Emotional Decision-Making Model

The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail

• The model proposes that human decision-making, especially moral judgments, is driven by emotions first, and rationalization follows.
• Eliciting Situation: An event or circumstance triggers an emotional response.
• Intuition/Emotion: An instinctive, often immediate feeling about the situation.
• Judgment: A decision based on this emotional response.
• Reasoning: Rational explanations are constructed to justify the decision.
• This essentially flips the traditional model of rational decision-making, suggesting that our emotional responses guide us, and we use reason to explain our actions.
• Rationality: Is not the primary driver of our likes, dislikes, or choices, it follows our emotional reactions.
• Moral Dumbfounding: People often struggle to articulate clear reasons for their moral judgments, despite holding strong convictions.
• This suggests that our moral attitudes are based more on instinct than rational analysis.

Implicit and Explicit Attitudes

• Explicit Attitudes: Consciously held beliefs and evaluations that we can readily express.
• Implicit Attitudes: Unconscious evaluations or associations that are difficult to articulate.
• People can hold contradictory explicit and implicit attitudes about the same thing.
• Implicit Association Test (IAT): A tool used to measure implicit attitudes by assessing the speed and ease of associating concepts (e.g., good/bad and self/other).

What are Attitudes?

• Stable evaluations: Representing a value judgment about a person, event, or stimulus, reflecting a "goodness" or "badness" assessment.
• Affect: A broad term encompassing emotional responses, ranging from "good" to "bad" feelings related to various domains, such as sensations, emotions, and attitudes.
• Attitudes: Are relatively enduring and stable "goodness" or "badness" responses, distinct from fleeting emotional reactions.

Components of an Attitude

• Affective: The emotional component, involving feelings of liking or disliking.
• Cognitive: The thought processes underlying the affective component, encompassing beliefs, knowledge, and reasons for the attitude.
• Behavioral: How the attitude influences our actions, including behaviors associated with the attitude.

Key Aspects of Attitudes

• Discrimination between good and bad: A fundamental function of attitudes.
• Affective influence: Emotions play a significant role in shaping and affecting our cognitive evaluations.
• Cognitive rationalization: We often develop reasons to support our pre-existing emotional attitudes.
• Behavior prediction: Attitudes are significant factors influencing behavior, but not the sole determinant, as other influences exist.

Explore the unique model of decision-making that emphasizes the role of emotions in shaping moral judgments. Understand how emotional responses lead to judgments and reasoning, flipping the traditional view of rationality. This quiz delves into concepts like moral dumbfounding and provides insights into how our instincts guide choices.