David Simoes-Brown, CEO of 100%Open, tells us why we should trust our feelings when it comes to important decisions.

Things mentioned in this podcast

• David Simoes-Brown, CEO of 100%Open
• Categorising basic emotions

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. And also with us this week, we have our special guest, David Simoes-Brown, CEO of 100% Open. And this week, we're discussing emotions and decision making. Nick, if you could kick us off by introducing us, perhaps, to David.

Sure. Well, I've known David for several years now. And we, his company, 100% Open, who are an innovation consultancy, and our company, Aleph Insights, who, as you know, we do decision support and analytical consultancy. We've worked together on a few projects, including quite a major one, helping to establish the Defence and Security Accelerator, which is an organization within NMOD, which is there to try and improve the way that it innovates. The interesting thing about working with David, I think one of the reasons why I think it works so well is that, you know, we, as a company, we tend to approach things in a very analytical way. And watching David in action, for me, was really instructive. I think he's got a gift at being able to take the things that customers are sort of saying they want, which, you know, can sound a bit boring when you've got an NMOD person saying, well, we want this organization to do X, Y and Z. And he would take the things that they'd said and sort of basically almost represent it to them. But in a way, that was much more exciting. And which really kind of, you know, it was, in a way, just sort of restating what they were saying, but in a way that really made you want to go and do it. You know, and I think the interesting thing, seeing him in action in general, in 100% Open, is that, and I think knowing his history as, you know, as having worked in marketing, that he's got a really good grasp of emotion. And, you know, how it intersects with innovation. And, you know, one of the things that I'm aware of is that we tend really to approach problems in a very analytical and dry way. And we haven't really discussed emotion and decision making, which is why I'd like to like, which is why I wanted David to come on.

So we'll come on to exactly that emotion and decision making and how what David does ties in with that. But first of all, can you tell me, educate me a little bit more about 100% Open and what it does, and maybe even your background before founding the company, David?

Thanks, Fraser. Yes, good to be here. So I'm basically a recovering adman. So I spent 20 years or so in global advertising agencies, looking at communication strategy, mainly. So what do we say to people to persuade them to stuff and how they're going to react? And how do we wrap that up in a creative vehicle that's that's kind of intrusive, but on brand. So that was a very interesting job for a number of years. And prior to that, I was in a punk band called The Plastic Bags. And well, I won't go through all my careers, but this is career number seven, I think. So we co-founded 100% Open almost 10 years ago, can you believe it? So there must be some mileage in the notion of open innovation, which is essentially connecting the suits with the sneakers. So our clients are suits like Ford and UBS and Lego, in big companies that have trouble innovating easily and quickly. And we connect them with startups with passionate researchers, with people with amazing talents and technology around the globe. So we're kind of intermediaries, if you like.

Great. So, Nick, maybe you can kick us off with a question. I think you've probably got something burning stuff that you want to ask David. And I guess starting us off with this, this this area of

emotions and decision making. Well, one of the things I mentioned that David has been for, I think, as long as I've known him, allegedly writing a book about emotions. And I know that he's, yeah, he's just showing me that there is some of it. He showed me a paragraph or two, which could, as far as I know, be all there is. But he's never in the right mood to write it. Exactly. No, I think I think it is that like, like, essentially, actually, it's about sort of how consciously you are aware of, you know, emotion when you're interacting with these companies, you know, particularly the big ones where there can be, you know, it can be quite a deadening environment. And, and, and, you know, how, how it is you go about saying, well, actually, you know, this, that's not conducive to innovation, if we're going to try and get something to happen here, and what kinds of things you do to try and change the way that people are feeling.

