Emotions, Moods and Reactions

You’re out for a very nice dinner with your spouse, and you decide to share a bottle of wine. You look at the wine list, and you see several bottles listed in the $170 range, a few that are in the $50 range, and quite a number of them around $80-$90. $80 is more than you would’ve thought to spend when you left the house, but somehow you’re drawn to the $87 bottle of Cabernet.

$50 being the lowest price seems miserly for a special evening out, and with $170 as an example of a “very nice bottle of wine,” $87 now seems very easy to accept.

This is an example of anchoring. The $170 figure drew your expectations in the direction of that figure, higher than you would’ve chosen otherwise.

If the highest price bottles were all in the $80-$90 range, you probably would’ve chosen a less expensive bottle.

Another example of anchoring is called “rationing,” where you’re told that there’s a limited supply of something.

In one experiment at a supermarket, Campbell’s soup was on sale at 10% off. When there was a sign that also said, “Limit of 12 cans per person,” people bought an average of 7 cans per person – twice as many as when there was no limit. The “anchor” of 12 cans drew people away from the 3-4 cans they would otherwise have bought, and toward the number 12.

If you look for it, you’ll see this technique everywhere in marketing. In most cases it’s relatively harmless, drawing you to buy something that’s a few dollars more than some other product, or to buy a higher quantity of something you would probably use anyway. But as we’ll see, awareness of this technique when you’re facing higher cost items like a car or a home can save you a lot of money.

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Anybody can become angry – that is easy; but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. – Aristotle

It’s easy to get caught up in emotions, to follow the flow and intensity of our impulses. It’s natural… animal… primal. And without intervening with our consciousness, it can be dangerous. This is how we operated throughout much of human history… which is why most of human history was so terribly, horribly violent.

But it’s not how most of us today usually operate, because we have a choice. Over time, particularly through the Enlightenment, we’ve culturally refined our ability to choose – and that ability is central to what makes us human.

When we feel like reacting with anger, fear or hurt feelings – anything that feels like it’s an automatic, purely emotional response – we can react without thinking, blindly following the tides of our emotions.

Or we can choose to do something different.

Stephen Covey talks about this ability to choose as being a “pause button.” A moment between stimulus and response, that transforms that response from an automatic, rote behavior to a conscious, human one.

When we feel like reacting to a situation, instead of going right into the reaction, we can “press the pause button” and consider what we genuinely – from our consciously chosen values and priorities – want to do.

During the ‘60s, ‘70s and well into the ‘80s, the idea that we should “let our feelings out” was a common message in psychology that found its way into popular culture.

This had a positive side. Our emotions are where we live. Awareness of our feelings deepens our experience, and can help us understand one another and even think more clearly. Love, joy, excitement, elation, satisfaction, peace, warmth… as well as fear, pain, grief, anger, and sadness… These all bring us essential information about how people and events are affecting us.

Our emotions are how we experience the meaning of life. To be more in touch with our emotions is to be more in touch with ourselves. To be able to easily and appropriately express our emotions allows us to live a rich, full life with satisfying connections with others.

“Appropriately” is an important qualifier here, though. There can be a downside to emotional expression, in two ways:

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I met my wife Sue over 30 years ago at a Thanksgiving party with some friends of ours. Normally I would have been with my extended family – Thanksgiving was always a favorite of my parents – but this year they hosted our family dinner on Friday, so other family members could be with their respective in-laws.

Had my parents not changed the routine that year, Sue and I might never have met; we never would have been married, we would never have had our kids, and the life we know would be different in so many ways it’s hard to fathom.

Many other circumstances lined up just right to lead to that night that might not have worked out – my wife might not have come to the dinner (she almost didn’t), one or both of us might have lived in another town, we might not have known these particular friends…

It’s pretty remarkable if you think about it, that two people ever meet. But people do, and we did.  If you’re married, it might be worth considering there’s a chance the two of you might never have met.

Doing this deliberately can also make you happier.

In the classic Frank Capra movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is so despondent from events that he’s on the verge of committing suicide. Clarence, a new angel hoping to earn his wings, shows him what life would be like for those he cares about had George not existed. George comes to appreciate the many ways he has deeply affected people, and how much he had taken his good effect toward all those people he held dear for granted.

Seeing clearly what his absence would have meant – and would mean – for so many people he cares for puts suicide out of the question, and brings him to a state of profound gratitude.

That’s more than a sweet story and a classic movie; there is something very true and strong in it that has consequences for a life well lived.

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It‘s easy to underestimate our effect on others. We go about our business in our own world, and assume that everyone else is going about theirs.

New parents can be stunned sometimes to hear their own words coming out of their kid’s mouths; their own actions being recreated by their children. But our impact on each other runs deep, and extends far beyond our immediate family.

Those we are close to, and even those people who are three degrees of separation away from those we are close to – friends of friends of friends – are our sphere of influence… and we are theirs. What we say and do makes a real impact on those around us, and even on those a moderate distance away.

Appreciating this can be a great motivator for living our best life.

In studies by Christakis and Fowler, drawing from the Framingham Heart Study subjects, they found just how powerful our personal contacts with people can be. Here are some examples:

• For every happy friend we have, our likelihood of being happy ourselves increases by 9%.
• Our chances of becoming obese increases by 57% if we have a friend who becomes obese.
• Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling becomes obese the chance that the other will become obese increases by 40%
• If one spouse becomes obese the likelihood that the other spouse will become obese increases by 37%

That’s for our immediate connections; in other studies, they found that we can have a remarkable effect on others even several steps removed from our direct contact:

• If our friend’s friend’s friend quit smoking, we are much more likely to quit smoking ourselves.
• Even happy people we’ve never met, three degrees of separation away, have a positive effect on our own happiness.

Good and bad behaviors pass from friend to friend; we influence each other’s health and happiness just by our social interactions.

But the impact of our behavior in one arena is particularly significant… shocking even.

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Envy is an ugly emotion with awful effects. Many religions forbid or warn against it, as with the 10^th commandment in the Old Testament; storytellers show its horrible effects. We all know that it’s bad on a feeling level, yet envy persists as a powerfully destructive force.

It isn’t about having very little; we aren’t particularly unhappy when we have very little. But we do become very unhappy, depressed, and bitter when we dwell on having less than our neighbor.

Yet there is an antidote to envy: empathy, curiosity, admiration, and the effective redirection of our initial impulses. It can also help to more fully understand this destructive and bitter emotion.

Envy de-humanizes the person envied. When we envy another person, we are not seeing that person for who they are, we are seeing him for what he has. It breeds malevolence; when we envy, we are not happy for the success of our neighbor, we are resentful of it.

Envy diminishes our capacity for empathy, and this lack of empathy makes it possible for people to do horrible things to one another.

It also reinforces a self-image of helplessness and impotence. Envy implies disbelief in ourselves; it presupposes that we don’t believe we can create the wealth, the relationships, the values that we see in others, and this helplessness can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, limiting our ability to work toward what we would like to create in our lives.

But like any negative emotion, by catching ourselves and understanding what we’re feeling, we can redirect our actions in a way that works much better for us.

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