We’ve all heard of the saying, “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into”; in other words, logic doesn’t usually work as an antidote to emotion, any more than giving an arachnophobe a list of scientific facts about why spiders are beneficial isn’t going to make them any less afraid when they see a big wolf spider skittering down their kitchen wall the next time.
Now - what is a good way to convey that to someone who is super-logical or logic-first? Without getting too much into family-situation specifics, there is a family member who likes to use logic as a scalpel to dissect and cut apart people’s words - not even necessarily in a malicious way, but just in a it-comes-naturally way. She thinks that logic ought to prevail over emotion, and seems baffled that it does not have the desired effect. (If someone tells her how they are ***feeling ***about something, for instance, she can then turn it into a logic debate.)
What’s a good way to explain that that approach just doesn’t work with a listener’s emotions?
I disagree, logic if taken to the right level can very often help to defuse emotions. The usual problem is that we seldom have enough information to really apply any useful logic to something emotional.
‘You ran over my dog!!’
‘Yes, but the weather’ ‘I had to swerve to avoid hitting a tree branch in the street’
‘My dog is still dead!!!’
They don’t want to hear logic. Their dog is dead and you’re to blame.
“Shut up bitch” always works in my family.
I can understand the problem - however I’m an asshole, so most of my explanations would be needlessly provocative.
“So, you’re aware people have emotions, right?”
“You realize that emotions are part of the brain state, and influence how information is processed by the brain, right?”
“Are you so stupid that you fail to realize that cognitive processes colored by emotion will analyze problems and situations differently than they would if directly only by cold logic?”
“Seriously, this is obvious. How stupid are you?”
“Oh, you’re pissed off at me now? That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Logically, nothing I’m saying should perturb you; you should calmly accept that I have pointed out an oversight and error in your assessment of how human thought works. Now put down that fireplace poker, please.”
You can’t argue someone out of their feelings. Telling someone it is illogical for them to be sad/scared/angry never works. But feelings always arise from thoughts, and thoughts can be challenged and debate. So you can indirectly use logic to change someone feelings. That is the whole basis of cognitive behavioral therapy.
The delivery of the “logic” is important, though. I have never been persuaded by someone who is unable to validate my feelings. Prefacing a “logical” argument with something like, “I understand why you feel the way you do, but I think you may not have all the facts” can go a long way to opening someone’s mind.
Although many crazed and insane female fans did mail Leonard Nimoy their panties in the 60s, there is an important point that most overlook:
Spock. Never. Got. Laid.
('Nuff said.)
I would say logic is a tool used in the process of learning. How logic is applied to an emotional situation depends on the intended outcome.
Excample: When my nephews were young I was playing with them as they learned how to build things with blocks. One of them decided to play Godzilla to the other’s newly constructed buildings. Much unhappiness ensued from the young city planner until I pointed out he had acquired the knowledge to rebuild it bigger and better. He went from boo-hoo to yahoo in seconds.
Putting logic aside and going with an emotional response I could have screamed at the other nephew and demanded he stand in the corner for being mean while his brother cries for being picked on. Logic seemed the better path. Both learned something from it. All I had to give little Godzilla was “the look” of disappointment.
OP, your description sounds like someone who does not process her own emotions. If that is the case, any challenge to her current method of dealing with the world is going to be threatening to her, and therefore heavily resisted by her. She may be someone who has a huge backlog of unexperienced and unprocessed feelings, and that’s very scary to her (although she doesn’t know that on a conscious level). If she ever has a breakthrough it could go on for a long time.
She is, by the way, correct in one sense. Changing the way you think about something can and will change the way you feel about it. But you can’t do that in the moment, human emotions need to be felt and accepted for what they are, so that they can recede and reason can take over. The key to this is actually feeling all of the emotions, all the way through, so that they then lose their power.
A very good therapist would be able to get through her defenses in the first hour.
I’ve never actually heard that one. The one that I use is “You can’t have a rational discussion with an irrational person.” I’ve lived with this as my creedo since my daughter hit puberty. She’s had many emotional problems and has been a major challenge and stressor on me and the entire family.
My only solution is to disengage and walk away until the emotions die down and then try to talk rationally. [Of course that’s tough when she follows me screaming…]
How so? Take me for example. I’m not afraid of flying, but I am uneasy. Give me four good liquor drinks before flying (and a few maintenance ones on the plane) and I am fine, but still a bit uneasy. I’m afraid of heights and I watch too many “Seconds From Disaster” episodes.
So, how would you logically persuade me not to feel that way? I know that flying is far safer than car travel. I know that mechanics inspect the plane before every flight and I know that the pilots are trained professionals.
Yet I still have that feeling. How are you going to change the way I feel with logic?
My husband flies a tiny plane, and he used to kayak (well, C-1 – looks the same but it’s actually a decked canoe that you kneel in and use a single bladed paddle). He would love it if I joined him in his hobbies but I just can’t. It’s a gut-level, maybe instinctual? can’t.