Okay, so behind all this is a sort of observation, having had two daughters, that we're, when we're younger, and teenage and pre teenage, we don't have any issues with expressing our emotions. They don't get in the way. That's what you're for, in fact, as a teenager, is to express your emotions. But as soon as you get into the world of work, these things are sort of kicked out of you or suppressed in some way. And it's, I'm not suggesting that work suppresses you, I'm, I'm suggesting that you kind of conform to a cultural norm, where, where emotional expression is seen as kind of somehow childish, or immature, or irrelevant to, to the world of work. And so I think that on the sort of basic level, as we grow up, we lose our emotional literacy, because if you stop expressing emotions, you stop kind of using them in a curious way. And that's bad, because that makes us less than human. And as I'll develop the argument a little bit later, I hope it enables, it enables us, it disables us from making decisions in the way that the human being is designed to. So, so the first thought in response to your question is that the world of work is a weird one, and adulthood is a weird one. Because we, having gone through this, this wonderful flowering of emotional literacy, as youths and teenagers, you, you kind of spend the rest of your life thinking that emotional intelligence is the suppression of emotions. Whereas, in fact, I, I would contend that emotional intelligence is the exact opposite of that, which is the encouragement, recognition, categorization of emotions.

I want to come in with Chris, you've probably got a question for David, but just before you do, as you were speaking, one thing occurred to me, David, which is something I've often felt I've suffered from the last 10 years or so, is apart from male pattern baldness, there is that, right? It's not suffering. This is a kind of its own kind of flowering, but in a different way. No, is that, um, yeah, I would go off to work. And I behave myself. And you know, I get angry with people, but I keep it inside. And I, you know, and I behave, and I'm good. And I come home, and I meet my wife, and now with my kids as well. And it kind of just, and it kind of all comes out. And I feel the, you know, the I've often said this, that, you know, my work gets the best of me, my home life gets the worst of me in an emotional sense. Because I just sort of like, because this suppression that we've talked about. Anyway, that's just sort of, you know, just occurred to me as you were talking. But, um, but anyway, but, but, but, so what I guess, what you're saying very much makes sense to me. Chris, did you have a question?

Yeah, well, I suppose, for me, so I'm a massive stoic, when it comes to emotions, I see them as a, as a, as a hindrance to me personally, all the things you were talking about, you know, emotion being the enemy of reason, and you know, that, that things like deferred gratification, which are, you know, the bedrock of kind of, you know, middle class success and, and organisational success are kind of over, overpowered often by emotion, they get you to act in the here and now and not, not longer term. So, but I definitely acknowledge that the emotions are a tool, right? And that the, the, the ability to understand other people's emotions, and not necessarily manipulate them, but work with them and exploit them, I suppose, is definitely of value. So I suppose I'm interested in what, what I'm missing out on. And there's probably, you know, it's probably something that is personality dependent, I don't feel a great uprising of emotions. And that may be because I've been repressing them for, you know, 25 years or whatever. But so yeah, I'm interested in what it is I'm missing out on by viewing emotions as something that other people, that apply to other people that I can manipulate.

Where do I start? I think you're just English, I don't think you're weird. And, and of course, English people aren't, you know, the rest of the world. There's, there's lots of different approaches to how you express codify and channel emotions, the Japanese would be very different from the Portuguese, for example. So, so let's remember, we're English, and we're sort of aiming off, aiming off that particular trajectory. For me, it comes down to business empathy, which is a weird conjunction of words, almost oxymoronic. And in our work at 100% Open, it becomes really clear that you can't objectify a partner and look at some them as something to exploit, you have to look at the, you have to objectify the relationship between you and a partner. And it's so it's really hard to do that. Without understanding where they're coming from, where they're going to, and how they're feeling. So the best, the best, the companies that best conduct relationships outside of their borders, are people like GSK, the pharma company, who have a gang of people in Surrey who are dedicated to running collaborative relationships. And you may think the transaction is all about intellectual property, we're going to rent your stuff, we're going to help you scale it. But in fact, it's about people. And it's about what their hopes, dreams and desires are. And without this business empathy, you want is ill equipped to deal with business in the 21st century. Because it is all about collaboration.

Now, you've been, as you said, an ad man. What marketing gets a bad rap, though, precisely because it does try to do this. And now what's going on now is sort of, why do you think marketing deserves some of the stick it gets for, you know, trying to manipulate, you know, but at least to persuade us to be excited about things persuade us to feel emotions about things, so that we can be sold things. Is that is that a mischaracterization? Is that unfair?

