Perception of the physical environment and emotions about the social environment are integrated into a resource-based account. Animals, unlike plants, must move around their environment to obtain resources and avoid predators, which in turn necessitates perception. Animate creatures also must coordinate perceptions of their internal and external environments to balance bodily expenditures of energy and environmental demands. Consequently, perceptions of distances and the steepness of hills increase with exhaustion and glucose depletion and decrease with physical fitness. They also increase with emotions of sadness and fear and decrease with accessibility to social resources. Social support when individuals are under stress even increases available glucose in the blood. The extraordinary success of the human species is believed to have depended on their living in cooperative social groups. Hence, social inclusion is a valuable resource. We propose an emotion-as-information model in which emotions serve as information for managing resources, especially social resources.