Understand How Emotions and Perceptions Shape Judgement

(Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TCvI0szvJaQ)

This is Session 1 of a 4 session journey exploring 16 behavioral science concepts that take emotional intelligence to the next level. In this first session, we look at how emotions and perceptions shape judgement, and how leaders can work with emotion more intelligently in themselves, in others, and across teams.

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Slides & Transcript

Welcome

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining. As you know I do organization development, and for me, OD is about fixing those funny things that happen in the organization, one conversation at a time.

In fact, this course, 16 Behavioral Science Concepts that take Emotional Intelligence to the Next Level, is about those funny things.

We all sense when something funny is happening in the room, right? The problem is, it’s so hard to put your finger on what’s going on.

The purpose of this course is to help you find better explanations to those moments. And the leaders who can recognize and decode that funny thing that is happening beneath the surface, can make life easier for the people around them. I believe that is what leading with emotional intelligence at the next level can look like.

Today in our first session we are going to explore four behavioral science concepts that help us understand how emotions and perceptions shape judgement.

In each of the following monthly sessions, I will introduce three more concepts. Our second session will focus on framing decisions and designing choices. The third will explore using time and trade-offs to your advantage. The fourth will look at deciding better together. We will then close with a fifth session that brings all 16 concepts together.

Understand how emotions and perceptions shape judgement

Okay, so session 1, understand how emotions and perceptions shape judgement.

Concept 1, the affect heuristic is a mental shortcut where we quickly give a good-or-bad tag in sizing up a situation. It’s about our tendency to use our intuition, “How do I feel about this?”, instead of objectively weighing the pros and cons of the situation.

Concept 2, integral and incidental emotions is about where the feeling came from. Some feelings belong to the decision in front of you, for example, “I feel this investment is risky,” and other emotions come from somewhere else but spill over into the present situation, like feeling grumpy after a crowded train ride on a rainy day. They are two categories of emotional state that influence judgement.

Concept 3, the hot-cold empathy gap, is about being a fair and level-headed leader when emotions are running high, and here’s the complex part, it’s not just about staying cool when things get hot, but it’s about foresight. We are surprisingly bad at predicting how our judgement changes in a different emotional state, both in our own future selves and in other people.

Concept 4, emotional contagion, is about the moods we bring into the room, and how it affects collective judgement.
From the individual snap reaction to where the feeling came from, from how judgement shifts across emotional states to the mood we bring into the room, let’s understand how emotions and perceptions shape our judgement, and what to do about it.

Affect Heuristic

Let’s take a look at our first concept, the affect heuristic.

When we assess a situation, person, or idea, we rarely begin with a completely neutral, rational analysis. Our intuition quickly pulls a good-or-bad tag from what researchers call our “affect pool,” a reservoir of emotional associations built from memory and experience.

Something may feel reassuring because it comes from a trusted brand. A person may seem trustworthy because they’re wearing a nice suit. Or you may immediately brush off a product proposal because it has yet another “AI” in its name.

This happens before we deliberately weigh the facts. It is part of what Daniel Kahneman calls System 1 thinking. System 1 is fast, automatic, and intuitive.

Instead of asking the more difficult question, “What are the actual risks and benefits?”, we often answer the easier one: “How do I feel about this?”

This shortcut is fast and often useful. Intuition can be surprisingly accurate. Experienced leaders regularly sense that something is not quite right before they can explain why.

But it is also easily skewed by mood, past experiences, and preconceived notions. The same proposal may look more attractive when we are relaxed and optimistic, and more threatening when we are tired or irritated. We’ll look at this more closely next, when we discuss integral and incidental emotions.

It can be uncomfortable to acknowledge, but we also need to be aware of prejudice. Earlier encounters, stereotypes, and assumptions can trigger unwarranted negative judgements before we have properly considered the person or situation in front of us.

Strong feelings can also overpower data. When something feels good, we tend to see more benefit and less risk. When it feels bad, we tend to see more risk and less benefit.

This helps explain why firm views sometimes persist even after the evidence changes. The emotional judgement may have come first, with the reasoning built around it afterwards. That is when we need to activate System 2. System 2 is slower and more effortful. It deliberately weighs facts, alternatives, risks, benefits, probabilities, and costs.

