Sunday, 20th January 2008 - 11:30 am

Due Date - 15th January 2008. Extended to - 16th January 2008. Submitted - 20th January 2008. Why?

Well, the reason is --> Because emotion clouds judgment.

I sat down on Wednesday evening (the 16th) to write my blog entry, but couldn't think of a satisfactory and still publicly-describable incident from my life to write about. I thought that if I give it more time, I might come up with a better topic. I had hope. I had the 'emotion' of hope. This clouded my judgment of "What if Mrs. Balan gets angry?" "What if she refuses to correct my assignment saying I was late?", however, it did cloud my judgment. It wasn't that I had a pile of work waiting for me, it was just the mere hope that I could write something better that kept me from writing it on Wednesday. That is an example of how emotion clouds my judgment.

I could've said that I had been thinking about this assignment day-in and day-out, every passing moment for the past 5 days, but that would be a lie. I could've easily stated that, but the emotion of guilt, and that of lying, kept me from doing so.


Now for the counter-example. I realised this morning that I had a TOK assignment due, and decided to finish it off once and for all. Again, the lack of a suitable topic. Then this problem itself became my topic. I thought to myself, I could lie "I had written my assignment on Thursday, but my computer crashed" "I had written it on a piece of paper and TDQ stole it" etc. etc. This resulted from the feeling of fear, fear that Mrs. Balan would get angry, and would be annoyed that the assignment due 5 days back was being written today. However, emotion does not always cloud your judgment. The emotion of guilt (which could also be seen as a moralistic explanation of honesty) led me into saying that I was in fact writing my entry on a Sunday morning, at 11:30.

Emotions Clouding Judgement

How Emotion Clouds judgement

At different points in time we humans feel different things. Usually when we feel happy, everything around us seems happy. When we feel stressed we get irritated by every small insignificant. When we feel sad the environment becomes gloomy. Such situations are faced by all humans in some points of their life. These are not actual situations. These are merely examples of how emotion clouds judgement.

Our judgement depends on our reasoning and our perception. However, different circumstances and our emotions in these circumstances affect our reasoning. The emotions we feel may force us to do something that we do not want to.

An incident can elucidate this better than words.
Rohit Mehra was an IIT Kanpur student. His father did not earn much but managed to get his son first class education through several loans. No doubt Rohit was an exceptionally hard working student. The 4 years at IIT were the toughest academic years of his life. He graduated from the institute with a perfect score. Rohit was hired by Siemens and was to get transferred to the USA. That night Rohit was elated. He and his friends went to party at the school terrace. Rohit was ecstatic and could not control his excitement. He was running and jumping- rejoicing after 4 years of hard work. His friends could not do anything when they saw him jump off the terrace edge...
All his fathers’ loans, all his hard work, all the rewards – wasted. Only because of the excitement that blinded his judgement of things.

Reasoning is only strong when emotion has no part to play in it.
A strong emotion can take the reason out of reasoning.