Thinking:
Emotion or
Cognition?
Ruth Byrne
Professor of Cognitive Science
rmbyrne@tcd.ie
School of Psychology and Institute of
Neuroscience, Lloyd Building Room 3.44
Thinking: Deciding, judging,
reasoning, choosing
 Fast intuitive processes
 Emotion
 Slower deliberative processes
 Cognition
Kahneman, 2011
Thinking, fast and slow
 Fast
 automatic, quick, little or
no effort, no sense of
voluntary control, innate
skills we share with animals
 Slow
 effortful mental activities,
requires allocation of
attention, leads to
subjective experience of
agency, choice,
concentration
Danny Kahneman
Thinking, fast and slow
 Fast
 …can detect simple
relations, integrate
information about
one thing
 Slow
 …can follow rules,
compare objects on
multiple dimensions,
make deliberate
choices
Thinking, fast and slow
Dual processes
‘In two minds’ Evans, 2003
Steven Sloman
Stanovich & West, 2000;
Sloman, 1996
Keith Stanovich
Outline
Trust: Anger or assessment?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or
affective?
Ultimatum Game
Two players must divide a
sum of money
The proposer specifies the
division
The responder has the
option of accepting or
rejecting the offer.
 If the offer is accepted, the
sum is divided as proposed.
 If it is rejected, neither player
receives anything
Alan Sanfey
Ultimatum game
 Suppose you’re the proposer. You have 10 euro
to divide between you and anonymous B.
 B has the option of accepting or rejecting your
offer.
 If B accepts your offer, the sum will be divided
as you proposed.
 If B rejects your offer, neither of you will get
anything.
 What amount would you offer B?
Ultimatum game
 Suppose you’re B. Anonymous A offers you
1euro
 You have the option of accepting or
rejecting A’s offer.
 If you accept A’s offer, the sum will be
divided as A proposed.
 If you reject A’s offer, neither of you will get
anything.
 Would you accept A’s offer?
Game theory
Nash equilibrium prediction
If people are motivated purely by
self-interest
the proposer should offer the
smallest nonzero amount.
the responder should accept any
offer
Game theory?

In fact, the modal offer is a 50/50 split
 Low offers of less than 20% of the total
amount are rejected about half of the
time
Guth et al, 1982
Why don’t people accept ‘something for
nothing’?
Emotional decisions
Low offers are often rejected after an angry
reaction to an offer perceived as unfair
Pillutla, & Murnighan, 1996
Unfair offers induce conflict between
cognitive (“accept”) and emotional (“reject”)
motives
Sanfey et al, 2003
Humans and computers
Shown pictures, told were of their
partners
10 trials with 10 different partners
10 trials with computer
Sanfey et al 2003
Ultimatum game
 Participants
accepted all fair
offers, with
decreasing
acceptance rates as
the offers became
less fair.
 Unfair offers of $2
and $1 made by
human partners
were rejected at a
significantly higher
rate than those
offers made by a
computer
 Sanfey et al 2003
Ultimatum game
 Two brain regions
particularly active
when participant
confronted with an
unfair offer
 anterior insula
(emotional
processing)
 dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex (dlPFC)
(deliberative
processing)
Sanfey et al, 2006
Ultimatum game
 If insula (emotion)
activation greater than
dlPFC (cognitive)
activation, tended to
reject the unfair offer
 If dlPFC (cognitive)
activation greater than
insula (emotion)
activation, tended to
accept the offer.
 Neural evidence for a
two-system account of
decision-making
 Sanfey et al 2006
emotive
cognitive
Ultimatum game
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
disrupt processing in dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex
Van’t Wout et al, 2005
Outline
Trust: Anger or assessment?
 Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
Counterfactuals: affective or preparatory?
Trolley (train) problem
‘You are at the wheel of a runaway train quickly
approaching a fork in the tracks. On the tracks
extending to the left is a group of five railway
workmen. On the tracks extending to the right is a
single railway workman. If you do nothing the train will
proceed to the left, causing the deaths of the five
workmen. The only way to avoid the deaths of these
workmen is to hit a switch on your dashboard that will
cause the train to proceed to the right, causing the
death of the single workman. Would you hit the
switch?’
Moral dilemmas
 Most people say
they would hit the
switch
 They decide to
sacrifice the life of
the single workman
in order to save the
five workmen
Mikhail, 2009
Footbridge problem
‘You are on a footbridge over the railway tracks
towards which a runaway train is quickly
approaching. On the tracks beyond the footbridge
is a group of five railway workmen. If you do nothing
the train will proceed on the tracks, causing the
deaths of the five workmen. The only way to avoid
the deaths of these workmen is to push a nearby
stranger off the bridge so that his large body will stop
the train, causing the death of the stranger. Would
you push the man?’