So, what can we do?

The first step is actually a step zero: catch yourself when you notice a judgement forming unusually quickly, strongly, or emotionally. That is your signal to pause and bring System 2 into the process.

Then, name the feeling. Ask: “What are you feeling about this?” Naming the feeling brings the initial reaction into conscious awareness, making it easier to examine.

Next, separate feeling from fact. Ask: “What data supports this view?” “What evidence might challenge it?” “What are the possible outcomes, risks, benefits, and costs?” The aim is not to prove that the initial feeling was wrong. It may be pointing towards something important. The aim is to test whether the judgement still holds after System 2 has examined it.

Finally, ask again: “Now that you know this, has your assessment changed?”

The core insight of the affect heuristic is not that we should dismiss System 1 intuition. It can be helpful and, in the right conditions, highly accurate. The point is to recognize the crucial moments when we need to slow down and activate System 2. Our feelings can provide valuable information, but they should not automatically become the final verdict.

Integral vs. Incidental Emotions

Behavioral economics and decision science are a big focus at business schools like INSEAD, which got me interested in the field for my own practice as well. What fascinates me is the core idea of these fields: emotions shape our judgement. This simple statement is anything but simple.

Take integral and incidental emotions. On closer inspection, there are two different categories of emotional state that influence our judgement, and we are often surprisingly unaware of the difference. Both integral and incidental emotions shape our judgement, but they come from different places.

Integral emotions arise directly from the decision or situation in front of us. They are the emotions attached to the choice itself, such as the anxiety you feel about the risk in an investment decision you are about to make, or the excitement of a new job opportunity.

Incidental emotions are carried in from somewhere else. They have nothing to do with the situation in front of us, but they spill over into it. Perhaps you arrive at work feeling grumpy after a crowded train ride on a rainy day. Perhaps you’ve just had a difficult telephone call. You may be tired, hungry, jet-lagged, or worried about something at home. Or perhaps you have just received some very good news and arrive feeling unusually upbeat and confident. That positive mood may make a risky proposal seem more attractive, or lead you to underestimate what could go wrong. Those emotions are real, but they do not belong to the decision now in front of you. Even so, you could still be impacted by them.

The distinction matters because the two kinds of emotion need to be handled differently.

Integral emotions serve a functional and strategic purpose. They can act as useful signals, prompting us to slow down and examine the facts, risks, and benefits of the decision in front of us. The anxiety about a risky contract is exactly what makes you slow down and read the fine print. The flutter of excitement about a deal should prompt you to check that you’re evaluating it objectively.

Incidental emotions, on the other hand, are highly susceptible to misattribution. Someone in an incidental state of anger may unconsciously carry that aggressive appraisal into an unrelated business meeting, becoming overly critical. Or someone still elated after receiving good news may become more optimistic and risk-tolerant than the situation warrants. The emotion has spilled over, and we have attached it to the wrong source.

Recognizing that an emotion is incidental rather than integral is the primary way to keep it from skewing our judgement. The trouble is, incidental emotions are hard to detect. Mood is genuinely hard to read in ourselves. We can be grumpy, tense, tired, or wired without registering it at all. It is often only when we deliberately turn our attention towards the mood that we notice it, and even then it can be hard to name. It is not unusual to feel low and have no real idea why.

And brushing the feeling aside does not make it go away. We tell ourselves to move on, we switch to the next task, but that low-grade mood stays in the background, quietly impacting the next judgement, and the one after that.

You might think this is simply about mood, but it can have significant implications for leadership performance. I do Hogan Assessments, and sometimes this pattern shows up as a serious leadership concern. A leader may make a harsh remark or an unfair judgement during a bad moment and then move on. The person affected may carry the consequences for months. What was temporary for the leader can become lasting damage for someone else. And these things tend not to be isolated incidents. Over time, people begin to see a pattern. They become more guarded, stop bringing difficult issues forward, and warn others to be careful around the leader. Eventually, the reputation catches up with them, undermining trust, influence, and their ability to lead effectively.

So, what can we do?

The first move is to pause before a decision that matters, and name the mood. “What am I carrying into this decision?”

