Emotionalists Vs Rationalists

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There are 2 types of people in the world...
Emotionalists...
And...
Rationalists...

Which one are you?
Which it the better?
Can you adopt either mindset dependent on the situation?
Can you be cohesively both?
What motivates us to be one or the other?
What factors are involved in pushing us from one to the other?
How has the evolutionary process effected our mindset to choose one over the other?
The influences of chemicals determining our choice...
How much choice do we really have?
What aspects of the brain influences the embracing of one over the other?
What environmental factors influence our choice?
The effect of aging and life wisdom...
The influences of our neurological makeup on our life philosophy...

Yet another journey into the development of intellectual constructs to gain further enlightenment/depth...

Both need to cross-examine and cross-inform one another. A person who was fully one or the other would be a caricature and no doubt suffering an immense amount of neurosis and maladaption.

To maybe offer something a bit more substantive - I tend to think reason as we commonly understand it is in large part deductive and much of induction has emotional origins. Without emotion and creativity there's not much to drive hypothesis or modeling.

Everyone is a "Rationalist".

No one would ever admit that their opinions are not based upon reason.

logic is merely the beginning of wisdom.

Interesting questions.
I'm a bit of both I think. I have really bad emotional regulation, so i am very controlled by my emotions, but I don't think I ever make decisions based on them. I definitely don't have that mythical "gut feeling" to guide me.

I definitely think you get more rational with age. At least in most cases. I know a lot of older people who are extremely passionate, and a few who are still very much controlled by their emotions. But most of the older people I know have the mindset of "ah, whatever. It all passes".

I don't want to get into freedom of choice. That one is just too big. But I hadn't thought of the fact that emotional/rational thinking could have an influence on that. That is really interesting.

I think it can have something to do with culture as well. Of course, there are many individuals who are exceptions to the rule, but there's still something behind stereotypes, and it's pretty clear that people in for example Italy or America are a lot more passionate and emotional than us Swedes or the Germans who are known for being reserved and rational.

I am extremely rational (if I understand your question). Humans who are wholly irrational, especially under stress or when making important decisions, is something I will never understand. It is interesting though how I can be so ridden with anxiety in general, but when "the s**t hits the fan" I am almost always calm, cool, & collected. Whenm something crazy happens, there are few sentient bipeds that can cope as well as I can. That may be a result of PTSD as well though.

I was just listening to a YouTube presentation by a Danish psychologist who is on the spectrum. He touched on the neurophysiology of ASD, specifically that we have much different amygdala responses than NTs. This makes sense to me because many things that would send NTs into a panic spiral simply do not illicit the same response to me. I have had to resuscitate someone who wasn't breathing before & everyone else around me was freaking out while I was "cool as a cucumber" (<never understood that idiom).

Conversely, neurologists maintain that we have more activity in our prefrontal cortex & do not see as much "pruning" (whereby the brain sheds excess tissue) after infancy. This may also contribute to our tendency toward low latent inhibition (we don't take things for granted....more or less).

I know this isn't really thesis-level material, but it illustrates a possible neurophysiological link between the stereotypical ASD "detachment" & the tendency towards rationality (imho).

Emotions are biochemical signals, living organisms need them to adequately percieve their surroundings and their own physical state.
When someone claims to be purely rational,or adopts ''Rationality'' as a label, I can't help but think they're an unfortunate liar.

On a more personal note I've been taken out to the extremity of whits end quite a few times in my life where, as someone above mentioned, for a lot of people the weird stuff starts jumping off. I'd avoid like heck ever making too big of a decision in that state because I'd agree one's horizon line is so contracted that it's almost impossible to deliver a sensible response with the distortions of perspective considered, luckily if I'm really pushed I'll generally side with long term interests (unless there's a core issue of integrity involved - then I have to answer to that).

By the time a choice or decision is extorted or coerced enough however with bad or incomplete data I think it's a coin-toss for most people or a prayer to intuition because your self-conscious/discursive faculties are completely overpowered at that point. Sadly, for a lot of human history, I get the impression that a lot of decisions were made at gun (sword, club, spear, etc.) point in that way and whether the answers they gave were the only right one, a couple of several, whether they were close to bad with different pitfalls, or all ending in death we won't know - we just know ourselves as their offspring.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 29 Dec 2017, 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

I would figure that they're triaging as many of the voluntary complexities as possible in order to keep with only that which is compliant to their worldview and subsequent needs. In this case I think in one sense of the definition they're right but not in all definitions - which perhaps only backfires if they themselves aren't aware of that because even if you rule your own inner kingdom with an iron rod you still have to know that kingdom and its topography.

So if someone was a gut instinct kind of person but reasoned they are because it works well for them, would that make them a rationalist?

The word choice is meaningless. All humans are "emotionalists" who masquerade as "rationalists".

I think that you mean "instinctive" vs maybe"calculating". Folks who go by the gut vs folks who dissect the situation.
Some folks are more emotional than others. And some are more analytical than others.

Even then most folks use a combination of both to make decisions. You can be analytical and calculating, but being that way for an emotion based irrational goal.

Here is a little grist for the mill...

I am not a black and white person...
Though I do have an affinity with Zebras...
I'm more a shades of grey individual...
Some would say I am simply shady...
But they would be wrong...

When I say there are 2 types of people in the world, the hidden qualify is "predominantly"...
I.E. There are 2 types of people in the world:
Those who are predominantly emotionalistic...
And...
Those who are predominantly rationalistic...

Consider the phrases:
-"My heart rules my head..." (The emotionalist)
-"My head rules my heart..." (The rationalist)

Which one are you?

Much of what I have been considering in this thread is interwoven in my actual life experience...
For example:
Recently I bought a car...
I very much liked the look of the Jeep Wrangler but ultimately it was impractical and I settled for something else...
I enjoyed the dream/fantasy for a short time but it was never going to happen because I am very much more rational than emotional when it comes to these types of decisions...

Years back I read about a study indicating most people (using this shopping context) allow their emotional needs over ride practicalities. I have no reason to disbelieve it's veracity...

comfy shoes over stylish shoes, never the twain shall meet, I go for comfy every time. style is for the birds.

Allegedly I'm a INTP, “The Logician” as they say.

I've been all over the I part of that map. when young I was an INTJ, as I grew older and more tired, I started hovering on the knife edge between INFP and INTP.

Aren't well a little bit of an emotionalist sometimes?