“If I can get you thinking emotionally you’re not thinking rationally.”
(David Schweidel, Professor of Marketing & Goizueta Chair in Business Technology – Top AI expert at Emery University Goizueta Business School)
Later I went about researching what he said.
Psychology websites point out emotions and rational thought come from differents parts of the brain and emotions do not lead to irrational thinking.
BUT
The abstract from a study (PMC4050437) documented on the PubMed website starts out:
Recent experimental studies show that emotions can have a significant effect on the way we think, decide, and solve problems. This paper presents a series of four experiments on how emotions affect logical reasoning.
So I guess we can choose what to think about our emotions, but experiments show our emotions can affect how we think. That would explain why scams and con artists play on emotions. Not everybody will take the bait, but enough to make it worthwhile.
I think it’s important to understand how we are getting played so we can be careful. Probably also the reason Fox12 ran the story. It’s become a fact of life, our emotions are inundated by everything from social media to commercials to politicians. Our task if we know someone affected is not to criticize but to be there for them as they process their thoughts.
-Dave