Guilt in decision making. The effect of guilt emotion on how a decision maker focuses on the problem was investigated in the Jan. 2007 issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. A total of 171 volunteer students participated in the experiment, where each was randomly assigned to one of three emotional states

(guilt, anger, or neutral) through a reading/writing task.

Immediately after the task, the students were presented with a decision problem where the stated option has predominantly negative features (e.g., spending money on repairing a very old car). The results (number responding in each category) are summarized in the accompanying table. Is there sufficient evidence (at a = .10 )

to claim that the option choice depends on emotional state?

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Emotional State Choose Stated Option Do Not Choose Stated Option Totals Guilt 45 12 R 57 Anger 8 50 58 Neutral 7 49 56 Totals 60 60 111 171