[Question 8: How do emotion and cognition interact?] Can we advance our understanding of emotional behavior by reconceptualizing it as involving valuation?

Abstract

Emotions are difficult to define, but they likely evolved from simple mechanisms that enable animals to avoid harm and seek valuable resources [1]. Simple and evolutionarily old brain systems may serve fundamental aspects of emotional processing and provide information and motivation for more recent systems that control complex behavior [2]. Here we sidestep subjective and experiential phenomena of emotion and focus on the observation that emotions have quantifiable and distinct objective consequences in the behaviours they evoke - for example, facial, postural and approach behaviours differ unmistakenly between anger and desire. Because only one or a few behaviours amongst the many potential ones can be expressed at any one time, emotional guidance of behaviour effectively implies a choice between multiple different options, and hence a relative valuation of these options.