We all have them, we all have to live with them.
And we have to make sure that they don't influence us in a negative way. That may sound easier than it actually is, as a study by Dan Ariely seems to show (I say "seem" because of what I wrote in my post "Why Don't You Prove It?", which you can check out here).
In his book The Upside of Irrationality he writes about the problem of negative feelings and how they tend to influence our behavior (and especially decision-making) in a chapter entitled The Long-Term Effects of Short-Term Emotions.
With the help of a few social experiments, Ariely realized that his hunch was probably right: We are usually very strongly influenced regarding the decisions we make by the emotional state we are in at the time of making them. It would take too much time (and space) to give a summary of the entire chapter, in which he thoroughly describes the whole process of the experiments and the conclusions that he and his colleagues were able to draw from this. If you're interested in that, buy the book :-) (and no, I'm not getting paid for writing that). But I would like to share the author's own summary of his findings:
"It turns out that emotions easily affect decisions and that this can happen even when the emotions have nothing to do with the decisions themselves. We've also learned that the effects of emotions can outlast the feelings themselves and influence our long-term DECISIONS down the line." (p. 276)Ariely uses the capitalized version of the word "decision" every time he wants to emphasize the influence of our emotions on said decision. So the scary thing is this:
(1) Our emotions influence our decisions, even if the two don't have anything to do with each other and
(2) Our emotions still influence our decision-making long after the original feelings have faded away (but only if we reacted to them initially while we could still feel them).
Well, now you know why you and your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse fight so much! ;-) But in all seriousness: this problem has a rather profound impact on our relationships with other human beings, often leading us to doing or saying things that we later regret. And even if we ourselves are aware of this tendency and have learned not to allow our emotions to "get the best of us" (or had parents who taught us this from a very young age), what about the other people we interact with on a daily basis, especially those that are closest to us?
This is where Ariely's "canoe argument" comes in. He freely admits that he has no empirical evidence whatsoever for his claim, but he believes there's a simple solution for avoiding relationships with people who let their (negative) feelings strongly affect their actions: instead of going out to dinner on a first date, take them canoeing. Why?
"There isn't a clear protocol. The river is unpredictable, and canoes tend to drift and turn in ways you don't anticipate. (This situation is very much like life, which is full of new and surprising stresses and roadblocks.) There's also a fuzzy kind of division of labor between the front and back (or bow and stern, if you want to be technical). This context offers plenty of opportunities to establish and observe fresh patterns of behavior." (p. 279)If your canoeing partner starts arguing and blaming you each time you hit a rock, then the first date should probably be the last one with this person. But if you both work together to find a solution for the problem, you can consider seeing him/her again. (Ariely even goes so far as to suggest that a couple should plan their wedding together before they decide to get married. If they still like each other afterwards, then they should go ahead and get engaged. Anybody tried that yet? :-) )
So what should we take away from all this? Before you take any actions that you will later probably regret, take some time to cool off and let the initial emotion fade away before you decide what to do. That's why "sleeping over it" is actually a pretty good idea.
Now where did I put that canoe again?
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