Rationally I know that to fly planes must be very lightweight, made of light materials. But when I see his little plane (1956 Piper Tri-Pacer) made of thin aluminum and cloth and think about going for a ride in it the deep ‘lizard’ part of my brain screams “Oh hell no!” I can’t help it. I know that flying in a little plane with a good pilot is probably less hazardous than my daily commute in a car, but reason gets swamped by something deeper.
It’s the same with the boating. I know that if you overturn it’s easy to slide out and come up to air. But the thought of sitting in a tub on water with my legs trapped gives me the heebie-jeebies despite having watched hours upon hours of roll practice. You ain’t gonna logic me into kayaking in anything other than a swimming pool.
On the other hand, I ride horses and will quite happily gallop a 1,000+ pound animal (with a brain the size of a large walnut) up to and over a solid 3 ft barrier. To each her own terrors! 
Perhaps a logical first step would be watching fewer episodes of “Seconds From Disaster”? I think I understand why you feel the way you do. Perhaps you may be stacking the deck against yourself by watching all those episodes? 
She probably doesn’t know it, but doesn’t know another way to act. She reminds me of me in many respects. It’s not that I/we lack empathy, but lack anything better to say, so rather than saying nothing, something logical is the default.
<hijack> I was raised by people who, if dealing with that Godzilla vs. a young city planner situation, would have gone with the screaming/punishment route as surely as water is wet. Your story was heartwarming, Magiver … plus well-written as a bonus! Thank you for that. </hijack>
That’s hilarious … and also probably the route I’d take, too!
It’s also unlikely to work - in the sense that you’re not changing anyone’s mind with the tactic, although I guess you may at least succeed in feeling better in the moment.
Sometimes, that’s as good as you’re gonna get.
But if you actually care and really want to get through to someone, the explanation by Roderick Femm was perfect.
In fact, I wish I’d read it back when I first started doing phone-based customer service. Your post makes a nice guide for de-escalating someone who’s pissed off about something that isn’t my direct fault, for example.
(Crap. I just made the connection between the previous two parts of my post. Raised by Teh Dysfunctional … and also likely to use the antagonistic response that won’t work anyway? Hmmm. Wow. Jesus Christ.)
It depends. In the throes of an emotional moment, it’s nearly impossible to reason with a person. Generally you should probably let people calm down a bit before imposing yourself (and your logic) on them.
Assuming we’re not talking about a major tragedy, mentally healthy people generally recover from emotional moments pretty quickly and then regain their ability to reason or even joke about the situation. They do need a few minutes or so, however. Then they are more receptive to the inputs.
Unless there’s a rodent in the room. I’m not calming down until the threat is gone. Then we can talk. 
Of course, if your family member is acting in bad faith or just wants to demolish an opponent, that would be neither logical nor effective, so how they go about it matters. You can’t pretend it’s logic if it’s motivated by malice.
Generally, I would appreciate your family member’s ability to take me down a path of logic. At the very least, it would be amusing. Distraction by thinking. It’s an interesting form of distraction, maybe even beneficial, because you’re engaging in a bit of mental jousting.
The timing has to be right, though. Just like elsewhere in life, timing is everything.
The obvious problem here is that the irrational respond best to well-reasoned arguments when presented not in-person, but on social media.
And emotion isn’t an antidote to logic. If someone has very little emotion, you can’t get that logical person to understand how others with more emotion and less logic work. Just as you aren’t going to get a super emotional person to understand how logic can help. Humans exist on a spectrum.
Logic absolutely can help with emotions, if presented the right way to the right person, but that doesn’t mean that logic can always help everyone with their emotions. The best is being able to balance both because a purely logical person misses out on a lot of life as many ways that we experience things are on an emotional level.
I left a cult. You can go try to logically reason with those 8 million people I left behind but it won’t do any good because emotion keeps them stuck. Logic does no good. Once they can emotionally get into a different place where they’re more open to other lines of thinking, only then can you have any hope that logic will help them see the light.
She is probably emotionally attached to that approach, so there’s no antidote. 
Two approaches that could plausibly lead somewhere:
Make her defend some opinion of hers and show that at the deepest level there are emotion based axioms.
Pick a logical argument she is making, and show the same.
That’s as good as I can do without knowing more detail about the kind of situations and kind of “logical” arguments that are being used.
An example from just the last 24 hrs.
We need to have inoculations to travel this year. One of our kids (14) is terrified of needles. We arranged the appointment some time ago but told them only last night. As expected they flipped out somewhat. My wife and I did nothing and said nothing beyond telling them it was set for for tomorrow at 5:00. We then left it and let them settle down. Sure enough they came back us to ask more about it and only at that point did we state the facts and logic and discuss what can be done to help them get through it. They are still not happy and we said it was perfectly reasonable for them to feel like that.
At no point did we try to reason them out of their emotional response. There seems to be no point. Let it explode and subside and only then introduce the logic, it is only then that they might be in a frame of mind to absorb and process it.
We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. I expect shakiness, unhappiness and a touch of resentment towards the world but we’ll avoid making a big thing out of either the needle or the response to it.