Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking

"For millennia, we have viewed thinking and feeling as fundamentally opposed processes. According to this persistent, age-old belief, to truly live well we must marshal our logical and rational capacities to master our emotions. This perceived dichotomy lies at the heart of our historical pursuits in theology, philosophy, and psychology. But extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience, including neuroimaging and other related technologies, have cast doubt upon this traditional conception and led to a revolution in the science of emotions. In Emotion, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a captivating journey to the frontier of this new field. Here, we discover that a surprising variety of animals experience emotion-even creatures as simple as fruit flies and bees. We ponder the evolutionary purpose of emotion and the role it plays in our brains. We venture into the labs of pioneering scientists, some who have made incredible contributions in neuroscience and others who have flirted with disaster. We enter the high-stakes world of finance and see how emotion affects decision making on the trading room floor. What emerges from our investigations is that we have long fundamentally misunderstood the role of emotions in our lives. Contrary to ancient wisdom, we begin to see that emotions aren't an obstacle to our incredible human ability to reason, but are an integral component of it"--
Examines how current research shows how our emotions are as key to our sense of well-being as our thoughts, and how we can use them to overcome frustration, fear and anxiety and lead happier, more well-balanced lives.
We’ve all been told that thinking rationally is the key to success. But at the cutting edge of science, researchers are discovering that feeling is every bit as important as thinking.You make hundreds of decisions every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how you should invest, and not one of those decisions would be possible without emotion. It has long been said that thinking and feeling are separate and opposing forces in our behavior. But as Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of Subliminal, tells us, extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience have proven that emotions are as critical to our well-being as thinking. How can you connect better with others? How can you make sense of your frustration, fear, and anxiety? What can you do to live a happier life? The answers lie in understanding your emotions. Journeying from the labs of pioneering scientists to real-world scenarios that have flirted with disaster, Mlodinow shows us how our emotions can help, why they sometimes hurt, and what we can learn in both instances. Using deep insights into our evolution and biology, Mlodinow gives us the tools to understand our emotions better and to maximize their benefits. Told with his characteristic clarity and fascinating stories, Emotional explores the new science of feelings and offers us an essential guide to making the most of one of nature’s greatest gifts.