Emotional refers to a situation in which emotions control our behavior, causing us to react without thinking.

The answer is Emotional Hijack.

According to David Goleman, when a person suffers a moment in which he or she can not control the emotions, causing a disruption in normal behavior and reacting to any situation without thinking, is called Emotional Hijack.  The expert explains that when the stimulus received (or part of them) go directly to the amygdala and are not processed by other parts of the brain, it causes to react, “hijacking” the rational part of the brain.

The answer is emotional hijack. Emotional hijack refers to a situation in which emotions control our behavior, causing us to react without thinking.

EXPLANATION

An emotional hijack is a concept in psychology. It was first developed by Daniel Goleman in his about emotional intelligence. His book was published in 1995 and it made the public familiar with the term emotional hijack.

The emotional hijack itself refers to the situation where the amygdala, the specific part of our brain that functions as our emotional processor, bypasses or hijacks the normal reasoning process. This happens when our emotion takes part to make the decision instead of our rational part of us. Therefore, someone can actually do something without actually thinking first about all of the consequences and risks.

An emotional hijack, the amygdala takes over the circumstances in our lives. Sometimes, this can do good things in our life. For example, when a bad person is trying to attack your kid, you’ll do things to stop them out of love for your kid. You do not think whether the attacker is bigger than you or not.

On the other hand, emotional hijack can be bad for us. In certain situations, emotional hijack can make us do irrational things. For example, when there is a problem at home, and suddenly a co-worker does not do his job well. Instead of fixing the job and telling him the problem, you snap and you cry on the spot.  

LEARN MORE

If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, we recommend you to also take a look at the following questions:

Emotional intelligence:

Test for emotional problems:

KEYWORD: emotional hijack, behavior, emotion

Subject: Social Studies

Class: 10-12

Subchapter: Emotional Hijack