Footbridge problem
 Most people say
they would not push
the man
Deontological reason
 Kant (1788/2002)
 People reason to
moral judgments
 Deontological
principle
 People follow a
moral principle only if
they would approve
of it being
universalised
Immanuel Kant
Passions
 “Morals excite passions, and
produce or prevent actions.
Reason itself is utterly impotent
in this particular. The rules of
morality, therefore, are not
conclusions of our reason”
Hume (1739-1740/2004)
David Hume
Moral intuitions
‘The emotional dog and its
rational tail’
Haidt, 2001
Jonathan Haidt
Emotions occur first?
Abortion, child sexual abuse
 People have nearly instant implicit reactions to
scenes or stories of moral violations
Luo et al, 2006
 Affective reactions are usually good predictors of
moral judgments and behaviors
Sanfey,et al, 2003
Dual processes
A role for both reason and emotion as
‘dual processes’
Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley,
& Cohen, 2001
Joshua Greene
fMRI
 Footbridge-type but not train-type problems
activate emotional areas of brain, detected in
fMRI scans
Greene et al, 2001
Greene et al, 2001
Brain impairment
 6 patients with focal bilateral damage to the
ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC)
 a brain region necessary for normal generation of
emotions, social emotions
 Compared to Normal Controls and Brain Damaged
Controls
 NB: Patients with VMPC lesions exhibit diminished
emotional responsivity and reduced social emotions
(e.g., compassion, shame, guilt)
Koenigs et al, 2007
Abnormally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgments on personal moral
dilemmas Normal in other moral dilemmas - Koenigs et al, 2007
But cognition does matter…
 Increased cognitive load interferes with
judgments to e.g., hit the switch in
impersonal dilemmas, take longer
Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom &
Cohen, 2008
Working memory
 Working memory capacity influences
judgments on ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’
dilemmas
Moore, Clark & Kane, 2008
Separate systems of
emotion and cognition…
Monica Bucciarelli
 Are moral intuitions guided by separate
evaluative and emotional processes,
 independent systems operating in
parallel
Sunny Khemlani
Phil Johnson-Laird
Bucciarelli, Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2008
Evidence
 Dilemmas
 Emotion questions and moral questions
 Emotion question: does it make you feel
good or bad?
 Moral question- is it right or wrong?
Faster response to emotion questions for
‘emotional-prevalent’ scenarios, faster to moral
questions for ‘evaluation-prevalent’ scenarios
Not always emotion first…
 Emotions sometimes precede evaluations and
evaluations sometimes precede emotions, and so
one is not always dependent on the other
Bucciarelli et al, 2008
Outline
Trust: Anger or assessment?
 Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
 Emotion and Cognition separate?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or
affective?
Outline
Trust: Anger or assessment?
 Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
 Emotion and Cognition separate?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or
affective?
Alternatives to reality
 Common in entertainment
Alternatives to reality
Historical analyses
‘What
if … Hitler had
chosen to make his
major attack …into Syria
and the Lebanon?
Would he have avoided
defeat?’
Keegan, 1999; Tetlock &
Lebow, 2001
Counterfactual Alternatives
- Regularities
 People think ‘if only’ most often
after bad events
 e.g., traumatic accidents, deaths,
job losses, relationship break-ups
 but also sometimes after good
events, ‘lucky chances’
 E.g. winning a prize, meeting
someone new, escaping a bad
event
Mandel et al 2005
 People think ‘if only’ most often
after unexpected events
Markman et al 2010
David Mandel
Functions of counterfactual
thoughts
 Preparatory function
If he’d been wearing a seatbelt he
wouldn’t have been injured
Neal Roese
 Learn from mistakes, work out
causes, form intentions, plans, to
avoid bad outcome in future
 responsibility, fault
 Key learning mechanism
Epstude & Roese, 2008
Functions of counterfactual
thoughts
 Affective function
If he’d been wearing a seatbelt he
wouldn’t have been injured
 Amplify emotions such as guilt,
regret, remorse
 Roese & Olson, 1995
Neal Roese
Functions of counterfactuals
Amplify emotion
Individual goes to a party,
her friend’s boyfriend flirts
with her and before
leaving asks for her
telephone number which
she gives. Her friend is later
very distressed.
