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We become less emotional with age - using this information, which has been proved by psychologists, can we make more rational decisions now?
Psychologists state that our tendency to make decisions from the heart decreases as we age. They reason, that as a person ages, he/she becomes more pragmatic with every passing year and their decisions on the same issues on which they took the decisions years earlier, has a much more rational element to it now, and an equally lower emotional element to it. Given this fact, we will be making more cerebral decisions say X years from now than in the present moment – it has been proved as an evolutionary change that happens on its own. Being aware of this fact can be adapt our minds to make more rational and less emotional decisions in the present. When awareness of a particular facet of aging comes in, can we not use it to our advantage – when we look back on our lives, we realize that the decisions we took ten years ago on some important and not so important issues were based on what our hearts dictated that time, if we were to make those decisions again we would in all likelihood listen to our minds and not our hearts. So we see this evolutionary aspect for ourselves. Now with this awareness, can we not direct our minds to adopt a more rational approach toward decision making- why wait to age another ten years? Its all a question a fine tuning one’s mind to think from the head more than from the heart…comments are welcome
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by blueeyedf8 on -
I'm a Di and I still, at the age of 47, prefer to think from my heart rather than from my head, I have very intuitive feelings and know they come from my heart, not my head. Quite a few times I disregarded what my heart said and went with my head and it got me into a lot of problems, so I will stick to what works for me and that is listening to my heart.
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Permalink Reply by Sheetal on -
Yes I agree with you....you have misunderstood the issue conveyed through the discussion..even I'm a DI....If I understand correctly, DIs have very strong intuitive abilities. I agree with you when you say that we should pay heed to intuition...what I meant was we should not let our feelings, or say our moods dictate what we should do, but do what is required of us....in that sense I meant that we should be pragmatic....as far as what you're saying is perfectly justifiable, that we should listen to our intuitions...when I say making more rational decisions I mean, there should be decorum while addressing some issues in our lives...and not just mood and feeling based decisions be taken, this is particularly pertinent to DI, who tend to be moody and get carried away by feelings. I being a DI myself can tell. I think you misinterpreted feelings in my discussion as intuition.
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Permalink Reply by blueeyedf8 on
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yes i did misinterpret what you were saying and I apologize. It's just that I tend to put all those things into one basket.: ) Emotion, intuition, feeling, to me, are from the heart. First off with decision making, I look inside and see If I have any intuition about the subject and if not, then I use my mind to try and find the right answers. I try to leave emotion and mood completely out of the equation. But yes I get carried away by my feelings quite often, I just try not to make any decisions when I'm like that!
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Permalink Reply by Felicitas Heyne on -
Sounds perfectly sensible to me. As a "feeling" type (SR) I'm also very often carried away by my feelings and would be unable to leave things like emotion, intuition or so aside when making decisions. But as I aged, I also learned to let things (or better: myself) cool down a bit when I'm "out of control" like that. When I was a teenager or in my early twenties, I often got myself into trouble because I let myself act immediatly, no matter in which mood I was. Nowadays, I'm usually able to hold myself until I'm calm and centered again - and then I make my decision. Consulting my pillow for a night is usually a good help ... ;-)
But, as you said, it changed while I aged - I'm facing my 42th birthday this year ... so good luck in finding a shortcut to this ... ;-)
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Permalink Reply by ~Gal~N~Green~ on -
I wonder if ones personality type makes a difference in whether logical rather than emotional decision making produces desirable outcomes. Like, if feelers HAVE to make emotion-based decisions to be comfortable with their choices, and thinkers, vice versa. I guess we should be careful not to assume that one way is necessarily better than the other.
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Permalink Reply by Felicitas Heyne on
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Absolutely right. Both ways have their weaknesses and their strengths. And yes, I'd say the feelers have a tendency to make emotion-based decisions and thinkers vice versa. But I'm a great fan of the idea of a free human will and the possibility of personality development and change! ;-) So I'd put it this way: you are born with a tendency here- or thereto, but it's like the tendency to write with your right or your left hand: strong, but not inevitable for the rest of your life. If you lost your right hand in an accident, it would take a while, but you'd learn to write with your left hand. We all have the capability for both emotional- and logical-based decisions in us. We're only more used to do it one way or the other. But it's a good idea to train the other half in us as well, maybe one could call it the "shadow" half. It increases our possibilities instead of decreasing them - and that's always a good thing!
