Abstract：This study aimed to examine whether coherence shifts effect exist and justify the role of emotion and consequence seriousness, when emergency decision makers evaluating cues’ importance and being faced with multi-cues multi-alternative decision task. Experimental psychology method was used, and subjects’ evaluations of importance of the same four cues were statistically analyzed. The result showed that: Coherence shifts exist in evaluation of importance of cues under emergency, decision makers tend to overestimate the importance of cues which support the leading option, and underestimate the importance of other cues. The higher the consistence of decision making task is, the stronger the extent of coherence shifts is. Even when the number of cues support leading option and non-leading option is equal, coherence shifts still exist. Decision makers’ negative emotion and serious crisis consequence can strengthen coherence shifts, and the interaction between these two factors also has significant effect on the extent of coherence shifts.
2015, Vol. 12 
