Success Blog: Psychology, Human Behaviour, Self-Development, Relationships, and Affirmations

Last week I wrote a post on how high emotion leads to low intelligence and results very often in poor decisions. At the end I said that there are very few instances where emotions have a place in making decisions. In the time that followed, I got a couple of comments on the post, so I thought I’d take another stab at it. What I was trying to say last week was that really strong emotions, like when we are head-over-heels in love, or when we are so angry that steam is coming out of you ears, strongly affect the quality of our decisions. Very often we look back and regret the things we have done or said. These are the situations that the ‘high emotion – low intelligence’ comment refers to.

Emotions in themselves, when they do not take control of you, are actually vital to sound decision making. Reason and emotion go hand in hand. In 1848, there was a remarkable case of Phineas Gage in Vermont. Phineas Gage survived a head injury that took out his abilities to experience emotions, but left his reasoning capabilities perfectly intact. The accident made it very difficult for him to make any decisions, even trivial ones, whereas prior to the injury that was not the case.

We rely on emotions to tell us whether something ‘feels right’ or somehow just doesn’t. We trust that gut feeling and without it we seem unable to reason our way to a conclusion. So emotions are not bad unless they start to overtake you.

Until next time,

V

To me ‘emotional decision making’ is equivalent to ‘irrational decision making’. It is the best way that I can sum it up. I don’t remember where I first heard it, otherwise I’d give full credit, but I do recall someone saying that high emotion leads to low intelligence. Another great way to put it.

I recently had a chat about this with a couple of friends in relation to soccer. Refs use yellow cards to calm the players down and make sure that the game does not get out of hand. There were a few games that I have seen where refs lost control of the game by giving out too many yellow cards. At some point, the players start to intentionally be more physical and aggressive in their challenges, as to dare the ref to show another card. Since two yellow cards get you sent off leaving your team short-handed and earn you a next-game suspension, why would anyone want to dare the ref to give them a card? Well, simply because they are angry and frustrated with the ref and high emotional involvement leads to stupid decision making.

Soccer, obviously, is not the only place where this applies. We even have a different classification for murders that occur in ‘the heat of the moment’ and punish those offenders differently. So there is recognition in our society of emotional decision making and we try to account for that. However, the most valuable thing that you can do is to recognize that tendency in your own life, and give yourself time and space to cool off before making a decision. Easier said than done, but it is a very valuable skill to have. There are very few places where emotions have a place in making decisions.

Until Monday,

V