Effect of Emotional Information Preference on Cognitive Processes: Specifics for Decision-making

Abstract

Emotions affect cognitive processes such as memory and reasoning, but cognitive evaluation and control processes are also important to our emotional experiences. The current study aims to examine the effect of emotional information preference on decision-making processes and whether cognitive processing is affected by task self-relevance and cognitive load. Participants completed the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Cognitive Load Valence interaction. We found that both young and older adults show emotional information preferences when under load and emotional preference in the absence of load for all types of self-reliabilities. The cognitive load valence interaction revealed that the young adults exhibited a more robust negativity decrease when under cognitive load than a positive decrease, with the positive information preference maintained under both cognitive load and no cognitive load The findings from the present study support DIT's suitability for examining emotional information selectivity during decision making processes based on information acquisition goals.