Need-Emotion – A Complex system

Need-Emotion – A Complex system

The below article is an extract from my book ‘being Emotionally street-smart’. It gets a little technical and would need background in theoretical understanding of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.


Emotions

Out of all the experiences we carry, our journey with Emotions is the oldest. Emotions have been with us since birth and we all have our understanding and Individual theory about what they are, how they work, how to make the best of them, etc. The simple way Emotions can be defined is representation of satisfied or unsatisfied Needs (Maslow chacha ki theory for Needs). When you Desire something and achieve more than expected, you experience positive Emotions like joy, happiness, delight, etc. and in the event of not achieving what is Desired, you experience negative Emotions like sadness, anger, frustration, etc.

Does this also mean that people, who constantly achieve exactly what they predicted, do not feel extreme Emotions? Yes it does. Emotions are Metric System to determine how realistic Individual theory is. Predicting an outcome is driven by your Know-How of the world. How accurately you understand all the forces at work, parameters involved in influencing an act, etc. More realistic your Individual theory is, better is your prediction of outcome. Think of instances when you had put in lot of efforts and were really really really hopeful that things turn out the way you want. You did not have clarity in predicting the outcome accurately, but when it happened the way you hoped for, you were not only extremely happy, but you also added learning from your experience and improved your Know-How about how things work making it more realistic. On the contrary, you did not feel any extreme Emotion when you took the same train which you do daily. The outcome of your efforts was predictable with high accuracy, hence, no extreme Emotion.


Risk taking appetite – The Emotional impact

Risk taking is an integral part of Human Decision Making process and Emotions play a large role in it. Any Rational human being takes Risk when he has enough to afford losing a little. Risk is usually taken to achieve Desire at upper level and in the event of not achieving it, the least what a person gains is better Know-How, better understanding of how things work. So there’s no real loss, it is just an estimate of the investment being worth it.

While referring to Emotional Impact we have learnt earlier in this text that often investment in terms of efforts (in terms of time, energy, money, space of mind, etc.) is needed while attempting to establish a new relationship or achieving Desire of higher level. Such investments are easily welcome when the person is either high on positive Emotions (remember making large promises when you were very happy?) or has robust mechanism (highly practical Individual theory) of achieving what is Desired (with highly realistic Know-How). People who are Emotionally resilient (capable of recovering fast from loss) have higher appetite for Risk taking.


Ever growing Needs and role of Emotions – a complex system

Referring to discussed concept in the text earlier, Needs follow complex hierarchy, they don’t just move from basic to advanced, they also move up in their levels in each Need. To facilitate understanding of the same, below is a game with similar rules:






Similar to any game, this game has an Aim and few Rules.

Aim: To achieve as many points as possible

Rules: You need to stand near the start line and throw marbles in the hole with the following rules:

1.     You need to decide which hole to aim at before throwing the marble
2.     If the marble goes inside the hole, you get points mentioned in that level and if you miss you lose the same amount of points from your total score.
3.     All the holes will be closed at the beginning except A1.
4.     Other holes will open when you master your skills of putting marbles into A1, atleast 5 marbles.
5.     On successfully putting 5 marbles in A1, two holes would open; B1 and A2.
6.     The same rule of mastering skills at a hole with 5 marbles applies to all holes before they are opened.
7.     For holes like B2, they will open only when both the holes below A2 and B1 are mastered by putting 5 marbles in each.
8.     The game gets more complex at higher levels as the required no. of holes to be mastered are more and the risk is also higher. For example to open D3 one has to master all 11 holes below and even after it opens the risk is very high. Missing an attempt of putting a marble in it would cost 60 points, equivalent to 6 successful point gains at A1.

When one tries to gain more and more positive points, it is essential to meticulously balance between risk and skills. The same is the case with Human Decision Making, to carefully balance.

Here each hole refers to Needs, on achieving a Need positive Emotions (positive points) are gained and on not achieving negative Emotions are experienced (losing points in game). The only way to win this game is by using a plan and process that works (realistic Individual theory). Losing points (experiencing negative Emotions) doesn’t stop the game, one has to accept the loss and give time to understand what would be a more practical approach (managing Emotions) and use the revised approach to give it another shot and gain more points (improve Know-How and Individual theory making it more practical).

A small note here to identify different levels of same Need. Looking at our experiences and talking about simple Need of hunger, it grows from any food to specific taste to specific ingredients to specific method of growing/raising ingredients and so on and on and on. Below is a small exercise to identify your personal levels of same Need:

Need
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Hunger



Security



Self-Respect



Respect from others





Warm Personal Regards,
Deep Mody
A Change Leader!
Helping Humans do what they do the best - Be Human



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Human Time

Human Time Clocks measure other clocks, they don’t measure Time… I heard this in a movie and it totally makes sense. Let’s discuss how…. Let’s look at an example. Consider a rose garden which has a giant wheel next to it. If someone was to keep a track and calculate no. of roses grown, flourished and died (completed cycle) when the giant wheel completed 100 rounds, the report would show highly varied rose cycles per 100 giant wheel cycles, wouldn’t it? Near the rose garden there is also a hotel. If someone was to keep a track of no. of giant wheel cycles completed per 100 customers served (came to hotel, ate and left); i.e. giant wheel cycle per 100 customers served cycle, the report would again show varied no. of giant wheel cycles, wouldn’t it? A river flows by the hotel and that same person also tried keeping a track of no. of customers served per 100 litres of water flowing… Well again the ratio wouldn’t be consistent, isn’t it? All of these cycles don’t...
Read more

Analytics in People Science is Ostrich with head in sand

Image
Analytics in People Science is Ostrich with head in sand Analytics driving precision in prediction and control has been immensely successful in proving its effectiveness across various fields of science and study, almost every. Hence, the obvious tendency to look at and aim for analytics or artificial intelligence to act as guiding path on achieving predictability leading to control over people behaviour. However, people science is different from other, so called, ‘materialistic science’. ‘Enlightenment Effect’, a term from organisational behavioural science which describes how different patterns or theories observed and identified about people behaviour instantly change the behaviour. Elaborating briefly, if we are to observe a group of people and share details about their behaviour patterns observed, as soon as they become ‘aware’ of the patterns, those patterns are either avoided or amplified depending upon the ‘values’ of individuals and group as a whole. In either cas...
Read more

Negotiation – An un-boon to exponentially flourishing relationships/organisations

Image
Negotiation – An un-boon to exponentially flourishing relationships/organisations When you’re good at something, never do it for free… Joker, The Dark Knight Sounds like a really smart statement to get the most possible in a trade, isn’t it? Ofcourse I share a different perspective… I would rather rephrase it as ‘When you’re good at something, it is the least you can do for free…’ The basic belief in what people are deep with-in is the distinction here… ‘Smart Negotiator’ is someone well renowned on giving least possible to gain maximum possible in a trade. Someone who understands how to reach an agreement which eventually ends up with bigger share of the pie for themselves. There are many ways of doing this; convincing with facts and logic making the deal look a win-win situation, using power driving fear or authority driving rewards. Infact Negotiation in itself is an act to articulate and cap the input and output from a relationship. It is derived f...
Read more