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Permalink Reply by nalini on -
This is about staying cool-making decisions from head rather than the mood. Since most of us, (ok, at least people who share our traits) frequently keep a check on our feelings, it's easy to see when we're carried away by the emotions and with time, to control it. I think it's applicable in controlling emotional expression, staying cool at emergency situations/difficult times, motivation to study rather than day dreaming and the like.
But when it comes to making important decisions I trust my intuition. I don't know the rational basis of my intuition but I know it is not based on my emotions/heart either. If I trusted my intuition rather than the apparently logical option OR what my emotions wanted me to do, I wouldn't have made the major mistakes I have made in my life.
So, I feel there are at least 3 routes to arrive at a decision-rational thinking, emotional thinking and intuition. Decisions based on emotions could fail because we tend to ignore all the probabilities and the fact that emotions are liable to be altered over time. Logical reasoning may fail simply because it doesn't address our emotional needs- we're, after all, living beings and not machines and how we feel is extremely important to our well-being.
Intuition perhaps is what our subconscious mind decides based on our general perception towards the world-our personal value system, our knowledge base, what we feel to be important and of course, what makes us feel good.
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Permalink Reply by Sheetal on
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I so agree with you...there are three routes to decision making - intuition , feeling based, and logical. Yes, in hindsight , I also feel that i wouldn't have committed as many mistakes as I did if I had paid heed to my intuition. And when I say that we need to make more rational decisions as we grow, I am talking about the dichotomy that often occurs between our moods, our feelings on one end and our logical faculty at the other end. In such cases we need to exercise control over our moods and listen to our logical faculty. When I started the discussion, I was talking about the two routes - logic and moods. I was not discussing intuition. Maybe I should have mentioned it to clarify things. Intuition is by far the most reliable method to decision making. I like your contribution Nalini. It clarifies a lot of things.
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Permalink Reply by nalini on
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I was just thinking, if our decisions were based on logic only, would it make us feel better? When we base a decision on our feelings, it usually aims at immediate satisfaction; Long term effect could well be in the reverse direction, but we never know. Or, do we take our emotions in to account when we make a logical decision-ie: take our happiness in the long run as one factor supporting the decision?
Say, I start a relationship; It will be based on feelings only if I fall for somebody I love regardless of who he is. It will be a logical decision if I consider suitability depending on his job, income, family background etc. But, can't this logical facts include the criterion "I love this man"? And if it does, may be I'm willing to disregard some of the negative points in favour of others, such as my feelings.
So, perhaps it's the relative importance we attribute to each fact that matters, rather than a division between the logic and feelings.
Personally, I don't want to disregard my feelings in making a decision.
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Permalink Reply by ~Gal~N~Green~ on
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For me, someone who has always been more of a thinker than a feeler, the issue of becoming more rational than emotional as I age strikes me as irrelevant. Whereas I have been known to be spontaneous, even impulsive from time to time, when it comes to making important decisions, I can only do so with careful consideration, after weighing all the pros and cons.
Perhaps though, for people who are not naturally as conscientious, the differences in their decision-making processes that occur as they age might also be attributable to emotional and psychological maturity that comes from experience.
In other words, like Felicitas said, over the years they notice that hasty decision making can often lead to trouble so they learn to find the balance between their logic and emotions.
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Permalink Reply by Sheetal on
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I do so agree with you and also with Felicitas that the trick is to find a balance between logic and emotion. I being a DI, do have a hard time doing so, because I'm greatly influenced by my feelings...can you suggest some method by which I could control my impulsive responses, and pay heed to the voice in my head. The voice in my head warns me..but I have to deal with my impulses, which can be so overpowering. Please suggest a way out, ~Gal~N~Green.
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Permalink Reply by Gabriel on -
Oh and speaking from personal experience by experimenting with food that raise serotonin levels
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