Choice and Decision-Making Require Emotion, but Shouldn't be Focused on Emotion

Fact after fact about something won't always win people over to reality. Many of us are only moved by appeals to emotion to pull, tug, move and push us into action. The truth and reality of the issue doesn't matter as much as how we feel about it, or how it makes us feel.

My latest post on "Know Thyself" mentioned as much regarding the importance in understanding what motivates, drives and influences our actions:

"Knowledge of the functionality, behavior, motivations, drive and influence of the mind, psyche and consciousness empowers one in life."
- @krnel

There is also the backfire effect I have previously covered, whereby people reject new information, no matter how much there is, and dig their heels in deeper, because they want what they believe to be true. Truth in reality, doesn't matter to them really as much as what they want, desire or wish to be true.

I will talk about another aspect of how we act, what we choose to do, making decisions, and how that relates to our emotions and how we feel.

Antonio Damasio discovered that people who had damage to the emotional parts of the brain, had the common issue of having great difficulty making decisions. Emotions are important to decide and choose one thing over another. We value, weigh and judge things based on how we feel much of the time.

Logic, unfortunately, is not a high level concern for a basic human who doesn't know themselves and these cognitive biases and deficits. Truth matters less than having our emotional desires, wants and wishes satiated through following how we feel about things. A decision is not based on wanting truth, right, good or morality to prevail as an outcome, but on wanting to do something personally based on how they feel.

Some people don't want to be convinced with reason, because they can't be. The negotiation with reality must take place for them to change their worldview or selfview.

If you get people to admit their problems, their pain, their suffering, and their vulnerability, then they are emotionally open, and you can build on that vision of their problem to propose a solution that fits with what they want and how they feel about something. It might not be the best solution, because they don't care about what is best, optimal or more right or less wrong, they just want what they want, the full honest hard truth be damned, they want to feel good about themselves and get what they want.

About the above Antonia Damasio article, someone made a comment about it on FB:

"Research suggests that logical arguments and facts are not what drives change. What really matters is how we make others feel."
- Someone

Then I said:

"What do you mean by: 'What really matters is how we make others feel'?"

They responded:

"I think this means we need to make our best efforts to appeal more to the heart than the head. So what we say to them matters less than how they feel about us, and whether they regard us as worthy of their trust. It points to the importance of caring and connecting with those we talk with, and listening closely to learn how we can best serve their interests and emotional needs."

Rather than serve truth, reality, existence, no... let's serve our deluded ego's and false perceptions that have us attached to lower consciousness interests and the emotional attachment towards those things in our lives we don't want to let go of. No... that doesn;t cut it for me.

This is what I have to say about the "feel-good" self-focus they try to validate as the best way to speak watered down "truth" to people.

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It's not about how YOU make them feel, that's just one way to manipulate them to change. What determines whether they change to accept something or reject it, is based on how THEY feel about the change itself, not how YOU make them feel.

The article is not really saying "what really matters is how we make others feel." That's just one way of manipulating them into a love-bomb "feel-good" emotional state to accept something from you that you want them to accept by relating you as the "feel-good" producer, to what you want them to accept. They will trust you because you make them feel-good, and then more likely trust and accept the message you deliver.

This is how many beliefs are propagated into consciousness, especially religious and New Age gurus and the like who peddle fantasies. If the messenger can make you feel good about a message, then you are likely to accept the message.

But I digress, as this is not what the article was really talking about: "You don’t tell your opponent what to think or what’s best. You help them discover for themselves what feels right and best and most advantageous to them. Their ultimate decision is based on self-interest. That’s emotional. I want this. This is good for me and my side."

But it does imply what you say, as ONE way to get people to accept something is by targeting their emotional/feeling/desire/wants saliency/value/importance/weighing capacity, or changing it.

The punchline is that logic and reasoning of facts in reality doesn't often work, because people are more concerned about their self-interested self-concerned self-centered gains and advantage that they will get or lose. How they feel about something is the point, not really how you make them feel.

The feeling of a topic, what "feels right" (whether it is right or not), what "feels good" (whether it is good or not), is related to the saliency of the information as it related to them personally. The saliency of information is how you feel about it, what you desire from it, if your desires align with the information, if you weigh the information as important to you personally, if you value the information. Saliency is related to feeling how valuable, important and weighted something is for you. And yes, if you can affect/alter someones feelings about something, then you can affect/alter whether they accept it or not.

Therefore, facts in reality, a truth, doesn't matter for many compared to how they feel about a something, whether it is true or a lie, they will be more likely to accept it or reject it based on the saliency of the information to them, how they feel, the value they place in it, the important and weight it has for them in their lives.

This demonstrates the subjective attachment to self and how we want to feel-good about ourselves, vs. objective detachment to recognize the truth in reality that may not feel-good. People are focused on feel-good deceptions that will sustain and maintain their current condition, their current selfview or worldview, or what will improve their current condition, selfview or worldview, as judged/weighed from a feel-good self-interested self-concerned advantageous winning perspective of the saliency/importance/value of something as it relates to them.

There are many manipulators who know how to be charismatic, smother talk and make you feel-good with word-magic and the science of imagery to invoke feel-good states in you related to them and their message they want you to accept. Once accepted, your behavior can change in accordance with the newly accepted information. This is how politics and sophistry work.

People need to focus on understanding truth, right, good and morality, and see the value/importance/weight and salient significance that those higher guiding principles will bring them and others in life. Then you don't need to make people "feel-good" about something for them to accept it, all you need to do is speak the truth.

Focusing on getting them to trust you by making them feel-good about you is a low consciousness approach of letting them remain in this modality of consciousness whereby they always focus on their feel-good attachments, self-interest, self-concern and self-consideration. Then you have to do this manipulation game to play on their emotional attachment to you every time you want them to change. That is not dealing with the root causal factor of their low consciousness modality of focusing on themselves instead of truth, right, good and morality.

The root causal factor is their rejection of facts, reality, truth, right, good and morality in the first place, because they focus on themselves and feeling-good. The solution at the root causal level is to get them to actually care for truth, right, good and morality more, so that they can change themselves, rather than you making them feel-good and then changing them for each issue.

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TL;DR?

Caring about truth, right, good and morality is to have salience, value, importance and weight put on those higher guiding principles, rather than the lower self-interest, self-concern and self-consideration of personal advantage and feeling-good about a worldview, selfview or sensory stimulus.

The proper way to make decisions is based on a properly functioning consciousness and brain that provides both reasoning and rationality along with emotion and intuition to judge and value information objectively with respect to reality.

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One final thing to note, is with respect to the "willusionists" who believe there is no free will. If there were no free will, then people would be able to make decisions regardless of emotions. Free will is an automatic factor of a properly functioning consciousness that emerges from a healthy functioning brain.

Consciousness is free will. Thought and emotion are part of consciousness. When something is damaged in the brain and in consciousness it affects our abilities. Like damage to process emotions affects our ability to make choices, free will. Damage to emotional areas of the brain prevent us from exercising our free will properly: we can't make decisions/choices. There is more proof of free will in reality, demonstrable in life, but this is on example to show from reality.

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[Image source]

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Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.

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@krnel
2016-12-01, 7:26am