Relationship between emotions and decision making

Abstract

Emotion is the vital component of human mental processes by which one can "wilfully" make a decision, intensely manifest a feeling, automatically react to an unexpected stimulus, and constructively or destructively participate in one's reasoning. Having such important roles in human mental life, emotion was regrettably ignored as a scientific topic throughout twentieth century both in the field of psychology and neuroscience. But nowadays, many neuroscientists, including Antonio Demasio, have also endorsed emotion, arguing that “emotions not only regulate our social encounters, but they also influence our cognition, perception and decision-making through a series of interactions with our intentions and motivations (Damasio 1994; Scherer, 2001).