Emotions affect a variety of cognitive functions such as perception, attention, learning, memory, as well as decision-making. There are two types of emotional influences on decision-making: those of expected emotions and those of immediate emotions. Expected emotions include cognitive predictions about the emotional consequences of decision outcomes i.e., they originate from the decision-making task at hand. Immediate emotions are ‘real’ emotions experienced at the time of decision-making. They arise from any source other than the decision-making task at hand i.e., the sources for these emotions are usually present in the environment, and/or may also include a person’s mood or chronic dispositional affect.

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Given the strong relationship between emotion and decision-making on a theoretical and behavioural level, the regulation of emotions could be used as a means to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of emotions on decision-making behaviour.

 

This project is set out to systematically investigate

1) the effect of immediate emotions on value-based decision-making and

2) the modulatory effect of reappraisal of immediate emotions on decision-making.