Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Volume 16, Issue 9, September 2012, Pages 476-483
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Review
Emotion and decision-making: affect-driven belief systems in anxiety and depression

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.07.009Get rights and content

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.

Section snippets

Overview

Emotions are an integral part of a person's internal state and, thus, have profound influences on the choices one makes; yet, our understanding of how emotions interact with decision-making (see Glossary) is surprisingly incomplete [1]. Decision-making integrally depends on the computation of the value of available options [2], which, in turn, are a function of the environment and the internal state of the individual [3]. Recent studies have examined how choices are computed in dynamic

Decision-making and emotion

Decision-making is a process that unfolds over time. This temporal structure can be used to identify three component processes. Specifically, choosing among options initially involves the process of assessing the available options. This is followed by the selection of an option based on the value that has been associated with the option. Lastly, the outcome associated with the selected action is evaluated and incorporated into existing knowledge for subsequent decisions. The influences of

Evidence for disruption of decision-making in anxiety and depression

Studies of decision-making in clinical populations are of immense value, because they can help to establish brain-behavior relationships, clarify the nature of dysfunctional process(es) in a disorder group, and point toward the development of potential treatments for disorders. However, when studying decision-making in individuals with a particular disorder, it is important to note that the observed differences between the psychiatric target population and the comparison group are typically the

Bayesian models of decision-making and control

In recent years, the understanding of the behavioral and neural processes underlying decision-making has benefited significantly from neuroeconomic models 2, 76, 77 and reinforcement learning models 13, 78, 79. These approaches have provided insights into how individuals quantify the value of options, what brain systems play a key role in this process, as well as how the underlying neural substrates give rise to behavioral phenomena. However, one critical aspect of goal-directed action

Concluding remarks

The integration of emotion processing and decision-making is challenging on a number of different levels (Box 1). Conceptually, emotions have been defined along arousal and affective valence dimensions, which are difficult to integrate within value and probability frameworks of decision-making. Phenomenologically, emotions are often viewed as highly introspective, whereas decision-making has been quantified along a few external variables. Computationally, emotion processing has been

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