Niedenthal, Tangney &
Gavanski, 1994
Functions of counterfactuals
Amplify emotion
Participants asked to
imagine themselves as the
individual and think ‘if only’
Directed to change
Something about the
individual’s actions
Something about the
individual’s personality
Rated emotions they
expect character to
experience
Functions of counterfactuals
Amplify emotion
 Something about the
character’s actions
 E.g., If only I hadn’t flirted with
him
GUILT
 Something about the
character’s personality
 E.g., If only I wasn’t so disloyal
SHAME
Counterfactual imagination
• People mentally
simulate events
• They create an
alternative to reality
by changing an
aspect of their
simulation
• Emotions are
‘amplified’
Kahneman & Tversky,
1982
Amos Tversky
Danny Kahneman
What happens when you
can’t create counterfactual
alternatives?
Counterfactuals and the Brain
 Brain injury
 Parkinson’s
 Schizophrenia
Counterfactuals and the Brain
 Patient with damage to the
DLPFC
 Exhibited perseveration
and social impairments
“a complete absence of
counterfactual expressions”
p.1367
 Recently experienced
various emotional stressors
e.g., mother’s sudden
death, career failure,
typically associated with
counterfactual thinking
Knight & Grabowecky 1995
Counterfactuals and the Brain
18 patients with PFC
lesions, 26 controls
Beldarrain, GarciaMonco, Astigarraga,
Gonzalez, & Grafman,
2005
Counterfactuals and the Brain
 Participants write down whatever was on their minds
in response to 3 questions for 5 min:
(a) recall a negative event in the past year,
(b) what are you thinking about right now,
(c) you just have completed a task for us. Record
your reaction to it and any other thoughts about
your performance on this task
 Record number of mentions of a counterfactual
thought; grammatical markers, such as might have,
could have, almost, if only, what if, if or wish that.
Counterfactuals and the Brain
 Number of mentions of counterfactual thoughts
Controls
PFC patients
Beldarrain,et al 2005
M=4
M=1
Counterfactuals and the Brain
“This selective impairment in selfgenerated counterfactual thoughts
should be considered and
mentioned as part of the
dysexecutive syndrome exhibited by
patients with PFC lesions
and cognitive rehabilitation
programs should consider cueing
counterfactual thoughts to help
these patients reflect on their
behaviors.”
Beldarrain, Garcia-Monco,
Astigarraga, Gonzalez, & Grafman,
2005, p. 276
Jordan Grafman
Counterfactuals and the Brain
Parkinson’s disease
 Prefrontal dysfunction in patients with advanced
Parkinson’s
 24 people with Parkinson’s, 15 controls
 Asked to recall a negative personal event; given
three minutes to consider in detail; asked explicitly if
they had any thoughts of how things might have
gone differently, thoughts of ‘if only’s’ or ‘what if’s’.
Controls
M = 2.07
Parkinson’s patients
M = 0.77
McNamara, Durso, Brown & Lynch, 2003
Counterfactuals and the Brain
-Parkinson’s disease
1) Janet is attacked by a mugger only 10 feet from
her house. Susan is attacked by a mugger a mile from
her house. Who is more upset by the mugging?
a) Janet
(86% norms)
b) Susan
(0)
c) Same/can’t tell (14%)
Controls
Parkinson’s patients
McNamara, et al, 2003
M=2
M = 1.17 (chance level)
Counterfactuals and the Brain
-Parkinson’s disease
“Counterfactual impairment may be
one reason why these patients fail to
learn from past mistakes and thus why
they persist in maladaptive or
dangerous behaviours…
If patients suffer counterfactual
impairment they are less likely to be
able to handle social conversations
fluently, to formulate plans easily, or to
compare alternative outcomes
imaginatively…”
McNamara et al, 2003, p.1069
Patrick McNamara
Counterfactuals and the Brain
-Schizophrenia
 Frontal lobe deficits in some patients with
schizophrenia (40%-50%)
 14 schizophrenia patients, 12 controls
 Recall personally experienced negative events;
recorded mention of counterfactual thoughts
Controls
Schizophrenia patients
Hooker, Roese & Park 2000
M = 2.08
M=1
Counterfactuals and the Brain
-Schizophrenia
Counterfactual Inference Test
Controls
Schizophrenia patients
Hooker, et al 2000
M = 2.33
M = 1.29 (chance level)
Summary
Trust: Anger or assessment?
 Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
 Emotion and Cognition separate?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or
affective?
 Cognition first? Emotion arises from cognition?
Emotion or cognition?
 Dual processes of fast and slow thinking
 Emotion is important aspect of ‘fast’ thinking
 Relationship of emotion and cognition is
complex
 In some cases, emotion is immediate and cognition
overrides it, e.g. trust
 In some cases, emotion and cognition appear to
be separate systems – e.g., moral
 In some cases, cognition gives rise to emotion –
e.g., counterfactual
Reading
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and
slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sanfey,A. et al (2003) The Neural Basis of
Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum
Game, Science 300, 1755-1758
Haidt, 2007, The new synthesis in moral
psychology, Science 316, 998-1001.
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