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The impact of emotions on decision-making
Cognitive and biological emotion
The impact of emotions on decision-making
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People’s emotions are not trustable in the pursuit of knowledge. When making decisions, people naturally refer to their emotions to help them. Emotions are not only physical, but cognitive as well. Physically, emotions can be shown by facial expression, and body language. For example, someone who is sad may have a frown upon their face, and may be slouched over. People’s emotions are affected by their beliefs, and emotions affect their beliefs due to the cognitive side of emotions. The cognitive qualities of emotions are inborn, meaning they are not learnt. The mental aspect of emotions can change due to a person’s beliefs. This means if someone’s beliefs changed, there could be a change in the corresponding emotion as well. An example of this is that someone may feel fear because they have a history test next period. They believe the test is going to be difficult, and they fear failure. Once the test is passed out and the person see’s it isn’t as hard as they had believed, their fear goes away. This shows that the change in belief can change the corresponding emotion.
There are multiple reasons why emotions cannot always be trusted in the pursuit of knowledge. Passion plays a big role in emotions. When a person has a great amount of passion towards something, they tend to argue their beliefs more strongly, and not listen to the counterclaims. For instance, two very passionate athletes could argue about which sport is better. The soccer player will strongly argue why soccer is so much better, whereas the basketball player will do the same for basketball. Neither will listen to the counterclaims because of their strong passion for their sport. Their emotions take over, and don’t allow them to listen to the opposing argument. Peopl...
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...nly one person instead. Using reason, the person could come to the conclusion that one death is better than five, but emotion also plays a role in this decision. Having to interact in the situation can change the decision, and the person’s view on the situation. When searching for knowledge, emotions make it so humans have the energy ti take part in intellectual activities. Along with that, emotions give people the potential to discover new ideas. Those with passion in their work, are more motivated, and able to gain more knowledge because of this. Emotions can be a source of knowledge for some things that reason cannot prove. Reason can only take people so far, until emotion is needed, such as making a decision between two rational options. All in all, there are arguments that show emotions are trustable in the pursuit of knowledge, and can be a source of knowledge.
Should we let our emotions control us? Should we base our decisions on how we are feeling at a specific time? Perhaps emotion shouldn’t factor at all into our decisions. Some of the characters we have studied exhibit both sides of this question. Luther and Alice from the show Luther fall on opposite sides of the spectrum while Billy Budd takes a hybrid approach.
A multitude of opinions are found on the subject: are emotions more a function of the heart or of the head? According to Antonio Damasio (1), emotions and feelings are an integral part of all thought; yet we as humans spend much of our time attempting to disregard and hide them. In the view of source (2), experience is the result of integration of cognition and feelings. In either view, it remains indisputable that emotions are not what we typically make them out to be: the unwanted step-sister of our cultural sweetheart reason. Reason in our culture denotes intelligence, cognition, and control. Emotions seems such a "scary" concept to our collective m...
... Finding the equilibrium between emotion and reason n is crucial for one to be able to make moral decisions that can be justified in an acceptable manner. The ability to balance those two can be very challenging, especially in situation where the emotion side of the brain attempts to take control. It should be kept in mind that emotion and reason can keep reasonable thinking from turning into irrational behavior.
Cultural based explanations posit that emotions are acquired via socialisation and recognise that cultural beliefs play an important role since research has indicated cultural variations amongst individualistic (USA) and collectivists (Japan) cultures. Studies have also focused on recognition rates of emotions and in relation to age.
Emotions – Emotions are a way for us to be able to communicate our emotional state and feelings with others. Sometimes this is through our moods or even facial
Hamilton, L.W. (2012). The Brain and Our Emotional Future: Foundations of Emotions [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences Online Course site: rutgersonline.net.
Scientists often take pride in presenting themselves as uninterested discoverers of truth who merely give us the facts and tools we need to acquire knowledge. “Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be,” said Albert Einstein, yet scientists themselves are frequently forced to make difficult emotional decisions. So, what is the role of emotion in the natural sciences? Well, scientists are expected to share their findings regardless of their effect on society. Sometimes however, this can have severe repercussions.
