Affective state is a hypernym encompassing emotion or mood; emotions and moods are a set of inner, instinctive and subjective psychological “feelings”. Emotions are intense and brief while moods are more long-lasting and stable but less intense, so neither state can be directly observed. This makes them extremely difficult to measure within a psychological discipline, leading to the study of affective states being rejected in early psychology, particularly in the areas of cognition and behaviorism, as they were seen as complicating research. (Gardner 1985). However, more recent research examining eyewitness accounts and flashbulb memories suggests that affective states and cognition are closely linked and that it would be problematic to perceive them in isolation. Therefore, it is beneficial for researchers to determine whether affective states hinder or facilitate cognition/reasoning. because of their real consequences. Affective states can be difficult to measure because manipulating and evaluating them is difficult because individual differences can come into play, and researchers also use different measures to manipulate and evaluate them, making it difficult to draw a valid conclusion between two studies. Although there is an important distinction between how these affective states are manipulated, which can be integral or incidental studies; incidental is when there is no link between the affective state and the reasoning task, whereas in integral studies the affective state is linked to the content of the reasoning task thus serving more of an interaction. Additionally, researchers can determine whether it is the affective state or the reasoned content that induces the state, which can vary from study to study. Research on reasoning can also measure more “general” affective states, such as positive or negative, or more specific, such as anger or surprise. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an original essayReasoning is the practice of consciously drawing conclusions about current information through logical thinking and adjusting current conclusions if new information is available, for a plausible result. . However, if reasoning is universally rational, it should resist the influence of affective states; In order to test this, deductive reasoning is commonly used (Blanchette & Richards 2010) in which inferences are drawn from a set of syllogisms in order to assess validity. Research has been conducted to assess various types of emotions on reasoning skills and whether an emotion provides a marked response (Blanchette & Leese 2011). Early research simply suggests that people reduce their accuracy in reasoning if they draw conclusions about emotional content or in an emotional state, compared to neutral content or in a neutral state; this is supported by Lefford (1946) who describes emotion as unfavorable to the accuracy of reasoning (Lefford 1946). In early research by Lefford, participants reasoned about emotional and non-emotional syllogisms and found that when reasoning about emotional content, accuracy was reduced, suggesting that when a syllogism causes affective arousal, it hinders the correctness of reasoning in one way or another. Rudimentary relationships between positive and negative mood and reasoning were conducted by Oaksford et al (1996). They created a chance study manipulatingthe mood of the participants before reasoning, using film extracts. They found that both positive and negative moods suppressed accuracy when performing a Wason selection task compared to people in neutral moods. Although this suggests that both positive and negative moods have an effect on reasoning, it may be that a specific mood leads to that specific response and not just the overall "positive" or "negative" connotation; A positive mood can encompass happiness or surprise, but they represent completely different moods. Therefore, this study does not allow for an in-depth assessment of specific moods, as it provides a broader baseline overview. Studies focusing on specific manipulated moods may therefore provide greater precision. Blanchette and Richards (2004) conducted an experiment testing the emotional content of words during reasoning; they used either emotional words (representing anxiety, sadness, and happiness) or neutral words in place of the P and Q syllogisms. They found that participants reasoned more accurately with neutral words than emotional ones. , showing that emotional content can also affect reasoning, not just emotional state. In their second experiment, they used classical conditioning to transmit neutral or non-neutral words to participants to express their emotions. They undertook this by associating the non-words with images perceived as positive, negative or neutral in their emotional content. They used these nonwords because they thought it would be easier to initiate participants with unfamiliar words. They then used these primed words to replace the P and Q syllogisms, showing the same effect as Oaksford (1996), namely that participants were more accurate when reasoning with neutral words compared to primed emotional words. This study therefore concluded that people were sensitive to emotional content during reasoning by showing a diminished response. Together, this research by Oaksford (1996), Blanchette and Richards (2004), shows that emotional mood and emotional content incriminate the accuracy of reasoning, supporting earlier research by Léford (1946). However, an obvious problem with this research, as well as other laboratory studies, is that they lack ecological validity when manipulating affective states. Additionally, Blanchette and Richard's (2004) study only used verbal content, but real-life emotion is much more complex to express than using simple words, which may not have produced the desired effect. Additionally, when mood is manipulated, it can become comorbid with another mood and does not necessarily erase the participant's previous mood(s). This can pose a methodological problem, because it is possible that another mood, in addition to the one being manipulated, influences the accuracy of the reasoning. Due to the above problems with laboratory studies, it is imperative to study actual affective states, first. these studies are preferred because no manipulation is necessary to prime participants in their affective state, resulting in more authentic results. During manipulations in a laboratory, participants may be made to experience a certain effect, for example by seeing a sad film clip, but when they are subsequently tested with their reasoning ability, the content they must reason about may not not be linked to the way they were initially prepared. thus separating their affective state from the (accessory) semantic