Emotional Reasoning: When Emotions Cloud Thinking
In everyday life, emotions are part of our behavioral repertoire, They guide us in our permanent search for satisfaction and well-being and help us avoid harm and discomfort that can threaten our physical and psychological health.
However, Such important benefits come with some side effects There are times when emotions play tricks on us, even when we are in full mental health.
A typical example of the latter is what is known in the field of psychology as emotional reasoning.
Doing emotional reasoning implies, as its name indicates, reasoning based on how one feels
Let’s imagine that we have done poorly on a math test, or that we have been fired from work. In such circumstances, we are likely to “feel” like we have failed, so if that is what we “feel,” then it must be because we effectively “are” failures. When we fall into the trap of emotional reasoning, we reach seemingly true conclusions but without following a sequence of logical reasoning, but paying attention only to how I feel.
Then, an excessive generalization is made from an anecdotal or very specific fact Just because we did poorly on a math test does not necessarily indicate that we have failed in life. And this is something we constantly incur; We draw hasty and generally blunt conclusions, without there being any valid and objective evidence to justify them.
In the same sense, if we feel alone, we can come to think that we deserve it, that we are not worthy of being loved, or that we have some defect that pushes people away. From there, to believing that we are going to be alone for life, there is one step.
Emotional reasoning has another aspect focused outwards. We also tend to judge the behaviors or emotional states of others according to how we feel ourselves at that moment.
If we are angry because a superior denies us a raise, we are much more likely to attribute malice to the neighbor next door who is listening to rock at full volume, or to take as a personal grievance the reckless maneuvers of the driver of the car in front of us. our on the highway.
When we feel angry, we see anger in others, and we are unable to realize that it is really us who are angry and project our emotions onto others.
Emotions are useful
All this should not lead us to think that emotions themselves are harmful to us. I like to think of the set of human emotions as a primitive system of intra and interpersonal communication This may sound overly sophisticated, but it’s actually quite simple.
Let’s go in parts, see word by word.
I say primitive system becauseEmotions, as we know them, within the framework of the evolution of the human species, are long before language When we were little more than primates living in the treetops jumping from branch to branch and completely incapable of articulating any sound even remotely similar to what we know today as the human word, we already had the possibility, however, of express a wide range of emotions.
The “emotional communication system”
And this brings us to the second concept: communication system. When someone smiles at us and his face lights up when he sees us, he is telling us, before he articulates any words, that he rejoices in our presence. Either that he likes us in some way, or that we have no reason to fear him, since he has no hostile intentions towards us. These interpretations are valid, of course, depending on the context.
If, at the other extreme, someone stares at us, wrinkles their nose, raising their upper lip and exposing their teeth, they are letting us know, without expressing it verbally, that they despise us, detest us, or for some reason they hate us. feels motivated enough to hurt us. In fact, our fellow evolutionists, the apes, display fangs as a form of threat toward others. Showing off your attacking arsenal is usually an effective intimidating element or a way to dissuade the other from their intention to attack us.
Therefore it is possible to affirm that The main function of emotions is to communicate states, attitudes and behavioral predispositions both to ourselves and to others.
Emotions and how we manifest them
It is not necessary for our partner to tell us whether or not he liked the anniversary gift we bought him; Before she utters any words we already know it by the expression on her face. In the same way, we know if our boss is going to give us a raise or fire us when he calls us to talk privately and we enter his office.
When we see someone with a face lined with sadness, without asking them anything, we are certain that they are going through a bad time, that there is something that is making them suffer. That awakens our interest, our compassion… his emotion acts as a facilitator that pushes us to act, to do something to help him
Cooperation between human beings in the face of adversity, or in pursuit of a common goal, is one of the main components that allowed our evolution and progress as a species.
The primitive and interpersonal nature of emotions occurs not only on the phylogenetic level (Darwinian evolution from one species to another), but also on the ontogenetic level, that is, during the individual development of the person. To see this you just have to observe how a baby behaves before the first year of life, before she can articulate single words.
From the very birth, the baby’s different cries communicate to the adult that he is hungry , who is colicky, or upset because he wants his diapers changed. Every mother more or less skilled at decoding emotions learns to recognize the subtle nuances of her child’s whining and what these indicate during the first months of her life.
Some modest conclusions
Emotional reasoning is a mental scam, a deception, an illusion created by a demonic magician who appears as a result of a certain difficulty in correctly interpreting and managing one’s own emotions, and who hidden in anonymity can completely direct the life of the affected person, making him believe things that are not true, such as that he is worthless as a person, that the world is a dangerous place, and even that there is no hope that he can get out of that state.
That is to say, emotional reasoning generates illusions based on emotion
But emotions, in themselves, are neither harmful nor an error of nature. In general terms, all of them, those that are pleasant and especially those that are unpleasant, They are very beneficial for human beings, since they play a fundamental role for survival They help us establish relationships, strengthen bonds, and distance ourselves from dangers.
