Media Literacy Challenge #4: Emotional reasoning

The Nomadic Blog

Notes and reflections on history and education

Nate Noorlander
March 9, 2026

This post is part of The Nomadic Professor’s 2026 Media Literacy Challenge: Read Smarter Online! Twice a month throughout 2026, America’s 250th anniversary year, we’re sharing one small skill to help you read better online—social media, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, forums, magazines, journals, newspapers, and everything between. Follow along or join and enter the drawing to win free courses or Amazon gift cards—including a grand prize of lifetime access to all Nomadic Professor courses, or a $500 Amazon gift card. Learn more here.

We can take the following as a pithy summary of today’s topic, popularized by Tristan Harris from the Center for Humane Technology:

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” E.O. Wilson, sociobiologist

The embedded claim is that our emotional and psychological lives are not keeping pace with our technological development; our psychologies are still climbing out of an ancient period of human development, but our tech is not.

In their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt provide a nice introduction to another way of arriving at the same conclusion:

“‘Always trust your feelings’ [is a dictum that] may sound wise and familiar. You’ve heard versions of it from a variety of sappy novels and pop psychology gurus. But the second Great Untruth—the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning—is a direct contradiction of much ancient wisdom. We opened this chapter with a quotation from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus [‘What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. EPICTETUS, 1st–2nd century’], but we could just as easily have quoted Buddha (‘Our life is the creation of our mind’) or Shakespeare (‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’) or Milton (‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven’). …

“Sages in many societies have converged on the insight that feelings are always compelling, but not always reliable. Often they distort reality, deprive us of insight, and needlessly damage our relationships. Happiness, maturity, and even enlightenment require rejecting the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning and learning instead to question our feelings. The feelings themselves are real, and sometimes they alert us to truths that our conscious mind has not noticed, but sometimes they lead us astray.”

In other words, whether we take it from evolutionary psychology, the wisdom traditions of many different societies, or even just our own personal experience, the conclusion is the same: don’t trust your feelings.

With this behind you, go out and consume the news as normal, and then come back and let us know—do you find yourself choosing a side before you’ve considered the evidence? Do you find yourself working backwards to justify the conclusions you want to be true? Do you find yourself making decisions based on intuitive but unconsidered emotional reactions of fear, sadness, anger, or joy?

I hope to hear from you—talk soon!

Media Literacy Challenge 2026 – Skill #4: Emotional reasoning

Definitions

emotional reasoning:

letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality; “I feel angry; therefore, I’m right and they’re wrong”; “I feel excited; therefore, this is an effective policy”; “I feel sad; therefore, this group deserves my money” [adapted from The Coddling of the American Mind]

intuition:

immediate understanding, not clearly derived from perception or reasoning

System 1:

the path to judgment and choice that, according to Daniel Kahneman, is followed quickly and automatically, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control; Haidt uses the “elephant and rider” metaphor to make a similar distinction

System 2:

the path to judgment and choice that, according to Daniel Kahneman, is followed through effortful mental activity; often associated with the subjective experiences of agency, choice, and concentration; Haidt uses the “elephant and rider” metaphor to make a similar distinction

The rider-and-elephant metaphor:

From Coddling: “[T]he mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict, like a small rider sitting on top of a large elephant. The rider represents conscious or ‘controlled’ processes… The elephant represents [processes that] can be called intuitive, unconscious, or ‘automatic’… The rider-and-elephant metaphor captures the fact that the rider often believes he is in control, yet the elephant is vastly stronger, and tends to win any conflict that arises between the two”

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8 Responses

Wanda W says:

March 13, 2026 at 3:55 pm

I have read Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow. It details System 1 and System 2 thinking. Emotions are engaged before you can logically think things through, consequently, you should usually slow down and rationally think things through.

I just finished reading Four Red Sweaters by Lucy Adlington. The true stories of four girls aged preteen to early twenties and their experiences as Jews during Nazi Germany are detailed. The book explains the propaganda put out about Jews being less than human and how that was designed to hit an emotional chord amongst people, so they would not object to, and would even participate in the mistreatment or the killing of those the regime wanted eliminated. During the Nuremberg Trials, it was exposed that some of the guards had been so taken in by the emotional propaganda that they never thought logically about it, so could not see that they had done anything wrong, with some even justifying their behavior based on the emotion laden propaganda. So, responding emotionally, without logical thinking can have dire consequences.

More recently there have been emotionally charged statements: they’re eating the dogs; they’re not people, they’re animals; invaders; migrant criminals; they’re garbage. Statements such as these are designed to engage the emotions, with the recognition that most people will not slow down to think rationally about the situation. Emotions can be easily manipulated. People responding emotionally are ipso facto not responding logically, and do things they would not do if they were responding thoughtfully.

