In Western culture, and even more so in American corporate culture, we are frequently told to take the emotion out of important decisions. This is disastrous advice. It’s terrible guidance because it is contrary to how the brain works and, specifically, contrary to how we arrive at high-quality conclusions and decisions.
In Eastern philosophy the combination of feeling and thinking is often referred to as Wise Mind or the middle way. In neuroscience is it referred to as Affective-cognitive integration, or more technically, “prefrontal-limbic integration.” Regardless of what we call it, this integration is the interplay between the prefrontal cortex (reasoning, analysis, planning, impulse control) and limbic structures which assign value and create meaning via feeling. Good decision-making comes from effective communication between these regions.
In fact, the absence of this coordination results in dreadful decision making. Antonio Damasio’s research on patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed that when this emotion-decision link is severed, people can still reason logically but make terrible real-life decisions — they lose access to what we might call “gut instinct.”
In effect, emotion provides context and assigns relative importance to different options. It also takes into account how people might feel about one decision over another, which matters a lot, because emotion underlies motivation and drives behavior, i.e., how people ultimately feel about and respond to a given choice.
In short, emotion not only doesn’t “get in the way” of effective problem solving and decision making, it is essential to clear thinking. Take it away, and the mind doesn’t grow more rational — it becomes lost, adrift in endless options that all feel equally weightless, because nothing feels like it matters more than anything else. So when an important decision in on the line, ignore the advice you’ve received over and over again about “taking the emotion out of it.”The Worst Advice You’ve Ever Received for Making Good Decisions: “Take the Emotion Out of It.”
In Western culture, and even more so in American corporate culture, we are frequently told to take the emotion out of important decisions. This is disastrous advice. It’s terrible guidance because it is contrary to how the brain works and, specifically, contrary to how we arrive at high-quality conclusions and decisions.
In Eastern philosophy the combination of feeling and thinking is often referred to as Wise Mind or the middle way. In neuroscience is it referred to as Affective-cognitive integration, or more technically, “prefrontal-limbic integration.” Regardless of what we call it, this integration is the interplay between the prefrontal cortex (reasoning, analysis, planning, impulse control) and limbic structures which assign value and create meaning via feeling. Good decision-making comes from effective communication between these regions.
In fact, the absence of this coordination results in dreadful decision making. Antonio Damasio’s research on patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed that when this emotion-decision link is severed, people can still reason logically but make terrible real-life decisions — they lose access to what we might call “gut instinct.”
In effect, emotion provides context and assigns relative importance to different options. It also takes into account how people might feel about one decision over another, which matters a lot, because emotion underlies motivation and drives behavior, i.e., how people ultimately feel about and respond to a given choice.
In short, emotion not only doesn’t “get in the way” of effective problem solving and decision making, it is essential to clear thinking. Take it away, and the mind doesn’t grow more rational — it becomes lost, adrift in endless options that all feel equally weightless, because nothing feels like it matters more than anything else.
Interestingly, in the “real world” of decision making, in the absence of brain injury that would compromise “affective-cognitive integration,” it isn’t actually possible to fully remove feeling from the cognitive process even if we want to. What we end up actually doing is invalidating what seems like feeling in ourselves and others. In other words, even when we try to “take the emotion out” of the process, we actually do experience some level of affect because it’s unavoidable. Then we sabotage clear thinking by reflexively discounting and even openly degrading the very part of the process that provides meaning and relative importance. So when an important decision in on the line, ignore the advice you’ve received over and over again and leave the emotion in!