On Decision-Making and Relevance Processes: the Epistemological Function of Salience/Relevance of Emotions in Economic Agents

Abstract

Although in the literature on the subject, we can find some agreement (pro-emotion consensus) that emotions affect the decision-making process, there is no agreement as to which stage of this process they affect or in which of them they have a greater/lesser impact. In this paper, we propose to focus, among the various stages engaged, on those involved in relevance determination processes. Thus, based on the epistemological function of salience/relevance of emotions, our key question revolves around “how”, “when” and “to what extent” emotions act as relevance guides/detectors facing decision-making.