Importance of Emotional Regulation in Decision Making, Research Paper Example

Introduction

Emotions are powerful forces that influence our lives in various aspects, including physiological responses, attention, memory, social interactions, and decision making. Success can very much depend on one’s ability to regulate emotions, as they can become dysfunctional at excessive intensities and durations.

Decision-making is the process of identifying alternative courses of action, collecting information on these alternatives, assessing them, and choosing the most favorable choice. One engages in a thoughtful process, defines the alternative courses of action, organizes the acquired data, and deliberately decides to take a particular direction. Decision-making is harder in times of uncertainty and risk, although the probabilities can be deduced in times of risk, which allows weighing between potential consequences. In situations of uncertainty, one merely relies on estimations (Meder 2013). Regulation of emotions is vital in making decisions.

Difference between emotion and reason

Emotions, unlike reason, are constructed socially and are apparent, and actions are interpreted into various emotional states depending on the social context. Emotions can be defined as a personal and conscious occurrence influenced by biological factors and mental conditions (Barrett, 2012). They can be broadly categorized into incidental and integral emotions. The former is unrelated to a decision or judgment and, consequently, more genuine, and the latter is part of one’s representation of choice on hand. An example of integral emotion would be anxiety felt by a student about an upcoming exam which leads him to choose to start studying sooner instead of meeting friends. In the same scenario, the student decides to cheat in the exam, even though he can do well on his own, and the consequence of getting caught is dire, which becomes a case of bias decision making. In reaction to being expelled from school, the student then attributes fault to everyone he encounters due to the incidental anger he is experiencing. His bad mood may bias him to make more pessimistic judgments (Loewenstein, 2001).

For a long time, the relationship between reason and emotion has been discussed by psychologists and philosophers. In the years following Plato and Aristotle’s proposition of emotion and reason, western literature has commonly considered emotion opposed to reason and vice versa. This deemed opposition is the cause of the head and heart dilemma, and in some instances, one state may override the influence of the other in decision-making. In contrast, the reason is associated with deliberation and rationality, and can be defined as how one scrutinizes the benefits and disadvantages of a certain situation against available options, performs cost and benefit analysis, and choose the option to which maximum benefits are derived.

When Emotion Dominates Cognition in Real Life

Emotions have evolved to the extent that they override the influence of cognition in some instances. An example would be when a person senses danger which causes fear, leading the person to decide based on his emotions, without necessarily weighing the available options – a reaction based on instincts to evade danger. Another example would be an angered person retaliating based on emotions elicited by a provocative act. Luo and Yu introduce two concepts that help explain instances when emotion dominates cognition: cognition reduction and emotion exaggeration. Cognition represents biological, mental processes. Maintaining information in the brain, problem-solving skills, planning, and attention are some cognitive processes.  The cognitive anatomical and physiological capabilities are inhibited in this state, preventing it from doing the tasks it is responsible for in the brain. This type of incapacity occurs when information is conveyed ambiguously, causing people to make decisions based on their perceptions. Another factor contributing to this decline is a lack of time, which forces people to make impulsive decisions. The final aspect is ego depletion, which occurs when people believe their self-control has been compromised and act to recover their ego (Luo & Yu, 2015).

On the other hand, when you are clouded with emotions during emotion exaggeration, the bottom-up influence exerted clashes with cognition and affects your decision-making, with the amygdala once again being the key player. In general, emotions have an inverse relationship with spatial and temporal distances, a direct relationship with self-relevance, and are often triggered by social stimuli (Luo & Yu, 2015). One common feature across the two contexts is that decision-making engages greater activation in emotion-related brain regions such as the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the insula. Over and above the knowledge of the above issues in discussion, it is worth understanding human emotions from a neurological point of view.

The brain parts that are involved with emotions

A panoramic connection of the human brain and emotion is vitally detected, expressed, and regulated by these brain parts. Through neuroimaging techniques such as MRI, extensive studies have been successfully conducted on the following brain parts. Their involvement in ER has been identified. The brain parts are worth analyzing. They are involved in emotional regulation and, therefore, involved in the process of decision-making.

