In a way, this is a bad thing: we shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions, and we should examine the evidence! However, psychologists have also found that people need their emotions to think clearly. Antonio Damasio and others discovered that people who have lost their ability to feel emotion—based on a brain tumor or injury to the brain—also lose their ability to make rational decisions, and so end up making messes of their lives, losing their jobs and wrecking their marriages. Evidence has been piling up that feelings and reason are linked. We may do bad thinking when we allow emotions to cloud our thinking, but we also need emotions to think clearly. Think again about your emotional reaction to the photo, and then ask: are my feelings making me irrational, or are they helping me find the truth?

Look at this picture, and notice your first reaction. Do you have an emotional reaction, good or bad? What is your opinion right off the bat? Going with your gut, what do you think? Notice I am asking you about two things: (1) your emotional reaction and (2) your first thought.