You might think that emotions are best kept out of decision-making. You'd be in good company. For hundreds of years, people have emphasized the importance of rational thought. We have systematically misunderstood the role of emotion. Recent research suggests this is a significant mistake.
Imagine you are a chess master. You have played many thousands of games; you can think 15 moves ahead. However, just how are you making your decisions? The chess board has around 10120 possible configurations. In order to cope with this complexity, expert players rely on emotion first, and then logic, in order to succeed.
Researchers looked at chess players as they were playing. The researchers observed that chess players use emotion to deal with the huge range of different directions the chess game could proceed in. Emotion is used to filter down to a...