The amygdala (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). This part of the brain is connected to the prefrontal region of the human brain, enabled by the ‘Ventral’ and the ‘dorsal’ pathways. This part of the brain is also associated with the reward system as well as the connection or activation of the expressions applied after a stimulus, for instance, an angry face, a sad face, or a happy face (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). Studies have concluded that the amygdala is more responsive to stimulus prominence than its positivity or negativity (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). The amygdala alters automatic emotional evaluations in moral judgment (Shenhav & Greene, 2014, p4747). This neurological region is crucial during drawing moral conclusions and verdicts (Prinz, 2021).

“The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST)” (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). The BNST is the part of the brain that receives projections from the amygdala (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). Additionally, this region has been to be affected by stressful conditions. It is involved in body stress’s response, anxiety, and addiction (Avery & Blackford, 2016).

“The habenula” (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). The neuroimaging process has identified this brain area as small nuclei located above the “thalamus” (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). This part of the brain is hugely affected when someone has depression. From a depressive patient, the habenula is reduced (Sebastian & Ahmed, 2015). This region is key for motivation and decision-making (Namboodiri et al., 2016). The mid part of the thalamus is responsible for uncomfortable feelings and the habit of laughing out loud. On the other hand, the lateral part is triggered by anger, rage, and pleasure. The hypothalamus is involved in pain, emotions, and involuntary body actions.

Implicit and Explicit Emotion Regulation

While the objective of emotion regulation is usually to decrease negative emotions and increase positive emotions, there could be situations that fall outside of hedonic goals. For example, downregulating positive emotions to hide relevant expressions during a poker game or up-regulating negative emotions to maintain empathy for the less fortunate. Regulating emotions means that the process affects the way the emotions are displayed in terms of how intense they are, the length of the emotional experience, and the kind of emotions they are (Gyurak et al., 2011).

Implicit and explicit emotion regulation form a generalized distinction of the various ways through which people regulate emotions. These categorizations create a difference between effort-driven attempts at regulating emotions and automatic responses, which are classified as explicit and implicit, respectively. Given emotions’ relationship with time, an obvious explicit strategy would be to allow sufficient time to pass and not make rash decisions, which is more easily said than done based on the average person’s experience. A more feasible regulation strategy is cognitive reappraisal, which is a method that uses executive functioning and cognitive control to regulate emotions. This flexible strategy reframes the situations or the stimuli to a different meaning to change the emotional valence. One reinterprets emotional events in a particular manner to change the emotional experiences. This method is effective when the individual employs it in the initial stages of emotion generation by targeting the emotional elements. In the earlier hypothetical example, could the student have taken a different route had he reminded himself that it was just a test? The results from a more real-life study using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are hopeful: After undergoing cognitive reappraisal training for one week, participants displayed more conciliatory reactions and less aggressive ones than those who were in the control group (Halperin, 2012).

From a neurobiology perspective, cognitive reappraisal activates the medial, dorsolateral, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and down-regulates emotion-related experiences and behaviors. Meta?analyses of neuroimaging studies also show cognitive reappraisal associated with activation of the parietal cortex, supplemental motor area (SMA), and pre?SMA (Etkin et al., 2015). Using patients with damage to vmPFC, Koenigs and Tranel could support brain structure’s role in emotion modulation (2007). Specifically, unfair treatment provoked anger resulted in “hyper-irrational” behavior where such participants rejected unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game much more than the control group. Similarly, Hampton et al. looked at amygdala lesion subjects. They discovered a lack of reward signals in the mPFC found in normal subjects (2007), highlighting that computation of expected reward values is supported by the interaction of the amygdala and mPFC.

