Integration of Emotion and Cognitive Control

Emotion is easily typecast as the nemesis of self-control. However, recent advances suggest a more nuanced view in which emotion and cognitive control are integrated, at times working in harmony. Emotional states can enhance high-level cognition, and can modulate the neural mechanisms that support cognitive control. Such an integrated neural organization might be adaptive: Emotional states could help resolve control dilemmas, facilitating the transition of the whole system into a more unified, situationally appropriate control state. This perspective is intriguing because control dilemmas are pervasive in human affairs (e.g., balancing risk vs. reward, short-term vs. long-term effects, and personal advantage vs. group advantage). Although many challenging questions remain, understanding emotion-cognition interactions at multiple levels of analysis is a realistic and exciting scientific goal.