No, I think it's fair game. It also stops you smoking and put seatbelts on you. And, you know, stops you from getting aid. So there's, there's, there's the yin and the yang of all of that stuff. No, it's about being human. So I think that's, well, it's a bit different now that mass media seem to have died. And it's more about, you know, who can influence your feelings on through social media and how over and covert that is, I would say in the modern context of media manipulation, the traditional mass media are more trustworthy and transparent than, than the world of the internet. But that may just be the old ad man talking. So I think that it is fair game. And consumers aren't just kind of like business partners, objects to be exploited, that it's a conversation. And if you ineptly try and manipulate consumers emotions, they will just reject your brand. So it's a high risk game, right? So if you're gonna do something, that is emotionally manipulative, take the Lloyd's Bank advertising, which has got lots of lovely black horses running around the screen that that succeed on a number of levels, tradition, grace, power, movement. It's just, it's really difficult to unpick all that stuff. You wouldn't say that is deliberately trying to get you to, you know, feel a certain way and therefore open a Lloyd's Bank account. It's not as sophisticated as that. So it is in a conversation between human beings or between advertiser and target audience that there should be a transaction of emotional content, just like there's a transaction of informational content. And why I got really interested in emotions was that transaction is impossible to plan, characterise and measure, because our emotional literacy at work, even in ad agencies is, is, is pathetic. So,

yeah, and I, it seems to me that it's hard to fake. And I, and I think one of the, the best defences of, of, of marketing was someone I was speaking to who worked for, worked in business development for a legal firm. And she said, you know, what it is, is trying to understand your, your customers. It's nothing more than that, right? It's trying to understand what it is and what they want. Business empathy. Right. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense to me.

But, but do you think so? So, I mean, there's, there's cognitive empathy, empathy, which is, which is knowing or understanding what the other person thinks, you know, perspective taking. And, and I think that's what you've talked about a bit. And then there's, you know, that actual emotional empathy, where you genuinely feel what the, what the other person is feeling, you know, so the way crying or laughter is contagious, where you actually take on the emotions of the other person. And that's, that's pretty, that's pretty wearing. I think that's generally seen to be, you know, quite emotionally tiring, right? You know, if you're always, if you're in disaster relief or something and you turn up and you, you can't turn off that sense of the misery of the other people, you know, it's, it's, you can't do your job anymore. And then there's sort of compassionate empathy of actually being moved to act and act in the interest of the, of the other party, because you're empathising in that way. Now, I think you've talked about the cognitive empathy, right? And the fact that you need to understand what levers to work on. And maybe that's my perspective, what levers to work on. You're still giving it a fairly psychopathic Chris Wragg style twist. Yeah. So you understand how to engage with that person in a way that is most productive, right? You know, that doesn't rub them up the wrong way and, and, and so on.

So a selling strategy. So car, car advertisers are notorious for this. They say, well, look at our specifications, lovely wheels, fantastic engine, amazing MPG, super, you know, and, and, and they're saying, well, we will persuade your left brain to buy this car through sheer weight of argument. And people, of course, buy cars for completely and utterly different reasons. All to do with the sexiness of it or the safety of it or the kind of emotional aura around particular, particular brands. So there's a, there's a sort of, I'm not, I'm not arguing for any kind of cognitive empathy because you can get that in terms of a business partnership by writing down what your aims, goals are and negotiating stuff. The trouble is processes like that don't give any weight to the real way we make decisions, which is our emotional circuits, if I may put it like that. So, so, and the more, the more one tries to kind of think about this, the less effective you are at doing it.

Yeah. So if you didn't construct it, you've kind of spoiled the magic as it were. But do you, do you think that there is a, there is a sense where you do need to have that emotional empathy where you are feeling what the other partner is feeling to some extent?

