How EMOtion moTIVate Action – EMOTIVA

Humans are able to respond to others' non-verbal signals - such as emotional expressions - in a very rapid and efficient way. Learning to effectively adapt our behaviors to these socio-emotional signals is key to successful interactions and is a good predictor of mental health across the life span. Despite their importance, the mechanisms underlying our action decisions in response to emotional displays are still poorly understood. Automatic reactions to emotional stimuli are commonly believed to be the main constituents of emotional behavior. Nonetheless, in social contexts individuals may not simply re-act to emotional displays, but use them to flexibly adapt their behavior. The present project will investigate the contribution of goal-directed learning processes to the emergence of adaptive decisions to socio-emotional behavior, pooling together expertise from philosophy of action, affective and computational neuroscience.