Part 2 Emotions Reasoning: The skill of utilizing emotional information in decision-making - Enhanced decision-making where more information is considered in the process - Greater buy-in from others into decisions that are made Readings and Assignments:

Part 2

In this section I learned that having knowledge about how emotions affect others can be beneficial, but also knowing how they affect one’s own self is also important. For instance, understanding how one makes decisions and how emotions affect that process is important especially for leaders. The website, Psychology Compass, explains that the same part of the brain that is responsbile for expressing and experiencing emotions, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is also involved in the decision making process (Psychology Compass). Some think that decision making should be a rational, logic and objective activity, but emotions must enter into the process too. If a person were to always make decisions without considering his or her emotions, there would eventually be a negative impact and it would probably come sooner rather than later.

One part of making sound decisions and including one’s emotions to do it is knowing that there are two types of emotions. The first type are incidental emotions. They occur in the background and probably have no relation to the actual decision. A good example is the happiness a person feels when their dog greets them at the door after work. That emotion may fade into the background while the person makes a decision about whether to punish their child for not doing his homework. The other type of emotions are integral emotions. These emotions are those that are caused by the decision making itself such as anxiety over whether or not making the decision to punish the child is a good example of parenting.

Incidental emotions are constant and may have nothing to do with decision making. A leader should be aware of this and should not let it affect decision making if the emotion is not related to the decision. Being aware of how one’s mood affects the risk one perceives in making a decision is also important (Psychology Compass). Being aware of how one’s mood affects one’s outlook is important in leadership.