Affective integration in experience, judgment, and decision-making

Abstract

The role of affect in value-based judgment and decision-making has attracted increasing interest in recent decades. Most previous approaches neglect the temporal dependence of mental states leading to mapping a relatively well-defined, but largely static, feeling state to a behavioral tendency. In contrast, we posit that expected and experienced consequences of actions are integrated over time into a unified overall affective experience reflecting current resources under current demands. This affective integration is shaped by context and continually modulates judgments and decisions. Changes in affective states modulate evaluation of new information (affect-as-information), signal changes in the environment (affect-as-a-spotlight) and influence behavioral tendencies in relation to goals (affect-as-motivation). We advocate for an approach that integrates affective dynamics into decision-making paradigms. This dynamical account identifies the key variables explaining how changes in affect influence information processing may provide us with new insights into the role of affect in value-based judgment and decision-making. Decision making integrates affective dynamics, with affect providing information, signalling changes in the environment and conveying the current relevance of goals