A common idea that I’ve encountered numerous times in my life is that emotion and logic are opposites. In stressful situations, the ideal is to remain calm, rational, and level-headed. Emotions are often framed as obstacles to decision-making or problem-solving.
But the more I’ve looked into cognitive science, the less accurate that idea seems.
There’s a theory in neuroscience called the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, proposed by Antonio Damasio. Damasio’s claim is almost the opposite of the common belief: emotions aren’t obstacles to thinking and reasoning, but rather the very thing that makes them possible.
The basic idea behind the theory is that the brain attaches emotional signals to past experiences. These signals, referred to as somatic markers, link feelings to different outcomes. A negative experience may become associated with discomfort, anxiety, or fear, while a positive one may be linked to emotions like joy, pride, or confidence.
When you encounter a situation similar to one in the past, these somatic markers activate almost immediately. Your body begins to feel something before you have time to consciously apply logic or reasoning. You might feel hesitation, discomfort, or confidence without fully knowing why. In reality, your brain is using past experiences to guide you.
In that sense, emotion acts less like an obstacle and more like a shortcut.
One experiment that highlights this theory is the Iowa Gambling Task. In this study, participants were asked to pick cards from different decks. Some decks offered high rewards but larger long-term losses, while others provided smaller but safer gains. Over time, most participants learned to avoid the risky decks.
What’s interesting is how they learned. Their bodies began reacting to the bad decks, showing signs of stress such as increased sweat, before they could consciously explain why those decks were disadvantageous.
This experiment was also conducted on individuals with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in processing emotion. These individuals did not show the same stress response. Without those somatic markers, they lacked the early warning signal. As a result, they continued choosing the risky decks, even when they logically understood the consequences.
From this perspective, emotions are not the opposite of rationality, instead they are part of the system that makes rational thinking effective. Somatic markers act as a filter among the countless decisions we could make, drastically narrowing the field and making it manageable. Without this filtering system, analyzing every possible option would be overwhelming and far too slow for real-world situations.
Rather than being a flaw in human cognition, emotions are an essential part of the thinking process.
However, even though emotions can be helpful, they are not perfect. They can be biased, incomplete, and misleading. In my own experience, emotions, especially fear, have often driven my decision-making, particularly in situations where I don’t have much time to think. They tend to push me toward safer choices, even when taking a risk might be more beneficial.
I’ve tried to eliminate these emotions and rely purely on logic, but instead of making better decisions, I often froze and ended up not making a decision at all, which is arguably worse than making the wrong one.
After learning about the Somatic Marker Hypothesis and the Iowa Gambling Task, I have a better understanding of what’s happening in those moments. Instead of trying to remove emotion from the process, it might be more effective to work with it, either by reframing negative emotions or by paying more attention to the positive signals that I tend to overlook.
It’s easy to view emotion and logic as two sides in a raging battle, kind of like the devil and angel on your shoulder. However, I think it’s important to note that the two work in tandem, and that overlooking either is detrimental to the problem-solving process.