Rational emotions

Abstract

We present here the concept of rational emotions: Emotions may be directly controlled and utilized in a conscious, analytic fashion, enabling an individual to size up a situation, to determine that a certain “mental state” is strategically advantageous and adjust accordingly. Building on the growing body of literature recognizing the vital role of emotions in determining decisions, we explore the complementary role of rational choice in choosing emotional states. Participants played the role of “recipient” in the dictator game, in which an anonymous “dictator” decides how to split an amount of money between himself and the recipient. A subset of recipients was given a monetary incentive to be angry at low-split offers. That subset demonstrated increased physiological arousal at low offers relative to high offers as well as more anger than other participants. These results provide a fresh outlook on human decision-making and contribute to the continuing effort to build more complete models of rational behavior.

Keywords:

• Emotion regulation
• Decision-making
• Skin conductance response
• Dictator game
• Rationality

Acknowledgments

We thank seminar participants at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin, University of California at Los Angeles, and Max Planck Jena, for the discussion of these ideas, and Peter Shizgal (Concordia University) and Gary Bornstein (Hebrew University) for their comments.

Notes

¹For “angry” participants: an increase in both autonomic measures used (skin conductance and HR). For “happy” participants: an elevation in HR only.