High emotion contributes to great opera. It does not, however, serve us well when making judgments about others. This is the argument advanced in “Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust,” a new paper by Maurice E. Schweitzer, Wharton professor of operations and information management, and PhD student Jennifer Dunn. The two researchers show how incidental emotions — emotions from one situation that influence judgment in a following, unrelated situation — affect our willingness to trust others, and thus our responses in certain business and social contexts. As Schweitzer puts it: “Did you give someone a big contract because of his reputation for dependability or because he told you a funny, uplifting story prior to making the deal?”
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