Well, I would start with one should start with oneself. Right. So it's unless you can really decode how you feel about a certain person or idea or company or situation, unless you, it's very difficult then to say, OK, I understand how the other person is feeling. So, so I think a little bit of self-knowledge goes a long way in this particular instance. So remembering when you were a teenager and how you felt when, you know, mum did something or dad denied you something or, you know, you had your first kiss or whatever it was and kind of understanding what sort of emotional aliveness kind of is and getting back in touch with that. And I think, you know, starting with yourself is good, good advice. And so, but that brings you to the question of, well, what am I feeling exactly? And what is the language we're going to use here about our feelings? So I've spent the last years counting human emotions and deduplicating them because in advertising, I thought, well, you know, if we're going to, if we're going to try and be more sophisticated about our emotional communication and persuasion, then we need to have a language that we can use in the agency to specify a particular effect we're looking for, you know, or research when we're trying to find out what we've done. So I spent quite a long time doing some reading and, you know, reading poetry and novels and everything, just kind of collecting emotions. And I think I've got them all. An exhaustive list. 602. 602 so far. There are about kind of 1,200 or 1,300 synonyms, which are useful for other purposes. But yeah, if you deduplicate them all, you've got about 600. And most people, when you ask them how many emotions are there, they say, well, you know, about six. One. Anger. Well, that's that's terrible. So so you've got this amazing emotional palette and that that's only at the resolution of what the English language can provide, right? So there's more you can feel. And there's some wonderful things about that. One is that they're pretty much universal. So you can find most translation. Most emotions are translatable in different languages, in different cultures. I'm actually a biologist by training. So I look at this in an evolutionary biology way. So emotions have utility of some sort. We wouldn't bother with them. As you said, it can be quite exhausting. So, you know, why feel chagrin? What's the point of that? Why feel embarrassment? What's the point of that? Well, it probably stops you from, you know, sleeping with your cousins and doing things that are biologically deleterious. And it keeps the social glue of humanity together because we don't live as individual units. We live as societies.

I kind of quite tempted. What? No, you can hold on. But just hearing the two sides here, almost speaking, it strikes me that how you make your living and the approach to that, is that not complete opposite to one another? It seems to me.

Well, I wanted to just put the rationalist sort of analysis of decision making and how emotion plays. Right. So the strictly sort of rationalist approach essentially says that all value, the things we're trying to do, the things we're trying to achieve, all values, if you like, or utility in economic terms. That all derives from emotion, essentially, like the fact that we desire certain states of states of the world above others, the way that we're able to say, I want that one more than that one. Or, you know, I prefer the taste of beans of this brand of beans than some other brand of beans or the color of those beans. All of those things are driven by emotion. That's the rationalist approach is that value comes from emotion, comes from us essentially having preferences, liking certain things, disliking certain things in, as David says, hundreds of different ways. But essentially, they boil down to which thing, which situation do I want to be in? What feelings do I like? You know, if we didn't have feelings, we wouldn't mind. Everything will be as good as anything else. Right. But I think where the rationalist approach then says, well, in order to make a decision, you take into account those feelings, but you don't use those feelings. Right. So the rationalist approach, which I guess derives from the Enlightenment, ultimately, and I think the Enlightenment's great gift to the world is to say we should try to be objective. Right. Which essentially means, yes, OK, we know that you guys are going to be feeling certain things, but we're going to make this decision in a kind of abstract mathematical way and say, OK, well, we've got a 10 percent chance that these 70 people will feel better and a 90 percent chance that these, you know, 20 people will feel worse and so on. And we're just going to make a decision essentially like that. And that's what most decision theory expects. Your utility function comes from how you feel, but your beliefs have to be driven by the world, not how you'd like it to be or any other.

Well, Nick, I think that's well put, but you're making Descartes' error and we are now post-Enlightenment, really. There's a wonderful book by Professor Antonio Damasio called Descartes' Error, in which he argues, and he's a brain scientist, so he should know that your rational, it's a bit like the system one, system two thinking, your rational sort of architecture is one of the levels of consciousness that you have and not a very influential one and the one that is late to the party. So when you make decisions, you are essentially always post-rationalizing your decisions and you are trying to make sense of an emotional reaction that you have had instinctively. So so Descartes, the Enlightenment is it was, I think, great for inventing computing and maths, but but led us astray in terms of what the human condition is.

I want to just, I want to, I want to slightly back it up. I want to bring in.

