How many times have you made an impulsive decision, letting yourself be carried away by the euphoria of the moment?
How many times have you committed to impossible tasks when you thought you could take on the world?
How many times have you undertaken an overly complex project inspired by naive optimism?
How many crazy life changes have you made in the name of love?
“Positive” emotions can play just as many tricks on us as “negative” ones, especially because we are not fully aware of their influence. By acting under the radar, we are often pushed to take excessive risks or take paths we would not have chosen under other circumstances.
Not all that glitters is gold
In our emotional universe, we usually divide emotions into positive and negative. We assume that negative emotions are an enemy that we must monitor and keep under control while giving carte blanche to positive emotions. This leads us to a mistake: completely lowering our guard with positive emotions, so that when we realize it it’s too late to go back on the decisions we have made, letting ourselves be carried away by euphoria, joy, infatuation or the feeling of empowerment.
Emotions play tricks on us because they validate themselves. That is, since they come from within us, we do not usually question their validity or functionality. And we also do not question the conclusions we draw from what we feel, which condemns us to a self-referential loop. We rarely question why we experience fear or have fallen in love with a person. We feel emotions, we don’t analyze them.
The problem begins when those emotions become the compass that guides our decisions. We lose our way when we believe that feeling like Superman will make us Superman. And positive emotions are the ones we question the least because they do not bother us, so we act by letting ourselves be carried away by them without wondering if perhaps we are exaggerating.
Pink glasses also distort the world
A study carried out at the University of Maryland found that experiencing positive emotions usually pushes us to make riskier decisions. These psychologists found that euphoric people tended to bet more than those who had a more stable mood. Furthermore, euphoria led them to overestimate the remote possibilities of success.
We must be clear that emotional valence is simply a label that we add. When an emotional hijacking occurs – whether motivated by fear or euphoria – our brain reacts in a fairly similar way. In other words, intense emotions “disconnect” the rational part that helps us make better decisions.
Therefore, we must be particularly careful when making important decisions when we feel overcome by intense emotions, even if they are positive, since they can push us in a direction that, in other circumstances, we would not have chosen since they prevent us from evaluating properly the risks and obstacles along the way.
Feeling overcome by emotions traditionally classified as negative (such as sadness) is like wearing gray glasses. But experiencing very positive emotions would be the equivalent of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. In both cases we will not be objective. We will not be able to perceive real colors because our emotions are acting as a filter.
The key to using positive emotions to your advantage
The solution is not to become a stone that does not feel or suffer. Emotions are not our enemies. In fact, they are important messengers of our inner state. However, they are not always good advisors.
An experiment carried out at the University of Maryland in which participants had to make investment decisions revealed that the key is not to “have a cool head”, as is often thought, but to be able to identify and manage emotions.
Emotions are states that move the internal balance to tell us what pleases or bothers us, so we must pay attention to them. In fact, these psychologists explain that the common advice to “ignore emotions” does not work well. People who took their emotions into account made good decisions, the secret lies in the way they managed those emotional states.
We just have to be aware of our emotional states. The simple fact of identifying the emotion and knowing in which direction it pushes us can help us balance the scales and make a more appropriate decision. We must learn to relate to emotions as if they were inner compasses, take note of their message and then choose accordingly. We should not ignore them, but neither should we allow ourselves to be carried away by them, even when they are negative. At the end of the day, the key is always balance.
References:
Seo, M. & Feldman, L. (2007) Being emotional during decision making—good or bad? an empirical investigation. Acad Manage J; 50(4): 923–940.
Isen, A. M. & Patrick, R. (1983) The effect of positive feelings on risk taking: When the chips are down. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance; 31(2): 194-202.
