Customer Reviews

Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition (A Bradford Book)

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This book is the first I know of that tries to examine the impact of emotions in decision making from the lay person to the scientist. It is not an easy reading like the money-making populist books on 'emotional intelligence' and similar, but it can be read by anyone wanting to learn about emotions impact in our lives using a scientific approach, because it uses simple language and it is very organized and methodical.

To me the scientific study of the impact of our emotions in our lives is important because:

1) Emotions appear to be biologically evolved algorithms for quick behavioral response to particular situations.

2) Emotions evolved before conscious step-by-step reasoning, as they can easily be observed in lower functioning animals.

3) And since their initial appearance emotions have continued to do most of the decision-making work of animals while the consciousness of the self and of the decision-making process gradually developed and grew as a percentage of the total decision-making process from one species to the next up in complexety, up to the human species, which is the one that seems to have the higher ratio of conscious to unconscious decision-making process.

However, current humans are still somewhere halfway toward being completely conscious of their decision-making process, and, like everything else we know, individual humans vary one from the other according to a bell-shaped curve of distribution from those who have the lowest ratio of conscious to unconscious decision making to those who have the highest ratio. In other words the decisions of humans are based on a mixture of the processing of data using unconscious learned memes plus genes-based hardwired neural-emotional-reflex-circuits mixed with a varying amount of conscious step-by-step process of reasoning. The ratio of both types of reasoning for each individual defines the individual as either more unconscious of the reasons behind his/her own decisions (sometimes called more emotional) or more conscious of the reasons behind his/her own decisions (sometimes called more rational).

Emotions allow for speedy decisions which are vital in many situations, but their evolutionary-programed behavioral patterns, which developed as the most effective responses to stereotypical environmental situations, are either less effective or not effective at all when dealing with significantly different situations and they lack the flexibility to adapt quickly enough to them. So, it is here, before novel situations, where conscious step-by-step processing/thinking of each situation particular gives an edge to those who can do that. It is unclear if our brains will ever be powerful enough to be capable of awareness of all the processes involved in each decision we make, as it unclear if this will ever be practical/useful for the survival of any species in the Universe.

Hi! Do you like feeling insulted by terrible authors' attempts to circumvent their readers with pretty words? do you enjoy wasting hours translating self-congratulating terminology, only to find out the meaning is absurdly simplistic and asinine? THEN THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU!

It ACTUALLY SAYS THIS: "the calculated valence of an element is like the expected utility of an action, with degrees of acceptability analogous to probabilities and valences analogous to utilities" WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!

Oh it means that when we make decisions, we attribute inferences to what we are considering based on our goals and we do this by considering previous experiences or learned information. Basically that when we consider things, we take things into consideration! WASNT THAT FUN?? :D

Please avoid this book. If you have to read it for class, I'm so so so sorry. :(