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Should one listen to one's emotions?

The human brain is not the result of an improvement toward rationality of a single brain function, but rather the addition of new functions alongside existing ones.

Our genetic heritage: the cognitive-affective system

This heritage is shared with great apes, probably all mammals and many other species as well.

This cognitive-affective system ₍₁₎ is governed by the dichotomy of seeking pleasure (or reward) – avoiding suffering (or punishment).

It is composed of four elements:

When childhood proceeds well, and parents know how to understand and provide satisfactory responses to their child's problems, the child associates positive emotions with a whole series of circumstances, especially those where he needs external help. This results in attachment and altruism, because when he encounters other people in difficulty, these positive emotions surface and allow him to find pleasure in action.

On the other hand, children who have known aggression tend to reproduce it, but this time playing the role of the aggressor. They thus gradually transform the content of their associated memory.

Let us also note that major traumatic events can be obscured by memory, so that the victim is not aware of their presence.

Our cultural heritage: problem solving

Unlike the cognitive-affective system, which is shared with many animal species, only humans are capable of practicing 'Problem solving' which requires complex language. It is an eminently cultural function that requires years of learning under favorable conditions. Consequently, the majority of present-day adult humans exhibit more or less serious deficiencies in their capacity to practice problem solving, and function primarily on the basis of their cognitive-affective system. In particular, rhetoric is a verbal confrontation based on the cognitive-affective system.

Let us simply recall here that problem solving is what we consider to be the optimal cognitive functioning accessible to humans, as well as the solution to contain social violence arising from social ambition. Conversely, as long as humans function primarily on the basis of the cognitive-affective system, they live in social violence produced by social ambition. See the paragraph 'Alliance Strategies' in the question 'What are the consequences of social ambition? The notion of generalized nepotism.' to understand that violence within a group does not result from the leader ruling by terror rather than benevolence, but results from the fact that he does not practice problem solving and thus leaves the field open to the play of alliances.

The overall cognitive functioning of humans

The actual cognitive functioning of humans is the superposition of the cognitive-affective system and reason supervising it... possibly.

Our cognitive-affective system produces conclusions instantaneously, which may take into account a large number of factual parameters, but also emotional ones, engraved in our memory. Hence its potentially high performance, but unreliability when emotions have not been worked through. Hence also the interest in having reason control the produced solution.

More particularly, even when a human tries to practice problem solving, emotions linked to memory can, on the one hand harm motivation, and on the other hand disrupt rationality, just like beliefs.
In the extreme but frequent case, the person gives primacy to emotion, draws a conclusion that explains the emotion to themselves, and then possibly constructs a biased reasoning to justify the conclusion to others. By giving primacy to emotion over facts, the person acts in a way that is globally contrary to the general interest; supervision has not taken place.

The psychotherapies aim largely to attenuate imperative negative emotions associated with certain situations. This can be done in two ways:
By becoming aware of our tendency to generalize. For example, a number of failures can lead to a generalization in the form of an absolute like 'I will never succeed' or even 'I am useless', meaning forgetting to take into account the particularities of the circumstances in which these failures occurred (CBT psychotherapy).
By managing the flow of our emotions instead of simply enduring them or trying to stop them, and especially by becoming aware of the nature of emotions (notion of defusion from ACT).
Finally, by obtaining different results in similar circumstances, we can gradually modify the emotion linked to these situations.

Somatization

Somatization corresponds to the attempt by reason not to take into account negative emotions linked to memory that arise and come to contradict the course of action we have chosen following rational reasoning.
Consequently, these emotions tend to express themselves at the bodily level.

Course of action

We all have to conduct deep work to identify situations that generate negative emotions in us produced by memory, on the one hand to avoid generalization that can lead us to lose self-confidence, and on the other hand to prevent these emotions from taking over objective reasoning at the level of interactions with others and decisions we make.

This work can be seen as a significant part of the second recommendation mentioned in the question 'How to succeed in life?': The reason dimension - Krishnamurti - living in reality.
This can be done through personal work, or with the help of a therapist.
It is also the basis of a Buddhist spiritual approach, of which meditation is a key element.

Populism or the exploitation of collective emotions

Populism is the technique of power conquest based on the exploitation of emotions linked to collective beliefs or difficulties encountered by large layers of the population, such as, for example, the fear of social downward mobility.
Technically, a discourse is served that easily wins the adhesion of reason, through deceptive obviousness, often simplistic, while in reality targeting emotions. As a result, populism generates adhesion, fervor, impulse, and capacity for action, far superior to that produced by a coherent rational discourse.

It is important to understand that the only morality that holds is the taking into account of all facts, including those that are disturbing, and not a relativistic tolerance.

Citations

Nietzsche: 'To consider states of distress in general as an obstacle, as something that must be eliminated, is [the supreme absurdity], a disastrous attitude in its consequences [...] almost as stupid as wanting to eliminate bad weather.'

Nietzsche again: 'If you refuse to let your own suffering weigh on you for even an hour and constantly try to protect yourself against any possible distress far in advance, if you consider suffering and displeasure as bad, detestable, to be eliminated, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that [you have ...] the religion of comfort. As you know little of human happiness, you others [...] who prize comfort so much, for happiness and misfortune are brothers, and even twins that grow up together, or, as in your case, remain small together.'

To deepen

See the question 'Putting an end to the abusive use of psychotropics and psychotherapies' which explains the dangerous current tendency to substitute psychotherapy for the fight against injustice, and presents two serious therapeutic methods. In particular, ACT psychotherapy specifies how to listen to one's emotions, and responds to Nietzsche's citation.

At the level of scientific validation now, different variants of dual cognition models have been proposed and tested. In the one proposed by Keith E. Stanovich, type 1 corresponds to what we call here the cognitive-affective system, and type 2 corresponds to what we call here reason.
The following article provides an update on attempts to validate these models:

↣ Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate

(1) We use the same terminology 'cognitive-affective system' as the CAPS system described in the article 'A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure' by Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda (1995), but do not attribute the same content to this term.
We have reused this term to emphasize that the innate human cognitive system is governed by emotions.