In this paper, we examine whether affect influences higher level cognitive processes. We review research on the effect of emotion on interpretation, judgement, decision making, and reasoning. In all cases, we ask first whether there is evidence that emotion affects each of these processes, and second what mechanisms might underlie these effects. Our review highlights the fact that interpretive biases are primarily linked with anxiety, while more general mood-congruent effects may be seen in judgement. Risk perception is also affected by (...) negative and positive affect. Research shows complex effects of emotion on decision making and reasoning, with emotion sometimes hindering normatively correct thinking and sometimes promoting it. There are also important effects of emotion on reasoning style. We discuss key differences between the effects of incidental affect (feeling states not related to the semantic contents of the cognitive task) and integral affect (where the feeling state is caused by or linked to the contents of the cognitive task). In the conclusion, we suggest that focusing on some of the constituent mechanisms involved in interpretation, judgement, decision making and reasoning provides a way to link some of the diverse findings in the field. We also highlight important areas for future research. (shrink)

New paradigms in the psychology of reasoning have included a consideration for general contextual factors that may impact on the reasoning process, including individuals’ goals and motivations. We suggest that emotions are one such important contextual factor that influences reasoning. The classic literature on thinking and reasoning has typically ignored the possible influence of emotion, except to consider it a source of disruption. We review findings from studies where participants were asked to reason about personally relevant emotional experiences such as (...) sexual abuse, war, and terrorist attacks. While some findings are consistent with the view that incidental emotions have a deleterious effect on reasoning, a number of findings also suggest a beneficial impact of emotion. For instance, veterans reasoned more logically about combat-related syllogisms than structurally identical syllogisms with neutral contents; victims of sexual abuse reporting more negative emotions following the events also reasoned more logically on abuse-related contents, relative to neutral contents. This may be associated with integral emotions, when the affective reaction is relevant to the semantic contents reasoned about. We propose that the positive impact of integral emotions on reasoning can be explained by increased utility of problem content and increased utility of reasoning. (shrink)