Affect and Time Pressure in a Simulated Luggage Screening Paradigm: A Fuzzy Signal Detection Theory Analysis

摘要

Research on the effects of negative emotions on risk assessment profiles in decision making has shown thatemotions significantly impact the perception of risk; anger reduces perceived risk, fear heightens perceivedrisk, and sorrow leads to more logical and objective decision making. Another situational factor thatinfluences operator performance is time pressure, which in general is not an optimal condition for decisionmaking. Participants performed a simulated airline luggage screening task under varying time pressuresafter being primed with emotion-inducing stimuli (anger, fear, or sorrow respectively). Operatorperformance was assessed using fuzzy signal detection theory (FSDT) analyses to evaluate the impact ofvarious negative emotions and time pressure on performance in a visual threat detection paradigm. It wasanticipated that the added cognitive stressors of negative affect and time pressure would induce more lowconfidencetarget-present responses (i.e., low r; near miss), albeit to differing degrees due to the distinctiveeffects of different negative emotions. These findings have implications for the training and performanceenhancement of luggage screening operators, and, in turn, air transportation security.