Emotions & Planning

1. Charles Hoch Urban Planning & Policy Program chashoch@uic.edu Emotions & Planning

2. Overview • The cognitive emotional gap • Insights about cognition and emotion from experimental research • Emotions matter • We use emotions to shape judgment • Damasio Nussbaum combo: • Emotions crucial for cognition • Emotions crucial for judgment • How do emotions do this work? • Two stories and some commentary • Lessons for practice • Including emotions • Three areas where we can learn more about emotion

3. The Cognitive Emotional GapWhy do we believe that separating feelings and thinking improves judgment? • Popular reasons to keep emotions in check • Bias judgment • Pre-empt logic • Distort beliefs • Succumb to desire • Learn to keep emotions in check • Objectivity • Sensitivity • Unfamiliar reasons to engage emotions • Focus judgment • Balance logic • Inform beliefs • Shape desires • Learn to use emotions as guides • Intentionality • Relevance

4. Cognitive Emotional Gap • Cognitive Psychologists • Planning as goal directed cognitive activity • Optimal = complete, efficient & foolproof • Experimental tests of plans undertaken as part of puzzle solving behavior • Emphasize precision and fit • Experimental tests of plans prepared to simulate more complex goal directed behavior (e.g. planning a shopping trip). • Emphasize relevance and coherence • First ignores emotions, second treats emotions as external influence of simulation activity • Both study planning at the heart of rational activity

5. Cognitive Emotional Gap • Social Psychologists focus on cognition, emotions and social relations together: How do emotions shape cognitive judgments? • Counterfactuals • Counterfactuals evaluate past events (if only…then…) • What cognitive value do counterfactuals offer? • How do emotions influence cognitive counterfactuals? • Counterfactuals for the future • A future counterfactual turns a desire into a plan for a goal • Counterfactuals create plausible futures that we can act upon psychologically [emphasize functional and emotional impacts]

6. Cognitive Emotional Gap • Examples of emotional impacts on counterfactual judgments: Bias • Subject over predicate (Winnetka vsWillmette) • Better over worse (Challenge vs Problem) • Great contrast over slight contrast (Rendering vs Sketch) • Emotions accompany and influence cognitive judgments; but do not contribute to the quality of the content (e.g. like spices in a salad versus lettuce, tomatoes,…); but they do…

8. Daniel Kanheman, Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics, American Economic Review 93(5): 1451.

9. Closing the Gap • Damasio’s Functional Approach • Emotions developed as contributions to adaptive learning • primary (anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust) • social (sympathy, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, jealousy, envy, gratitude, admiration, indignation and contempt) • Feelings are not only automatic responses (e.g. disgust), but provide resources for cognitive reflection and assessment. They direct our attention to the salience of the objects we encounter within any specific situation that allows time for reflective assessment. Feelings do not operate like a hydraulic system, but more like finely tuned sensors that interact tacitly and subtly to variations in the flow of diverse stimuli. • Hierarchy of emotions from primary to social reflects an evolutionary development that forms practical judgments both cognitively and emotionally

10. Closing the Gap • Nussbaum’s interpretive approach • Emotions mark the salience of the objects we perceive – emotions shape intentions • I grieve my mother’s death, not all mothers’. • I am angry with your criticism, not all criticism. • Four qualities: • Pull not push – The storm • Engage us intentionally – Meaning of the storm • Shape comprehension – God/guilt versus Drought/joy • Find value in objects – Feeling tied to Salience: attachment

11. Practical Planning & Emotions • The Story of Michael: Visiting the Site • The Story of Valerie: Planning for Prisons • Social emotions and cognitive judgment • What work did emotions do? • How did the emotions do this work?

12. Lessons for Practice • Feelings, moral judgment and cognitive efficacy • Wisdom vs smart • Commitment, integrity and craft • Character vs Clever • Cynicism and subjection • Hopeful vs Opportunistic

13. Questions for Inquiry • Creation • How do we compose plans? Anastasia’s Muse – Stories and Arguments • Communication • How do we combine cognitive and emotional activity to persuade others to make and follow a plan? • Evaluation • How do our evaluations of plans and plan effects draw upon emotional and cognitive activity?

14. Creation • Problem setting • The Homeless in Charleston SC: • Visibility in commercial public space • Stigma evokes discomfort among shoppers • Make law to move homeless away to shelter • How do we reframe the problem to remove the stereotype and stigma? • Some use stories that evoke compassion • Others use stories that evoke equality • Others use stories that evoke solidarity • These each combine feeling & moral view

15. Communication • Persuasion as advertising • Manipulation that uses cognitive and emotional bias to obtain consent • Sidestepping deliberation to manufacture affective approval • Persuasion as deliberate comparison • Highlighting bias and risks of intuition • Framing comparisons using stories that include the emotional mixing that accompanies tradeoffs

16. Evaluation • Funnel attention and feeling toward popular assumptions and results • Visual renderings omit or diminish likely bad • Stories exclude different views & complexity • Include competing viewpoints as relevant and important • Visual images include good & bad results • Stories include tensions, tradeoffs and locate conflict areas where contested interpretations might diverge or reconcile