I don't want to hear more from David at this point.

So this is really hard because we are, we all earn our money and have been brought up to think that thinking is the thing. Unfortunately, it's just not. So this is this takes a certain amount of, you know, a deep breath and a bit of a kind of scratch of the head. But essentially, the thought process and logical thinking is a great trick. It's a great trick, as I said, for analyzing things and for making sense of the world. And it's given us science. And I'm a scientist, so I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But we have obsessed with the scientific method and scientific inquiry of being the only valid thing that humans can do. And that's that's that's like, you know, cutting all your arms off from the legs because you're left with replacing the wheels, which would be useful on roads, but not great up mountains. So you're we're focusing massively on us on a small part of the human capability. And to the extent that we're fooling ourselves the entire time, we think we are making decisions when we're not. We're in fact post-rationalizing decisions.

Yeah. And I think, you know, I I completely agree that the emerging sort of, you know, neuropsychological evidence, you know, is showing quite clearly that decisions are made emotionally and subsequently justified by by rational decision making processes. You know, the at least the scientifically collected evidence seems to seems to support that. The question for me is not does this happen in practice, but should it happen in practice? So so, you know, I've no doubt, you know, we we all know that, you know, you see this particularly in politics where there's been this huge drive in government in the UK for evidence based decision making. And the whole thing really can just be seen as post hoc scaffolding for whatever decision was going to be made in the first place. But even the most rational people sort of, you know, use all these cognitive biases to end up supporting the argument that they felt initially, which which is the one that feels good, which is the answer that feels right. It's that one. Why do I think that? Ah, well, the reason I think that is for all these rational reasons. Right. I get that. But should that be? Should that be?

Well, it just is. I think you do about it. What you can do about it is bring it to people's attention, which we are doing right now in this podcast. So you can be more aware of your humanness. I'm not I'm not going to say fallibility because it isn't. It's a strength of human beings. This is what happens. So if we all know that's what's happening, you wouldn't have to sit there and listen to the government parrot the same old stuff about, for example, Brexit, as they have been doing for the past six months with a broken record. You'd have a more truthful discussion about why people want to leave Europe or certain people want to leave Europe. And you could name some, you know, truer truths about all that. So I think that what you said is great and perceptive and accurate, but it's what you do with that information.

I think that seems it's a really good point. And I feel like I think we probably might be we might be agreeing here because, I mean, as I said, and I think I think the Brexit is a really good one, actually, because actually what it is we care about. So so the things we're really making decisions about are actually things like I feel like I'm a European. I feel like it's emotionally important to my identity to be part of Europe and for there to be no borders. And I like that, you know, versus, again, completely legitimate. I feel like I'm comfortable among people who look and sound and behave like me. And, you know, when we have just free movement of people, it stresses me out. I mean, people, you know, people, that's a legitimate feeling we should take into account. But I think people feel reluctant to talk about that. So we end up talking about things that are actually pretty irrelevant, like the economy. But no, I think I do want to I mean, having thought about, OK, what do we mean when us rationalists here criticize emotional decision making? And I think I can boil it down thinking about myself and when I've been ashamed to be emotional in decision making. It's that, you know, it's when your preferences change very rapidly and you're and you're not really aware of that. So you get angry with someone because of some small slight. You then behave in a way that is consistent with you hating them deeply and and hating them for the rest of time. You do something which is way in excess of what you should of how you should behave, because you should realize that, OK, well, in about three hours time, I'll feel nothing about this. And and I sort of feel like, well, you know, when you make those decisions, you should you shouldn't just listen to what emotions are going on at the moment. You should do something vaguely rational, which to say, yeah, but when I when I think about me averaged out over the next couple of years, am I really going to be glad that I said or did this? And I feel like most of the mistakes we make when we're being emotional are because we're not asking ourselves that question.

So I want to hear from David and then actually we're close to me. I've got another question. Yeah. So I want to hear from David. Then you and then there's something I want to wrap up on.

