Self-Awareness: The Secret to Making Sound Decisions
Co-authored with Robin Stern, PhD
When’s the last time you made a poor choice? Maybe you bought a fancy kitchen appliance or a piece of exercise equipment that ended up collecting dust. Or you agreed to do a favor for a close friend that took way longer than you anticipated. Maybe you declined an invitation to celebrate a colleague’s long-awaited promotion. We’ve all been there. Some of our decisions are simple and not hurtful to you or anyone else. Some have greater consequences.
We’ve been traveling more than usual lately. From red-eye flights to sleepless nights tossing and turning in hotel beds, we are often tired and even slightly irritable. When I (Marc) finally arrive back to the office or home after a trip, I find myself more critical than usual saying things like, “No, I do not want to go out to dinner or a film.” I (Robin) find I easily forgo self-care. I catch myself saying, “I’ll skip my morning workout because I really need rest.”
Does any of this sound familiar? Though we can’t always leverage its truth in the moment, we often refer to neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio’s quote, “Affect is not just necessary for wisdom; it’s also irrevocably woven into the fabric of every decision.” Emotions are information. In this way, they can guide us to make better-informed decisions. However, emotions also can unconsciously cloud our thinking and our ability to make good choices.
When we train leaders and educators on RULER, we share a study we conducted at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence that really underscores this point. In this study, we recruited a random sample of teachers and divided them into two groups. We asked one group of teachers to write about a “good” day. We asked the other group to write about a “bad” day. Immediately after writing about their good or bad days, both groups of teachers read and graded the exact same student essay.
What did we find? Teachers who wrote about a “bad” day scored the student’s essay, on average, a whole letter grade lower than teachers who wrote about a “good” day. In other words, when we asked teachers to reflect on times when they felt different ways, they judged the same essay differently and decided it deserved a different grade. Interestingly, when we asked the teachers if they thought how they were feeling affected the grades they assigned, 87% of them said, “no.”
The study suggests two things: (1) that our moods influence our judgements, and (2) that it happens outside of our awareness. Think about it: would teachers intentionally give a lower grade if they knew they would do so when in a bad mood? Who would admit to that kind of bias? Pretty scary if we reflect back on the grades we got in school!
Other researchers have run similar studies, but with one key change: before study participants are asked to decide on something, they reflect on their mood. They are asked, “how are you feeling right now?” In these cases, the effects disappear. That is, moods no longer bias people’s decisions when they are aware of how they are feeling.
The takeaways here? First, it’s not that our feelings directly bias our judgment; it’s that when we are unaware of our feelings, we’re likely to be biased (positively or negatively) and change our behavior based on how we’re feeling: the same steep staircase can feel like fun challenge or an impossible climb. Second, it’s important to check in with and be aware of our feelings. When we do that, our feelings are less likely to bias our thinking. We can ask ourselves if we’re making the purchase, deciding to climb the stairs, or assigning the essay an “C” just because we’re in a bad mood, or because it’s actually the best course of action.
With this in mind, we challenge you: Over the next week, before you go into an important meeting or have a difficult conversation, ask yourself two questions: How am I feeling? How might my feelings influence my thinking and my choices?
