Softer now vs. harder now

When emotion > reason

When reason and emotion are in conflict, emotion’s role is to add bias the outcome. Emotion modifies decisions, making them either softer or harder than decisions you’d make using reason alone.

Emotion is about immediacy; it removes hesitation. For both experts and beginners, the decision is swift regardless of whether the decision is wise or unwise.

Emotions can only seem wiser in the short run, or now. Emotions do not help anyone understand or anticipate the future. Only reason can do this. The long term effects of any decision could be the opposite of the short term effects. This is how you get unintended consequences.

When emotion modifies reason, it’s likely one of these two possible situations:

Softer now

Something bad happens, and a response is needed. Applying only logic and rules, the response would be “by the book,” but softer now is the path of compassion and forgiveness. By adding emotion, one can soften the decision.

Harder now

Something bad happens, and a response is needed. Applying only logic and rules, the response would be “by the book,” but harder now is the path of anger or fear. By adding emotion, one can intensify the decision.

In the moment, going easy on someone and bending the rules in their favor may seem like a wiser choice.

The future consequences of a soft now could be either good (gentleness now leads to future benefits) or bad (gentleness now leads to bigger problems later on).

In the moment, responding harshly and “teaching them a lesson” may seem like a wiser choice.

The future consequences of a harder now could be either good (better safe than sorry) or bad (overreaction now leads to bigger problems later on).

Is bending the rules a smart or dumb idea? Better outcomes can only come from expertise. Experienced experts use emotion differently than beginners who face a problem for the first time.

Inexperience

Emotion with inexperience is no better than random chance, just more intense. It might steer you to a good outcome, or it might bring disaster. Either way, the result you get is due to dumb luck.

For the inexperienced, emotion provides confidence, not correctness. With confidence, you can take action and feel great about it in the moment. If your confidence is entirely unjustified, well, hey, that just isn’t a problem right now.

Expertise

For an expert, emotion captures the accumulated wisdom of past experience. It tells you what has always worked for you in the past, assuming conditions are pretty much the same.

But emotion tells you nothing about what will work in the future if conditions change a lot. To see the future under unfamiliar circumstances, you need reason. Expertise with logic is the only way to get an answer for a unique or new situation, something outside your experience, like long reach problems.

When reason wins out over emotion: see Delicious poison vs disgusting cleanup

See also