How Important are Emotions in Human Cognition?

For many people, they live their lives based on emotions. Emotions of happiness, love, success, and many more, could possibly be the most satisfying feelings. Except we commonly experience unpleasant emotions. There are emotions of anger, hatred, sadness, and disgrace. A very important question in the understanding of the human mind and highly related to cognitive science, is how do these emotions affect human cognition and the impact on our abilities to be rational? To tackle this question, we need to understand what emotions are, but not solely in the manner we are all familiar with, we need to understand them from a cognitive nature involving our physiology, psychology, and environment. Cognition, according to the Oxford definition refers to “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses”. By this definition alone we can say that emotions are incredibly important for our cognitive abilities. These processes must include attention, memory, planning, and decision-making. Obviously there are also processes that require a lot more cognitive attention than others. Studying for a difficult exam would require a lot of preparation and memory along with voluntary attention. In the other hand, walking and having a conversation with a friend would probably require a lot less concentration to succeed in the action. So how can our emotions impact those two very simple and common situations? As a university student, it is easy to agree that studying for an exam while stressing out from personal issues becomes a very grim undertaking. In the same manner, having a conversation under an angry emotional state, might lead to the impression that you are a jerk. In the past (before...

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