Role of emotions in decision making

We make a huge number of choices every day. Generally these choices have an positive or a negative effect. We all want to make rational decisions, but often we are loaded with emotion that influences this decision. Events like whom to marry, which house to buy or whether to quit smoking are important choices which are based on emotion. 


Decision-making is a process where both cognitions and emotions play an important role. If cognition help us generating ideas, emotions allow us to decide what is worth thinking about and what is not. Emotions also help us in deciding what is relevant and irrelevant, what is wrong and what is right. 


Emotions have been categorized into two types: the positive emotions and the negative emotions. Negative emotions such as anger, serve to enhance credibility of threat, while positive emotions such as happiness ensure credibility of cooperation in decision process. Negative emotions can result in a limited search for new alternatives and less vigilant use of information, while positive emotions can increase or enhance active generation of ideas such as inference making, productive thinking  and facilitate the integration of information in decision-making process.


In contrast to the negative emotions, positive emotions help individuals in decision making and because of this decision makers arrive at a decision more quickly than people who experience negative emotions. People who are made to feel happy were better able to eliminate unimportant information and processed information in a creative way. 


A short but interesting interview with Antonio Damasio, researcher and professor of neuroscience at USC, about the influence of emotion on our daily lives.