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Short-term fluctuations in incidental happiness and economic decision-making: experimental evidence from a sports bar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Judd B. Kessler ,
Andrew McClellan ,
James Nesbit  and
Andrew Schotter
Judd B. Kessler*
Affiliation:
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
Andrew McClellan*
Affiliation:
Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA
James Nesbit*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, New York University, New York, USA
Andrew Schotter*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, New York University, New York, USA
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

We develop a new experimental paradigm to study how emotions affect decision-making. We use it to investigate the impact of short-term fluctuations in incidental happiness on economic decisions. Experimental subjects watch an NFL football game in a sports bar. At various commercial breaks, we measure subjects’ happiness and observe their decisions regarding charitable giving, willingness to pay for a consumer good, risk taking, and trust. We find that events in the game impact the incidental happiness of our subjects, and these changes lead to predictable changes in choices. We provide a simple model that rationalizes how subjects’ behavior varies with incidental happiness and provides insight into how mood can be tractably included in economics models. Our experimental paradigm can be leveraged by other researchers interested in exploring the impact of emotions on behavior.

Keywords

Decision makingEmotionsLab in the field
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 141 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-021-09708-9.

The authors thank Eric Clemons and NBC Sports for organizing recruitment and providing funding for the experiment. They thank Anwar Ruff for writing the software for the study; Ala Avoyan, Elizabeth Schotter, Joseph Briggs, and Severine Toussaert for their help running the experiments; and Rachel Ryley for RA work. They thank Ori Heffetz, Alex Rees-Jones, Homa Zarghamee, and seminar participants at CESS for helpful comments. In addition to organizing recruitment and funding the experiment, NBC Sports, through Eric Clemons, paid $5000 each to Judd B. Kessler and Andrew Schotter for consulting services related to analysis of data from the experiment. However, no party had the right to review the current manuscript or limit the publication of any research findings related to this project.

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