Emotional reasoning fallacy and Memory
Adrianna Xue
35142132
Psych 101 005
As human beings, emotions are a motive for a lot of our actions. We give a couple dollars to the homeless man begging for change in the cold because we feel sympathy. We sometimes slam the door when we are angry. Sometimes, we have no control over our emotions. However, emotions may go as far as to reason with our minds, validating/disproving claims irrationally. Emotional reasoning fallacy is the error of letting our emotions to dictate our logical thinking and validation capabilities. We refuse to accept facts and evidence because they cause emotional distress to ourselves. A great example would be charity statistics. The Justice Board of British Columbia reports that 1 out of every 3 women have experienced sexual assault in their life. The saying goes, “I refuse to believe it” holds true. When I first heard this statistic, instantly my mind does not believe it. Not because I was questioning the research or statistics- but because it personally distraught me to learn that one third of women experience sexual assault. And to learn that it was happening in my backyard, in my home of beautiful British Columbia? This statistic should have prompted people to take action, and spread awareness about the issue. Instead, I chose to ignore it, and claim that it is most likely “fake”. I chose to shut down those negative emotions. The reasoning behind this is that as humans, most of the time we want to feel happy, content, and positive. We do not enjoy feeling sad, depressed, or disturbed. Naturally, we will shift our mindset to more positive thoughts, trying to shut out the negative ones. However, this unfortunately leads to falsely validating facts. I refused to believe it because I did not enjoy the emotions the fact gave me. Therefore, this proves that emotional reasoning fallacy happens very often; sometimes without us even knowing it.
Memories are a tricky mind game; it comes and goes. Without a doubt, memory is very
35142132
Psych 101 005
As human beings, emotions are a motive for a lot of our actions. We give a couple dollars to the homeless man begging for change in the cold because we feel sympathy. We sometimes slam the door when we are angry. Sometimes, we have no control over our emotions. However, emotions may go as far as to reason with our minds, validating/disproving claims irrationally. Emotional reasoning fallacy is the error of letting our emotions to dictate our logical thinking and validation capabilities. We refuse to accept facts and evidence because they cause emotional distress to ourselves. A great example would be charity statistics. The Justice Board of British Columbia reports that 1 out of every 3 women have experienced sexual assault in their life. The saying goes, “I refuse to believe it” holds true. When I first heard this statistic, instantly my mind does not believe it. Not because I was questioning the research or statistics- but because it personally distraught me to learn that one third of women experience sexual assault. And to learn that it was happening in my backyard, in my home of beautiful British Columbia? This statistic should have prompted people to take action, and spread awareness about the issue. Instead, I chose to ignore it, and claim that it is most likely “fake”. I chose to shut down those negative emotions. The reasoning behind this is that as humans, most of the time we want to feel happy, content, and positive. We do not enjoy feeling sad, depressed, or disturbed. Naturally, we will shift our mindset to more positive thoughts, trying to shut out the negative ones. However, this unfortunately leads to falsely validating facts. I refused to believe it because I did not enjoy the emotions the fact gave me. Therefore, this proves that emotional reasoning fallacy happens very often; sometimes without us even knowing it.
Memories are a tricky mind game; it comes and goes. Without a doubt, memory is very