Emotion and decision-making: affect-driven belief systems in anxiety and depression

Emotion processing and decision-making are integral aspects of daily life. However, our understanding of the interaction between these constructs is limited. In this review, we summarize theoretical approaches that link emotion and decision-making, and focus on research with anxious or depressed ind...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in cognitive sciences 2012-09, Vol.16 (9), p.476-483
Main Authors: Paulus, Martin P, Yu, Angela J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Affect - physiology
Anxiety
Anxiety Disorders - physiopathology
Anxiety disorders. Neuroses
Arousal
Arousal - physiology
Bayes Theorem
Bayesian analysis
Biological and medical sciences
Cognitive ability
Decision making
Decision Making - physiology
Depression
Depressive Disorder - physiopathology
Emotions
Emotions - physiology
Humans
Medical sciences
Miscellaneous
Mood disorders
Neurology
Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
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Summary:Emotion processing and decision-making are integral aspects of daily life. However, our understanding of the interaction between these constructs is limited. In this review, we summarize theoretical approaches that link emotion and decision-making, and focus on research with anxious or depressed individuals to show how emotions can interfere with decision-making. We integrate the emotional framework based on valence and arousal with a Bayesian approach to decision-making in terms of probability and value processing. We discuss how studies of individuals with emotional dysfunctions provide evidence that alterations of decision-making can be viewed in terms of altered probability and value computation. We argue that the probabilistic representation of belief states in the context of partially observable Markov decision processes provides a useful approach to examine alterations in probability and value representation in individuals with anxiety and depression, and outline the broader implications of this approach.
ISSN:1364-6613
1879-307X
DOI:10.1016/j.tics.2012.07.009