Emotion’s true role in our decision making has been measured abundantly in experiments. Researchers will induce a mood in their subjects—by having them read or watch something happy or sad, for example—and then ask them to make decisions. In one study, subjects were seated in rooms that were either comfortable or uncomfortable and then asked about their satisfaction with their lives. The comfortable-room group reported being more satisfied. In a separate study, when subjects were made to feel sad, they perceived a mountain to be steeper than it actually was. And in a study on medical school
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