And so, you are standing in the middle of the rally, your heart and breath are trying to escape from your chest, your throat is dry, and some unusual ringing appears in your ears. And you do not understand why all these people do not understand such simple rational arguments that fit so smoothly into your picture of the world. An inner voice screams: “And why do such obvious things have to be explained to someone here !!??!? Who do I actually work with?
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In this article, I would like to understand a little why emotions are an inseparable part of an IT specialist, and what to do with it all.
To do this, you need to go down to a lower level.
When our brain encounters negative emotions such as criticism, denial, etc. he perceives it as a threat against him. Something needs to be done about the threat, and therefore the command is given to produce the stress hormone cortisol. In general, stress was invented by evolution rather for survival than in order to have intellectual conversations with an opponent. Therefore, the main two strategies that we focus on in a stressful situation are:
- beat (if the attack of the appeared enemy makes sense according to our inner feelings)
- run (if the total body mass of the tiger in the bushes looks more convincing than the muscle mass of the programmer).
Accordingly, under cortisol, rational thinking is inhibited, control is transferred to the emotional System-1, where the mode of protection and preparation for conflict is activated, which is realized in the form of an appropriate emotional background. The situation is seen in a much darker light than it really is.
The person from the scene at the rally described above is somewhere at this point. It is possible that he is now feeling an emotional cocktail such as anger, loneliness, helplessness, etc. There is also a possibility that he is used to thinking of himself as a rational and typically unemotional being, so he simply cannot see what is really happening and what to do next, because. The problem lies not at all in the plane of rationality. Often, to get closer to reality and to look at the situation with an unclouded eye, you need a break. Let everyone wait out the stress and try to communicate the main points of the presentation to each other later, when it all calms down.
Cortisol is a fairly long-acting hormone, and it takes some time before its effects wear off. Positive iterations are quite another matter. Dopamine, serotonin, endorphin, oxytocin - a feel good hormones that are produced when we communicate against a positive background, increase the ability to communicate, interact and help other people. These hormones also contribute to the processing of events at the level of System-2, the rational part of the brain. In general, this is what is needed for productive work and normal human communication. Unfortunately, happiness hormones, unlike cortisol, dissolve much faster, so their action is not as long and has not such a significant effect. As a result, the bad moments quite easily outweigh the good in their importance. Therefore, in order to compensate for 1 negative entry, significantly more positive iterations are required, 4 times.
This is how it works on a hormonal level. On the emotional level, we are simply either depressed and don’t want to talk to anyone, or aggressive, and ready to “break our mouths”, if this is something positive, then it can be a reaction of joy, or even simple programmer tenderness, etc. .
Have you heard of robo-rats? These are laboratory rats whose brains were implanted with electrodes to teach them to perform tasks that not all people are able to effectively perform, such as searching for victims under rubble or disarming explosives. So, by supplying electrical signals to certain areas through electrodes in the brain, in fact, scientists control rats. They can make them go left, or they can go right. Or even do things that in normal life rats do not like at all, such as jumping from a great height. When certain centers are stimulated, the brain generates the appropriate hormonal and emotional background, and if you ask this rat why she went right or left, if she could, she would quite rationally explain why she wanted to go this way or that way. Are they forcing her to do things she doesn't like? Or does she enjoy what she is programmed to do? How different is our brain, and would the same methods work on humans? So far, for ethical reasons, scientists do not seem to be conducting such experiments. But evolution on planet earth is the same for all. And freedom of choice, to be honest, is still an elusive concept. Do you have an understanding of what and why you will choose for lunch today? Yes, you can make a choice of what exactly you will eat, it will be pizza or french fries, probably you will make a choice in favor of what you want today. Do you have a choice of what you want to want?
Unfortunately, the Soviet past has not left the most favorable imprint on the inhabitants of the post-Soviet space in terms of understanding the internal processes taking place in the head of the layman. This is the one who today is someone's grandmother - grandfather, father - mother, etc. And the curves and patterns are quite naturally passed down from generation to generation from parents to children. Therefore, it is not surprising that among those born in the USSR (until now) a closed type of thinking prevails, where emotions are given one of the very last places in the list of human needs, and it seems that it is easier to deny them than to admit them, and live in harmony with evolutionary principles. . Once I had to stir up and start to notice the environment a little from the other side. And when you begin to realize the human world more fully, new opportunities and ways open up that were simply invisible before. If earlier it was possible to run into a wall and be perplexed about questions like: why are my comrades at work promoted and I constantly stay on the sidelines? Why can't I finish what I started? Why don't you get along with your bosses? Why does my vote not have significant weight? etc. and so on. The answers are very often beyond the rational System-2, and without understanding and awareness of the whole picture and the presence of an emotional System-1, they simply cannot be seen.
The language "Emotion" is the most ancient programming language of the past, present and future in which we all, and most of the living organisms on our planet, are written. Understanding the principles of its work greatly facilitates the perception of life and existence in the social environment of human beings.
Thanks, that's all for now.
More about System-1, System-2 .
Source: habr.com