content; this problem can be more easily avoided by using real affective states and integral studies (e.g.,Bodenhausen et al., 2000; Oaks Ford et al., 1996; Palfai and Salovey, 1993). Studies on integral emotions show more of a direct link to emotions. effect, testing the link between emotional state and emotional content. Blanchette and Richards (2007) studied real-life terrorist incidents because they are alarming to the individual and therefore there is no doubt that they will provoke deep emotion. The July 7 terrorist attacks in London were used as the basis for real emotion in this study. Participants in Manchester (UK), London (UK), and London (Canada) reasoned deductively with syllogisms with neutral content, usually emotional or terror-related. Participants were tested one week after the incident and then six months later. All participants self-reported the extent of their emotion. Results showed that participants from London (UK) reported higher levels of emotion than the rest of the participants from Manchester (UK) and London (Canada). However, other results did not show that emotion caused logical impairment in the London (UK) participants as they were particularly more accurate in their reasoning about terrorist syllogisms; then followed Manchester then London (Canada). The closer participants were to the 7/7 attack, the higher their reported emotion; Participants from London (UK) were more fearful and, on the other hand, higher in positive emotions, showing that different emotions can coexist. Overall, neutral issues were most accurately argued across all groups compared to emotional issues, but participants in London (UK) were just as accurate when reasoning about terrorism-related content, concluding that higher reports of emotion, whether negative or positive, do not reduce reasoning ability, as noted. with previous studies. As this study was comprehensive, it suggests that when reasoning syllogisms go to the core of an individual's emotion, they allow them to reason with even more precision. However, it should be noted that terrorism may be subject to stereotyping of a certain group, which may lead to heuristic processing and therefore illogical conclusions when reasoning, which could indicate a flaw in the methodology of the study and in the working memory of the individual. The Blanchette and Campbell (2012) study also examined the effect of real emotions and its impact on reasoning, using veterans. They measured veterans' reasoning on neutral, emotional, and combat-related syllogisms. They too found a similar pattern to Blanchette and Richards' (2007) study that when reasoning was related to participants' specific emotion/experience, they reasoned with greater accuracy in relation to content. neutral, in this case combat experiences. This therefore shows an integral response, according to which, depending on the emotion, we obtain a facilitated effect when there is an affiliation between the affective state and the content of the reasoning. However, participants with PTSD were less accurate in their reasoning across all conditions than the other groups, but still had an advantage for combat-related content. This is not a surprise, as veterans have higher rates of PTSD, which correlates with working memory capacity, which may involve accuracy of reasoning, which may be a non-existent consequence. pathological PTSD that severe emotions can cause. They also found a link betweenthose who had more intense experiences found that they had reduced accuracy for emotional content and combat-related experience, suggesting that they may have become more "immune" to the effects of emotion before face it on a higher basis, hence why they reasoned the same way as with neutral content. This suggests that when individuals experience extreme emotions, it can taint their overall reasoning performance, suggesting that when emotion crosses a certain boundary, it can have negative effects that no longer benefit reasoning. The above results can be explained by relevance, as the integral emotion is considered more relevant than the incidental emotion. When the content of emotion and reasoning is integral, greater attention can be paid, increasing accuracy compared to more irreverent integral reasoning, deferring attention, however, this has not been observed in those who have had intense experiences. Therefore, depending on the context/emotional content, the attention paid to the conclusions of the reasoning will depend. Nonetheless, these results may be due to familiarity, as those who have had more combat experience will therefore perform better when reasoning within their domain, although emotional/neutral reasoning should also have seen this facilitation as it s It's more about "everyday emotions", even if they are not. Therefore, when emotion is related to the content of reasoning, there appears to be an advantage to the accuracy of reasoning. However, research by Jung, Wranke, Hamburger & Knauff (2014) contradicts these results. In their 2014 study, participants solved logical inference problems. They tested participants with exam anxiety or those with spider phobia; These participants solved problems related to their affect. People with a phobia of spiders experienced reduced accuracy when reasoning with spider content compared to neutral content. Those who were anxious on the exam achieved the same performance accuracy as those who were not, thus showing a neutral effect of emotion. The results therefore conclude that, even if the participants' emotion is very relevant, no facilitated effect is present for reasoning, contradicting the results presented by Blanchette et al above. However, phobias are extreme irrational fears that may not be equivalent to everyday emotions and are therefore somewhat of an anomaly as to why this research does not represent previous findings. Additionally, a phobic's goal is to avoid their fear which may trigger their phobia explaining the reduced accuracy (DSM-5 2013). The study testing exam anxiety was comprised entirely of college students, and while some reported no exam anxiety, it's unlikely that was the case because they could have fooled themselves . This could show that the non-anxious may have had equivalent results to the anxious because they had similar levels of anxiety, thus showing the neutral results. Additionally, anxiety can use maximum working memory capacity, leading to decreased accuracy. In the case of more deeply rooted emotions, Channon and Baker (1994) examined incidental reasoning of syllogisms in depressed participants and found that these participants reasoned with significantly lower accuracy. Compared to controls, even when the reasoning was not emotional, there is still an influence of the individual's internal emotion.