So David, there's a trap here in confusing the rational with the mindful. What what what you're thinking about, what you're expressing, I think, then is is the fact you're you are reflecting upon your emotional state. And that is brilliant. That's what mindfulness teaches us to do. You sit there and go, well, how am I feeling? No one ever does that, apart from people who meditate and who think about mindfulness. And that's that's that's a growing movement and more power to its to its elbow. So I think there's nothing illegitimate about feeling emotions and acting on them, because that's we're human beings. There is every reason in a social and business context to then reflect on your reactions and and take them into account next time. So I think that that is nothing to do with being rational, irrational. I don't even recognize that word exists, actually, but it is more to do with being mindful and emotionally kind of connected with yourself. And if you can't manage that, then, you know, it's going to be difficult for you to relate to others. But the question we haven't really been debating is if this is what got me on this train in the first place. If, as I contend and various other people contend that emotional decision that decision making is almost entirely emotional, then what's the mechanism? What emotions come into play? How do they affect your attitude to the thing in question? How do you decide to buy this house rather than the house down the road? How did you decide to go out with this girl rather than that girl? How did you decide to get this job rather than that job? How did you make the strategic decision in your business versus that decision? Which particular emotional mechanic was at play in these situations? And I think that's very that's very interesting because you then ask some deeper questions about the notion, the notion of consciousness and the notion of memory and self. So it's sort of wrapped up in your emotional experience, codes, memories in certain places and connects experiences in certain ways using, I would imagine, emotional sort of chords that bind different experiences. So you could probably remember most of the things that you were excruciatingly embarrassed or ashamed about. And you could probably remember the things you were probably ecstatic and delighted about. And those those have a commonality to your to your brain and your self and consciousness that transcend time and transcend kind of what subject matter. So your memories are largely coded due to your emotional reactions to events and your memories are very much part of yourself because they determine how you relate things and what things you relate to other things. So if that's all true, and there's some evidence for a lot of that, then you start to get an understanding of what the emotional mechanics are. So you can look at, which is why I've developed this map of human emotions, you can look at the specific emotional area in question and you can think harder. Think, yes, think harder about feel harder. Well, yes, there must be a new word. Think, feel, feel harder about about whether you are embarrassed or chagrined or, you know, ashamed or and the nuances of the emotions kind of within that emotional connection. Start to get you to understand why you've made the decision you made in a particular way.

I mean, I think and I think this is where, again, probably we are agreeing more than we're disagreeing is that actually a lot of emotions are connected to the world, right? They're connected to information about the world. And, you know, if we have had a positive experience, and we've encoded that as a happy feeling that is associated with, you know, sunny days or, you know, or free time. Well, that, you know, then we've learned something important, which is, well, if we're offered the chance to have free time on a sunny day, we will be more likely to be happy if we take it if we take that chance, right? And, you know, when we when we learn about when we feel unease, because we met someone who we don't feel like we don't trust. And so we don't extend trust to them. That is going to be based on similar experiences with other people who have betrayed us, you know. And so I think we are emotions are telling us factual information a lot of the time. But that isn't how they're presented to us. But actually, what I wanted to ask David, again, I think this is, you know, zooming back in on his subject matter and on something I'm personally quite interested in. What is the best emotion to try and stimulate in order to get innovation?

There's a little set of them. Curiosity is probably the key thing. And that's that that may surprise you that that's even an emotion. But there are what I call cognitive emotions. There are emotions that directly affect thinking rather than, you know, purely felt emotions like rage. So so there are some emotions that are very connected with the drive to understand things and give you an emotional reward for trying to understand things. You know, given a problem, there's a certain amount of intellectual satisfaction from solving a problem. But unless you're fascinated and curious and, you know, excited and expectant and obsessed and alert and in suspense and focused and all those emotional things, you know, you're not going to bother with it, really.

