Every day we fall victim to the ploys of advertising agencies and companies who try to sell their overpriced products. We also fall victim to the opinions and the judgments of the people around us. Today’s society leaves us with little room to create opinions of our own. With the influence of media and others our opinions are rarely formed on hard fact. Rather than viewing all sides of an argument, or determining whether we truly need a certain product, we allow our environment to determine how we should think and what we should by.
Humans are emotional beings. If something makes us feel warm and fuzzy on the inside then assume that it must be a good thing. If something sounds evil it must be evil. It goes back to the old argument: if it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, then it must be a duck. However if you look closer at the “duck” it isn’t really a duck at all. Our emotions can cause us to make decisions and judgments that are erred. However we are taught from a young age to listen to our instincts.
Having emotional reactions is not the problem. However, making decisions strictly based on an emotional response to a specific topic is. Emotions should not just be felt, but also understood. To avoid these irrational decisions based on emotion, one must understand that an emotional reaction is occuring and seperate it from rational decision making. In his book On Dialogue, David Bohm explains his theory of dialogue and flow of ideas. In order to have a dialogue, Bohm states that one must suspend their assumptions (Bohm, p. 23). Also emotional reactions must be suspended and reflected upon. Instead of just reacting to them and allowing emotions to take over our cognitive processes, one must recognize and suspend their emtions.
Molden and Higgins concluded in their study that there are two main strategies that people use when making judgements: eager and vigilant (Molden; Higgins). Eager strategies are those that are mostly derived from achieving aspirations and furthering of oneself. Vigilant are those that wish to prevent bad outcomes (Molden; Higgins). Subjects during the study were more likely to make decisions that allowed them to be perceived in a greater light. So it seems that most decisions are based on one's perceived wellness.
However, one's own perceived wellness is very much different from one's actual wellness. It is a bias view. Like emotional responses they cannot be trusted and likewise must be viewed under much scrutiny. In order to make more informed and rational decisions, one must suspend their preconceived notions and emotional responses in order to make rational decisions.
References
Bohm, David. On Dialogue. New York, New York: Routledge, 1996.
Molden, Daniel C., and E. Tory Higgins. "How Preferences for Eager Versus Vigilant Judgment Strategies Affect Self-Serving Conclusions." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44.5 (2008): 1219-28
1 comment:
I definitely agree that one's perceived wellness is different from one's actual wellness. Making rational decisions does require one to separate emotions from logic, but how does this separation occur? If what is perceived is not what is actual, then how does one know what emotions they are actually feeling?
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