How Feelings Make Us Smarter

**Shankar Vedantam** (0:00)
This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. In October 1967, the world's greatest chess minds gathered in Sus, Tunisia, to face off at the Interzonal Tournament, the high stakes gateway to the World Chess Championship. The early games were dominated by the American prodigy Bobby Fischer. He was a 24-year-old grandmaster with an IQ rumored to be at the genius level of 180 He was the favorite to win it all.
But despite his overwhelming lead, the tournament quickly spiraled into a master class in self-sabotage.
Bobby Fischer issued a series of escalating demands regarding his playing schedule. When organizers refused to rearrange the event to suit him, he walked out, withdrawing from the tournament while in first place and throwing away years of work in a single fit of frustration. The walkout was a window into a profound emotional ineptness that lived right alongside Bobby Fischer's brilliance. Throughout his career, he operated in a state of constant relational friction, alienating the very coaches and friends who tried to support him. At his chess matches, he frequently violated the social norms of the game, arriving late and refusing to make eye contact with the player sitting across from him. Bobby Fischer possessed a mind that could see a dozen moves ahead on a chessboard, but he struggled with the basic moves of social and emotional life.
This week on Hidden Brain and in a companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, the logic of emotion and how feelings make us smarter.
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**Shankar Vedantam** (3:12)
Think back to the last time you made a decision you regretted. Perhaps you fell blinded by rage or paralyzed by fear.
In those moments, it feels like our emotions are obstacles to our success, a vestige of our primitive brains getting in the way of our rational minds.
But research in recent decades into the world of emotions suggests that this idea is profoundly wrong. Emotions are central to our ability to understand, attend and to prioritize. They aren't obstacles that block our path. They are food and fuel for the journey.
Peter Salovey is a psychologist at Yale University. He studies how our emotions shape our decisions and our behavior. Peter Salovey, welcome to Hidden Brain.

**Peter Salovey** (4:00)
Thank you so much, Shankar. It's a real honor to be with you. I listen to your show regularly and have enjoyed seeing you live as well. And so it's a privilege to be a guest.

**Shankar Vedantam** (4:14)
Peter, in addition to being a psychology professor at Yale, you've held several administrative posts at the university, including provost and dean.
While you were dean, a prominent individual visited the campus. Can you paint me a picture of the moment you got to shake hands with the president?

**Peter Salovey** (4:34)
Yes, we had invited President Clinton to visit campus. And if memory serves, he was going to give a talk on campus at the time. And they lined all of us up, all the deans in the boardroom, actually, of the university. We were around the perimeter, and President Clinton walked in.
And he worked his way around the perimeter of the room, shaking hands with everyone. And when he got to me, I was quite nervous, actually. And he stuck out his hands and he said, I'm Bill Clinton. And I said, I'm Peter Salovey. I'm the Dean of Yale College. And he said, you know, it's a pleasure to meet you, Peter. We actually already know each other.

**Shankar Vedantam** (5:30)
So when he said that you had met earlier, had you actually met him earlier, Peter?