I have been targeted based on false emotional statements about my cultural background. Consequently, I am sensitive to these emotional pleas. When I find myself having an emotionally charged response to the news, I deliberately look for this type of language. As Joe Friday of Dragnet fame stated, “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” Even facts such as: “he was a convicted sex trafficker and pedophile” or “he was convicted on 34 felony counts” do not engender the emotional response in the way of examples like those listed previously.

As a result of doing Challenge #3 I changed how I watch national news. I watch the first portion when the facts are stated, or video of the actual event is shown. Then I do not watch the portion where the commentator opines, alone or with others, about what that might mean or how it might impact the future. I have noticed that since I made this change, the news is less emotionally charged for me. My mind is not changed by emotions. Because my opinions on things are based on considering the evidence, the facts, I do not get caught up in emotional entanglements. My basic personality type and my experiences have taught me to value and trust facts and be wary of emotions. People have wrongfully accused me of having no emotions, but it does evidence that I am known for logic and rational reasoning, rather than emotional reasoning.

As a result of doing this challenge, I realized that my new way of watching national news is no longer emotionally draining for me. For example, I might not like the temperature outside, but the temperature is a fact, and not emotionally charged. I might not like the fact that the USA bombed Iran, but it can be viewed as a dispassionate fact without getting emotionally involved in guesses as to why now, or for what purpose, or for how long. Those are not yet known, and guesses by commentators or ourselves can lead to emotional hijacking and potentially dire consequences depending on how people respond to the emotions flooding them.

Reply
1. Nate Noorlander says:
  
  March 16, 2026 at 7:14 am
  
  Thank you Wanda—sounds like we’re reading books in a similar vein. Love your efforts to inform yourself with what you need, but avoid making yourself vulnerable by rejecting the most partisan stuff.
  
  Reply
Emily D. says:

March 14, 2026 at 3:14 pm

I love the rider-and-elephant metaphor, explains my natural thought process so perfectly. Lead on mighty elephant. JK
Now that I have a name for it I am much more aware. My first response was the rider must control the elephant. But as I was looking farther into it. It occurred to me- a little rider is delusional if he thinks he ever controls the elephant. And I don’t think emotional responses are only bad. It’s an emotional response to help a struggling friend or cause, still those are the worst to be manipulated by. But the point is to tame the elephant response. So now when I consume news I check any emotions -especially strong ones- and consider what would disprove the running narrative. Do I really have all the information? etc

Reply
1. Nate Noorlander says:
  
  March 16, 2026 at 7:16 am
  
  Perfect follow-up questions about the narrative, your emotional response, and what else you need to know. Thanks Emily.
  
  Reply
Hyrum Petersen says:

March 17, 2026 at 8:32 am

One of the things that politicians do to try and win people’s support is by being a demagogue, and appealing to the emotions rather than rational arguments. Part of why they do this is because we are so susceptible to emotions, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if we let it get in the way of our rational decision making, then it is generally not as helpful. An example of this is in the Book of Mormon, a Nephite general named Teancum is enraged at the Lamanite leaders, and sneaks into the enemy camp to kill the leader, much like an earlier time, except this time instead of it being planned out carefully, he went in anger, letting his emotions take control, and because he hadn’t planned it out as carefully, the Lamanite king woke before he was killed, and alerted his servants, so Teancum ended up dying as a result. This is not to say that we shouldn’t have emotions, emotions are a good and normal part of life, we just can’t let them control our lives, lest we suffer bad consequences from poorly thought out decisions.

Reply
Brenna says:

March 17, 2026 at 12:20 pm

As someone who studied communications and journalism in college, it is amazing how much media has changed in the last 15 years. Emotions have become a much larger and accepted part of journalism. I think it is tough for anyone to not consume media with at least a degree of our emotional brain.

Reply
Camille P says:

March 28, 2026 at 6:54 am

I do find that I have chosen a side before I read the details of an article. The other day I came across an ad for “Honest History” and was immediately skeptical about what angle they were promoting as honest. I emotionally react when certain names are used, I feel anger about certain parties’ choices, and I have to work hard to see both sides of an issue.

Reply
Kortney Garrison says:

March 30, 2026 at 5:34 pm

We got a community newspaper and the top headline was very inflammatory. And my 8th grader was duly inflamed! But then we started asking questions and looking for specifics beyond the sweeping headline that made everything seem dire. He was able to take a step back and think as he read.

Reply

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