Quick answer: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found that emotions, not logic, drive roughly 95% of human decisions — patients who lost the ability to feel emotion after brain damage could list every pro and con of a choice but still couldn’t actually decide. Damasio’s conclusion: we’re not “thinking machines that feel” but “feeling machines that think,” which means self-awareness and humility matter as much as facts do when making good decisions.
Over the past several weeks I’ve been performing my research on developing empathy and humility, the foundation of servant leadership, in Afrillennials. I found in the past session an interesting “aha moment” popped up in our discussion and it brought me back to this quote:
According to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio our emotions are the deciding factor for 95 percent of our decisions. So rather than “thinking and acting,” we generally “feel and act.” Part of Damasio’s research involved brain-damaged people who were unable to experience emotions. Even though they could list the pros and cons of any given choice, they were unable to make decisions.
Damasio’s work led him to believe that human beings aren’t “thinking machines that feel,” but rather “feeling machines that think.”
The 95% of our decisions are based on emotions is a staggering thought. I’ve found in my own life, as the development of this research has been taking place, that I desire to make more decisions based on fact vs. emotions. The self-awareness required for this takes deep effort, introspection, and humility with others to allow them to speak into your life, calling out the areas where your thoughts may not be in alignment with your values.
Frequently Asked Questions
Damasio found that emotions drive about 95% of human decisions, not logical analysis. His research on brain-damaged patients who couldn’t feel emotion showed they could list every pro and con of a choice but were still unable to actually decide — proving emotion, not just information, is what triggers a decision.
It’s Damasio’s reframe of how humans actually work: rather than being rational thinkers who occasionally feel emotions, we’re fundamentally emotional beings who use thinking to make sense of and act on what we already feel. Emotion drives the decision; logic mostly explains it afterward.
If most decisions are emotional first, then self-awareness and humility become leadership skills, not soft extras. Leaders need to recognize when their own emotions — not just the facts — are steering a decision, and stay open to others pointing out where their reactions don’t match their stated values.