Next, locate the source. “Does this feeling belong to the situation in front of me, or has it come from somewhere else?”

If it came from somewhere else, ask the critical question, “If this mood or feeling were gone tomorrow, would I still make the same call?” If the honest answer is no, or even “I’m not sure,” then it’s a signal that you shouldn’t push through. Create some distance, and try resetting.

Take a break. Have some tea, a snack. Go for a short walk. Sleep on the decision. If the decision cannot wait, ask someone who is steadier at the moment and ask them to test your perspective, or hand the decision to them. That is not weakness; that is emotional intelligence in action.

You can offer the same to others, gently. When you sense someone is deciding from a mood rather than the merits, you might say, “if whatever happened earlier weren’t bothering you, would you still decide this way?” It gives them the same chance to separate the two, without feeling judged.

The aim here is not to become someone who never has a bad day. The aim is to notice when a bad day is quietly creeping into your judgement, because your team has to live with the decision long after your mood has lifted. Noticing when a feeling has wandered in from elsewhere is a small discipline, but it has a long reach, and it is one of the quieter ways of looking after the people who depend on your judgement.

Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

Our third concept is a cognitive bias that applies across time and across people.

The hot-cold empathy gap describes how badly we misjudge what we will think or do in a state we are not currently experiencing.

Think about grocery shopping while hungry. When you are calm and full, you buy what is on the list. When you are hungry, you fill the cart with whatever looks good and come home with things you did not need.

Behavioral economist George Loewenstein, who developed this idea, describes hunger, fear, anger, stress, and exhaustion as visceral states that can take us over while they last, then fade surprisingly quickly from memory once they pass.

There are three directions in which this matters for leaders.

The first is cold-to-hot. We often plan in a calm, fresh state, picturing a clean run. From that state, we assume that our future selves, and the people who will have to implement the plan, will remain equally focused, patient, and rational. What we underestimate is the tired, distracted, and pressured version of ourselves who will actually have to deliver. That is one reason plans fall apart: we fail to empathize with our own future selves.

The second direction, hot-to-cold, explains the overreaction we later regret. A spreadsheet error is discovered during a final budget approval meeting in front of stakeholders. An internal team email is accidentally sent to a client. A build breaks, or a deployment fails. In that moment, the incident can feel existential. The leader may overreact, shouting “Get it fixed!”, and immediately reprimand the person in the hot seat. At the time, the response may feel justified as decisive leadership. Later, once we have calmed down, we see that the situation was probably manageable without the exaggerated reaction, and without the damage to trust, confidence, and reputation that came with it.

The same overreaction can show up in management decisions. One breach, and every system is locked down. One bad hire, and the process gains three more approval gates. One public failure, and everyone gets a new policy. These are often hot-state decisions made when the fear is loudest. It’s the same pattern as the hungry shopper, except the consequences now fall on people and organizations.

The third direction is interpersonal, and this can be particularly costly for leaders.

When we are cold and the person in front of us is hot, stressed, afraid, overloaded, we cannot feel the force shaping their behavior. So we explain their behavior as character, “they’re difficult,” “they’re lazy,” instead of context, “they’re under real pressure.” A temporary state gets misread as a fixed trait.

And it runs the other way too: a leader who is hot assumes everyone shares the urgency, and reads a calm colleague’s composure as indifferent or uncommitted.

This is why “be more empathetic” is not enough. The hot-cold empathy gap, our difficulty accessing a hot emotional state when cold and vice versa, is a persistent cognitive bias. We need something more practical than hoping we will suddenly become wiser and more empathetic when the pressure arrives.

Anyone can make a good decision when they are calm. The real difference is whether a leader can still decide well when the pressure is on. And again, this is not simply about keeping your cool. It is about anticipating how to make a good decision in situations where keeping your cool may be difficult.

So, what can we do?

The most practical tool is an “if-then” plan. Rather than relying on a general intention such as “I will stay calm” or “I will respond with empathy,” an if-then plan identifies a likely trigger and a predetermined response: “If this happens, then I will do that.”

If I discover someone’s error, then I will breathe for one minute before responding. If an email provokes me, then I will draft a reply and wait until the next morning before sending it. The calm self leaves instructions for the pressured self.
This works because it does not depend on becoming wiser while in a hot state.

