The Emo Connection: Emotions and Their Role in Public Discourse

On April 5, 2013, a person posted on quora.com a statistical estimation that an average adult makes about 35, 000 decisions a day, beginning from the moment he wakes up. For the 35, 000 decisions you make every day, reader, how many do you make based on feeling or emotion? After you ponder that, consider this: could you then easily believe that decisions in public debate or discourse can be and have been made based on emotion alone?

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If you read my post "With All Due Respect," you would know that I wrote about the commenters for an article by the Atlantic magazine about the Old Dominion University. I analyzed how some seemed logical and reasonable in their argumentation while others seemed to spew anger-infused gibberish in a weak attempt to defend their beliefs. Though in such scenarios the emotional outbursts appear childish, if used correctly, emotion-manipulating rhetoric could prove to be one of the most powerful weapons anyone can have.

Of course, implementing such rhetoric must be handled with caution. A research brief by the National Institute for Civil Discourse noted that emotions, especially anger and fear, are incredibly effective in swaying people to one side or the other. Thus, a line needs to be drawn to determine what is an acceptable use for emotions in rhetoric.

One may think that one solution is to completely eliminate emotions in decision-making, but the research brief proves otherwise. Research shows that politics and symbols play on emotions and that, in some situations, emotion-based arguments are stronger than intellect-based ones. How then do we use emotions properly in rhetoric? I believe the answer is this: use emotion as a buttress for logical reasoning rather than as a battering ram against the argument at hand. The research brief reveals that the mind does not create "a contrast between cognitive and affective evaluations," but rather "a contrast between affective only and cognitive plus affective evaluations" (http://nicd.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/research_briefs/NICD_research_brief4.pdf, 5). Thus, finding a way to combine emotion and intellect as one can be the optimal way to argue since it appeals to both personality and intelligence.

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Returning to the Atlantic article, I mentioned a commenter named Blogvader, who fueled his comments with anger and impudence. He received no praise for his belief, and the fact that he had very little evidence besides his own irate thoughts to support him degraded both his credibility and his argument.

On the other hand, the author laced her writing with indignant passion, yet she also presented reasons and logic and even conceded to other arguments as well. Instead of detracting from her rhetoric, her emotions added to her writing, giving personality to her evidence and more logical nuance. By balancing both logic and emotion, she made a case against misogyny and "rape culture" much stronger than Blogvader's and thus bolstered her own credibility, argument, and values for female respect.

Everything I have written so far essentially boils down to this: emotions are important for argumentation and for decisions. No decision has been made without some emotion laced into it, whether it be fear or angst or happiness or sadness. Should we then learn how to properly handle emotional manipulation not to exploit, but to support our own thoughts and beliefs so that others may use their own emotions and intellect to form their own decisions? Think about it...with some emotion and intellect tied together.