Another extensively studied explicit regulation strategy is expressive suppression. This strategy entails inhibiting the expression of emotions, such as facial expressions, verbal utterances, or gestures. In contrast with cognitive appraisal, expressive suppression happens after emotion generation and usually leads to minimal change in ongoing emotion experience (Goldin et al., 2008). Examples include emotional conflict regulation, fear, and volitional response inhibition, where neural activity is consistently noted in the ventral ACC (vACC), ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC), and ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) (Etkin et al., 2015). Its effect on the amygdala and insula is unclear due to its varying effects on emotional expression, behavior, and physiology (Goldin et al., 2008). More importantly, suppressing emotions such as frustration, anger, sadness, or grief only works in the short term. Ultimately, such emotions may not be contained and may also stress the body physically, causing blood pressure fluctuations, memory problems, and self-esteem issues. By inducing fear and disgust emotions in participants, Heilman et al. showed that cognitive reappraisal, but not expressive suppression, reduced such negative emotions and increased risk aversion (2010).

Emotional regulation in risky situations and decision making

People are involved in risky situations daily in their lives. The current society especially can be referred to as a risk society. Dealing with risk has become a norm undertaking for the current population. During these times, the brain is adapted to making decisions based on the present situation (Zinn, 2019). The process of making decisions is affected by different ER strategies. Cognitive reappraisal, as discussed above, is one of the emotional regulation strategies that may be involved in positive mindfulness of individuals and risk-taking. Cognitive reappraisal is an antecedent-focused method that entails construing a potentially emotion-eliciting circumstance in a way that affects its emotional impact before it has fully occurred. In risky situations, the brain is also required to make fitting decisions. It has to respond to risk (Bjorn et al., 2013).

Risk is in all forms in life. Whether gambling using the mortgage or school fees, decisions have to be made in scary or non-scary situations. Most of the emotions involved with risk include fear, rage, and extreme happiness. Embarrassment is also felt in risky situations. It is imperative to involve emotional regulation strategies, for instance, cognitive reappraisal, which leads to positive emotions. Positivity in a situation of loss, for instance, after a misguided risk perception, could help an individual deal with the situation in a better way. Since the emotions involved in risk can be intense, they can lead to impaired self-control (Bjorn et al., 2013). They can affect how people do their risk analysis and management. For example, a person is prone to spending a lot more money on lottery tickets when in a bad mood than at any other time (Zinn, 2019). Likewise, extreme happiness can lead to over-exaggeration of betting odds which can eventually lead to loss.

The amygdala and the PFC are connected to risk. If the amygdala and the mPFC are well-functionally connected, a person can manage risks better. The person is more tolerant of risks (Bjorn et al., 2013). The significance of regulating emotions in such situations cannot be over-emphasized. Emotional regulation eventually affects people’s decision-making; there are powerful emotions involved in risks. Risks are involved in virtually all decision-making processes (Zinn, 2019).

Final remarks

In conclusion, emotions are powerful forces that influence our lives in various aspects, including physiological responses, attention, memory, social interactions, and decision making. They have evolved to the extent that they override the influence of cognition in some instances. It is easier to confuse reason and emotion. The two are different. The reason is linked to deliberation and rationality, whereas emotion is involved with attention and memory. Decision-making can be described as the process of identifying alternative courses of action, collecting information on these alternatives, assessing them, and choosing the most favorable choice.

Furthermore, it can be defined as the process of weighing the pros and cons of a situation against the available options, performing a cost-benefit analysis, and selecting the option with the greatest benefits. As discussed in the current paper, cognitive reappraisal is one of the emotional regulation strategies that may be involved in positive mindfulness of individuals and risk-taking (Mauss et al., 2007). Different brain parts, for instance, the amygdala, are triggered differently when different emotions are experienced. Neuro-imaging studies have revealed that there exists cognitive intervention in all emotional processes. Emotional regulation is of great importance in the process of making decisions. Risks are involved in most decision-making processes. Therefore ER at risk is significant for it influences the decisions made. The foregoing discussion has tried to point out the importance of ER in decision-making.

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