The Role of Emotion in Decision-Making

In the television and movie series Star Trek^®, the character of Spock was from a race, the Vulcans, who had rejected emotion in favor of pure logical analysis and thought. In the non-fictional world there is a discipline of Decision Analysis. One of its principles is that decisions should be guided by rational thought processes and the involvement of emotion is to be avoided. While this may sound like a good idea, we should question whether emotion can, or should, be avoided.

Emotion is a part of the human condition and has both physiological and psychological manifestations. They influence our decision-making in many ways.

How many emotions are there and what are they? To a great extent, that depends on the source you consult. Most researches in the field list seven basic emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise. Others will list some secondary emotions that are mostly varying degrees of expressions, or combinations, of those seven, generating a list that runs over two dozen, but for this article we will stay with those seven. Note that of that list, five (anger, contempt, disgust, fear and sadness) are generally perceived as negatives while only one, joy, is clearly positive. Surprise is a bit of a special case since it can be either; its first appearance is generally followed quickly by some other emotion when the nature of the surprise is recognized.

In general, emotions are automatic responses to some stimulus. If you doubt this, think about what happens if you are at home and, say, reading a book, and hear a crash from somewhere else in the house. Your first response will be some level of surprise, followed by a desire to find out what caused it. You are likely to have one of the other emotional responses when you find out. Perhaps it will be anger, or its milder younger brother annoyance, when you find out the cat knocked a lamp off a table and it broke.

Our emotions are also associated with outward physical responses. In our interactions with others, we rely on facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, choice of vocabulary, and all other non-verbal communication cues we use to give us information about the emotional states of others. We use that information to determine how we respond to them and what their response may be to us. This includes situations in which we are making decisions or offering suggestions and ideas related to making decisions. It is a two-way process; others are watching and evaluating the same things in us. It is a critical part of our interactions with others.

There is no specific emotional center in the brain; rather, since many of our emotions are connected to input from one or more of our five physical senses, multiple areas of the brain are activated, as measured by various techniques, when emotions are expressed. This neural network activation can spread to somewhat different areas for the different emotions. Some, fear, anger and disgust for example, seem to be more closely associated with evolutionarily older portions of the brain such as the amygdala while others are more functions of the so-called higher structures. But no matter the emotion, much of the brain is involved because that emotional response leads to the activation of other pathways, including those of making decisions about what the cause of the emotion may be and, if need be, the decision(s) of what to do about it.

“What to do about it.” Here is where the role of emotion becomes important. Emotions affect our judgement, a major part of decision-making. Judgement is a critical feature of good decision-making in that it encourages us to consider our basic sense of propriety in the process. This sense of propriety is informed by social, moral, and spiritual principles that bind a successfully functioning society together, in other words the definition of justice within the society. It is a way to help us reject some possible decisions to problems that will clearly violate those norms. An example of this is one I read years ago, a suggestion (not serious) that the problem of overpopulation could easily be solved by any mathematician: just line up everyone and shoot every third person. Voilà, problem solved, but in violation of all societal norms! Our judgement, informed by our emotions, helps us reject such ideas.

So why do people make decisions that clearly violate those norms? We all know that when we are angry, fearful, or in another negative emotional state, we respond differently to a given situation than when we are joyful. A decision made in anger is more likely to be a reactive, hasty, and potentially negative decision than one we may make in the same situation when we in a “better mood,” calmer, and reflective.

Are all the negative emotions, like fear or disgust bad? Actually not. Many researchers consider them part of survival mechanisms in that they help us not make fatal decisions like ignoring the sound of a rattlesnake or a smell we associate with poisonous gases but decide, usually quickly, to back up or to back off. Others, like contempt, are harder to see as having a positive function. Still, they all affect our decisions.

This is not meant to imply that all decisions made when we are in a negative emotional state are negative, or “bad,” any more than all decisions made in a positive state are going to be positive, or “good.” Decisions are also made in the context of the situations in which they are being made; those situations also affect the decisions themselves.

To return briefly to the very beginning of this article, Spock himself was half human and as part of his character development struggled with emotions at times. It also turned out that the Vulcans (including those who were not half-human) were not entirely free of emotion, but were disciplined from childhood in setting them aside and only expressing them under appropriate conditions. Of course, Spock and the Vulcans were fictional and were used to explore the ways emotions can influence the actions (and, by the way, decisions) of people.

Implicit in the depiction of Spock and Vulcans is a recognition that emotions are a core part of our being. In fact, it appears that emotions are a core part of all living things, at least on planet Earth. Since emotions are integral to us and provide the basis for judgement we should be aware of their importance in our lives, including their influence on making decisions.

Next week we will begin our exploration of group decision-making.