Meanwhile, build in slack. Add buffers, guardrails, and more time than the ideal scenario appears to require. And plan for interruptions, fatigue, mistakes, and bad days.

Finally, consider state before character. Before making a strong judgement about another person, consider what may be behind their behavior. Ask: “What pressure, emotion, or circumstance may be shaping what I am seeing?”
This does not mean excusing harmful behavior or removing accountability. It means making sure that we understand the context before turning a temporary response into a permanent judgement about the person.

The core insight of the hot-cold empathy gap is, again, not simply about staying cool when things get hot. It is that judgement changes with our state, and we are poor at predicting that change.

Good leadership here is less about heroic self-control in the moment. It is about foresight: preparing responses, buffers, and safeguards before the heat arrives.

Emotional Contagion

Our last concept for today is emotional contagion. The basic idea is straightforward: it is the unconscious spread of emotion between people through facial expression, tone, posture, movement, pace, breathing, and attention.

What we want to spend time on is understanding its impact and how to manage it, because one person’s emotional state can quickly become the team’s climate, shaping whether the environment drains the team or helps it thrive.

Shared mood shapes the group’s judgement. It influences what the group notices and what it overlooks. In an anxious group, people may become highly alert to risks but overlook opportunities. In an irritated group, a neutral comment may be interpreted as criticism. In a cynical group, new ideas may be dismissed before they receive serious consideration. In an overexcited group, confidence may rise so quickly that nobody wants to point out what could go wrong.

This is why emotional contagion is not simply about whether people are feeling good or bad. The more important question is whether the emotion is helping or overwhelming the group’s ability to think.

Some emotions need to be contained. Panic can narrow attention and encourage reactive decisions. Cynicism can spread resignation. Irritation can turn disagreement into personal conflict. Unchecked excitement can make a group complacently optimistic, moving ahead without testing its assumptions. Containing these emotions do not mean suppressing them. It means preventing them from taking over the conversation and becoming the only lens through which the group sees the situation.

Other emotions can be cultivated. Calm can help people remain open when uncertainty is high. Curiosity can turn disagreement into exploration. Realistic confidence can give people the courage to act without pretending success is guaranteed. Concern can focus attention on something important, while a shared sense of purpose can help people stay engaged when the work becomes difficult.

These are not just niceties or simply pleasant emotions. They serve a functional purpose. They help teams maintain balanced judgement and take purposeful action.

Leaders are especially important because they are emotional amplifiers. People pay close attention to a leader’s signals, particularly when the situation is uncertain. A sign of anxiety can be interpreted as evidence that something is wrong. A dismissive remark can give others permission to become cynical. Visible calm can reassure the group that the situation is manageable. This does not mean controlling how everyone feels. It means recognizing that what you bring into the room affects what becomes possible inside it.

So, what can we do? I’ve grouped my suggestions into three areas: manage your own emotional contagion, manage the emotional contagion of others, and create an emotional climate people can think inside.

First, manage your own emotional contagion by conducting a mood audit. Before joining a meeting, pause and ask, “What am I bringing into this room?” You may be frustrated by an earlier conversation, anxious about a deadline, or excited about an idea you want approved. The feeling may be understandable, but noticing it helps prevent incidental emotion from spilling into the room unchecked.

Then ask, “Is this emotional state useful for what the group needs to do?”

If the group needs to examine risks carefully, urgency may help, but panic will not. If the group needs to generate ideas, curiosity may help, but early enthusiasm for one solution may steer the discussion too quickly.

Using your emotional influence deliberately does not mean performing an emotion you do not feel. It means reading what energy the situation needs and drawing on the emotions already present in you that can support it.

The next practice is simple: do not text what needs a voice. Written messages remove tone, facial expression, pacing, posture, and immediate response. When those cues are missing, people fill in the gaps themselves. A short message written in frustration can create hours of anxiety or speculation. When a situation needs nuance, reassurance, or repair, move to voice, video, or a face-to-face conversation. Use a channel that gives the emotion enough context.

And when you cannot reset your mood, say so. You might say, “I’m carrying some frustration from an earlier meeting. It isn’t about this team, but you may hear it in my voice.” Naming your state prevents people from having to guess. Otherwise, they may assume that your tension is directed at them.

