Why might someone avoid information that could be useful for making an important decision? Useful information can indicate that some options are better than others for achieving an important goal or averting disaster. A theory is developed here which proposes that decisions feel more important because the consequences of the decisions are more threatening the self-concept. Useful information threatens to reduce a decision maker's decision options, thus constraining their opportunities to act quickly, reduce uncertainty and make the decision in a way that is self-verifying. This occurs while a decision maker is strongly motivated to reduce the uncertainty and the threat to the self-concept generated by the decision making situation. As a result, people become less likely to access useful information when making more important decisions. This is more likely to occur when the decisions includes a substantial threat to more salient identities and core aspects of the decision maker's self-concept. First a study is conducted to develop a measure of the relative strength of a respondent's leadership identity. Then, hypotheses derived from the theory are tested in two experiments. The hypotheses predict that participants making more important decisions will (1) experience stronger feelings, (2) value self-verifying options more and feel more certain after making a decision, (3) prefer fewer options in a subsequent decision task after making more, as opposed to less important decisions, (4) make more important decision more quickly, (5) access less useful information when making more important decisions , (6) feel more certain after avoiding useful information that could indicate an identity validating solution is inferior and less certain if accessing that information, (7) report that decisions associated with stronger feelings are more important, and (8) prefer fewer choices to pick from in a subsequent decision when having made a prior decision with less useful information. The hypotheses are tested in two incrementally differing experimental in which participants make organizational leadership decisions after completing the instrument developed to test the strength of their leadership identity. Contrasting pairs of conditions vary theoretically important elements to make the decisions feel more or less important. Both pairs vary the importance of the decision situation by changing the definition of the situation to increase or decrease the consequences for the participant's leadership identity. The second study similarly varies the decision's importance and adds the opportunity to access various types of useful information prior to making each decision. Findings indicate that decisions feel more important when the outcome includes a credible threat to the maintenance of a highly salient identity. Participant making more important decisions in experiment A felt more certain they were right after making their decisions. They preferred fewer options in a subsequent decision situation which indicates they felt more powerful. In Experiment B Participants were less likely to access useful information when making more important decisions. Participants who did access useful information prior to making a more important decision preferred more options in a subsequent task. This indicates they felt less powerful after making more important decisions with more information. These findings have implications for research on decision making, identity theory, leadership in organizations, and research on emotions, and the role of perceptual control in the resiliency of social structure.

The late 1990's was a time of great wealth and prosperity in the United States. With this economic fervor came a new era of deregulation of the financial services industry. During this time, Congress passed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, otherwise referred to as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GBLA). This law removed the final barrier (contained in Depression-era Glass-Steagall legislation) between mixing investment banking and commercial banking in the United States. The purpose of this report is to explain the intentions of the law's supporters and detractors, to discuss why this period was a particularly ripe time for such a policy, to examine the leadership decisions that contributed to the passage of GLBA, and to understand the motives behind a "new Glass-Steagall" bill today. This paper focuses only on the deregulatory parts of GLBA relevant to Glass-Steagall's repeal. It does not examine the privacy protections, et al. of GLBA at any length. Also contained in the analysis is a brief discussion of whether GLBA's stated intentions have been violated through the mixing of banking and commerce that has emerged in the present day. Finally, this report ends with a discussion on the fidelity of our national debate on banking regulation, and what it means for the federal government to manage risk in American financial markets in support of the public interest. / text