Emotional Influence on Ambiguity Attitudes:

How emotions influence people’s decision making is a recent research topic. This thesis makes the first attempt to investigate whether the emotion of disgust has an impact on decisions under uncertainty and more specifically on people’s ambiguity attitude. To do so, 85 completed online questionnaires filled in by subjects of European citizenship were analyzed. Based on the results, this study examines the effect of the alternatives that provoke the emotion of disgust on people’s decision making. Moreover, it studies if people’s disgust sensitivity scores have an effect on their ambiguity attitudes and if there is a connection between gender and disgust sensitivity. This research replicates previous research, suggesting that there are gender differences in disgust sensitivity. Furthermore, the research finds evidence for both ambiguity aversion and familiarity bias. However, contrary to what expected it cannot be concluded that the emotion of disgust influences the process of decision making.