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Introduction: The Hedgefox GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN, KATHLEEN D. VOHS, AND ROY F. BAUMEISTER IN A PERHAPS overused metaphor, academics are sometimes classified as “hedgehogs” and “foxes.” Playing on a famous, albeit somewhat mysterious, statement by the seventh century BC philosopher Archilochus that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” the prototypical hedgehog is a system addict on a quest for a unified theory of everything. Foxes, in contrast, have an appreciation of the complexities of reality which prevents them from even entertaining the possibility of any grand unifying scheme. Belying their physical image, hedgehogs are the life of the party. They take outrageous positions and push their arguments to the limit, generating heated debate. Foxes, despite their slyness, are party duds; they stand on the sidelines shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at the naivety of the hedgehogs' wild speculations. One more strike against foxes. As the party extends into the waning hours, however, the frantic repartee of the hedgehogs can wear thin, even to the hedgehogs themselves . At this time, the host begins to long for the arrival of a third species of party animal: the “hedgefox.” Hedgefoxes combine the best properties of their two mammalian relatives. Like the hedgehog, the hedgefox is a synthesizer; but like the fox, the hedgefox cares about, and advances theories that take account of, and make sense of, the complexities of reality. If research on emotions is a party (and the explosive growth of the topic over the past few decades has lent the topic something of a party 3 atmosphere), the time is ripe for the entry of the hedgefox. Research on emotions has made enormous strides, stimulated by debates between researchers who have taken extreme stands on a variety of central issues. There are hedgehog emotion researchers who argue for the primacy of emotions over cognition, and others who argue, instead, that all emotions are derivative of cognition. (There is also a third group which denies the validity of the distinction; see Oum and Lieberman, chapter 6, this volume.) There are advocates of the idea that moral judgments are the product of emotion, perhaps justified ex post by reasons, as well as those who argue that morality is a matter of logic. And, most central to the basic theme of this book, there are hedgehogs whose research focuses almost exclusively on the destructive effects of emotions, and there are others who focus as selectively as the first group on the vitally beneficial functions that emotions serve. Of course the foxes are right; each of these polar positions is simplistic in its extremity. But that observation doesn’t take us far. In the waning hours of the emotion research party, we have arrived at the point where debates between extreme and obviously untenable positions are not as productive as they once were. In short, we need answers to the When question. When do emotions or cognitions predominate? When are moral judgments driven by reflexive emotional reactions and when by logical thought? And, when are emotions helpful or harmful? This book provides nuanced synthetic answers to these types of questions. Decision making is the other half of our topic. It too has seen explosive growth in research interest in recent years. As with emotion, its few early hedgehogs (for example, groupthink, rational choice, framing) have had to withstand a stampede of foxes. Some decision making researchers are starting to think that their field’s destiny is merely to develop lists of departures from rationality, without much prospect of integrative theory. Yet others are confident that new grand theories will emerge. The time is ripening for hedgefoxes to impose limited order on decision theory also. If a party is an imperfect metaphor for describing emotion and decision research, its aptness cannot be debated as a metaphor for the events that led to the creation of this book. The genesis of the book was a fiveweek summer institute on emotion and decision making for twenty young researchers, codirected by two not-so-young researchers, Roy F. Baumeister and George Loewenstein. The institute was hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and funded by the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations. A highlight of the summer institute was a series of visits and presentations , supported by a separate grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, by eminent researchers interested in emotion and/or decision issues. 4 Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? [18.218...

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