On Serena and Emotional Control

Humans have a love/hate relationship with emotion.
Sometimes our “emotions get the best of us”, and sometimes we’re supposed to “play with passion”.  Sometimes we’re supposed to “listen to our heart” and sometimes we’re supposed to “not let our heart cloud our mind.”  Emotions lead us to the most enthralling moments of our life, and they lead us to our most dejecting moments as well.  Whether we’re being lead toward ecstasy or embarrassment, emotions often exert their influence without our conscious control, particularly when we are in a “hot-state”.  The interesting questions from a behavioral science perspective are if, when, and how we can exert cognitive control over emotion’s influence on our behavior.
In the case of Serena’s recent eruption on the Tennis court at the US Open, the question is also how much control can we expect people to exert over their emotions in high pressure, high stress situations.

You could see the anger radiating out of her head, bending the air around her like a mirage in the desert. Usually, Serena can channel her rage into something positive. This time, it was her downfall. – Greg Garber

Psychological science tells us that when our resources are depleted we have less ability to control our behavior. Certainly, we’ve all experienced this either at work, at home or on the recreational sports field. When our emotions are running high, we necessarily have less cognitive resources accessible and thus we have less conscious control over our behavior, and we act in ways we later regret.

“Last night everyone could truly see the passion I have for my job. Now that I have had time to gain my composure, I can see that while I don’t agree with the unfair line call, in the heat of battle I let my passion and emotion get the better of me and as a result handled the situation poorly.” – Serena Williams

Serena is not alone in this thought or experience. In fact, it has been popular in the press for the past two days to point other public examples of people demonstrating remarkable lack of cognitive control when aroused into a “hot-state” (see Joe Wilson and Kanye West). But certainly, this behavior is not relegated to the realm of high-profile public personalities. Certainly, these impulses are in all of us. How many times have you ‘hit the send button’ on an email that you later regretted?
Further, hot-states aren’t limited to just negative emotions like anger. Hot-states encompass positive arousal as well, and when we’re in positively aroused states we also act in ways that we might not if we were “more composed” (think of the millions of teens that impulsively send texts that are a little too ‘gushing’ to a potential love interest).
Marketers know and practice these principles of hot-states routinely. Arousing consumers into hot-states induces much greater behavioral change than simply listing a set of reasons to buy a product. For example, with football season upon us, I’ve recently been inundated with exposure to a McDonald’s Angus 1/3 pounder commercial that shows a big, beefy, cheeseburger moving toward and away from the screen in high definition as if it is just about to enter my mouth. Admittedly, this has put me in a positive approach emotion hot-state and on several occasions this week I’ve nearly pulled into the golden arches drive-through to get my hands on one of those burgers. Fortunately, for my diet, I’ve been able to exert some cognitive control (so far) and I’ve driven past.
Indeed, we are pushed and pulled in and out of positive and negative hot-states all day long. In our interactions with our colleagues, in our meetings with our clients, in our communications with our friends, family and co-workers, by the constant stream of marketing messages that envelops us as we try to navigate our worlds, in all of these ways we are perpetually effected emotionally by these forces. We do our best to make conscious deliberate choices, but human decision making simply doesn’t work that way. Humans are emotional and sometimes our emotions “get the best of us”.
But here is the essential insight: humans do not react emotionally to things they do not care about. You can bet that if you’re reacting emotionally toward something, you care about it, you place value on it. Emotions are a divining rod for humans to focus in on what is most important to them in their environment in that moment. The rub is that we may value things in the short-term (e.g. the temporary satisfaction of an angry release, a 1/3 pound  bacon cheeseburger) that are inconsistent with our long-term values (e.g. being a gentle, warm and compassionate individual, maintaining a healthy weight). That’s the dilemma with hot-states and it is also what makes us beautifully and uniquely human. The battle between our cold, cognitive, deliberate choices and our rare, throbbing emotions is the essence of the human condition.
So where does that leave us on Serena? First, shouldn’t we recognize the very comfortable position we are in of being able to publicly judge another human who has her life on display for us? Let’s keep that in mind, and rather than criticize, reflect inward and ask ourselves what we can learn from this, how can Serena be a teacher to us all to act in ways that are consistent with our long-term values.

“I think the whole point of learning from your mistakes is not to do the same thing,” Serena Williams said. “I definitely would, I think, have a more professional way of voicing my opinion … I want to get another bad line call so I can get some more practice and see how I do. That would be awesome. OK, this is my one moment here. Yeah, so I probably would even smile.” – Serena Williams

Psychological science would say that Serena has it right. If we want to live in a way that is consistent with our long-term values, our best chance at overriding in-the-moment arousal, is to have practiced our desired behavior repetitively.
So which is it, do we love our emotions or do we hate them?  What does it mean to let your “passion and emotion get the better” of you? What would life be without emotion?