Does Time Pressure Alter the Affect Gap in Risky Choice?

People often exhibit systematic differences in their risky choices when decisions elicit high anticipatory affect compared to choices that are relatively affect-poor—typically showing lower decision quality and greater risk aversion. This affect gap can be modeled by assuming that people use a compensatory strategy (i.e., a strategy that weighs outcomes against their probability of occurring) in affect-poor choices, but a simple non-compensatory strategy that considers outcome but ignores probability information in affect-rich choices. The reasons for this difference in strategy selection, however, are not yet understood. To examine whether the affect gap may reflect that in affect-rich choices, cognitive resources are more strongly taxed (leading to a simplification of the underlying decision strategy), we investigated whether the affect gap is impacted by a time pressure manipulation. Participants were asked to choose between affect-rich prospects (medical lotteries) and economically equivalent but relatively affect-poor prospects (monetary lotteries), either without a time constraint or under time pressure. The results indicated that the affect gap manifested similarly under time pressure as without time pressure. Specifically, differences between affect-rich and affect-poor choices in strategy selection did not differ between time pressure conditions, and differences in decision quality and risk aversion were even slightly attenuated under time pressure. The findings suggest that the differences in decision behavior between affect-rich and affect-poor choices are not driven by cognitive constraints. We discuss the potential psychological mechanisms involved in the affect gap.