Second, manage other people’s emotional contagion.

Protect the group from being dominated by the loudest voice in the room. The intensity of the most vocal person can quickly take over, leaving others with little headspace to form their own views. Slow the pace and make room. Say, “I can hear how strongly you feel. Let’s also hear what others are seeing.” Protect independent thinking.

When emotions begin to escalate, interrupt the pattern without shaming anyone. Telling people to “calm down” usually dismisses the emotion. A simple statement such as, “The energy feels tense. Let’s take a short break,” can help the group reset without becoming overwhelmed.

When someone repeatedly spreads cynicism, anxiety, irritation, or resignation, treat it as a coaching opportunity rather than reprimanding them publicly. Speak with them privately about what others may be picking up and the effect it is having on the group. More importantly, listen to their story. Their cynicism, for example, may reflect a concern that has not been heard.

Finally, strengthen positive contagion. You do not have to carry the right emotional state alone; others are resourceful too. A calm, curious colleague can steady the room, while a level-headed team member can surface an overlooked risk. Notice and name genuine examples of curiosity, courage, calm, cooperation, and progress. This is not about manufacturing positivity. It is about reinforcing the emotional patterns that help the group function well.

Ultimately, managing and harnessing emotional contagion means creating an emotional climate people can think inside. That means containing emotional dynamics that overwhelm thinking and judgement, while cultivating emotional energy that supports dialogue, collaboration, and thoughtful action.

As a leader, you can help people feel safe to say what matters, remain open to one another, and think well together.

Why a fresh take on emotional intelligence with behavioral science

Let’s bring it all together. I want to step back and explain why I think emotional intelligence deserves a fresh look through the lens of behavioral science.

Emotional intelligence has so much untapped potential as a leadership practice. Yet it is still sometimes treated as something mainly for the “nice” leaders, as like it sits at the softer edge of leadership rather than at the center of judgement, performance, and relationships.

What we have explored today points to a different perspective.

Emotions are information. They tell us something about what we notice, what feels important, what we fear, what we value, and how we are interpreting the situation in front of us. They also give us information about what may be happening between people and across the wider group.

That creates an information advantage, for the emotionally intelligent leader. The leader who can read the emotion, instead of being run by it, is simply working with more information than the leader who cannot. They are not only listening to the arguments being made or looking at the data on the presentation. They are also noticing the snap reaction, questioning where the feeling came from, anticipating how judgement may change under pressure, and paying attention to what emotions are spreading through the team.

I think one of the limitations of traditional emotional intelligence education is that it can feel aspirational, ambiguous, and “soft.” We’re told to be more self-aware, regulate our emotions, show empathy, and build better relationships. That’s good advice, but they’re not necessarily helpful for what to look in to in a difficult moment or what to do differently once we notice something.

What behavioral science does is that it brings greater precision and tangibility to emotional intelligence.
The concepts that we studied today, the affect heuristic, integral and incidental emotions, the hot-cold empathy gap, and emotional contagion give us a more specific way to understand what may be happening. They provide patterns we can recognize and practical countermeasures we can use.

Know what to look out for. Catch it when it appears in yourself, in another person, or in the group. Then practice what to do differently.

My hope is that this makes emotional intelligence feel less like an abstract leadership ideal and more like a concrete skill that can be developed through attention and repeated practice.

Working Intelligently with Emotions

So, work intelligently with emotions.

Why. Because emotions are information. They help us notice what matters. A team member’s concern may draw our attention to something the rest of the group has overlooked. Curiosity may signal an opportunity.

Second, emotional intelligence is relational and collective. We influence, and are influenced by, the emotional climate around us. What this means is that emotional intelligence is not just a one-on-one interpersonal capability. It is also a capability for leading groups and teams.

The third point is what I call the lighthouse effect. When emotions run high, people look to the leader who is most steady, grounded, and reliable.

Like a lighthouse in stormy weather, the leader cannot make the wind, rain and waves go away. But they can provide orientation. They can help people understand what is happening, what matters now, and how the group can move forward without being overwhelmed. And those who demonstrate this capability consistently, command leadership.

