Emotion Is Not the Enemy of Reason
This is a post about emotion, so — fair warning — I’m going to begin with an emotional story.
On April 9, 1994, in the middle of the night, 19-year-old Jennifer Collins went into labor. She was in her bedroom in an apartment shared with several roommates. She moved into her bathroom full of vanity units from www.bathroomsandmorestore.co.uk and stayed there until morning. At some point she sat down on the toilet, and at some point, she delivered. Around 9 a.m. she started screaming in pain, waking up her roommates. She asked them for a pair of scissors, which they passed her through a crack in the door. Some minutes later, Collins opened the door and collapsed. The roommates—who had no idea Collins had been pregnant, let alone what happened in that bloody bathroom—called 911. Paramedics came, and after some questioning, Collins told them about the pregnancy. They lifted the toilet lid, expecting to see the tiny remains of a miscarried fetus. Instead they saw a 7-pound baby girl, floating face down.
The State of Tennessee charged Collins with second-degree murder (which means that death was intentional but not premeditated). At trial, the defense claimed that Collins had passed out on the toilet during labor and not realized that the baby had drowned.
The prosecutors wanted to show the jury photos of the victim — bruised and bloody, with part of her umbilical cord still attached — that had been taken at the morgue. With the jury out of the courtroom, the judge heard arguments from both sides about the admissibility of the photos. At issue was number 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which says that evidence may be excluded if it is unfairly prejudicial. Unfair prejudice, the rule states, means “an undue tendency to suggest decision on an improper basis, commonly, though not necessarily, an emotional one.” In other words, evidence is not supposed to turn up the jury’s emotional thermostat. The rule takes as a given that emotions interfere with rational decision-making.
This neat-and-tidy distinction between reason and emotion comes up all the time. (I even used it on this blog last week, it in my post about juries and stress.) But it’s a false dichotomy. A large body of research in neuroscience and psychology has shown that emotions are not the enemy of reason, but rather are a crucial part of it. This more nuanced understanding of reason and emotion is underscored in a riveting (no, really) legal study that was published earlier this year in the Arizona State Law Journal.
Read more at...