Even a fleeting exposure to a smiling face makes people more likely to make risky investment decisions (Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images News)
WAS it just greed that prompted the risky financial decisions that triggered global economic meltdown, or could other factors have been at work?
Before rushing to condemn the traders and bankers responsible, consider this: perhaps they were in too good a mood. That’s the intriguing implication of experiments showing that even a fleeting exposure to a smiling face makes people more likely to make risky investment decisions.
At the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in San Francisco last week,…
