Are We Ruled by Thought or Emotion?

“… no sharp line divides thinking from feeling, nor does thinking inevitably precede feeling or vice versa (notwithstanding the century of debate within psychology over which comes first).”—Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“I’m hooked on a feeling; I’m high on believing.”—Mark James, popularised by Blue Swede

Deceptive Dichotomies

We interpret the world through perception, but our perceptions are limited and often exclude basic relations. For instance, we might think that inside and outside, up and down, or left and right are mutually exclusive, but they are also interdependent: the existence of an outside entails an inside, up only exists relative to down, and left delineates right. Our mental landscapes are peppered with such dichotomies, tricking us into thinking interrelated phenomena are separate.

Many revolutionary insights have dispelled longstanding dichotomies, replacing separateness with interconnection. Newton brought together heaven and earth, showing that celestial and terrestrial physics are one and the same. Einstein merged Newton’s notions of absolute space and time into a single spacetime. Darwin and Wallace broke down the distinction between animals and humans, showing how all of life is related.^[1]

While our understanding of physics and biology has advanced, progress on the nature of mind has lagged.

For millennia, we’ve seen thought and emotion as opposing forces. In essence, we imagine two selves: a rational self, acting through thought; and an irrational self, acting through emotion. And different cultures have emphasised one or the other of these two selves. Today, with new insights into the subconscious, we’ve had to accept that we are not purely rational agents—and the pendulum now swings towards emotion, as if feeling has triumphed over thought.

This is a mistake, stemming from a false dichotomy between thought and emotion.^[2] Contrary to common belief, thought and emotion are not separate. To think clearly, emotions must be balanced. To feel appropriately, thoughts must be reasoned. Neither supersedes the other.

Despite the tenacity of this dichotomy, we can see through it by simply reflecting on our own experience.

Feeling Out Thought

Whenever we think, we also feel. Every thought—whether image, word, or idea—carries an emotional tone. This is because each thought is either grasped or not, and that sense of understanding or confusion is itself a feeling, not a thought. We never need to tell ourselves, “I understand this,” because comprehension is felt directly. Every thought, then, arrives with its own mood—clarity or uncertainty, ease or tension.^[3]

What would it feel like to think without feeling—without the sense of comprehension or confusion that accompanies our thoughts? Would it be like hearing a foreign language or abstract noise inside the mind? If so, would it qualify as thought at all?

Thought and feeling move together, each shaping the other. To see this more clearly, consider a simple example.

Imagine feeling dread before a public speech or job interview. Anxious thoughts flood your mind while unease fills your body. Conventional wisdom tells us that the thoughts and emotions contributing to this dread are separate. They interact but remain separate processes.

In truth, though, they cannot be teased apart because they are part of each other.^[4] If we could somehow erase the thoughts that summon dread, the feeling itself would vanish—after all, how could we dread an event that isn’t in mind? Conversely, if we could lift the feeling of dread, the character of our thoughts would change, since without dread there is nothing to brood over. This is exactly what we would expect if thinking and feeling were not two distinct processes but two facets of the same one.

We all recognise that thoughts shape feelings and feelings shape thought—a fact that should end any debate over which reigns supreme. Yet we rarely notice that we can feel thoughts before we distinctly think them. This happens more often than we realise. For instance, you may sense the impulse to speak but struggle to find the words. The meaning is there, hovering as a feeling, but the language to express it hasn’t arrived. In such moments, we are feeling thoughts before we think them. 

This familiar experience shows that the boundary between thought and emotion is porous. If we can feel our way to a thought, how could a clear divide exist between them?

Motivated Reasoning

Some would take the previous section as proof that we are, at root, emotional creatures. If emotion always accompanies thought, isn’t feeling the true driver of human behaviour? If rationality only appears when an emotional motive calls it forth, isn’t reason merely an appendage waved at the will of emotion?

