Abstract
Recent experimental studies show that emotions can have a significant effect on the way we think, decide, and solve problems. This paper presents a series of four experiments on how emotions affect logical reasoning. In two experiments different groups of participants first had to pass a manipulated intelligence test. Their emotional state was altered by giving them feedback, that they performed excellent, poor or on average. Then they completed a set of logical inference problems (with if p, then q statements) either in a Wason selection task paradigm or problems from the logical propositional calculus. Problem content also had either a positive, negative or neutral emotional value. Results showed a clear effect of emotions on reasoning performance. Participants in negative mood performed worse than participants in positive mood, but both groups were outperformed by the neutral mood reasoners. Problem content also had an effect on reasoning performance. In a second set of experiments, participants with exam or spider phobia solved logical problems with contents that were related to their anxiety disorder (spiders or exams). Spider phobic participants' performance was lowered by the spider-content, while exam anxious participants were not affected by the exam-related problem content. Overall, unlike some previous studies, no evidence was found that performance is improved when emotion and content are congruent. These results have consequences for cognitive reasoning research and also for cognitively oriented psychotherapy and the treatment of disorders like depression and anxiety.
Highlights
In the field of experimental psychology, for a long time the predominant approach was a “divide and conquer” account in which cognition and emotion have been studied in strict isolation (e.g., Ekman and Davidson, 1994; Wilson and Keil, 2001; Holyoak and Morrison, 2005)
In another study participants were recruited because they reported being depressed (Channon and Baker, 1994). They were presented with categorical syllogisms and their performance was worse than that of non-depressed participants
The results indicate that the emotions of an individual have an effect on reasoning performance independent from task content
Summary
In the field of experimental psychology, for a long time the predominant approach was a “divide and conquer” account in which cognition and emotion have been studied in strict isolation (e.g., Ekman and Davidson, 1994; Wilson and Keil, 2001; Holyoak and Morrison, 2005). In the last decade many researchers have realized that this is a quite artificial distinction and have regarded both systems as distinct but interacting (Dalgleish and Power, 1999; Martin and Clore, 2001) This new line of research resulted in many interesting findings and showed that emotions can have an influence on how we think and how successful we are at solving cognitive tasks (e.g., Schwarz and Clore, 1983; Bless et al, 1996; Schwarz and Skurnik, 2003). In the final section we discuss the connection between logical reasoning and emotions and draw some general conclusions
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