I was at the forum about communication strategy in Fundesem discussing with the assitants and the speaker about the rational versus irrational…
As was a subject that seemed interesting, I decided to deepen…Of course! I asked several people if they consider if there was nothing to be neatly separated, if it was impossible to take a decision only with the reasoning or only with the emotional. Then, as overall conclusion I find out that people equate being emotional with being irrational… but nothing could be further from the truth. If the situation calls for crying and someone is laughing, then that is irrational… not emotional. People who can “emote” are usually the people that have the ability to be very fluid and understand a situation at hand quick enough in order to make a valid, proactive snap decision… which can also include reasoning. There are benefits to being emotional and there are benefits to reasoning. An entire subject of logics was created to teach people how to think — but it doesn’t discount the person who is also emotional. In fact it can be a real asset!
I’ve also discivered that There are many different kinds of decisions and the division is more between the Cognitive and the Behavioral. Some decision can be made with one or the other and some with both. The gate is the type of decision being made, a nuance often overlooked.
The more complex is the problem, the less likely it is that we can completely isolate our emotional motives from our rationale calculations. This is because our instinct to act on our gut feel is still too strong; it had been a driving force behind behaviors of our ancestors for much longer than rational thinking had. Sometimes it takes a great effort to chose the rational path, so strong is the instinct. And sometimes gut feel gives us a better answer. But I think it happens less and less often, since the models we use get a little better with every generation (with a certain element of random fluctuation, of which the current crisis is a good example.)
In addition to this. I would like to add that in some extent we are referring to the Emotional Intelligence which is seen more as an exceptional advantage in today’s corporate world. In fact, there are courses taught all over the world. The term emotional intelligence describes the ability to identify, assess emotions of one’s self, and others. Look, if the situation calls for a complete rational decision then one would have to base the decision on logic and vice-versa. Usually decision call for a mixed approach. It leads me to think that all emotion is involuntary when genuine.
To end up as an afterthought, I would like to quote a fragment of ‘Life on the Mississippi’ : ‘And mind you, emotions are among the toughest things in the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion’.