To support this view, people point to the countless cases where flawless reasoning fails to persuade—religion and politics being prime examples. From this they conclude that rationality must, at its core, be governed by emotion. Many academics have joined the chorus, using carefully reasoned arguments and data to claim that emotion is the only reason we’re ever convinced of anything.

While it’s true that emotion often shapes behaviour and colours our worldview, that’s only half the picture. By clinging to the false divide between thought and emotion, we assume that wherever feeling exerts influence, reason loses its power. Yet the reverse view—that reason can exist apart from emotion—is equally mistaken. (Contrariwise, those who think that reasoned thought can exist apart from emotion are also misguided.)

When we mistakenly cleave thought from emotion, we imagine behaviour as driven either by an emotional tail wagging a rational dog or a rational dog wagging an emotional tail—and struggle to see any alternative. By overlooking their connection, we oversimplify the forces that shape action. In truth, the head and tail move together; to claim that one wags the other misrepresents reality. Likewise, to claim that thought or emotion takes precedence is to ignore their inseparable nature.

If neither thought nor emotion rules the other, what are we to make of the notion of emotionally motivated reasoning?

We can make perfect sense of it, so long as we appreciate that we’re motivated in concert by both emotion and thought. Where emotion influences us, it does so in accord with our mental models of reality. Where thought influences us, it does so in ways that fit with our emotional grasp of life. No solid line can be drawn between the two.

To see this interplay more clearly, let’s turn to two seemingly divergent cases—one that appears emotional, the other rational.

Common Paths to Belief

To an outside observer, religious belief might seem like a clear case of emotional motivation untempered by rational thought. The faithful rarely waver in the face of solid arguments or evidence. Indeed, many believers consider this resistance—their faith—virtuous. Surely this must be a case where emotion rules and reason holds no sway. But not so fast: thought is as vital as feeling in the formation of belief.

Like everyone, religious believers hold a system of assumptions that structure their worldview. Each assumption carries an emotional tone, and together this union of thought and feeling forms their beliefs. So while one might say that believers hold their views because they feel a certain way, one could just as well say that they feel that way because of their views. In truth, religious belief is neither the offspring of thought nor of emotion alone, but of their continual interplay.

When we don’t share or understand someone’s underlying assumptions, their beliefs can seem like emotional nonsense, though they may be perfectly logical within their own framework. A worldview makes sense only in light of its assumptions, which themselves arise from both reason and emotion. To judge whether our own worldview holds together, we must ask whether our assumptions are consistent with one another.

Whatever our assumptions, we all—religious, atheist, or agnostic—strive for consistency in our outlook. We have an instinctive drive to maintain a harmonious view of reality and feel uneasy when contradictions arise. This tendency offers clear advantages: a coherent mind better maps the regularities of the world, making our interactions with nature and with one another more predictable. It also enlists both thought and emotion in the pursuit of truth, inclining us towards logical consistency—which makes our beliefs more likely to reflect reality than logical inconsistency.

Most of the time, we’re not consciously driven by a desire for truth but by whatever helps us navigate life. Yet whether or not we seek truth, we accept only the logic that fits our underlying assumptions.[5] And when testing whether logic aligns with those assumptions, both thought and emotion are at work. Even in our most intellectual pursuits, they move together. Consider the aha moment of a scientific breakthrough.

What happens in a scientist’s mind when insight strikes? Weeks, months, or even years of study can culminate in a single moment of understanding. Has the motivation behind this breakthrough arisen from thought or from emotion? We tend to imagine science as purely rational, yet the feeling of discovery often comes before the reasoning that confirms it. Scientists frequently report knowing they’ve solved a problem before they can explain how. To some, this suggests that emotion precedes thought. But such feelings wouldn’t arise without the rigorous thinking that prepared the ground, nor would they stand alone without the reasoning that follows—because feelings of insight are but one stage in the unfolding of logical, thoughtful comprehension. Even at the heights of human intellect, thought and emotion work together.

