The certainty of a situation or event influences our emotions and affects our thinking. Future events that seem predictable and understandable are high-certainty, while future events that seem unpredictable and incomprehensible are low-certainty.

When we believe an event or situation is likely to happen, we experience high-certainty emotions such as happiness or anger. High-certainty emotions increase heuristic processing. In these situations, we tend to jump to conclusions and react. Angry people or happy people also tend to throw caution to the wind and take more risks. The happy person who runs gleefully along a wall doesn’t think about the risks of falling off the wall.

Low-certainty emotions, such as sadness and fear, however, increase systematic processing. If we are uncertain or fearful of how a situation will turn out, we are more likely to evaluate the situation carefully and less likely to adopt any risky behaviours or decisions. 

We make different decisions about the same situation or event depending on how we feel.

• When you are feeling positive and full of energy, you will see a particular event or situation as having high benefits and low risks.
• When you are feeling negative and drained, you will generally see the downsides of that same situation.

If emotions can be a goal in themselves and also influence how we make decisions, is there a right frame of mind to make decisions? The answer is not really. Emotions are always going to be there but be aware that they can influence your thought processes and decision-making.

A helpful way of minimising our emotional response when making decisions or problem solving is through the process of reframing. Reframing is looking at the current situation from a different perspective.  Ask yourself, “Is there another way to look at this situation?” Reframing helps us see problems as opportunities, unkindness as a lack of understanding, an impossibility as a distant possibility and so on. 

For example, your car has broken down and you need to walk to work. You can feel irritable and walk to work feeling sorry for yourself. Or, you can reframe the situation and see this as an opportunity to get some exercise and enjoy the great weather.

“A bad feeling about a choice is a reason not to make it – although not an overriding reason. Often, bad feelings are signals that some more tangible reason will reveal itself with further search. Even when the more tangible reason does not reveal itself, it may be rational to give uneasy feelings some weight, for the reason may still be there, even though we do not know what it is.” (Baron 2008, p.65)

The message: Don’t ignore bad feelings. But don’t necessarily avoid doing something because you have a ‘bad feeling’ about it. Try and search for a logical reason for feeling this way.