Affective state is a hyperonym that includes emotion or state of mind; Emotions and moods are a set of internal psychological "feelings" that are instinctive and subjective. Emotions are intense and brief while moods are more long-lasting and stable although less intense, so neither of these states can be observed directly. This makes them extremely difficult to measure in a psychological discipline, leading to dismissal of the study of affective states in early psychology, particularly in the fields of cognition and behaviorism as they were thought to complicate research (Gardner 1985). However, more current research relating to eyewitness testimony and flashbulb memories suggests that affective states and cognition are intertwined and perceiving them in isolation would be problematic. Therefore, it is useful for researchers to examine whether affective states hinder or facilitate cognition/reasoning. because of their real-life consequences. Affective states can be difficult to measure as manipulating and assessing them is challenging as individual differences may come into play and researchers also use different measures to manipulate and assess them, thus making it difficult to draw valid conclusions between any two studies. While there is an important distinction between how these affective states are manipulated, which can be integral or incidental studies; incidental is when there is no connection between the affective state and the reasoning task, while in integral studies the affective state is linked to the content of the reasoning task thus serving more than one interaction. Furthermore, researchers can manipulate whether it is the affective state or the reasoned content that induces the state, which can vary from study to study. Research on reasoning can also measure “broader” affective states, such as positive versus negative or more specific, such as anger versus surprise. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Reasoning is the practice of consciously drawing conclusions about current information through logical thinking, and adapting current conclusions if new information is available, for a plausible outcome. However, if reasoning were universally rational, it should be resistant to the influence of affective states; to test this, deductive reasoning is commonly used (Blanchette & Richards 2010) in which inferences are drawn from a series of syllogisms to evaluate their validity. Research has been conducted to evaluate various types of emotion on reasoning abilities and whether an emotion provides a marked response (Blanchette & Leese 2011). Initial research simply suggests that people reduce their reasoning accuracy if they draw conclusions about emotional content or in an emotional state, compared to neutral content or in a neutral state; this is supported by Lefford (1946) who describes emotion as unfavorable to accuracy of reasoning (Lefford 1946). In early research conducted by Lefford, participants reasoned about emotional and nonemotional syllogisms and found that when reasoning about emotional content, accuracy was reduced, suggesting that when a syllogism causes affective arousal, this somehow prevents the accuracy of reasoning. A rudimentary relationship between positive and negative mood and reasoning was conducted by Oaksford et al (1996). They created an incidental study by manipulating participants' mood prior to reasoning, using video clips. They found that eliciting both positive and negative mood states suppressed accuracy in completing a Wason selection taskcompared to those in a neutral mood. While this suggests that both positive and negative moods have an effect on reasoning, it may be that a specific mood leads to that specific response and not just the overall “positive” or “negative” connotation; a positive mood can include happiness or surprise, yet they represent completely different moods. Therefore, this study lacks an in-depth assessment of specific mood states as it provides a broader basic overview. Studies of specific manipulated moods can therefore provide greater precision. Blanchette and Richards (2004) conducted an experiment testing the emotional content of words during reasoning; used emotional words (representing anxiety, sadness, and happiness) or neutral words in place of the P and Q syllogisms. They found that participants were more accurate in reasoning about neutral words, rather than emotional words, demonstrating that emotional content can influence also the reasoning, not just the emotional state. In their second experiment they used classical conditioning to prime participants with neutral words or non-words to express emotions. They did this by pairing the non-words with images perceived as positive, negative or neutral in their emotional content. They used these nonwords because they believed it would be easier to attract participants with unfamiliar words. They then used these primed words to replace the P and Q syllogisms, showing the same effect as Oaksford (1996), that is, participants were more accurate when reasoning with neutral words compared to primed emotional words. This study therefore concluded that people were sensitive to emotional content when reasoning and showed a reduced response. Together, this research by Oaksford (1996), Blanchette, and Richards (2004), shows that emotional mood and emotional content impair the accuracy of reasoning, supporting earlier research by Leford (1946). However, an obvious problem with this research, along with other laboratory studies, is that they lack ecological validity when manipulating affective states. Furthermore, Blanchette & Richard's (2004) study uses only the content of words, but emotions in real life are much more complex to express than using single words, which may not have provided the desired effect. Furthermore, when mood is manipulated, it may become comorbid with another mood and not necessarily erase the participant's previous mood(s). This may be a methodological problem, since it may be that another state of mind, in addition to the one being manipulated, influences the accuracy of reasoning. Due to the above-mentioned problems with laboratory studies, it is crucial to study real-life affective states, firstly these studies are preferred since no manipulation is needed to prime participants in their affective state, resulting in more authentic results. During the manipulation in the laboratory, participants may be stimulated to feel a certain affect, for example by seeing a sad movie, but when they are subsequently tested with their reasoning ability, the contents they have to reason about may not be related to how they were initially activated. thus separating their affective state from the (incidental) semantic content; this problem can be more easily avoided when using real-life affective states and integral studies (e.g., Bodenhausen et al., 2000; Oaks ford et al., 1996; Palfai & Salovey, 1993). Integral emotion studies show more than a