Emotional and rational

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In the decisions and choices we make, there is always a struggle between emotion and rationality.

Your child breaks a bowl while cooking or cleaning, you can ignore it or just remind them to be careful. When your child breaks the vase you were given, anger increases and there are no more whispering words. Then when it breaks, it is the precious vase of the family, reacting to your actions - and even your wife or husband, family members - will be a burst of anger on the child's head.

Children's clumsy movements are completely the same, but different consequences will affect psychology at different levels, so that the boundary between emotion and rationality is fragile, even blurred.

Behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman generalizes the model of 2 cognitive systems: System 1 - Operating quickly, automatically, emotionally and heavily based on intuition; System 2 - Operating slowly, requiring effort, logic and awareness. More visually, in The Righteous Mind, psychologist Jonathan Haidt compares emotionality to an elephant, while rationality is an elephant trainer sitting on its back. The elephant trainer thinks he is controlling, but if the elephant is agitated by a great fear or anger, it will rush away and the elephant trainer will only have to find a reason to legitimize the elephant's running direction.

The 5-match suspension that FIFA imposed on Qatar player Assim Madibo also falls into this case. The nature of emotion is to look at the "obvious result" to judge the "nature of the behavior". Therefore, experts believe that the highest organization in world football only looks at Ismael Kone's broken leg to make a verdict. There is no combination, intersection, or harmony between emotion and reason.

Reason, on the contrary, requires necessary coldness. It forces the decision-maker to separate between motive, behavior and consequences - things that are often affected by random factors. Reason does not mean indifference to the victim's pain, but to keep the balance from being tilted by the weight of prejudice.

Balancing reason and emotion has never been easy. Emotion gives us empathy to share the pain of fellow human beings, but reason does not turn that empathy into injustice for others.

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