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Emotion and Rationality: a Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence

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Emotion and Rationality: a Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence Emotion and Rationality 1 Emotion and Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence Michel Tuan Pham Columbia University The relation between emotion and rationality is assessed by reviewing empirical findings from multiple disciplines. Two types of emotional phenomena are examined—incidental emotional states and integral emotional responses—and three conceptions of rationality are considered—logical, material, and ecological. Emotional states influence reasoning processes, are often misattributed to focal objects, distort beliefs in an assimilative fashion, disrupt self-control when intensely negative but do not necessarily increase risk-taking. Integral emotional responses are often used as proxies for values, and valuations based on these responses exhibit distinct properties: efficiency, consistency, polarization, myopia, scale- insensitivity, and reference-dependence. Emotions seem to promote social and moral behavior. Conjectures about the design features of the affective system that give rise to seeming sources of rationality or irrationality are proposed. It is concluded that any categorical statement about the overall rationality or irrationality of emotion would be misleading. The relation between emotion and rationality, affect emotional states and reviews their effects on and reason, is an ageless question. This question has reasoning, belief accuracy, self-control and risk- preoccupied philosophers, commoners, and classical taking. The third section focuses on the role of writers for many centuries. It is only recently, integral affective responses in judgment and decision however, that it has become the subject of scientific making. This section identifies distinct properties of inquiry and empirical investigations. In the past 20 affective responses as proxies for value and evaluates years, investigations related to this question have the “somatic marker hypothesis.” The fourth section been conducted across a wide range of scientific examines the role of emotions in social and economic disciplines including cognitive and social interactions. The concluding section discusses psychology, economics, decision research, consumer identified empirical regularities and advances research, and neuroscience. Unfortunately, because theoretical conjectures about the principles of an empirical studies are necessarily grounded in a affective system of judgment and behavioral certain theoretical, substantive, and methodological regulation that gives rise to seeming sources of context, any one study can provide, at best, only a rationality and irrationality. It is concluded that any very partial answer to the extremely complex categorical statement about the overall rationality or question of emotion and rationality. The empirical irrationality of emotion may be simplistic and literature on emotion and rationality is thus very misleading. fragmented and sometimes seemingly inconsistent. What is needed, therefore, is a comprehensive review Types of Emotional Phenomena and Types of of the wide range of empirical findings that have Rationality emerged across various literatures about the relation Emotions refer to complex states of the between emotion and reason. This is the object of this organism characterized by changes in autonomic article. nervous system arousal accompanied by distinct The article is structured in five sections. The physiological expressions, specific action tendencies, first section introduces distinctions between two and subjective feeling experiences of a certain types of emotional phenomena—incidental emotional valence (see Strongman, 1987). Emotions generally, states and integral affective responses—and three though not always, arise from a cognitive appraisal of conceptions of rationality—logical, material, and the emotional object or situation in terms of its ecological. The next section focuses on incidental meaning for one’s well-being (Lazarus, 1991). In this This article may not exactly replicate the final Review of General Psychology, Vol. 11 (2), 155-158 version published in the APA journal. It is not the 1 copy of record. Copyright American PsychologyPsychological Association. Emotion and Rationality 2 review, the term “emotion” will be used somewhat choice, rationality requires that preferences be broadly to refer to the presence of affect in general. It transitive: If a person prefers A over B and prefers B will be used not only in reference to emotions over C, then this person must also prefer A over C. proper—that is, intense affective experiences such as Similarly, according to normative (Bayesian) rules of anger, fear, joy, and love that have clear emotional inference, if a person has to guess which of two types referents—but also in relation to milder affective of taxis was more likely involved in a hit-and-run responses, feelings, and states, including moods that accident, it would be rational to take into account the do not have clear referents. This wide-ranging use of relative proportion of each type of taxi in the area. the term emotion is intentional. If one is to have a full This first conception of rationality has been referred appreciation of the rationality or irrationality of to as logical (Kahneman, 1994). emotional phenomena, it is important not to restrict A second conception of rationality one’s analysis to the most intense emotional emphasizes the consistency between a person’s experiences.1 decisions and actions and this person’s objectives and When studying the effects of emotion on self-interests. According to renowned economist judgment, decision, and behavior, two types of Amartya Sen (1990, p. 210), “rationality … demands emotional phenomena should be distinguished: cogent relations between aims and objectives actually incidental emotional states and integral emotional entertained by the person and the choices that the responses (Bodenhausen, 1993). Incidental emotional person makes.” This conception is central to standard states are those whose source is unrelated to the economic theorizing where it is posited that rational object of judgment or decision. These states include individuals choose courses of actions in a way that current emotions not caused by the target object, maximizes these individuals’ own utility. Choices of preexisting mood states, and enduring emotional inferior alternatives are irrational, so are behaviors dispositions such as chronic anxiety. Integral that are not in the person’s self-interest (e.g., emotional responses are those experienced in relation compulsive gambling, excessive smoking, to the object of judgment or decision. More unprotected sex with strangers). This second specifically, integral affective responses are emotions conception of rationality may be referred to as and feelings that are elicited by features of the target material. object, whether these features are real, perceived, or The study of emotion raises a third type of only imagined (Cohen, Pham, & Andrade, in press).2 rationality. Certain types of behaviors and actions are Three conceptions of rationality also need to “rational” not because of they are logically consistent be distinguished in discussing the relation between or serve the person’s self-interest, but because they emotion and rationality. The first conception fulfill broader societal goals, meet higher moral emphasizes reasoning, consistency, and logic. standards, or serve greater evolutionary purposes. According to the Webster’s New World Dictionary Some of these behaviors and actions, in fact, may be (Neufeldt, 1991, p. 1115), the word rational implies against the person’s material self-interest. For “the ability to reason logically, as by drawing example, it would not be in a bystander’s self-interest conclusions from inferences.” People are rational to take on an armed mugger and attempt to rescue the (irrational) if their beliefs, judgments, choices, and mugger’s victim. However, if the bystander elects to actions respect (violate) certain standards of logic. do so, one could hardly call this act irrational. Such For example, in the standard economic theory of benevolent, altruistic acts are quite reasonable, even desirable, from a societal or moral standpoint, even if 1 For instance, in his treaty on emotion and they seem irrational from a strictly material rationality, Elster (1999) concentrates his analysis on standpoint. Similarly, people’s almost universal intense emotional experiences of the kind discussed by attraction to certain ideals of beauty may seem classical writers. This analytical strategy introduces two irrational from a logical standpoint and could also be major sampling problems. First, it is unlikely that materially irrational if it leads to unfortunate classical writings, however insightful, are statistically outcomes (e.g., heartbreak). However, there is representative of human reality. Second, even if they evidence that the attraction to certain standards of were, an exclusive focus on intense emotions is bound beauty is sensible from an evolutionary standpoint to overstate their general consequences. (see Etcoff, 1999). Certain behaviors and attitudes 2 Unfortunately, space constraints prevent a may therefore be “rational,” not in the logical or discussion of the extensive work on memory for material sense, but in terms of their consistency with affective experiences and affective forecast of future societal goals, moral standards, or evolutionary experiences (see, e.g., Kahneman, 1994). Review of General Psychology, Vol. 11 (2), 155-158 2 Emotion
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