Are we rational or emotional beings?
If we were asked to summarize in an adjective something that defines the human being and differentiates it from other animals, we will probably refer to ours is a rational species .
Unlike the vast majority of life forms, we can think in abstract terms related to language, and thanks to them we are able to create long-term plans, be aware of realities that we have never experienced in the first person, and speculate about how nature works, among many other things.
However, it is also true that emotions have a very important weight in the way in which we experience things; the mood influences the decisions we make, in how we order priorities, and even in our way of remembering. Which of these two areas of our mental life best defines us?
Are we rational or emotional animals?
What is it that differentiates rationality from emotional? This simple question can be a topic on which entire books are written, but something that draws attention quickly is that rationality is usually defined in more concrete terms: rational action or thought based on reason, which is the field in which the compatibilities and incompatibilities that exist between ideas and concepts based on the principles of logic are examined.
That is, what characterizes rationality is the consistency and solidity of the actions and thoughts that emanate from it. Therefore, the theory says that something rational can be understood by many people, because the coherence of this set of ideas fitted together is an information that can be communicated, not depending on the subjective.
Instead, the emotional is something that can not be expressed in logical terms, and that is why it is "locked" in subjectivity each. Art forms can be a way to publicly express the nature of the emotions they feel, but neither the interpretation that each person makes of these artistic works nor the emotions that this experience will evoke are equal to the subjective experiences that the author or author has wanted to capture.
In short, the fact itself that the rational is easier to define than the emotional tells us about one of the differences between these two realms: the first works very well on paper and allows to give expression to certain mental processes by making others they come to understand them in an almost exact way, while emotions are private, they can not be reproduced by writing.
However, that the realm of the rational can be described in a more exact way than that of the emotional does not mean that it better defines our way of behaving. In fact, in a way, the opposite occurs.
Limited rationality: Kahneman, Gigerenzer ...
As the emotional is so difficult to define, many psychologists prefer to speak, in any case, of "limited rationality" . What we would accustom to call "emotions" would thus be buried in a lot of trends and patterns of behavior that, this time, have relatively easy to describe limits: they are all that which is not rational.
A) Yes, researchers like Daniel Kahneman or Gerd Gigerenzer have become famous for conducting numerous investigations in which it is verified to what extent the rationality is an entelechy and does not represent the way in which we usually act. Kahneman, in fact, has written one of the most influential books on the subject of limited rationality: Think fast, think slowly, in which conceptualizes our way of thinking distinguishing a rational and logical system and another automatic, emotional and fast.
Heuristics and cognitive biases
The heuristic, the cognitive biases, all the mental shortcuts that we take to make decisions in the minimum possible time and with the limited amount of resources and information we have ... all that, mixed with emotions, is part of non-rationality , because they are not procedures that can be explained through logic.
However, at the moment of truth, it is non-rationality that is most present in our lives, as individuals and as a species. Plus, many of the clues about how far this is so are very easy to see .
The rational is the exception: the case of advertising
The existence of advertising gives us a clue about that. 30-second television spots in which the explanations about the technical characteristics of a car are null and we can not even see how well that vehicle can make us want to buy it, investing in it several salaries.
The same goes for all advertising in general; advertising pieces are ways to make something sell without having to communicate in detail the technical (and therefore, objective) characteristics of the product.Companies spend too many millions per year on advertising, so that this communication mechanism does not tell us something about how buyers make decisions, and behavioral economics has been generating a lot of research that shows how the decision making based on intuitions and stereotypes are very frequent , practically the purchase strategy by default.
Defying Jean Piaget
Another way to see how limited rationality is is to realize that logic and most of the notions of mathematics must be learned deliberately, investing time and effort in it. Although it is true that newborns are already able to think in basic mathematical terms, a person can live perfectly their whole life without knowing what are the logical fallacies and falling constantly in them.
It is also known that in certain cultures adults remain in the third stage of cognitive development defined by Jean Piaget, instead of moving to the fourth and final stage, characterized by the correct use of logic. That is, logical and rational thinking, rather than being an essential characteristic of the human being, is rather a historical product present in some cultures and not in others.
Personally, I think the latter is the final argument about why that plot of mental life that we can associate with rationality can not be compared to the domains of emotions, hunches and cognitive shoddy that we usually do every day to get out of step in complex contexts that in theory should be addressed through logic. If we have to offer an essentialist definition of what defines the human mind, then rationality as a way of thinking and acting has to be left out, because is the result of a cultural milestone that was reached through the development of language and writing .
Emotion predominates
The trap by which we can come to believe that we are rational beings "by nature" is probably that, compared to the rest of life, we are much more logical and prone to systematic reasoning ; However, this does not mean that we think fundamentally from the principles of logic; historically, the cases in which we have done so are exceptions.
Maybe the use of reason has very spectacular results and it is very useful and advisable to use it, but that does not mean that reason itself is not, in itself, something to aspire to, rather than something that defines our mental life If logic is so easy to define and define, it is precisely because it exists more on paper than in ourselves .
