The Role of Emotions in Decision-Making
“Mindfully acknowledging our feelings serves as an ‘emotional thermostat’ that recalibrates our decision-making.”
[Noreena Hertz]
I am sure you have all heard advice such as “don’t let your emotions make your decisions”, or “don’t make a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion”. But truth be told: how important are emotions in our decision-making, and why is that? Recognizing and understanding emotions in ourselves and in others, and using this awareness to manage our reaction, behaviour and relationships can be a game changer for our personal development and growth.
Welcome back to Spiegelbild!
Today, I want to share something that has been fascinating me for quite some time: the role emotions truly play in our decision-making, and the influence emotions have on how we respond to and interact with others. By the way: horses are phenomenal mirrors of our emotions and can help us increase our awareness of them.
How is it that horses can read our emotions? As humans, we are emotional creatures. Our emotions influence the decisions we make in our personal and professional lives. Emotions help us choose our friends, who we fall in love with, and who we will leave behind. Facial expressions are important social signals that help us decipher subtle emotional cues we receive from another person. How we relate to these individuals may be influenced by cues they have given us in past encounters.
As you’ll see a little later, I’ve been following the science on this. We now know that a wide range of animal species are capable of discriminating the emotions of others through facial expressions. It seems logical that remembering emotional experiences with specific individuals can be beneficial for social bonding or avoiding conflict when these individuals are encountered again.
A study in 2018 conducted controlled experiments in which domesticated horses were shown a photograph of either an angry or happy human face. Several hours later the horses were then led to the same person they saw previously in the photograph, but this time the person kept a neutral facial expression. The results were fascinating!
A short-term exposure to either the angry or happy facial expression was enough to result in a clearly differentiated response by the horse to the person afterwards, even though the person remained neutral. In other words, if the horse saw the photograph of an angry facial expression first this predisposed the horse to perceive the person negatively; and if the photograph showed a happy facial expression the horse perceived the person positively. [1]
Now, let’s think for a moment about the instinctive reaction we might have based on the subtle social signals we receive from others, the facial expressions we notice, and how lasting their impact could be on how we perceive another individual. Societal norms and our “code of conduct” might prevent us from acting according to our instincts. But that does not mean that we’re less impacted by displayed emotions than the horses were in the study.
Emotions have power.
As a converging field of research and discoveries in genetics, neuropsychology and paleobiology [2], evolutionary psychology explains that although human beings today inhabit a thoroughly modern world, they do so by still being governed by emotions and traits that allowed their survival as Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Examples of such emotions are the instinct to fight when threatened, or a drive to trade information and share secrets. Evolutionary psychology offers a theory of how the human mind came to be constructed. In essence, evolution not only shaped the human body, but also the human mind. And as a result, we humans are “hardwired” in ways that determine most of our behaviour to this day. [3]
Consequently, if certain aspects of human behaviour are ingrained and universal, it can explain familiar patterns in how people tend to act and respond, whether in the workplace or their private lives.
Emotions rule. In an uncertain world full of wild predators, and at the mercy of occurring natural disasters, Stone Age people came to trust their emotional radar - or instinct - above all else. It also meant that those individuals who possessed a keen instinct were more likely to survive and thus reproduce. For human beings, emotions, therefore, are the first screen to all information received. [4]
In today’s work environment we are often asked to push our emotions aside and make decisions based on rational analysis and logical thinking. According to evolutionary psychology, however, emotions can never be fully suppressed. This offers one explanation why employees might not be able to receive critical feedback in a constructive vein. Due to the primacy of emotions people hear bad news first, and negative message have by far the greater power. They can wipe out all the built-up credit of positive messages in a heartbeat.
To take it one step further, a revolution in the science of emotions has emerged that puts theories of decision-making in question. The research reveals that emotions are powerful, pervasive and predictable drivers when it comes to making decisions. Identifying the effects of emotions on judgement and decision-making has become the focus of some intriguing research in recent years, and many psychological scientists now assume that emotions are the dominant driver of most meaningful decisions in our lives.
Concretely, this could mean that emotions triggered by a pending decision or choice may directly shape a person’s decision-making. For instance, if you feel anxious about a risky choice you might chose a safer option, rather than a more rewarding one. Or, if you feel a positive emotional connection to a school you attended in the past, you may decide in favour of a generous donation, even though that limits your ability to spend money on other personal interests.
Effects of emotions on decision-making happen at both the conscious and unconscious levels. They can even spill over from one situation to another and thus influence decisions that are - from a neutral perspective - unrelated to each other.
Fascinating, right? If emotions are powerful enough to not only determine our day-to-day lives and relationships, but also govern our decision-making it seems logical that our view of human intelligence has been broadened by adding the concept of emotional awareness - or intelligence. Fundamentally, this means that skills such as self-awareness, self-discipline and empathy can as equally influence a person’s success in the workplace as their IQ. Being aware of their emotions allows people to harness the power of these emotions and, as a result, manage both their own signals, and their response to other people’s emotions.
Due to their high emotional awareness, horses can bring special attention to our - conscious and/or unconscious - emotions, as well as our responses to others’ subtle emotional signals. Equine-assisted coaching offers a unique insight into our “evolutionary hardwired self” and can therefore improve our emotional awareness, and create new perspectives for our personal growth.
If you are curious about how working with horses might strengthen your awareness for emotions and related responses, don’t hesitate to book a free 30-minute consultation through our website. We are here to support your personal and leadership development - one human-horse partnership at a time.
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[1] K. McComb, L. Troops. Animals remember previous facial expressions that specific humans have exhibited. Published in the Journal Current Biology. 2018
[2] Paleobiology (or paleaobiology) is an interdisciplinary area of research that uses field research of current biota and fossils to answer questions about the molecular evolution and the evolutionary history of life.
[3] N. Nicolson. How hardwired is human behaviour? Harvard Business Review. The Magazin July-August 1998
[4] N. Nicolson. How hardwired is human behaviour? Harvard Business Review. The Magazin July-August 1998