Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy Emotional see-saw affects rationality of decision-making: Evidence for metacognitive impairments Michał Folwarczny a , Magdalena C. Kaczmarek b , Dariusz Doliński a , Remigiusz Szczepanowski c, ⁎ a SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty of Psychology in Wrocław, Poland b Institute of Psychosocial Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany c Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw, Poland ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Emotional see-saw Meta-reasoning Decision-making Social influence ABSTRACT This research investigated the cognitive mechanisms that underlie impairments in human reasoning triggered by the emotional see-saw technique. It has previously been stated that such manipulation is effective as it pre- sumably induces a mindless state and cognitive deficits in compliant individuals. Based on the dual-system architecture of reasoning (system 2) and affective decision-making (system 1), we challenged the previous theoretical account by indicating that the main source of compliance is impairment of the meta-reasoning system when rapid affective changes occur. To examine this hypothesis, we manipulated affective feelings (system 1 processing) by violating participants' expectations regarding reward and performance in a go/no-go task in which individuals were to inhibit their responses to earn money. Aside from the go/no-go performance, we measured rationality (meta-reasoning system 2) in decision-making by asking participants to comply with a nonsensical request. We found that participants who were exposed to meta-reasoning impairments due to the emotional see-saw phenomenon exhibited mindless behavior. 1. Introduction There are many daily life situations in which we fall in a certain emotional state that subsides quickly, leading us to make irrational decisions. Let us imagine a college student who is anxiously waiting for information whether she has passed a very difficult exam. By chance, shortly after getting the good news, a telemarketer calls her and she agrees to invite a kitchenware salesman to her apartment. Obviously, this is a nonsensical decision as she does not like cooking at all! Indeed, it is important to ask a question here: how does such sudden withdrawal of emotions make an individual's behavior mindless when confronted with the requests or demands of others? According to research on social influence (Dolinski, Ciszek, Godlewski, & Zawadzki, 2002; Dolinski & Nawrat, 1998; Dolinski & Szczucka, 2012, 2013), such situations represent typical fear-then-relief conditions which most likely induce compliant behavior that may in turn lead participants to do things against their own will. Dolinski and Nawrat (1998) conducted a series of experiments yielding such out- comes, since participants for whom the fear-then-relief procedure was applied seemed to comply more often than those from the control groups. For instance, in one study (Dolinski & Nawrat, 1998) the ex- perimenters placed a card looking like a parking ticket that was either an advertisement or a drive for blood donation behind the wipers or on the door of a parked car. As a result, drivers who noticed the card be- hind the wipers of their car were more willing to fill out a questionnaire regarding road traffic than drivers who did not undergo any manip- ulation, or received a note attached to the car door. In addition, Nawrat and Dolinski (2007) argued that the sudden withdrawal of a positive emotion can induce compliance, especially when a happiness-then-disappointment procedure was applied to par- ticipants. For instance, in one of their studies, participants in the ex- perimental group found a small piece of paper on the street that looked like a real banknote. After picking it up, they discovered that it was a banknote-like advertisement for a new car wash. In the control group there was no exposure to this fake banknote. Then, all participants were asked by an experimenter's accomplice to help her carry a heavy bag to the fifth floor. As in previous experiments, the researchers demon- strated that participants who experienced a rapid change in their emotional state were more compliant. In another study conducted by Nawrat and Dolinski (2007), the experimenter telephoned people in- troducing herself as an employee of Polish Telecom. In some of the experimental conditions, she informed the callee that the computer had calculated an overpayment in his or her account and he or she would soon receive a refund. Other participants were informed that the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.04.012 Received 25 September 2016; Received in revised form 11 April 2018; Accepted 20 April 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Lower Silesia, ul. Strzegomska 55, 53-611 Wroclaw, Poland. E-mail address: remigiusz.szczepanowski@dsw.edu.pl (R. Szczepanowski). Acta Psychologica 186 (2018) 126–132 Available online 26 April 2018 0001-6918/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T