Rather than view emotions as unwelcome visitors, we need to embrace them as a key component of thinking and cognition. One of the most important messages that we want to communicate is that emotions can enhance our thinking.
This was not always the case in the enlightened science we call psychology. Where the role of emotion in thinking is concerned, it can be a bit embarrassing to quote from the early history of psychology. Take, for instance, what a psychologist had to say about the role emotions play in our lives: “[Emotions cause] a complete loss of control . . . [and there is] no trace of conscious purpose.”
During the heyday of behaviorism during the last century, many psychologists thought that emotions were not important aspects of conscious experience.
Much has changed since this claim was made. Investigators now agree that emotions can work together with thought in interesting and unusual ways. Those who study the role of emotion in cognitive processes provide us with a firm understanding of ways in which our emotions influence our thinking—for better and for worse.
Emotions can assist our thinking, enhance our problem solving, and aid reasoning. For example, if we are in a positive mood, we can generate new and interesting ideas, and we tend to be better at inductive problem solving, such as generating a new marketing plan. If we are in a more negative mood, we focus on details and are better at solving deductive reasoning problems, such as checking a financial statement for errors.
It is important to stress that not everything that links emotion and thought is emotional intelligence. To be emotionally intelligent, emotions must enhance and assist our thought processes in some meaningful manner, not just influence them. For instance, the powerful memories conjured up by Proust’s madeleines is not emotional intelligence, unless the author were to generate such an emotion in order to purposefully engage in creative thinking.
Paying Attention
Emotions contain important data and information, but they also serve to bring our attention to bear on significant events in our environment. Thus when we are afraid, we pay more attention to the environment around us; we scan for a possible threat. When we are happy, our energy and attention are freed up, allowing us to explore the environment and to make new discoveries. Consider this example of how emotions assist thinking.
You’re sitting in the train on your way to work. You are not sure why you feel uneasy, but you do. You’re feeling worried and somewhat tense. You start to think about the budget spreadsheet in your briefcase that you will hand to internal audit when you arrive at the office later that morning. You absent-mindedly remove your laptop from your briefcase and begin to review the spreadsheet. You are startled to see a really egregious error on the second page. Feeling nervous but energized, you focus all your mental resources on the task, scanning every number on every line. You re-enter all the formulas and recompute all the numbers. You catch one more error, a fairly minor one. All of a sudden, you realize that the train has stopped; it has arrived at your station. You grab your bag in one hand, your coat in the other, and make a mad dash for the exit door, hurling yourself out the door just in time.
Nervousness and worry are often unwelcome, especially late at night when you are trying to get some sleep. But these emotions were used in an intelligent way in the spreadsheet situation. The feelings focused your thinking on a critically important task, helped you to concentrate on the details, and assisted you in error detection.
Taking Another’s Perspective
To understand another person’s point of view may be relatively easy. To truly see the world and experience it from a different perspective is much harder. This ability to experience what another person experiences or to feel what a certain course of action would be like requires us to generate an emotion or a set of emotions. Once we are in that mind-set, or feelings-set, we are better able to understand, from a thinking and emotional level, what it is like to be that person or to be in that situation.
Consider this scenario. You are a regional sales manager, and your team has not met its current quarterly sales goal. Not pleased with yet another problem quarter, you call a sales meeting, making it clear that everyone must attend. As the fifteen sales people enter the conference room, one seems more glum and despondent than the others. You start to feel a bit down yourself, and in doing so, you realize that they certainly don’t need to be yelled at or made to feel even more pessimistic about the future. You feel what they are feeling, and this allows you to have more empathy for your staff. The sales problem is still real, but rather than demand that the sales staff turn things around, you open the meeting with, “I think I know how everyone here today feels. I’m feeling the same way.” Surprised looks greet you, and as you continue, these looks turn to hopeful ones. “He’s not going to fire us!” runs through everyone’s mind, “He’s on our side!” With this feeling of empathy and camaraderie, you can now turn your team to achieving a common goal: a successful next quarter.
Thinking Differently
Moods have a direct impact on thinking. As our mood shifts, so does our thinking. Those who are able to harness moods and alter them are more likely to engage in creative thinking, seeing the world in one way and a different way soon after that.
When we say we are in a rut, we usually mean that everything around us is familiar, and we lose our sharpness of seeing and thinking. Our senses are dulled, as are our minds. Thus when we travel to a faraway place, our attention is heightened and we see new things. Those who can shift their moods can take a “virtual vacation,” anytime and anyplace. Their thinking and perspective shifts at will, thus enabling them to generate new ways of viewing the world.
A decision consists of logic as well as emotion, and if we can generate an emotion or a set of emotions that mimic some future or possible event, we can transport ourselves and walk around in this future world. How many times have you heard a story of a person who takes a new job, full of excitement, only to discover within weeks that the job isn’t the right job, or what they expected? They did all of their due diligence during the job search, negotiated a great offer, met with all of the key players, and yet it still didn’t work out. The one thing the job-seeker failed to do was to figure out how he would feel working at this new job. He didn’t, or couldn’t, create a sort of emotional fantasy world in which to spend a virtual day feeling what it would be like in that stifling environment.
Using Emotions to Problem Solve
John came into work with a smile on his face and in a very happy and upbeat mood. He sat down at his desk, and his boss came over to ask John to have a look at the marketing plan for the following year. John gladly agreed to do it and said he’d get it done right away. He worked quickly and sped through page after page of detailed charts and figures. There were still a few errors in the plan, and he circled them, noting what the corrections were in the margins.
The revisions were made the next day, and another version of the plan was prepared for presentation to the corporate office. Given the importance of the document, the manager wanted John to have a final, last look to make sure that all the changes were made. John walked into the office slowly, a bit downcast. “ Everything okay?” his boss asked. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” John replied with a slight smile. He wasn’t depressed, but he was in a slightly negative mood. In this calm state of mind, John went immediately to work on the final edit. After checking that the first revision had been made, he continued to scan the document and was surprised to find another error—one that he had failed to catch the day before. Concerned, he flipped to the front of the document and did a painstaking analysis of every line. By the end of his review, he had found five new errors, two of which were fairly important.
Why did John do a better job analyzing the plan the second time? Was it because he was more familiar with it? Not likely, as such familiarity can actually decrease attention to detail. The only discernable difference was that the first day John was feeling upbeat, and on the second day his mood was slightly negative. Does it really matter if you are in a positive and happy mood when you are asked to proofread and review a marketing plan? It certainly does, and the ability to use emotions to facilitate thinking recognizes that thinking is assisted differently by different moods.