Emotion is the “feeling” aspect of consciousness that includes physical, behavioral, and subjective (cognitive) elements. Emotion also contains three elements which are physical arousal, a certain behavior that can reveal outer feelings and inner feelings. One key part in the brain, the amygdala which is located within the limbic system on each side of the brain, plays a key role in emotional processing which causes emotions such as fear and pleasure to be involved with the human facial expressions.The common-sense theory of emotion states that an emotion is experienced first, leading to a physical reaction and then to a behavioral reaction.The James-Lange theory states that a stimulus creates a physiological response that then leads to the labeling of the emotion. The Cannon-Bard theory states that the physiological reaction and the emotion both use the thalamus to send sensory information to both the cortex of the brain and the organs of the sympathetic nervous system. The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial expressions provide feedback to the brain about the emotion being expressed on the face, increasing all the emotions. In Schachter and Singer’s cognitive arousal theory, also known as the two-factor theory, states both the physiological arousal and the actual arousal must occur before the emotion itself is experienced, based on cues from the environment. Lastly, in the cognitive-mediational theory
It is a well-known fact that different factors affect on human behavior as well as various aspects of people’s life. Among them the emotions detect a powerful force on humans. Strong emotions may cause people to take actions they might not perform as usual, or obviate situations that they generally enjoy. Psychologists, researchers, and philosophers have proposed a set of different theories that explain how and why people experience the emotions. I have chosen two theories of emotion that I am interested in such as: the James-Lange Theory of Emotion and the Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion. This paper describes those theories by comparing and contrasting them;
Emotions are defined as "stereotypic patterns of the body, which are triggered by the central nervous system in response to distinct external environmental situations or to the recollection of memories related to such situations." (2) In other words, this means the emotions are the way the nervous system reacts to different situations one might find themselves in. In order to survive, emotional responses must be present. (2) "Whenever an emotion is triggered, a network of brain regions (traditionally referred to as the limbic system) generates a pattern of stereotypic outputs, which ultimately induce a biological response of the body." (2) These stereotypic outputs are what humans call emotions. They are predictable responses to certain situations, for instance when a person is in a sad situation, they will cry and feel depressed or if a person is in a happy situation, they will laugh and smile. These responses are because "specific circuits of the emotional motor system have evolved to both generate this stereotypic emotional facial response, as well as instantaneously recognize it when it occurs in somebody else." (2) This holds true for people in love, when you see someone in love you can tell because their face tells all.
One scientist, Damasio, provided an explanation how emotions can be felt in humans biologically. Damasio suggested, “Various brain structures map both the organism and external objects to create what he calls a second order representation. This mapping of the organism and the object most likely occurs in the thalamus and cingulate cortices. A sense of self in the act of knowing is created, and the individual knows “to whom this is happening.” The “seer” and the “seen,” the “thought” and the “thinker” are one in the same.” By mapping the brain scientists can have a better understandi...
The ability to experience and express emotions can be a long process. Everyone starts experiencing emotions pretty much from the day of birth; as a person grows up with their family every single day they become more experienced and have more emotions that can help create and form their lifestyle. The decisions a person makes is always influenced by the emotions they have at the current time and the emotions they have experienced before. Experiencing emotions are easier than expressing them. Emotions may be easier to express at a younger age, but as anyone grows older it becomes more difficult. Both experiencing and expressing emotions are different for everyone. The ability to express emotions can be influenced by a person 's culture, personality,
Any person can relate to human emotions. It is a human desire to long for communication because we are social creatures. Emotions are a reflexive act, and they can be studied by others to understand reactions. They are present in all living creatures and are expressed through movement and behavior. The display of sadness in another person can create sadness inside you either through a similar experience (Russell) or by relating to sadness as a part of your own experience (Stein).
Emotion has a major role that it plays in the learning environment (Cleveland-Innes & Campbell, 2012). Educational psychologists believe the motivation, achievements, and the overall educational performance has a direct correlation to the human emotion (Cleveland-Innes & Campbell, 2012). That statement alone reflects the significant role that emotion plays in education. There is a major need for human emotion to be displayed in the educational environment and it really does not matter whether it is a brick and mortar class or an online learning environment; emotion must and in fact does play a role.
From the moment they wake up, people experience events that trigger certain emotions. How people react to these events may depend on that person feels during that event. In terms of whether our emotions control us or we control our emotions, I believe that to some extent emotions control us. Because we cannot change how we feel in response to certain stimulus, emotions control us. However, people have some control over whether or not they act on their emotions. Emotions at that given moment can influence our actions. If people can control their reactions, then to some degree we are controlling our emotions. However, the prompts raises several important questions. How can one’s emotions alter other ways of knowing such as perception or reason?