Emotions and Decision-Making: Unraveling the Connection
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Emotions are powerful forces that influence various aspects of our cognition, shaping how we perceive the world, what we pay attention to, how we learn, remember, and ultimately, how we make decisions. But how exactly do emotions impact our choices?
In our lab, we explore this fascinating interplay, focusing on two distinct ways emotions influence decision-making: expected emotions and immediate emotions.
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Expected emotions involve predictions about how we’ll feel once a decision is made. These emotions are tied directly to the decision-making process itself, as we mentally weigh the potential outcomes and their emotional consequences.
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Immediate emotions, on the other hand, are the emotions we feel in real-time, during the decision-making process. They can stem from external factors in the environment or reflect our current mood or personality traits. These emotions often arise independently of the decision at hand but can still profoundly shape the choices we make.
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Given this strong link between emotion and decision-making, our lab seeks to understand the underlying neural mechanisms. We focus on how emotions—especially immediate ones—affect value-based decisions and how the regulation of emotions can modulate these effects.
Key Research Questions:
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How do immediate emotions influence value-based decision-making? We aim to uncover how emotions felt in the moment affect our ability to make decisions, particularly when assigning value to different options.
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Can reappraisal of immediate emotions change decision outcomes? By investigating how we can consciously regulate emotions through techniques like reappraisal (rethinking the meaning of an emotional event), we hope to reveal whether this can alter decision-making behavior.
Through this research, we aim to deepen our understanding of the brain’s emotional and cognitive processes, shedding light on how emotion regulation strategies might help individuals make better decisions in everyday life. By combining insights from neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science, we are working to bridge the gap between emotion and cognition in decision-making.