Cranial

                                                 (cx trining)

Election is an emotional event. People choose the candidates based on what they feel about them. This could be explained why we elect those who do not understand legislation as long as they are friends, relatives or they SMILE a lot. According to Jon Morris: Substance is only part of the equation. How people FEEL plays a huge role in how they respond to the candidates and their policies.

In the field of social research, Psychographics has been applied to the study of personality, opinions, attitudes, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. With the results of the researchers such as the aforementioned one by Morris, one could directly say that elections in the Philippines are ruled over by what people feel and not what they think. In fact, latest work on emotional responses to communication showed that emotions are twice as good as raw facts in predicting behavioral outcomes. So, for the candidates to really understand people’s support (or disdain), they have to understand people’s emotional responses.

Just try to look back on the recently-concluded barangay and SK (Sangguniang Kabataan) elections. How many relationships got broken due to the emotional outbursts? How many family members led to become enemies? Crime was even committed during the time for the position some are aiming for. There were rumors created to make stains on the image of the candidates so that the emotional responses of the people would be affected.

On the other hand, there are candidates being supported by family and friends NOT by the capability of the one who ran for the position but simply because the candidate is CLOSE to their “hearts”. For them, the basics of making legislation could be learned and all they have to do is to affix their signatures on prepared resolutions and ordinances anyway!

Bernard Golden, Ph. D. mentioned that CHILD LOGIC overpowers most of the people. This is a term coined by him to describe logic that is hijacked by emotion. It emphasizes that regardless of age and intelligence, most of the people engage in magical thinking associated with earlier development. Such logic fuels unrealistic expectations and heightens the potential for destructive anger. It is when the EMOTIONAL BRAIN and the RATIONAL BRAIN are not effectively communicating with each other.

It is in this train of thoughts when one must realize the importance of emotional maturity. This is the time when a person transcends his/her emotional being to become a thinking one. Of course, our emotions are equally important but the whole brain must function well. We easily get hurt and our decisions could sometimes be muddled with the CHILD LOGIC to the point that we then surrender to such emotionally-tainted decisions. Most of them would be regretted.

As adults, we even apply the CHILD LOGIC to our children. We get angry if we they will not conform with what we say. We often forget that they are children, prone to commit a lot of mistakes and we are there to guide them. But we allow ourselves to see them as equals. We turn our backs to them and most of the time, we punish them.

But going back to the elections… We often complain about the way the government is being manned. Yet, we have to remember that it is us who elected the people who manage the laws and governance of the land. We often allow our emotions lead us to elect the persons who we FEEL as able. And it is also us who would then criticize them once they do not adhere to what we FEEL as beneficial to ourselves. The CHILD LOGIC would soon prevail.

The point of this discourse is that we must know how to think and understand our emotions and allow them to be processed properly by our rational brain. It has been a long term discussion among educators that keeping a JOURNAL is healthy since it allows the emotional outbursts be translated into the thinking process.

We understand that emotions drive 80% of the choices we make, while practicality and objectivity only represent about 20% of decision-making (Levine, 2012). But then we have the power to keep a balance once we allow reasons and objectivity to prevail through what we call as the THINKING. By doing so, we could avoid hurting ourselves and others. We could then embrace the road towards maturity.