How do emotions affect people's minds when the future is uncertain and does valence play a role?

How do emotions affect people's minds when the future is uncertain and does valence play a role? Humans' are the only species who can elaborate intentions forward in time. This capacity can be interrupted by PRIMEs, triggering fight - flight mode. And the valence seems to play an important role. Since I was in my teens, I have been involved in interpersonal matters concerning individual and organizational performance, learning, and creativity for problem-solving and innovation. Sometimes when we encounter a challenging situation with negative valence, cortisol levels increase, blocking hippocampi in favour of amygdala, which triggers fight-flight behavior. According to me and other researchers, the solution is a leadership style which influences work climate - an intervening variable between the leader and the organization

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How do emotions affect people's minds when the future is uncertain and does valence play a role?

Humans' are the only species who can elaborate intentions forward in time (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007). This capacity can be interrupted by motivation and emotional PRIMEs, triggering fight - flight mode (Buck, 1985; McDougall et al. 2005). And the valence seems to play an important role. According to (Shuman et al. 2013):

“The distinction between the positive and the negative is fundamental in our emotional life.” “This multifaceted conceptualization of valence is highly compatible with the frequent observation of mixed feelings in real life” (Abstract).

Since I was in my teens, I have been involved in interpersonal matters concerning individual and organizational performance, learning, and creativity for problem-solving and innovation. First, being lucky to experience the important father-influence (LaFlamme et al. 2012; Rolle et al. 2019; Sethna, 2017; Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004), by working side-by-side with my father in our family’s business. That included having business related conversations with my father (who also was the executive).

In parallel, I was assigned dual roles: (1) manager and (2) head coach for a smaller sports operation. As a manager, I mainly negotiated investments and personnel matters (like today's HR), which caused the inventory to increase by more than 100% and the organization to grow 1400 % to 14 assistant coaches. As a coach, I mainly applied goal-setting theory (Locke and Latham, 2002) and Baumrind's (1966) research on parenting styles, biomechanics and physio stuff, which together proved to improve the athletes performance. Significantly.

When I stepped down as the head coach/manager, I was offered the role of head of education for a sports association. I developed courses and traveled in Sweden to deliver these courses. I taught what I knew best: goal-setting theory, research on parenting styles, biomechanics and physio stuff.

In the midst of all that, I was asked to work for a couple of days in a company to clean up their business administration (mainly accounting). I stayed for two years, significantly improving my financial skills.

Then I started my own educational company; I kept travelling in Sweden to teach goal-setting theory, parental styles, biomechanics and physio stuff. And sometime around this time, I also became a so-called executive coach (years of training with my father kicked in). That means I advised managing director's and CEO's, by answering questions about things concerning leadership and organization from a perspective of business administration and prospective psychology.

Eventually, I received my master's degree in business administration, my bachelor's thesis in experimental emotional psychology, as well as my master's degree in social psychology.

After star-psychologist Daniel Kahneman (1934-2024) in 2002 received The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred, economists became increasingly interested in psychology. And because that, I was recruited to the only fully financed position at a faculty to write my doctorate (and to tutor researchers on method). As the crowning touch, I was recruited to the University of Helsingfors to become a research leader.

We know from Swedish psychological scientist Anders Eriksson’s (1947 - 2020) work on dedicated training that 4000 hours of dedicated training will improve your skill in any field. Significantly. (Some people recognize that this resembles the so called 10 000 hour rule, which is a misinterpretation of Dr. Eriksson's work; there is a 10 000 hours level, but before that, there's a 4000 hour level).

During my longstanding tenure as an expert in leadership - organization, > 100 000 hours, I typically have experienced situations where organizations have issues, one way or the other. And typically, the local political climate triggers conformity to sustain the situation which caused the problem in the first place.

Common knowledge in psychology is that the human mind is wired for prospection, and in particular, intentional thinking (Ardila, 2008, Ardila et al. 2018; Adornetti, 2016; Barkley, 2001; Coolidge and Wynn, 2018; Tomasello et al. 2005). This means, if everything 'up there' works properly, and we practice prospection in a dedicated fashion, humans in general should be very good at elaborating scenarios forward in time. And because we are social beings, this goal-oriented elaboration should typically take place with other people (Bandura, 1977; Heider, 1958; Pinker, 2011; Tomasello, 2014).

But, as Daniel Kahneman and his psychology colleague Amos Tversky (1937-1996) famously demonstrated, when the future is uncertain, members of our species fall victim to what they called “natural stupidity”. That means we tend to rely on information which is either:

• prototypical (Kahneman och Tversky, 1972)
  
  
• often repeated (Tversky och Kahneman, 1973)
  
  
• easy to access (Kahneman and Tversky, 1977).

A trigger for “natural stupidity” is emotional valence, and in particular negative valence Baumeister et al. 2001.

Sometimes when we encounter a challenging situation with negative valence, cortisol levels increase, blocking hippocampi in favour of amygdalae, which triggers fight-flight behavior (Goleman, 2006). That's when we abandoned reasoning - talking without winning - in favor of polemics - verbal war and guilt by association.

There are two ways to survive/get out of such a harsh climate:

1. people in the Soviet Union (1917 - 1991), where millions of people mysteriously disappeared, not seldom ending up i GULAG or a massgrave (Abrahamson, 2014; Skott, 2001), applied political correctness - saying things that may not be true from a general point of view, but which will fit the local political situation. The Soviet union eventually collapsed. In a similar vein, I have seen organizations collapse.
   
   
2. According to me and other researchers, the solution is a leadership style which influences work climate - an intervening variable between the leader and the organization (Ekvall, 1996; Ekvall och Ryhammar, 1998; Österberg, 2012).

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Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter