Emotions and Decision Making

Memory and cognition are far more susceptible to external factors than we think. For example, when an airport ticket inspector deliberately dropped something on the floor and bent down to pick it up, leaning over behind the ticket counter, another staff member took over and continued to inspect the ticket, the researcher asked the travelers and most answered that they did not notice the change of ticket inspector. In another study, subjects were asked to count the number of times a player in a white jersey appeared on a videotape, and most were able to say exactly how many times, but only 42 percent of the subjects noticed a more striking image: a person dressed in a black gorilla pattern walking to the center of the screen, beating his chest for a while and then walking away. More than half of the subjects focused only on the task given to them, not noticing a gorilla standing right in front of them! What kind of gorilla is walking by in your field of vision right now that you are blind to?

　　For this reason, the researchers also conducted a very influential experiment to illustrate the role that emotions play in the decision-making process. Subjects sat around a table with four decks of playing cards on it, issued to each $2,000, telling them the rules of this experiment: each person can draw cards from any deck, some cards represent up to $100 of income, some cards represent up to several hundred dollars of fines, if taken in turn from each deck, the probability is to get $1000, be fined $1250, a net loss of $250,. To prevent speculation. The subjects were connected with heartbeat and electrical skin sensors to monitor their mood swings, and they were also asked to say what they were thinking when the cards were drawn.

　　At first they drew their cards carelessly, not paying much attention to the outcome, but as the fines increased their emotions were activated, and after a few cards or even before they drew their cards it was clear that their emotions had changed, in fact the subjects who lost more money started to deliberately speculate about the cards. The obvious change in decision-making behavior occurred after about 20 cards, first for fines, then for bad cards, and then for trying to avoid cards that might lead to losses. This experiment not only proves that emotion is part of decision making, but also shows that it has a strong influence on behavior and can often indeed dominate the decision making process, even for such a simple card drawing process. From this we can conclude that the decision making process begins with input from the external environment - the information on the cards - followed by a subconscious emotional response, followed by a change in behavior consistent with the emotional response. From this we become aware of emotions driving behavioral changes, which is the sixth sense - intuition - and coincides with the avoidance of bad cards by the subjects in this experiment.

　　A recent survey showed that each person spends an average of 36 minutes a day worrying, or nine days a year, a year and a half over a lifetime, and that two hundred of the two thousand survey respondents worry for even two hours a day. Obviously, people's main objects of worry are money, health, work and future, so it is difficult to live a fulfilling life. What's worse, half of the respondents admitted that there is no way to "not worry", that they were born with a "life of worry", as the saying goes, "overthinking killed the cat", are you such a person? Not to commit when happy, not to reply when sad, not to make decisions when angry, do you do?