Emotional reasoning is a cognitive process by which an individual concludes that their emotional reaction proves something is true, despite contrary empirical evidence. Emotional reasoning creates an 'emotional truth', which may be in direct conflict with the inverse 'perceptional truth'. It can create feelings of anxiety, fear, and apprehension in existing stressful situations, and as such, is often associated with or triggered by panic disorder or anxiety disorder. For example, even though a spouse has shown only devotion, a person using emotional reasoning might conclude, "I know my spouse is being unfaithful because I feel jealous."
This process amplifies the effects of other cognitive distortions. For example, a student may feel insecure about their understanding of test material even though they are capable of answering the questions. If said student acts on their insecurity about failing the test, they might make the assumption that they misunderstand the material and therefore may guess answers randomly, causing their own failure in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Emotional reasoning is related to other similar concepts, such as: motivated reasoning, a type of reasoning wherein individuals reach conclusions from bias instead of empirical motivations; emotional intelligence, which relates to the ways in which individuals use their emotions to understand situations or the information and reach conclusions; and cognitive distortion or cognitive deficiency, wherein individuals misinterpret situations or make decisions without considering a range of consequences.
Origin
Emotional reasoning, as a concept, was first introduced by psychiatrist Aaron Beck. It was included as a part of Beck's broader research topic: cognitive distortions and depression. To counteract cognitive distortions, Beck developed a type of therapy formally known as cognitive therapy, which became associated with cognitive-behavioral therapy.
Emotional reasoning had been attributed to automatic thinking, but Beck believed that it stemmed from negative thoughts that were uncontrollable and happened without effort. With this increase in arousal, certain areas of the brain are inhibited.
{| class="wikitable"
|+Emotional reasoning examples
!Emotion
!Facts
!False conclusion
!
|-
|I feel jealous
|My spouse is apparently faithful and loving
|My spouse is unfaithful, because I wouldn't feel jealous if my spouse were faithful and loving
|
|-
|I feel lonely
|My friends and family seem to like me and normally treat me well
|I am unlovable, because I wouldn't feel lonely if I were lovable
|
|-
|I feel angry at her
|I can't think of anything upsetting she did or any harm she caused me
|She did something wrong, because I wouldn't feel angry at her unless she had done something wrong
|
|}
Treatment
Before seeking professional help, an individual can influence the effect that emotional reasoning has on them based on his or her coping method. Using a proactive, problem-focused coping style is more effective at reducing stress and deterring stressful events. Additionally, having good social support also leads to lower psychological stress. RIGAAR is an abbreviation for: rapport building, information gathering, goal setting, accessing resources, agreeing strategies and rehearsing success.
For memory bias, schema can affect an individual's recollections to cause schema-incongruent memories. For example, if individuals have a schema about how intelligent they are, failure-related recollections have a high chance to be retained in their minds and they become likely to recall positive past events. The schema also make individuals biased through the way that they interpret information. In other words, schema alters their understanding of the information. For example, when people refuse to help low self-esteem children solve a math problem, the children may think they are too stupid to learn how to solve the problem rather than the other people being too busy to help.
- Cognitive reversal: Patients are told of a difficult situation that they had in the past, and work with a therapist to help them address and correct their problems. This can prepare the patient for similar situations so that they do not revert to emotional reasoning.
EFT operates on the understanding that a person's development is influenced by emotional memories and experiences. The purpose of the therapy is to change the emotional process by resurfacing painful emotional experiences and bringing them into awareness. This process helps patients to differentiate between what they experience and the influence of past experiences on how they feel. This can result in greater self-awareness of what they want in their life and enable better decision-making through reducing emotional reasoning. Another purpose of EFT is to promote emotional intelligence, which is the ability to understand their emotions and perceive emotional information, controlling their behavior while responding to problems. Cognitive therapy is a form of therapy that helps patients recognize their negative thought patterns about themselves and events to revise these thought patterns and change their behavior. Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps individuals to perform well at cognitive tasks and to help them rethink their situation in a way that can benefit them. The treatment of cognitive-behavioral therapy is through the process of learning and making the change for maladaptive emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.
Implications
If not treated, debilitating effects can occur, the most common being depression. However, emotional reasoning has the potential to be useful when appraising the outside world and not ourselves. How one feels when assessing an object, person or event, can be an instinctual survival response and a way to adapt to the world. "The amygdala buried deep in the limbic system serves as an early warning device for novelty, precisely so that attention can be mobilized to alert the mind to potential danger and to prepare for a potential of flight or fight."
See also
- Cognitive bias
- Intensity of preference
- Motivated forgetting
- Motivated reasoning
- Motivated sequence
- Motivated tactician