Emotion, Cognition, and Belief Findings From Cognitive Neuroscience

Abstract

Emotion and cognition are increasingly viewed as something other than caricatured competitors in judgment, and there is considerable evidence now that both are required for the formation of states like beliefs. This change is due in part to an impressive research program producing finding after finding implicating emotion in the formation of beliefs: beliefs about other people, beliefs about risk and reward, and even beliefs about moral goods (Adolphs, 2003a; Bar-On, Tranel, Denburg, & Bechara, 2003; Bedlara, Damasio, & Damasio, 2000; Forgas, 1995; Greene, 2003; Innes-Ker & Niedenthal, 2002; Lazarus, 1991a; Smith, Haynes, Lazarus, & Pope, 1993; Zajonc, 1980). One initial reaction might be to take emotion and cognition as contributing towards two separate aspects of belief: Roughly, that emotion makes us believe in anything in the first place and that cognition provides the content of what it is that we believe. The conviction that Paris is the capital of France can be construed akin to an emotional feeling, whereas the content of the belief requires the representational and inferential machinery of cognition. Another way of putting it might be to say that cognition provides the reasons or justifications for our beliefs, whereas emotion makes us act on our beliefs. There is much to be said for this way of characterizing the contribution of emotion and cognition to belief, although as we will see in this chapter, matters are somewhat more complex.

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