5 Reasons to Be in Touch With Your Emotions

The emotions you experience on a daily basis can motivate you to act and influence the huge and minor decisions you make in your life.

5 Reasons to Be in Touch With Your Emotions

Trusting Feelings Over Facts

Why people panic buy in a time of crisis

Trusting Feelings Over Facts

Power and Poor Decision-Making

A recent study sheds light on how power can fuel the overconfidence that causes people in leadership positions to make bad decisions.

Power and Poor Decision-Making

Decision Making

When individuals are faced with making a choice that could result in short-term reward or longer-term benefit, those provided with complete information about the options tend to opt for the quick result.


Decision-Makers Opt For Quick Results

Consistent Contributors

Consistent contributors" help to increase efficiency by positively influencing less motivated members of their group.


Consistent Contributors

Gut Feelings Can Be Valid

Electrophysiological evidence that decisions thought to be based on guesswork or gut feelings may actually draw on valid memories that cannot be consciously accessed.

Gut Feelings Can Be Valid

Experiences More Satisfying Than Possessions

Research from San Francisco State University presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology has found that purchasing experiences rather than possessions results in increased well-being for consumers and others around them. The study concludes that this is because purchases of this type address higher order needs such as the need for social connectedness.

Experiences More Satisfying Than Possessions

Choosing A Mate

Beauty is still of paramount consideration for men while women are more discriminating, placing greater emphasis on the need for security and commitment.

Also, recent research from psychologists at McGill University has identified gender differences in responses to flirtation. Researchers found that men tend to consider their current partners less favorably after meeting an attractive unattached woman whereas female partners are more likely to work on strengthening existing relationships.

Choosing A Mate

New Light On Altruism

Research led by the University of Nottingham published in Science has shed new light on ways in which people are prepared to sacrifice personal advantage for the common good and what happens when "freeloaders" take advantage of their altruism.

Researchers explain that understanding decision-making processes behind cooperation is a key element in addressing major contemporary issues such as recycling and climate change.

New Light On Altruism

Gut Feelings

Research has shed new light on "gut feelings" arguing that they are real psychological phenomena that should be taken seriously.

Gut Feelings

Negative Influences

While we tend to believe that we are capable of forming independent opinions, what other people think can influence our conclusions, with negative attitudes resulting in the biggest changes.

Negative Influences

Longing Influences Choice

Longing for something intensely (like a holiday or food) can change an individual's choice making processes with a wider array of options considered than would normally be
the case.

Longing Influences Choice

Gut Instinct Decisions

People usually follow emotional gut instinct rather than rational responses when making decisions about complex issues such as terrorism, troop surges or crime, even though the brain can simultaneously process both kinds of information.

Gut Instinct Decisions

Counterfactual Thinking

Research sheds new light on the mental processes involved in "counterfactual thinking" in which past decisions are reviewed and alternatives evaluated. The authors explain that while this can be positive and affirming, it more commonly engenders regret and self-criticism.


Counterfactual Thinking

Decision-making Made not Born

People who do well on a series of decision-making tasks involving hypothetical situations tend to have more positive decision outcomes in their lives.

Decision-making Made not Born