How. How to work intelligently with emotions. Three simple steps: know, catch, practice.

Know what to look out for. And this is why, for starters, I am teaching you 16 behavioral science concepts, or cognitive biases, to look out for. I am providing you with the language to put your finger on that strange feeling you’re sensing.

Catch. Notice it in yourself, in another person, and in the dynamics of the group. This “noticing” is what I describe as the spirit of “kizuki” in my pedagogy, which I’ll paste the article in chat (https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/15502/coach-takeshi-pedagogy). It’s an incredibly important cognitive meta-skill.

Finally, practice the if-then countermeasures and alternative behaviors you have ready. Ask another question. Test the assumption. Take a pause. Slow the conversation. Delay the decision. Ask for other thoughts. Name what is happening without shaming anyone.

Today, we explored four concepts that help us practice this process.

The affect heuristic helps catch ourselves turning a good-or-bad feeling into an immediate judgement. It helps us activate System 2 thinking when it matters.

Integral and incidental emotions help us ask where a feeling comes from. Does it belong to the situation in front of us, or have we carried it in from somewhere else?

The hot-cold empathy gap reminds us that judgement changes with our emotional and visceral state. It helps us prepare for pressure, build in safeguards, and consider other people’s state before making a character judgement on them.

And we learned from emotional contagion that emotions spread and become part of the environment in which the group thinks. It asks us to manage what we bring into the room, respond constructively to what others bring, and create an emotional climate people can think inside.

From an aspirational practice to a tangible practice, I hope I was successful in getting you excited again with the potential of emotional intelligence.

The problem is not emotion, but unexamined emotion.

Funny things happen in organizations. A usually reasonable leader snaps at a team member, saying, “Just do it,” and then shuts down their resistance with, “Because I say so.” A normally calm and friendly colleague suddenly explodes with rage in front of everyone over a seemingly benign event. A team executes a task without questioning its validity because “it came from above.” Everyone rolls their eyes and thinks, “Here we go again,” when their leader enters the meeting room excitedly and says, “I’ve got a great idea! This should change everything…”

The problem is not a lack of rationality. The problem is not emotion either. It is unexamined emotion that becomes the problem.

When emotions go unexamined and unaddressed, we make poor judgements, damage trust and relationships, and create a difficult climate where people cannot speak honestly, think clearly, or act together coherently.

You can be the person who catches the snap reaction, pausing before a hot-state decision. And the one that helps the group regain clarity to think well together.

I hope today has given you a fresh appreciation of the potential of emotional intelligence, and the motivation to continue this five-session journey with me.

Thank you.

About the Series

16 Behavioral Science Concepts Most Leaders Were Never Taught

Taking Emotional Intelligence to the next level | A Four (+1) Part Series

Business schools, my alma mater INSEAD included, give serious attention to behavioral science today, taught through behavioral economics and decision science. The field has produced two Nobel Prizes in economics in the last twenty-five years, Daniel Kahneman in 2002 and Richard Thaler in 2017. Yet it has not made its way into mainstream leadership education with much effectiveness. The closest crossover is Emotional Intelligence, which earned its place in leadership development because it translated psychology into language leaders could use. Behavioral science has not had that translation done for it. Most leaders, even very senior ones, have never been taught it in any structured way.

This is a focus area for me. The premise I am working with is that behavioral science is most approachable for leaders when it is offered as an extension of Emotional Intelligence rather than a separate discipline. EI gave leaders permission to take feelings seriously in decisions. Behavioral science adds the mechanics: how emotions, perceptions, framing, time, and group dynamics actually shape what gets decided in the room.

This Dōjō series is my first attempt at that approach in a teaching format. I have selected 16 concepts and grouped them under four umbrellas, one per session, with a fifth session for application. The choice of concepts, the grouping, the sequence: all of it is a learning experiment. I am running this as a free Dōjō session to see how this lands and get feedback. Leaders, people professionals, fellow coaches and professors, come join.

The Four Parts + Wrap-Up Session

• Wrap-up Session (November 2026, sign-up opens after Part 4) — A working session, not a recap, where we will run through the four lenses from the previous sessions on current leadership situations, a decision, a stuck initiative, a team dynamic, that participants will bring to the session.