ABSTRACT
Departement de psychologie, Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres, Canada
The psychology of reasoning, which examines the cognitive processes under-
lying rational thinking, has been the object of a major theoretical shift in
recent years (Chater & Oaksford, 2001). While reasoning has traditionally
been confined to the realm of logic (e.g., Braine et al., 1995), recent data suggest that reasoning should be modelled in a way that integrates a range of
contextual factors in addition to, and sometimes rather than, logic (Evans,
2002). The present review focuses on the contribution to this debate of
studies that have investigated the impact of emotion on reasoning. While
there are only few such studies, we show that their results are compatible
with “utility” models that have placed people’s perception of content utility
and their motivation at the centre of the reasoning process.
