On a daily basis, emotions are part of our behavioural repertoire, they guide us in our permanent search for satisfaction and well-being , and help us to avoid the damage and discomfort that can threaten our physical and psychological health.

However, such important benefits come with some side effects . There are times when our emotions play tricks on us, even when we are in full mental health.

A typical example of the latter is what is known in the field of psychology as emotional reasoning .

What is emotional reasoning?

Emotional reasoning involves, as the name suggests, reasoning according to how one feels .

Let’s imagine we’ve done badly on a math test, or that we’ve been fired from our job. In such circumstances, it is likely that we will “feel” that we have failed, then if that is what we “feel”, then it must be because we are indeed “failures”. When we fall into the trap of emotional reasoning, we reach apparently true conclusions but without following a sequence of logical reasoning, but paying attention only to how I feel.

Then, an excessive generalization is made based on an anecdotal or very specific fact . The fact that we have done badly on a mathematics exam does not necessarily indicate that we have failed in life. And this is something that we incur permanently; we draw hasty and generally categorical conclusions, without any valid and objective proof to justify them.

In the same way, if we feel lonely, we can come to think that we deserve it, that we are not worthy of being loved, or that we have some defect that keeps people away. From there, to believing that we are going to be alone for life, there is a step.

Outward-focused emotional reasoning

Emotional reasoning has another aspect focused on the outside. We also tend to judge the behaviours or emotional states of others according to how we feel at the time.

If we are angry because a superior denies us a raise, it is much more likely that we will attribute malice to the next-door neighbor who is listening to loud rock, or that we will take as a personal offense the reckless maneuvers of the driver of the car in front of us on the highway.

When we feel angry, we see anger in others, and are unable to realize that it is really us who are angry and project our emotions onto others.

Emotions are useful

All this should not lead us to think that emotions themselves are harmful to us. I like to think of the set of human emotions as a primitive system of intra- and interpersonal communication . This may sound overly sophisticated, but it is actually quite simple.

Let’s take it one step at a time, look at it word for word.

I say primitive system because the emotions, as we know them, within the framework of the evolution of the human species, are very previous to language . When we were little more than primates living in the treetops, jumping from branch to branch and completely incapable of articulating any sound remotely similar to what we know today as the word human, we already had the possibility, however, of expressing a wide range of emotions.

The “emotional communication system”

And this brings us to the second concept: communication system . When someone smiles at us and his face lights up when he sees us, he is telling us, before he articulates any words, that he is happy with our presence. Either that he likes us in some way, or that we have no reason to fear him, since he has no hostile intentions towards us. These interpretations are valid, of course, depending on the context.

If, at the other end, someone stares at us, purses his nose by raising his upper lip and exposing his teeth, he is letting us know, without expressing it verbally, that he despises us, detests us, or for some reason feels motivated enough to hurt us. In fact, our evolutionary companions, the apes, exhibit their fangs as a form of threat to others. Displaying the attacking arsenal is often an effective intimidating element , or a way of dissuading the other from his or her intention to attack us.

That is why it is possible to state that the main function of emotions is to communicate states, attitudes and behavioural predispositions , both to ourselves and to others.

Emotions and how we manifest them

Our partner doesn’t have to tell us whether or not she liked the anniversary gift we bought her; before she utters a word we know from the expression on her face. In the same way, we know if our boss is going to give us a raise or fire us when he calls us to talk privately and we go into his office.

When we see someone whose face is furrowed by sadness, without us ever asking them anything, we are sure that they are going through a bad time, that there is something that is making them suffer. That awakens our interest, our compassion… his emotion acts as a facilitator that pushes us to act, to do something to help him .

Cooperation between human beings in the face of adversity, or in pursuit of a common goal, is one of the main components that enabled our evolution and progress as a species.

The primitive and interpersonal character of emotions does not only occur on the phylogenetic level (the Darwinian evolution from one species to another), but also on the ontogenetic level, that is, during the individual development of the person. To see this, one only has to observe how a baby behaves before the first year of life, before it can articulate loose words.

From the very birth, the different cries of the baby communicate to the adult that he is hungry , that he is colicky, or upset because he wants his diapers changed. Every mother who is more or less able to decode emotions learns to recognise the subtle nuances of her child’s crying and what these indicate during his first months of life.

Some modest conclusions

Emotional reasoning is a mental scam, a deception, an illusion created by a demonic magician that appears as a result of certain difficulty in correctly interpreting and managing one’s emotions, and that hidden in anonymity can end up completely directing the life of the person affected, making him believe things that are not true, such as that he is worthless as a person, that the world is a dangerous place, and even that there is no hope that he can get out of that state.

That is, emotional reasoning generates illusions based on emotion .

But emotions, in themselves, are neither harmful nor a mistake of nature. In general, all of them, those that are pleasant and especially those that are unpleasant, are very beneficial for human beings, since they play a fundamental role in survival . They help us to establish relationships, strengthen ties, and keep us away from dangers.