Suprarational:  transcending the rational : based on or involving factors not to be comprehended by reason alone <the stars inspire suprarational dreams — R. J. Dubos>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suprarational

 
It shouldn’t be a surprise that emotions have an impact on our decision-making.

In one study (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/emotions-decisions.html),    Jennifer Lerner found that sadness has the effect of making us pay more and making us more willing to forgo future money for present satisfaction.  Anger makes us more willing to take risks.

I’ve always thought that thinking of people in general as irrational hints of condescension.  In my experience, people make decisions that make sense for them, at the time they are making those decisions, taking into account their emotional state.  Their decisions are suprarational, not irrational.

But what does it mean if people are suprarational?  To me, this suggests that we need to explore factors that go beyond the traditionally rational if we are to understand how people make decisions.

I’m particularly interested in the concept of insecurity.  Everyone is subject to some degree of insecurity.  Some of this insecurity is intrinsic (e.g. individual emotional-state volatility), some is extrinsic (e.g. macroeconomic fluctuations resulting in job stress). 

If people are insecure, they will make more decisions that are optimized for short rather than long time horizons.  They will also make decisions to manage their current emotional state, which has a very short time horizon, rather than their long-term happiness.  Think of the kinds of decisions people make in the context of romantic relationships, and you’ll understand why we should avoid making decisions when we are feeling insecure.

Can we avoid insecurity then?  Not altogether, though we can manage to some extent the intrinsic factors, i.e. volatility of our emotional states.  But we can and should avoid making decisions with long-term impact when we feel insecure.

Unbelievably hard to do though at a point when our decision-making function is not optimized for the long term.  A chicken-and-egg problem.

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704407804575425561952689390.html

This article was from a month ago but I just ran across it.  Though it was in reference to the Mark Hurd ouster, the takeaways are universal.

Power is an interesting thing.  It’s lovely to think that you could make this enormous impact on the world for the better, but at some point it detracts from your decision-making, relationships, and eventually, your quality of life.  It suggests that perhaps we should manage the level of power we attain and purposefully institute handoffs and controls.


Excerpts:

"Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude. In some cases, these new habits can help a leader be more decisive and single-minded, or more likely to make choices that will be profitable regardless of their popularity. One recent study found that overconfident CEOs were more likely to pursue innovation and take their companies in new technological directions. Unchecked, however, these instincts can lead to a big fall."

..

"According to the survey, the students at the top of the social hierarchy—they were the most "powerful" and respected—were also the most considerate and outgoing, and scored highest on measures of agreeableness and extroversion. In other words, the nice guys finished first.

This result isn't unique to Berkeley undergrads. Other studies have found similar results in the military, corporations and politics. "People give authority to people that they genuinely like," says Mr. Keltner.

Of course, these scientific findings contradict the cliché of power, which is that the only way to rise to the top is to engage in self-serving and morally dubious behavior. In "The Prince," a treatise on the art of politics, the 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli insisted that compassion got in the way of eminence. If a leader has to choose between being feared or being loved, Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear."

--

"While a little compassion might help us climb the social ladder, once we're at the top we end up morphing into a very different kind of beast.

"It's an incredibly consistent effect," Mr. Keltner says. "When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. They flirt inappropriately, tease in a hostile fashion, and become totally impulsive." Mr. Keltner compares the feeling of power to brain damage, noting that people with lots of authority tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that's crucial for empathy and decision-making. Even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office."

--

"According to psychologists, one of the main problems with authority is that it makes us less sympathetic to the concerns and emotions of others. For instance, several studies have found that people in positions of authority are more likely to rely on stereotypes and generalizations when judging other people. They also spend much less time making eye contact, at least when a person without power is talking.

Consider a recent study led by Adam Galinsky, a psychologist at Northwestern University. Mr. Galinsky and colleagues began by asking subjects to either describe an experience in which they had lots of power or a time when they felt utterly powerless. Then the psychologists asked the subjects to draw the letter E on their foreheads. Those primed with feelings of power were much more likely to draw the letter backwards, at least when seen by another person. Mr. Galinsky argues that this effect is triggered by the myopia of power, which makes it much harder to imagine the world from the perspective of someone else. We draw the letter backwards because we don't care about the viewpoint of others."

--

"Although people almost always know the right thing to do—cheating is wrong—their sense of power makes it easier to rationalize away the ethical lapse. For instance, when the psychologists asked the subjects (in both low- and high-power conditions) how they would judge an individual who drove too fast when late for an appointment, people in the high-power group consistently said it was worse when others committed those crimes than when they did themselves. In other words, the feeling of eminence led people to conclude that they had a good reason for speeding—they're important people, with important things to do—but that everyone else should follow the posted signs."

--

"This suggests that even fleeting feelings of power can dramatically change the way people respond to information. Instead of analyzing the strength of the argument, those with authority focus on whether or not the argument confirms what they already believe. If it doesn't, then the facts are conveniently ignored."

--

"Mr. Keltner argues that the best treatment is transparency, and that the worst abuses of power can be prevented when people know they're being monitored. This suggests that the mere existence of a regulatory watchdog or an active board of directors can help discourage people from doing bad things.

However, people in power tend to reliably overestimate their moral virtue, which leads them to stifle oversight. They lobby against regulators, and fill corporate boards with their friends."

http://www.amazon.com/Enders-Game-Orson-Scott-Card/dp/0312853238

I don’t re-read too many books but Ender’s Game is one that I constantly return to. 

The basic premise, from Amazon:

“In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine...young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister…

This futuristic tale involves aliens, political discourse on the Internet, sophisticated computer games, and an orbiting battle station. Yet the reason it rings true for so many is that it is first and foremost a tale of humanity; a tale of a boy struggling to grow up into someone he can respect while living in an environment stripped of choices.”

I’ve always asserted that good art makes you feel.  Great art embeds universal truths to make many people, with disparate experiences and multivariate backgrounds, feel.  It is a hard, hard thing to do.  But the great books, great music, and great movies all succeed in this.

I mention this not because I believe Ender’s Game is an objectively great book – I can’t know this.  But the themes in Ender’s Game, of living and dying alone, of looking at the alien in a new way, of bridging realpolitik and human feeling, I think these are both universal and highly applicable in the world we find ourselves today.  In the book, it takes the vulnerability and openness of a child to find a new answer to the age-old problem of distrust between the different.

 

I’ve also noticed lately that Ender’s Game has been getting more media play:

1.        As the only book listed on Mark Zuckerberg’s (founder of Facebook) Facebook profile

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/20/100920fa_fact_vargas?currentPage=all

2.       In Jesse Schell’s (CEO of Schell Games) talk on the Gamepocalyse

"I personally believe...if you've read Ender's Game...and everything else that Orson Scott Card ever wrote, he sold his soul...If you go back and read that book, this book written in the early 70's, it predicts IM, it predicts blogging, it predicts people in dorms pranking each other's desktops. It's an insane amount of things that he just nailed so right. and it's such a beautiful story. For people who haven't read it. the whole idea of it is that the perfect general has total empathy, because they're able to use that empathy to understand the mind of their opponent. But of course they need to destroy that opponent which is going to make them go insane. And that's like the whole fundamental..."

http://fora.tv/2010/07/27/Jesse_Schell_Visions_of_the_Gamepocalypse

3.       As an in-development movie with director Gavin Hood attached

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=69974

I wonder how Merriam-Webster segments the dictionary into standard and premium words.  For the record, ophelimity means "economic satisfaction."  Though urbandictionary.com has a different and interesting take.