How Do Emotions Shape What We See?

How do our emotions shape our clinical and leadership decisions? It’s a question that often surfaces in my work, and it’s a question I don't think we talk about enough. I recently came across an article that addresses this question.

When Feelings Meet Clinical Decisions

The authors, a group of social psychology researchers at the University of Massachusetts, led by Professor Linda Isbell, found that our emotions actively shape how we process clinical information. When we experience positive emotions, we tend to process information more broadly, considering multiple sources of evidence. But negative emotions lead us to narrow our focus in ways we might not even notice.

I notice this in my own work. As the year wound to a close, I felt a subtle shift in my listening - from listening for nuance at depth to listening to content. When I'm rested, I notice how much more present I can be, and how my ability to notice subtle cues expands.

The article discusses how strong emotional reactions in providers colour our responses. From frustrating patient encounters to patients who somehow remind us of someone from our own lives, to rudeness and incivility in clinical contexts—from colleagues, from families—affect performance and diagnostic reasoning. In one study, rude comments toward NICU team members significantly disrupted information sharing during diagnosis and degraded diagnostic performance and procedural performance.

It’s about noticing

How often do we pause to notice what we're feeling during a clinical encounter? Whether it's triggered by a patient, a colleague's comment, or the broader clinical context? How might those feelings be shaping what we see—or don't see—in front of us?

Having emotions isn't inherently the problem. Emotions are adaptive signals. The question isn't whether we experience them, but how aware we are of them and how they're influencing our reasoning—and our team's ability to work together effectively.

What would have to be true for us to create space—even just a moment—to acknowledge what we're feeling before we make our next clinical decision? How do we tune into our emotional landscape during a busy day running between crises?

I’m curious…

I'm curious about your experience with this.

• Which patterns do you notice when it comes to the impacts of emotions?

• What about the emotional climate of your team or workplace—how does that shape the function of your team?

The article that sparked this thinking: Liu, G., Chimowitz, H., & Isbell, L.M. (2022). Affective influences on clinical reasoning and diagnosis. Diagnosis, 9(3), 295-305.