Emotional Reasoning: When the Mind Mistakes Feeling for Fact

Examples of Emotional Reasoning

The following are examples of emotional reasoning:

1. Andrew is afraid because his boss has told him she wants to speak with him at the end of the day, therefore Andrew concludes that his boss has something negative to say.
2. Mary is mad because a driver hasn’t let her merge, therefore she concludes that the driver is intentionally ignoring her.
3. Hannah is sad because a friend hasn’t returned her text, therefore she concludes that she is unlikeable.

In each of these examples, we see how a person draws on his or her emotional experience to reinforce a thought.

Andrew doesn’t have any specific information to suggest that his boss has bad news to share; he comes to this conclusion because he feels fear when his boss tells him she wants to speak with him. Mary doesn’t have any way of knowing the other driver’s motivations, so she let’s her emotional reaction of anger fill in the gaps for her. Hannah lets her sadness about an unreturned text reinforce a negative thought about her self-worth.

How and why emotional reasoning occurs

We never have complete knowledge about any topic or event, nor can we know exactly what someone else is thinking. Additionally, we will never be able to understand the full context of the situations we find ourselves in.

Therefore, we must make assumptions. Lots of them. In fact, most decisions we make are based on assumptions. Therefore, how well we do with making accurate assumptions goes a long way toward determining or success in navigating our uncertain world.

When faced with a knowledge gap, how do we choose where to leap?

In the (crude) image above, we see someone on a stepping stone, standing before three other stepping stones that are each labeled with a number. Each new stepping stone is an assumption, and the number assigned to each stone represents the intensity of emotion that assumption represents on a 1-10 scale, with 10 being the highest.

Let’s say this figure is Andrew from Example 1, and the stepping stone he is on now is the knowledge that his boss wants to speak with him at the end of the day. Each of the three stepping stones in front of him represent a different assumption as to why his boss wants to speak with him. His three assumptions are:

1. Andrew’s boss wants to discuss a recent presentation he gave to the company, as she always does. He thinks the presentation went well, but he still feels a slight amount of anxiety about this. We’ll say the emotional intensity of this assumption is 3/10.
2. Andrew’s boss is planning to fire him. He feels an intense amount of anxiety about this possibility. The emotional intensity of this assumption is 9/10.
3. Andrew’s boss is going to ask him to take on an additional task at work tomorrow, as she does with some regularity. The task will be manageable but a bit stressful nonetheless. The emotional intensity of this assumption is 4/10.

The reality is that Andrew may not know the true reason his boss wants to speak with him until he is standing in front of her. Unless he is able to suspend all assumption and walk into her office with an open mind, he will adopt one of these assumptions to help him to prepare for the conversation. Which one will he pick?

If Andrew is prone to emotional reasoning, then he is most likely to pick the 2nd assumption — that his boss is going to fire him — because this assumption provokes the most intense emotion. In other words, when faced with a knowledge gap, he will allow the intensity of an emotion to be his guiding light.

In a way, this makes sense. He can’t read his boss’s mind, so he may as well prepare for the worst.

But here’s the problem…

There is no correlation between the intensity of emotion that a thought evokes, and how likely that thought is to be true.

A thought that causes us to feel a high amount of anxiety/sadness/anger is no more likely to be true than a thought that causes a low amount of anxiety/sadness/anger.

This is an important principle worth the time to fully digest. Once we grasp the principle that emotional reaction is actually a pretty crummy gauge of reality, we can look past these intense emotions to consider the available evidence that supports or opposes our assumptions or beliefs.

To continue with the example of Andrew, we see that two out of three of his assumptions are rooted in past experience: his boss always reviews his presentations with him, and regularly asks him to take on additional tasks at work. Therefore, based on the available evidence these assumptions are much more likely to be accurate than the assumption that provokes the most anxiety and has the least precedence — that she is planning to fire him.

How can he — and the rest of us — avoid this trap?

How to overcome emotional reasoning

Use the following steps to identify and overcome emotional reasoning:

1. Identify the emotional intensity that you assumption or belief provokes
2. Remember that the emotional intensity caused by this assumption or belief does not correlate with a likelihood that this assumption or belief is true
3. Identify tangible evidence in support of each assumption or belief
4. Identify tangible evidence in opposition of each assumption or belief
5. Adopt the assumption or belief that appears to have the most tangible evidence in support of it and which cannot be contradicted by the tangible evidence in opposition to it.

Photo credits:

• Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash