Emotions and How They Affect Decision Making

Emotions and How They Affect Decision Making

According to Gaudene and Thorne (2001, p. 180) an emotion is a reaction that occurs when individuals encounter significant relationships with others or their environment. Emotionality is an element of behaviour and thus has a major impact on individuals (Mason, Capitanio, 2012, p. 235).

There are three different sub-sections all encompassing the subject of emotion. Namely: Affect, emotions and moods. An affect is a non-concious experience of intensity; it is a component of uninformed and unstructured potential (Shouse, p. 184). Of the three central components, affects is the most abstract because affect cannot be fully realised in language and because it is always prior to and outside of consciousness (Shouse, 2005, p. 184). The body has grammar of its own that cannot be fully captured in language and is aroused easily by factors over which the individual has little control (Shouse, 2005, p. 185).

A mood is an individual’s pervasive feeling, tone and internal emotional state whih markedly influences virtually all aspects of the person’s behaviour or his perception of external events (Lippincott, Williams, Wilkins, 2006, n.p).

And lastly, emotion. An emotion is the projection of a feeling directed at someone or something (Shouse, 2005, p. 188).

A Basic Set of Emotions

Modern research by psychologists has tried to single out and categorise basic emotions by studying facial expressions (Cropanzano, Weiss, 2006. P. 18). One problem with this approach is that some emotions are too intricate to be straighforwardly represented on an individual’s face (Cropanzano, Weiss, 2006. P. 18). Additionally, are factors such as culture, which have norms that have a major impact on and ultimately govern emotional expression (Cropanzano, Weiss, 2006. P. 18). Therefore the manner in which an individual experiences a specific emotion isn’t always the same as how they express it. Even so, enough researchers on the topic agreed on...