The Affective and Intuitive Forms of Trust: The Confidence We Inspire - Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational Model - page 133

reasoning (Bechara, 1997), enabling one for instance to choose an advantageous alternative
before being able to explicitly evaluate it as advantageous. 4
However, all this should not prevent one from acknowledging the differences between
emotional appraisal and cognitive evaluation, addressing the latter in their own right, and
trying to establish their specific functions. For instance, in some context emotional appraisal
by itself might prove insufficient for assuring adaptive responses, in that, the more changeable
and complex the world becomes (because of the increasing number of goals and situations to
deal with, and the complex relations among such goals and contexts), the more one is in need
of analytical and flexible judgments about objects and events , rather than (or in addition to)
more global and automatic reactions. In fact, evaluations allow one to make subtle distinctions
between similar (but not identical) goals and means, and to find out the right means for some
new goal, never pursued in the past.
Moreover, evaluations allow one to reason about means and goals, and to construct and
transmit theories for explaining or predicting the outcome of behavior. Therefore, though
emotional appraisal can be conceived of as an evolutionary forerunner to cognitive evaluation
(as well as a valuable 'support' for it), being an evolutionary 'heir' does not imply maintaining
the same nature as the forerunner; on the contrary, one might suppose that the same function
has favored the development of different means, at different levels of complexity.
It is also important to consider that evaluation and appraisal about the same entity/event can
co-occur , and give rise to convergence and enhancement of the valence, or to conflicts ; in fact,
either:
the means that we are rationally considering for our ends are associated to previous or
imagined positive experiences; or
what I believe to be the right thing to do frightens me; what I believe to be wrong to do
attracts me. 5
Evaluation and appraisal can also derive one from the other .
It is possible to verbalize, to translate a merely affective reaction towards m into a declarative
appreciation. This is for example what happens to the subjects in the experiment by Bargh and
Chartrand, 1999. They do not realize that their evaluation is just a post-hoc rationalization of
some arbitrary association (conditioning) they are not aware of.
4 A number of studies conducted by Damasio and his collaborators (e.g. Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, and Anderson
1994) have pointed to the crucial role of emotion in cognitive evaluation and decision making. Their patients with
lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex show emotional blunting as well as difficulties in making decisions,
especially in real-life contexts. If compared with normal subjects, they do not show stress reactions (as measured, for
instance, by skin conductance response) when trying to make choices in uncertain and risky contexts (e.g. a gambling
task). The interesting fact is that such emotional reactions, displayed by the normal subjects especially before making
a wrong choice (i.e. a kind of choice previously associated with some punishment), help them to avoid it, and to opt
for a less risky alternative. Such a choice is made before reasoning over the pertinent beliefs, including cognitive
evaluations about the game, its options, and the possible strategies of decision making.
5 On this, Damasio's model of the role of the somatic markers in decision-making looks rather simplistic: somatic
markers do not 'prune' the tree of possible choices, but just add some weight or value to them; it is always possible
that we decide to pursue a goal that actually disgust us, or that we do not pursue a goal that was very exciting and
attracting.