Emotion vs. Reason?

Here is a thought from David Brooks’ book “The Social Animal“, which made me aware of an interesting aspect of decision making – in a nutshell:

Emotion assigns value to things. Reason makes decisions based on these values.

Which means it is important to be clear on one’s emotions – let’s say I’m emotional about big cars because I saw them on TV series througout all my youth.

Now I want one of those cars. I use all my reason to get one.

But I might be better off analysing the emotion behind this wish to find that the value I assigned to it came from the idea of being able to take five friends with me at once. I might find out that my friends have cars on their own and going on a trip in two seperate cars is perfectly fine. Getting a small car saves me a lot of money and stress.

Here is the paragraph from Brook’s book

“…This understanding of decision making leads to some essential truths. Reason and emotion are not separate and opposed. Reason is nestled upon emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns values to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.”

Emotional Positioning System

He also introduces the idea of an “Emotional Positioning System” (EPS) which judges every situation you encounter by the experiences you’ve made. You may check your EPS every now and then – maybe you’ll find that some of the coordinates need to be updated!

Information related to this post

Reason’s Void and The Human EPS