The Relationship Between Emotions and Making Decisions.

Making a decision, whether it is a simple one or one that requires deeper thought and analysis, is an essential function of the human brain. USC professor of neuroscience, Antonio Damasio, illustrates the influence emotions and feelings have on ones ability to make decisions. Moreover, in an article from the University of Iowa’s College of Medicine by Damasio, Antoine Bechara, and Hannah Damasio, titled “Emotion, Decision Making, and Orbitofrontal Cortex” the correlations between feelings/emotions, decision-making and the orbitofrontal cortex are explained through the hypothesis of the somatic marker. Furthermore, In Jonah Lehrer’s “How We Decide” he reflects on a 1982 case where a patient suffered from being incapable of making simple everyday decisions due to the removal of a small tumor near his cortex and the loss of his emotions. Although previously argued by ancient philosopher Descartes as well as philosophers Plato and Freud, who all claimed that the way to making better decisions was to think irrationally, emotions are a vital necessity to a human’s ability to make decisions. Thus, the removal of the cortex or anything near the lobes of the brain affects our ability to make simple everyday because it impairs our ability to feel or have emotions.

“Damasio’s famous theory suggests that when individuals make decisions, they use cognitive and emotional processes to assess the value of their choices.” (Pamela J. Johnson) He describes feelings as “changes in both body and brain states in response to different stimuli.” He believes that emotions and feelings have an influence on our ability to make both simple and harder decisions. “A brain that can’t feel can’t make up his mind,” he explains how when a person has no feelings t...

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...ish philosopher who delighted in heretical ideas, was right when he declared that reason was the “the slave of the passions.”

In conclusion, we’ve examined the different ways that emotions relate to our ability to make decisions. Through Damsio’s and his colleague’s works and hypothesis we can conclude that there is a strong relationship between our feelings and emotions with the way we make decisions. Without emotions or feelings we as humans would not be able to make any decisions. While previous philosophers would argue against such claims it is proven that emotions are an essential factor used when making decisions. Without them we are unable to function on a normal everyday basis. As stated by him and his colleagues “damage leads to the pathological impairments to the decision making process which seriously compromise the efficiency of everyday life decisions.”