Most people make terrible decisions when they rely solely on their emotions, which can sometimes change in the blink of an eye, along with the justifications for the actions we’ve taken or the merits of certain actions. This is because strong emotions intensely focus our thinking and neutralize the influence of other inputs from the environment, logic, various reminders, and past decisions. This is why people eat unnecessary snacks even after swearing not to, invest all their money in a single stock or similar financial avenue, and spend money on frivolous things despite saving for a major purchase or paying off a loan.
Ken Shubin Stein is a professor at Columbia University in New York, who throughout his life founded and led a hedge fund with a scientific approach to investing enormous sums, so he knows a thing or two about decision-making situations. He attributes his success to one simple principle: not making foolish decisions, and he explains that it’s not as easy as it might sound. This is because, at the moment of making bad and foolish decisions, we are rarely aware that they are such, and we don’t always have the self-control needed to listen to the voice of reason. The culprits are six emotions that we all must be more aware of to know how to neutralize them and make better decisions.
6 Emotions That Lead to Bad Decision-Making
Before you continue reading, pause for a moment and try to think about which emotions you believe are the most harmful to your decision-making. Professor Stein refers to the six main ones with the acronym HALT-PS: Hunger, Anger, Loneliness, Tiredness, Pain, and Stress. This acronym serves as a reminder for him of what to check and examine in himself before making big decisions. There’s no obligation to use a similar acronym, but it is advisable to remember these emotions well. If you know in advance that you’re about to enter a situation where you’ll need to make decisions that are important to you, these six emotions are a big stop sign that shouldn’t be ignored. For example, going into a meeting with a banker, shopping at the supermarket, conducting an important work call, and so on…
These are not necessarily negative emotions; they are a natural and common response to many situations in life and various needs of the body and mind. According to Professor Stein, you shouldn’t try to ignore these emotions, suppress them, or attempt to eliminate them—just pause when you recognize them, just as a car slows down at a stop sign and then stops before continuing.
How Do These 6 Emotions Lead to Bad Decision-Making?
If you try to recall some wrong decisions you’ve made recently, you’ll likely find that one of these six emotions influenced you at the time, and the influence isn’t always clearly linked in a way that’s easy to identify. For example, a person feeling lonely might spend a lot of money ordering unhealthy, fattening food from a restaurant, even if they’re not hungry at all. A person feeling tired might not read the fine print of a new credit card plan and pay dearly for it later. A young couple, extremely stressed about starting their life in their own home, might make incorrect assessments about the mortgage payments they can afford, and there are plenty of other possible examples.
Why does this happen? The explanation is that these emotions remove the barriers that usually separate us from making bad decisions. You can think of them like blinders placed on a horse’s eyes to keep it focused. When a person is hungry, they tend to think less about the harm an extra slice of cake might cause or the proper way to reprimand their child for negative behavior. Similarly, anger from work increases the likelihood of getting into an argument with a partner when returning home.
How Do We Prevent These Emotions from Affecting Our Decision-Making?
Congratulations, you’ve already taken the first step to applying Professor Stein’s advice—you’re familiar with these six emotions, and now you need to find an easy way to remember them and recall them in different situations throughout the day. As mentioned, it’s advisable to pause before entering a “crossroads” where important decisions are made. Ask yourself whether one of these emotions is affecting you right now because you didn’t sleep well, have a nagging thought that won’t leave your mind, or are dealing with a physical issue that’s bothering you. Simply being aware that these emotions might negatively influence your mindset and decisions already helps “broaden” your perspective to other considerations and assists you in answering an important question.
“Why might I be wrong?” is the question in question, and in principle, it’s hard to answer without a framework that limits and focuses the possible answers to reasons that might actually be relevant and negatively affect you. However, when you have only six possible answers, each with significant negative potential if you feel them intensely, it’s a different story. Of course, this is an important emphasis of the method, because it’s okay to feel a bit of hunger, tiredness, or stress, but the problem starts when you feel these things at an intensity that you believe will affect your judgment. Sometimes it takes a bit of time and experience to understand where that line is, and that’s perfectly okay.
Professor Stein’s method has another application: checking whether excessive self-criticism is a result of these emotions. Take, for example, young parents raising their first child, a group that undoubtedly experiences these six emotions a lot. Due to their influence, they might constantly criticize themselves and tell themselves they don’t have “what it takes” to be good parents, without pausing to realize they’re probably tired and stressed. Their mind doesn’t allow them to see the full picture, which includes many important details. For instance, they’ve never dealt with raising children before, and it’s natural to struggle at first before learning from mistakes that almost everyone makes, or they’re extremely tired and forgot to buy something at the store by mistake, not because they’re foolish, scattered, or incompetent.
In Summary
Hunger, anger, loneliness, tiredness, pain, and stress are the emotions most dangerous to your decision-making, according to Professor Ken Shubin Stein. They also cause self-criticism to erupt with irrational intensity, can turn any small argument in a relationship into a monstrous fight, and more. It’s not always possible to assess their impact on us before making important decisions, but it’s worth trying, and over time, you’ll develop greater awareness of these emotions in your thinking and be able to avoid things you might regret later. Remember, being aware of these emotions doesn’t mean they’ll disappear, and it’s very hard to neutralize them without taking action. So, if necessary, grab a fruit as a healthy snack to combat hunger, call a loved one for a short conversation, lie down for a half-hour rest, or take any similar action to ensure you’re in the mental state that allows you to make the best decisions.
