How Emotions Affect Decision Making

1. How Emotions Affect Decision Making By Alyssa Jacot and Dan Langston

2. Why Do We have Emotions? Emotions are a result of evolution; they are a lot of the reason why we humans can survive in this world. Our body over time has recognized situations in which we needed specific help in responding to various situations and has adapted to being able to respond accordingly. EX: Fear raises our pulse rate, thus making us receive more oxygen to our brain and muscles in the case of an attack or need to quickly make a decision.

3. So How Do Our Emotions Help Us? As stated before, emotions are the result of our body’s reaction to a situation and that affects what we decide to do in response. Our base three emotions are Fear(guilt, sadness…etc), anger, and happiness/love. Fear elicits a response of more blood flow, and it has been shown that people who are afraid take less risks when making decisions. This could be contributed to fear being present in situations of danger, and our body it responding by making us afraid so that we are more careful and wont take risks in that situation. [a]

4. Continued Anger also plays a large role in decision making; when angry, one also has more blood flow due to a beating heart, but the purpose was originally meant for attack for our survival. When angry, it has been found that your perception of risk is lowered, less likely to admit a mistake, and exhibit a need for self control. [b]

5. Our Emotion’s Help Us Become Better Having normal emotions and conscious can attribute to much success in our world, whether it have been thousands of years ago, or even today’s world. Study’s show that when a person with normal emotions loses a card game (against a stacked dealer) the fear they feel in response to losing makes them less likely to be risky as a defense to not lose as often. [c]

6. How Does Love Affect Our Brain? Love can be one of our most confusing yet rewarding emotions! The feeling that we contribute to love is caused oxytocin (cuddle hormone) and makes one exhibit euphoria. They have found that this hormone is active in not just couples, but also when gambling. The reason for this, is that our body is responding to situations where there is a chance for a great outcome for the user.

7. Love Continued • But why do we feel love when in a relationship? • When in love, our body makes us feel euphoria, which leads to becoming very agreeable, happy, and less likely to think about risks. • This emotion was basically programmed into our bodies to better repopulate the human race. Think about it, and why that might be. [d]

8. Antonio Damasio • “[E]motions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes. Let's say you are trying to make a complicated decision...if you have previously been in similar situations, and if you have been either rewarded or punished by the choices you made in those situations, then emotional memory may help you with your current choice. That help may come in the form of a gut feeling or…in the form of a nonconscious bias that leads you in a certain direction. And we know this because if you're deprived of those emotions then...rather than being sort of a coolheaded reasoner, you become a rather poor reasoner.” (1)

9. Antonio Damasio • “If you have not had the right experiences, or if you have not classified your experiences in a good way, your emotional memory could be leading you in the wrong direction. So I am not saying that you should start listening to your emotions and do what your emotions tell you.” (1) • “[E]motional memory can have a very good tempering effect. And don't interpret reason as separate from emotion, but as part of a continuum.  Both reason and emotion are part of our life mechanisms.” (1) • "Human beings can judge [moral dilemmas] on the basis of reason alone, of emotion alone, or of a mixture” (3)

10. Emotions Improve Decision Making • “Neurobiological studies…indicate that emotion improves decision making in two respects.”(2) • “First, emotion pushes individuals to make some decision when making a decision is paramount.”(2) • “Emotion provides a coping mechanism and allows individuals to focus without being caught up in the details.”(2) • “Second, emotion can assist in making optimal decisions.”(2) • “Emotion helps to optimize over the cost of optimization.”(2)

11. Trends In Emotions • “Even mild emotional states can affect behavior”(2) • “While strong emotional responses are often associated with poor decisions…,recent research in psychology indicates that the absence of emotions can also lead to suboptimal decisions.”(2) • “ Positive feelings can make it easier to access information in the brain, promote creativity, improve problem solving, enhance negotiation, and build efficient and thorough decision making.”(2)

12. Studies Show… • “[F]indings, support the idea that emotional, intuitive reactions orchestrate moral judgments of people with intact brains.” (3) • “People who suffer damage to a brain area that generates compassion, shame, and other social sentiments apply coldly rational thinking to hypothetical moral dilemmas”(3) • “In contrast, people with healthy brains or with damage to other neural regions usually permit their personal concerns to override rational responses to such moral quandaries”(3)

13. Continued • “The researchers propose that prefrontal damage dilutes emotional reactions to harm that one inflicts on others. People with such damage thus solve moral dilemmas by following social conventions for helping as many folks as possible and hurting as few as possible, rather than by considering personal feelings.”(3)* *Based on a study where people with prefrontal damage and people without prefrontal damage gave responses hypothetical situations (both moral and nonmoral and personal and impersonal.

14. Works Cited 1. "Questions for Dr. Antonio Damasio: What feelings feel like." New York Times Magazine. 07 May. 2000eLibrary. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. 2. Ackert, Lucy F., Church, Bryan K., Deaves, Richard.. "Emotion and financial markets." Economic Review - Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. 01 Apr. 2003: 33. eLibrary. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. 3. Bower, Bruce. "Feeling Right from Wrong." Science News. 24 Mar. 2007: 182. eLibrary. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. A. Gagnon, Danny. "Why Do We Have Emotions?." montrealcbtpsychologist.com. .montrealcbtpsychologist.com, n.d. Web. 13 Apr 2012. <http://www.montrealcbtpsychologist.com/userfiles/373150/file/Why_Do_We_Have_Emotions.pdf>. http://www.strategy-business.com/article/09413d?gko=25b9b B. "Emotionsin Decision Making." Wikipedia. Wkikipedia, 22, 3, 2012. Web. 13 Apr 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions_in_decision-making>. http://bigthink.com/world-in-mind/its-all-numbers-up-here-love-and-decision-making

15. D. Sukel, Katyl. "It’s All Numbers Up Here: Love and Decision Making." Bigthink.com. N.p., 25,03, 2012. Web. 13 Apr 2012. <http://bigthink.com/world-in-mind/its-all-numbers-up-here- A. Tsai, Ming-Hong. "How emotions affect Decision making." Strategybusiness.com. N.p., 7, 2009. Web. 13 Apr 2012. <www.strategy-business.com/article/09413d?gko=25b9b>.