How Emotion Can Cloud Judgment

‘Emotion’ is defined by the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as ‘a strong feeling such as love, fear or anger; the part of a person’s character that consists of feeling’. We, as people, experience a range of emotions and find ourselves in several emotional states, almost all of which can be distinctly categorized as ‘negative’ emotions including anger, fear, depression, jealousy, etc. and ‘positive’ emotions like love, happiness, contentment, excitement, etc.
That emotion can and does cloud judgment is an irrefutable fact – almost everyone has made judgments or taken decisions, whether right or wrong, in ‘the heat of their passion’. However, the way we RESPOND to the emotional state we are going through, and how and to what extent we let it affect our sense of judgment differs from person to person, and there are several factors that affect this as well, such as upbringing, the environment in which the person lives, the mental and emotional strength of the person itself etc.
For example, let us take person A and person B as two people, both suffering from depression – while person A might decide to end his life, because his depression has led him to believe that life isn’t worth living anymore, person B might fight against the depression and emerge as a much stronger person.
Let’s take another example, the famous quote ‘love is blind’ – love is all about accepting a person with his or her faults, however, sometimes love leads people into IGNORING the faults of the person they love, and creating their own illusion of the person they live - this can, at times, prove to be extremely dangerous.
Lastly, I would like to take the example of Pakistani former president, Benazir Bhutto, who was recently assassinated – it was a fatal gunshot to the head that killed her, as she leant out of her car, through the sunroof, waving out to her supporters during a Rawalpindi rally. Now, everyone opines that it was very stupid of her to have leant out of the car and waved out to her supporters – however, if she had not been assassinated then, everyone would have admired and lauded her for her bravery. The decision that Bhutto made to lean out of the car, was, in my opinion, an emotional decision that she made – in THAT moment, Bhutto was enjoying the attention so much, and was so determined about reaching out to the masses and winning the forthcoming elections, that she threw caution to the winds, and leant out of the car, a decision that cost her her life.