direct effect, testing the link between emotional state and emotional content. Blanchette and Richards (2007) examined episodes ofterrorism in real life as they are alarming to the individual and therefore there is no doubt that they will induce deep emotions. The London 7 July terrorist attacks were used as the basis for real-life emotions in this study. Participants in Manchester (UK), London (UK) and London (Canada) reasoned deductively with syllogisms that contained neutral, generally emotional or terror-related content. Participants were tested one week after the accident and then six months later. All participants self-reported the extent of their emotions. The results showed that participants from London (UK) reported higher self-reported emotional levels than the rest of the participants from Manchester (UK) and London (Canada). Further results, however, did not demonstrate that emotions caused logical disturbances in the London (UK) participants as they were particularly more accurate in reasoning about terror syllogisms; this was then followed by Manchester and then London (Canada). The closer participants were to the 7/7 attack, the higher their self-reported emotion; Participants from London (UK) had higher levels of fear and, conversely, also of positive emotions, demonstrating that different emotions can coexist alongside each other. Overall, neutral issues were the most accurately reasoned within all groups compared to emotional issues, however participants from London (UK) were equally accurate in reasoning about terror-related content, concluding so that higher reports of emotions, both negative and positive, do not reduce reasoning ability, as shown. with previous studies. Since this study was integral, this suggests that when you reason with syllogisms directed at the core of an individual's emotions, you allow them to reason even more precisely. However, it is worth noting that terrorism can be subject to stereotypes towards a certain group, which can lead to heuristic processing and therefore illogical conclusions when reasoning, which could indicate a flaw in the study methodology and the individual's working memory. The Blanchette & Campbell (2012) study also examined the effect of emotions in real life and its impact on reasoning, using former war veterans. They measured former veterans' reasoning on neutral, emotional, and combat-related syllogisms. They too found a similar pattern to Blanchette and Richards' (2007) study that when reasoning is tied to participants' specific emotion/experience, they reason with better accuracy than neutral content, in this case combat experiences. It is therefore an integral response, which depending on the emotion, a facilitated effect is obtained when there is an affiliation between the affective state and the content of the reasoning. However, participants with PTSD were less accurate in reasoning across all conditions than the other groups, but still had an advantage for combat-related content. This is not surprising as ex-service men have higher rates of PTSD which serves a correlation with working memory capacity which may imply accuracy of reasoning which may be a non-pathological consequence of PTSD traumatic that a serious emotion can cause. They also found a link between those who had more intense experiences and found that they had reduced accuracy for emotional content and combat-related experience, suggesting they may have become more "immune" to the effectsof the emotion having to deal with it on a higher basis, therefore because they reasoned about it in the same way as about the neutral content. This suggests that when individuals experience extreme emotions, this can contaminate their overall performance in reasoning, suggesting that when emotion exceeds a certain warning it can have negative effects that no longer benefit reasoning. The above findings can be explained by relevance, as integral emotion is considered more relevant than incidental emotion. When the content of emotion and reasoning is integral, more attention can be paid, which increases accuracy compared to more irreverent integral reasoning, but deferring attention, this was not seen in those who had intense experiences . Therefore, depending on the context/emotional content, it will be clear how much attention will be paid to the conclusions of the reasoning. However, these results may be due to familiarity, as those who have had more combat experience will therefore perform better in reasoning in their field, although emotional/neutral reasoning should also have seen this facilitation as they are more "everyday emotions", although whether they are not. Therefore, when emotion is linked to the content of reasoning there appears to be a benefit to reasoning accuracy. However, research by Jung, Wranke, Hamburger & Knauff (2014) contradicts these findings. In their 2014 study, participants completed logical inference problems. They tested participants with test anxiety or those with a phobia of spiders; these participants solved problems related to their affections. Those with a phobia of spiders experienced reduced accuracy in reasoning with spider content compared to neutral subjects. Those who were anxious about the exam achieved the same performance accuracy as those who were not anxious, thus showing a neutral effect of emotions. The results therefore conclude that regardless of whether there is high relevance for participants' emotions, there was no facilitated effect for reasoning, contradicting the results shown by Blanchette et al above. However, phobias are extreme irrational fears that may not be equivalent to everyday emotions and therefore represent somewhat of an anomaly which explains why this research does not represent previous findings. Furthermore, a phobic's goal is to avoid the fear that might trigger his or her phobia explaining the reduced accuracy (DSM-5 2013). Study test test anxiety was entirely about students, and while some reported no test anxiety, this is unlikely to be true as they may have self-reported inaccurately. This could demonstrate that perhaps the non-anxious were behaving the same way as the anxious as they had similar levels of anxiety, thus showing neutral results. Additionally, anxiety can utilize maximum working memory capacity, resulting in decreased accuracy. In more deep-seated emotions, Channon and Baker (1994) examined reasoning by syllogisms incidentally in depressed participants and found that these participants reasoned with considerably lower accuracy in working memory. Compared to controls, even when reasoning was not emotional, there is still an influence of individuals' internal emotions on their success in reasoning, this may suggest that WM and cognitive functions influence reasoning ability, since those who are depressed people have a lower level in this. Therefore, suggesting other explanations for individual differences in reasoning accuracy, some individuals may have a reduced ability to.