The paper presents the results of an empirical study of the emotional characteristics of students when solving thinking problems. The study used an experiment that simulates a students' collaborative solution to the puzzle-doing problem. To study emotional variables, we used the method of B.I. Dodonov for determination of the general emotional orientation. To investigate feelings experienced by students, we used the method of K. Isard. According to the authors, the following types of general emotional orientation (with decrease) are dominated among students: altruistic, communicative, and mixed types. All students showed the dominance of emotions of interest, joy and surprise under the decision processes, regardless of the emotional type of personality. It was revealed that under the processes of solving thinking problems, students with the dominance of various types of emotional orientation showed a different ratio of emotions. Four strategies of solving thinking problems were identified, which are characterized by the representation of various emotions.