Sometimes it's best not to keep your cool.

In fact, hot-headed stock investors make better decisions, a study in the Academy of Management Journal showed.

Adding emotions to the decision-making process can enhance creativity, engagement and decision efficiency, Myeong-Gu Seo of the University of Maryland and Lisa Feldman Barrett of Boston College wrote in a study published in the August/September issue.

The greater the average intensity of an individual's feelings, the higher their investment returns, the professors found. The study monitored 101 stock investors in a simulated trading exercise spanning four weeks.

"Contrary to the popular belief that the cooler head prevails, people with hot heads -- those who experienced their feelings with greater intensity during decision-making -- achieved higher decision-making performance," they wrote.

The conventional wisdom that emotions can make you irrational has less to do with how intense your feelings are than with how much you understand them, the study showed.

In other words, those investors who listened to their emotions were better able to regulate them.

But showing emotion on the trading floor is still a controversial subject.

"I'm no friend of emotion in trading," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey, who has been trading stocks for more than 25 years.

"It's much more important to be disciplined."

译文：

头脑不冷静有时候未必是件坏事。

《管理学会期刊》的一项研究发现，实际上，感情用事的炒股人士往往能做出更好的决定。

美国马里兰大学的Myeong-Gu Seo和波士顿学院的莉莎•费尔德曼•巴雷特在发表于《管理学会期刊》八、九月号的研究报告中指出，在决策过程中加入感情色彩可以提高创造力、参与度和决策效率。

两位教授发现，一个人在做决定时的情感活动越强烈，他的投资回报率就会越高。该研究对101位股票投资者进行了为期四周的模拟交易监控。

他们在研究报告中指出，“与‘头脑越冷静越好’的普遍看法恰好相反，那些头脑容易发热的人——也就是在决策过程中情感活动较为强烈的人——能取得更大的回报。”

研究表明，“情感会让人丧失理智”这个传统的至理名言更多得是与个人对情感的理解能力有关，而不在于情感有多强烈。

换句话说，那些跟着感觉走的投资者“管理”自己情感的能力更强。

然而，在股市上是否应该跟着感觉走仍是一个有争议的话题。

新泽西州泽西市的骑士股权交易公司的主管彼德•肯尼表示“我炒股从不会感情用事”，他的炒股生涯已超过25年。

“遵守投资纪律还是重要得多。”