Imagine you are in a US gaol and seeking parole. What would
be your plea to your lawyer? What would you want him or her to present to the
parole board that would get you out of your prison garb and into some comfy
jeans and clean shirt?
Well, the answer to this is not a matter of what but a
matter of when. A really neat study showed that you are more likely to get your
parole request approved if the hearing is held first thing in the morning or
immediately after lunch. Outside of those times you may be out of luck.
This and some other intriguing research suggests that we
feel more positively inclined towards the world when we are less stressed, less
tired or as Dan Ariely puts it, less depleted. Later in the morning and in the
afternoon the research suggests that the learned judges are tired and probably
low on sugar: depleted. Depletion also seems to be associated with worse
decision-making and generally diminished cognitive performance, general
grumpiness and a less than positive affect.
Recent neurophysiological research has confirmed the long
held belief by philosophers and other students of human behaviour that emotions
play an enormous role in decision-making and other cognitive activities. We are
not as rational as we thought, in fact that we are barely rational at all, but
are more the victims of our emotional needs, and predilections than we like to
think: gut feelings trump facts. This is all due to a small part of the brain
called the amygdala that is the seat of our emotions. It is not only close to
the part of our cortex responsible for higher cognitive functions, such as
judgement and decision-making, but it has a lot of connecting nerve cells with
this area too. At a quite unconscious level it influences the information to
which we pay attention, how we appraise the information, and what we decide to
do in response.
When we are depleted we are even more influenced by raw
emotion, as our overloaded or tired nervous system becomes even less able to
attend to the facts, the details, the rational. Our biases and preferences and previous
emotional experiences, are more likely to hold sway against the facts as our
amygdala runs unchecked. The opinion of the person we dislike and those that we
admire or respect will hold even less or even more weight depending on to whom
we are listening. Politicians know this only too well, that how what one says is
received is hugely influenced by how people feel about us, or our party: the
truth is largely irrelevant.
Most of us probably at least intuitively knew about how
depletion, fatigue and stress affect what we decide and how we act. But I’m not
convinced that many of use actually take it into account and self-regulate. Self-regulation
is the capacity to be aware of our current state and to take it into account
before acting. It has been a key feature of a number of psychological
treatments in Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy for many years. Self-regulation is
also found in the organisational psychology literature about the reflective
practitioner (see Chris Argyris and Donald Schon, for example).
The key to self-regulating is having a more acute awareness
of self-a tricky thing at the best of times but we can get better at it even
though understanding ourselves is so difficult. When we know we are depleted
then perhaps we postpone important decisions, don’t have that challenging
conversation at that time, become more participative and ask for other
opinions, and do mundane rather than important tasks. In other words, save the
important things for early in the morning or early in the afternoon so that we
don’t send someone to the firing squad by mistake just because our blood
glucose is low!