That's really I mean, I've never thought about I have to say I haven't thought about curiosity as emotion. But it really makes sense. Like when I get presented with a new type of experience, like a new kind of puzzle or a new board game, something which needs to be figured out, there is a distinct emotion associated with that. And it's that desire to explore and fiddle with something and to see how it works and to real kind of really interesting to see how the mechanics fit together. And, you know, you mentioned sort of, I mean, for me, maths problems, that getting to a solution in a maths problem is a feeling which is impossible to describe if someone hasn't done it. It was like a really distinct feeling of satisfaction. So, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

This is fascinating. We're just sort of scratching the beginning of something here, it feels. Unfortunately, we need to draw things to a close. But before we do, there is something I want to ask for all of us. Over the years, on and off, I've sort of dipped my toe into Buddhism and mindfulness and meditation and so on. And various things have sort of stopped me from going deeper and deeper into that. And partly, I think it's one of those things that meditation is often sort of a truism or a cliche to say this. The people who need it the most are the ones who are the worst at practicing it is sometimes the case. But anyway, one of the things with Buddhism that I've often been a little bit frightened of it is it's often seemed to me sort of emotions are fun. They can be really fun. They don't always make us happy, but they can feel to me with what makes us human. And it feels like going down that path is maybe I'm misinterpreting is kind of an erosion of emotions. That's how it can feel. But my question is, this is when I sit with these guys every week, I often feel I'm way more emotional than you guys. And you're waving my arms around. And you're you're a lot more rational than me. That said, I've just come back from Naples. And I actually feel really I feel almost Swiss compared to them. But yeah, I mean, I guess my question is this almost on a scale of one to 10. How emotional are you? By which I probably mean how in control of your emotions are you? I regularly get angry every day. I get angry and I might shout, but also I laugh a lot. I love dancing around. I'm quite a that kind of guy. So, you know, with, you know, some Swiss bloke being at zero or one. We actually did do a podcast about the Swiss. I feel like we're picking on them. Yeah. And if some Neapolitan is at 10 in terms of our emotional, how we carry ourselves each day. I reckon I'm a kind of somewhere between a six and an eight, I reckon.

We'll need negative numbers for Chris.

And so I'd like to hear. Yeah. And if from you two and then and then from David.

Well, I actually think if you take David's definition, I'm going to be I'm going to say I'm in terms of experiencing emotions a lot, actually. You know, I think as I go through quite sort of spontaneously have feelings about things a lot, but don't really pay much attention to them. But in terms of control over emotion, I'm definitely at the Swiss end in that I think I do have the ability to sublimate it. And I think and I think partly that's just being able to say being able to look at yourself and go, oh, hang on a minute. OK, I'm feeling really grumpy, but I know that's because I haven't had much sleep. So I'm not going to let that come out and ruin my, you know, breakfast with my kids or whatever. There's a maturity element here as well, isn't there? Well, I don't know if it's that or if it's, you know, it can be a hindrance as well, because it does cause you to say, God, this is flipping. Oh, this is great. I'm loving it. Oh, hang on. But am I going to be disappointed tomorrow? You know, is this going to be not as good as I think it's going to be? Chris?

Yeah, well, I think there's a there's a distinction to be made between extroversion and introversion because.

Here he goes again.

Yeah, because there's not there's not necessarily the fact that somebody isn't exhibiting emotions doesn't mean that they're not feeling them right. And there's also a sense, like you were saying, of suppressing emotions because you are aware of of the disappointment or the the problematic effect emotions can can have. So you don't want to get too excited because, you know, it might be an anticlimax or something. So I think I think there's a lot of a lot of that going on. I would say generally, however, I'm pretty dead to most emotions, but I am surprisingly lacrimose. So so but only on really specific things. So anything to do with my children. And I can I can go from nought to ten and be be crying, you know, instantly. So so that's one. And that that's when I understand the power of emotions, because you there's nothing you can do. The moment that the taps start coming on, the more you try and suppress the tears, the more they just they just well up.

I mean, it's only the railway children, the ending of the railway. Oh, absolutely. Guaranteed. Nothing else ever makes me cry except that.

Yeah. David, for yourself.

OK, so we'll finish there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. We've been here with myself, Rez McGruer and Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. But I'd just like to extend a special thank you to David Simoes-Brown for joining us today. Thank you for being with us. And and until next time, goodbye.

You're welcome. I might want to rename it the Cognitive and Emotional Engineering Podcast. Yeah, that's a good idea.