Hot Thought: Mechanisms of
Emotional Cognition
Paul Thagard
pthagard@uwaterloo.ca
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Thanks to:
• Tom Ward and Lisa Neal
• Collaborators:
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Chris Eliasmith
Fred Kroon
Abninder Litt
Baljinder Sahdra
Cameron Shelley
Brandon Wagar, and others.
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of
Canada
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Outline
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2.
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7.
Emotional cognition
Mechanisms
Cognitive model
Social model
Neural models
Integrations
Conclusions
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Individual Decisions
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Decision Making is Emotional
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Slovic et al: Affect heuristic.
Loewenstein et al: Risk as feelings.
Damasio: Somatic markers.
Mellers: Emotion-based choice.
Etc.
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Emotion in Science
• 1953 DNA
• 1968 Watson
publishes The Double
Helix
• 143 pages
• 235 emotion words
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Watson’s Emotions
70
60
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40
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10
0
er
g
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A
ty
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a
Be
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F
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p
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p
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In
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Emotions in Scientific Thinking
interest
curiosity
wonder
Generate
questions
avoid
boredom
happiness
hope
Try to answer
questions
fear
anger
frustration
happiness
surprise
beauty
happiness
Generate
answers
Evaluate
answers
worry
disappointment
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Emotion in Law
• 1994: Nicole Brown
Simpson and Ron
Goldman murdered.
• 1995: O. J. Simpson
found not guilty.
• 1996: civil trial finds
O. J. guilty.
• Acquittal result of
emotional coherence.
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Mechanistic Explanations
Mechanism
Parts
Relations
Changes
Social
people
associate,
communicate
influence,
decisions
Cognitive
mental
implications,
representations associations
mental
processes
Neural
neurons
excitation,
inhibition
activations,
synaptic
Molecular
proteins
physical
connections
chemical
reactions
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Cognitive Mechanism: HOTCO
• Beliefs and goals are
represented by nodes in a
connectionist network.
• Nodes have activations
representing degree of
acceptance, but also
valences representing
emotional value.
• Activations and valences
spread through the
network until a stable
conclusion is reached.
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Why O.J. Was Acquitted
Solid lines are excitatory links; dotted lines are inhibitory.
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Applications of HOTCO
• OJ
• Experiment by Sinclair & Kunda on
motivated stereotypes.
• Experiments by Westen et al. on motivated
inference in politics.
• For details see Thagard in Cognition and
Emotion, 2003.
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Social Mechanism: HOTCO 3
• Group decisions are sometimes based on
emotional consensus.
• Consensus arises in part from emotional
communication:
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Contagion (includes attachment)
Altruism (includes compassion)
Means-ends
Empathy
Analogy
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HOTCO 3
• Individuals are HOTCO 2 processes.
• Emotional communication takes place by transfer
of emotions between individuals.
• Consensus sometimes reached:
– Couple deciding on movie.
– Academic department hiring decision.
• Thagard and Kroon, Mind and Society,
forthcoming.
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Neural Mechanism
• GAGE model: Wagar & Thagard,
Psychological Review, 2004.
• Brain areas: amygdala, hippocampus, nucleus
accumbens, ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
VMPFC
Amg
Somatic state
HC
VTA
To Action/
Overt
NAc
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Applications of GAGE
• Phineas Gage.
• Behavior of Damasio’s patients with
VMPFC damage on the Iowa gambling
task.
• Effects of context on emotion in Schacter &
Singer.
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Relation of GAGE and HOTCO
• GAGE is more neurologically realistic:
– Spiking neurons.
– Anatomically organized.
• But HOTCO can be viewed as an approximation
to GAGE:
– Units encoded by neuronal groups.
– Activations encoded by spiking behavior of groups of
neurons.
– Valences encoded by spiking in emotional brain areas
such as the amygdala.
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New Neural Model
• Litt, Eliasmith, and Thagard: “Why Losses Loom
Larger than Gains”, in progress.
• Uses Neural Engineering framework.
• Models loss aversion in decision making.
• Adds more brain areas relevant to emotional
cognition.
• Future applications:
– other neuroeconomics applications.
– social cognitive neuroscience.
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DLPFC
AMYG
5-HTRD
VS
DAmid
OFC
ACC
Abbreviations: 5-HTRD, raphe dorsalis serotonergic neurons;
ACC, anterior cingulate cortex; AMYG, amygdala; DAmid,
midbrain dopaminergic neurons; DLPFC, dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex; OFC, orbitofrontal cortex; VS, ventral
striatum.
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Molecular Mechanisms
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Happiness: dopamine.
Sadness: serotonin.
Fear: cortisol.
Love: oxytocin, vasopressin.
Thagard: “How molecules matter to mental
computation”, Philosophy of Science, 2002.
• Lower level mechanisms? - no. See Litt et al., “Is
the brain a quantum computer?”, Cognitive
Science, forthcoming.
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Research Strategy
• Develop models of mechanisms at all relevant
levels.
• Integrate models by relating
– parts: decompose from higher to lower.
– relations: decompose if possible.
– changes: show how higher changes result in part from
lower changes, but go in other direction too.
• Full reduction is rarely possible: pluralistic
reductionism.
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Normative Philosophical Issues
• HOTCO explains motivated inference.
• GAGE models explains weakness of will.
• Normative claim: Rationality requires removal of
emotion from cognition. But:
– Removal is neurologically impossible.
– Not desirable: lose motivation for science, etc.
• Need other strategies for ensuring that emotion
influences cognition positively.
– Informed intuition; social constraints.
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Conclusions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Cognition is emotional.
Mechanisms operate at
four levels: social,
cognitive, neural,
molecular.
Mechanisms can be
integrated and evaluated.
Web:
cogsci.uwaterloo.ca
Book: Hot Thought,
MIT Press, 2006.
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