Belief systems—religious or scientific—are woven from both thought and feeling. But what about physical behaviour? As we’ll see, it too depends on both.

Impulsive Behaviour

Most of our behaviour begins with vague desires that move us to act. Apart, perhaps, from the simplest reflexes—like jumping at the sight of a snake—these desires, or impulses, guide us through life. Though we seldom notice them amid the bustle of daily activity, every deliberate action arises from one.

Before speaking, we experience a linguistic thought paired with the urge to express it. Before checking our phones, we picture the device and feel a flicker of excitement or anxiety. Before moving, we faintly imagine our body in motion and feel compelled to follow through.[6] Impulses fuse thought and feeling.

If we were deprived of either feeling or thought, we could not perform any voluntary actions. To appreciate this, imagine waking one morning without the capacity to think. You would face the impossible task of navigating the world without your cognitive faculties. What would this be like?

You would remain in bed, trapped in a haze of shapeless emotions and impulses, with no mental reference points to ground you. Memories would be inaccessible; even the thought of your body and surroundings would dissolve. Bereft of language, you could neither grasp your situation nor plan how to rise from bed, nor even form the words to call for help. From the outside, you would appear to be in a vegetative state.

What if you could think but not feel?

You’d be just as incapacitated. Without the impulse to pursue a thought or the sense that you should do something, you’d be powerless to act.[7] As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio notes in Descartes’ Error, patients with flattened emotional states struggle to choose among options no matter how long they deliberate. We can think until our synapses wear out, but we cannot act—nor even speak—unless emotion moves us to do so.

Our behaviour is complex, a harmony in which thought and emotion are inseparable. To lose either is to lose what makes us human.

Beyond Dichotomy

Our confusion about the relation between thought and emotion mirrors our confusion about the relation between mind and body. When we ask whether the mind controls the body or the body controls the mind, we overlook that each exists within the other: the body within the mind, and the mind within the body.[8] So long as we’re alive, they move together. Thought and emotion share a similar relationship.

It’s often convenient to separate thought from emotion. Sometimes we simply want to apologise for getting angry or say we’ll think about a proposal, without delving into nuance. Such simplifications are practical—a shorthand for reality. Most of the time, this does no harm. But when convenience turns into conviction, and we neglect or exaggerate the role of either thought or feeling, the consequences can be serious.

All of us share the same basic motivation: to make sense of the world. This journey depends on both thought and emotion. This is as true for the non-believer as for the religious fundamentalist. To change ourselves for the better, we need more than one or the other—we need both, and we cannot help but engage them together.

***

[1]Contrary to what many believe, Darwin did not come up with the theory of evolution, nor was he the first to suggest a natural selection-type mechanism as the driver of evolution. He did, however, present enough evidence (along with Alfred Russel Wallace) to establish evolution by natural selection as fact.

[2]Admittedly, this essay itself leans into this dichotomy to illustrate a point. In reality, many people and cultures throughout history have realized that thought and emotion are not separate.

[3]And a lack of understanding is, in a way, a kind of understanding, in that our confusion cues us to understand that we don’t get the picture.

[4]One of my favourite Buddhist frameworks, the five aggregates, categorizes thoughts, emotions, and intentions under one category, called saṅkhāras.

[5]To this, someone might say, “What about your endorsement of the fact that E=mc²? How does this mesh with your underlying assumptions if you cannot even follow the maths and physics?” Though I cannot prove that E=mc², I have the assumption (through thought and feeling) that it’s safe to trust Einstein (and those who claim to have confirmed his work) on this point.

[6]Many people have never noticed the visuals that precede movement. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has said of these fleeting visuals, they are “often masked in consciousness by our awareness of the movement itself.”

[7]For argument’s sake, assume that in this hypothetical thought can exist without emotion.

[8]The body exists within the mind because you are currently aware of your body within awareness (i.e., your mind). The mind exists within the body because your brain is housed within your skull.