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Ane's avatar

Just to clarify I am on the autism spectrum and so my emotional experience seems to differ from most neurotypicals. However, I do have a few theories about emotional responses that I've kicked around for the past few years.

I recently helped a friend get clean from methamphetamine and sort through their borderline personality disorder. When I say help, I mostly just mean that I gave them a safe spot to be, connected them with the appropriate resources, and pointed them back on the path to mental health when they got too close to falling off of the wagon.

It was a very long process (roughly 2 years to get to stability/success), and I don't think it's something most neurotypicals would have seen through to the end despite claims of heightened empathy.

What does all this have to do with being a slave to emotional reasoning? My friend's bpd was fascinating and incredibly frustrating to watch. He would loop rapidly throughout the day. Something minor would trigger him, and he'd have an intense meltdown (think a two year old throwing a tantrum in an adults body).

After the episode he felt genuinely awful. He'd resolve not to loop again, and then the next day we'd be right back where we started.

At first, I thought it was chosen behavior, and I was angry. Then I realized that it really wasn't.

I saw his bpd as the extreme of neurotypical emotional reasoning. His feelings and emotions literally dictated his reality. If he felt betrayed then it was because he had been betrayed, if he felt scared then it was because he was in intense danger.

There was no ability to slow the emotional loop, insert logic, and get off the train. But, once he was calm he could explain how he had interpreted things and then his reactions made logical sense in his version of reality.

I suspect that there is a continuum among neurotypicals in there response to emotional stimuli. Most are not as extreme as my friend (who created patently false realities based on his feelings) and couldn't function, but some degree of emotional reasoning is socially functional.

To a psychopath I suspect that neurotypical levels of emotional reasoning look a lot like how neurotypicals would view my friend with bpd's emotional reasoning.

In both cases, I suspect that it isn't within the individuals full control. In my friends case it took years of therapy and practice to change the neurological pathways.

Today, he is still someone I consider to be on the higher end of emotionally reactive/driven by emotional reasoning, but he falls within the range of what neurotypicals would call normal, and he can function in society.

In terms of choice overall, there is a commonly cited study that shows our brain sends a behavioral impulse before we become consciously aware of it. So, instead of the causal chain of events going conscious awareness of choice, brain signal, action, it actually goes brain signal, conscious awareness of choice, action.

My takeaway from that is that we are actually reactionary beings not choice driven beings. Change the upbringing, the genetics, and/or the environment and you will get different reactions over time. My two cents. Hope you found it interesting.

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nnnnnn's avatar

To answer your question, yes, some neurotypicals can. But I've met extremely few. I would label this ability "awareness of cognitive bias". It's also a component of what it means to have little/no ego by my definition. The two people who I know who can do this are my best friends (one is a high-functioning psychopath and the other person is a neurotypical); I find it extremely hard to bond with people who can't.

I have to work hard to do this consistently. My neurotypical friend also shared with me once that he has to as well, during a conversation about it. It is a painful process, as when we are wrong, part our ego dies. But in pursuit of a true, objective worldview, it is necessary.

The rule you defined about considering information more strongly when you have an emotional response to it is very clever. My technique involves being aware of such biases from experience and when in a situation where it will be triggered, to create equal opposite thoughts that challenge the potentially biased belief. I created these habits many years ago when I became aware of how plagued I was by invalid beliefs that were holding me back from navigating the world successfully.

Another interesting bias is the self-serving bias, often manifesting itself in the form of blame. However, any highly rational person knows that shifting focus anywhere outside of your immediate control (e.g blaming) relinquishes their autonomy. So to remain in control, I've made a habit that whenever my subconscious thoughts push up blame, I consciously block it and assess what I could've done better in that situation.

One thing I can share as a neurotypical from experience and also observation of others, is that the stronger the emotion, the harder it is the reevaluate beliefs. However, with great discipline, even in those situations information can be evaluated without bias. Also, I find that while men are ridden with emotionally-driven biases, their more emotional counterparts are even worse.

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