ETR (Emotional Theory of Rationality): a new emotional paradigm

Historically, the emotions they have been a “cumbersome” element in research on human cognitive abilities and behavior.

Some researchers have defined them as “noise”, which constantly interferes with really important processes, such as attention, cognition, consciousness or decision making.

Why are emotions important in therapy?

In recent decades, however, the importance of emotions has been gaining ground, finding its own place within the field of psychology and neurosciences. Currently it is commonly accepted that we cannot understand the complexity of the human psyche without taking into account emotions and their relationship with other executive capacities.

However, we still do not fully understand these relationships, nor do we have models that allow us to integrate them naturally.

These limitations in our knowledge are caused by two main factors. The first is the fact that emotional experiences are subjective phenomena that can hardly be scientifically evaluated in all their complexity; the second is the need to address its functionality within an evolutionary context, reasoning its existence within the milestones that have defined us as a species and as individuals.

ETR (Emotional Theory of Rationality): what is it?

Recently, a new paradigm called ETR (Emotional Theory of Rationality, Garcés and Finkel 2019) has provided an original approach that allows us to address these knowledge gaps from a different perspective.

This new approach is based on the fact that every living being, in order to survive, is subjected to a series of constraints that force you to develop a fine balance between the skills you acquire and the energy and resources needed to keep them.

This means that fundamental physical laws, along with evolutionary and adaptive processes sustained over long periods of time, have configured the nervous system as a highly optimized information processing mechanism that allows the development of responses that facilitate the effective and efficient interaction of living beings with the environment, thus improving their chances of survival and reproduction.

As part of the optimization mechanism, due to uncertainties about the characteristics and simultaneity of the stimuli that an individual will face, evolution has designated the emotional system as responsible for carrying out three functions main:

• Implement innate responses broad spectrum that allow exploration and quickly address new or unexpected stimuli for which there is no specific response.
• Activate cognitive systems, responsible for the search and development of new responses, only on demand, thus improving response time and resource consumption.
• Assess the criticality of the stimuli to be resolved, modulating care to allow priority access to the most advanced and scarce resources, if concurrence occurs with other processes.

Its influence on cognitive systems

According to the ETR model, the emotional system is always active and controls attention, which in turn is in charge of regulating and prioritizing the access of information to cognitive systems.

Cognitive systems develop responses modulate emotional responses, thus closing a circular, complementary, dynamic and interdependent architecture. According to this model, emotion and cognition do not compete, but collaborate and complement each other. each other to achieve a more efficient way of solving the challenges faced by the individual.

This new approach clearly describes and substantiates the relationship that exists between the emotional mechanisms, attention and cognitive abilities, which in turn modulate the emotional response, thus shutting down the system and defining its global dynamics.

Thus, within this new paradigm, emotions would be the element for optimizing brain functioning, allowing understand how and why they are the ones that regulate the relationships of the rest of the executive functions, conditioning their dynamics and, in occasions, generating behavioral phenomena far from the socially established ideal, but very close to the evolutionary ideal of survival.

Likewise, the model opens the door to incorporate the somatic component, associated with emotional responses, as a new stimulus. that enters to be processed by the system, generating dynamics that give rise to very diverse mental and behavioral phenomena and complexes.

Applications of this new model

This new model has important implications for explaining these psychological and behavioral phenomena that until now could only be described. It also makes it possible to identify specific factors that can help improve the approach and understanding of these phenomena., having important applications in areas such as education, motivation, decision-making or the explanation of certain non-adaptive behaviors, among many others.

At the organizational level, this new model is already being used to develop personal skills related to adaptation to change, creativity and innovation, as well as the improvement of relationships interpersonal, the leadership or the restructuring of the organizations themselves.

Bibliographic references:

• Garcés, M., & Finkel, L. (2019). Emotional Theory of Rationality. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2019.00011