The Cunning of Emotions: A 10,000-Character Deep Dive | Feifan 03

What this episode is about

Are you the rational type, or the emotional type? Impulsiveness isn’t necessarily the devil; it can be an angel, too. Real emotion management isn’t about control and stability. It’s about discovering the hidden tricks inside our emotions. Emotions aren’t the opposite of reason: by sensing and understanding them from different angles, we can even turn anger and jealousy into strengths of the self. This book helps you step outside the binary framework of “positive versus negative emotions,” get to know the “cunning of emotions” all over again, and become the master of your own emotions.

You’ll hear

• Learn about five kinds of rational emotions, overturn traditional ideas about emotion and irrationality, and build a whole new perspective on reason and emotion
• Learn about game theory, psychology, evolutionary theory, and knowledge from many other fields, so you can become more savvy and sophisticated in your social interactions

Quote of the episode

We all have the ability to recognize other people’s emotional states. Without it, our social skills would take a serious hit. If we couldn’t tell whether other people liked us, our ability to reproduce would be severely limited. Our survival depends to a great extent on social activity, so if we lost the ability to read other people’s emotions, even the survival of our physical bodies would be under threat.

Society’s views of humility and arrogance are related to how frequently these traits appear: in a society where arrogance is the norm, humility is seen as a weakness; in a society where humility predominates, arrogance is seen as a rash attempt to inflate one’s self-image.

Humanity’s ability to coordinate emotions and turn them into a powerful force clearly has deep evolutionary roots. Anyone who fails to fit into the group—whether they leave voluntarily or are driven out—has a much lower chance of survival than someone who remains loyal to the group.

For a male peacock, a beautiful tail that is long and large is a “handicap” that gets in the way of survival. Yet that very handicap becomes a “credible signal” that cannot be faked, powerfully proving the quality of the peacock’s genes.

About the author

[Israeli] Eyal Winter　Professor of Economics and director of the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the field of decision-making research, the center is one of the world’s leading institutions. He received the 2011 Humboldt Research Award from the German federal government, an award given specifically to scientists and scholars who have earned international recognition through their teaching and research.