EMOTIONAL

KNOWLEDGE
Prof.Dr.Dr. Dr.H.C. Constantin Bratianu
UNESCO Department for Business Administration
Faculty of Business Administration
Bucharest University of Economic Studies

We need:

New metaphors,
new models,
new organizations.
(Corporate

Longitude, 2002, p.106)

Lei f Edvinsson

Knowledge as Energy

Mapping from source to target

Source
Domain
ENERGY

metaphoric
al
entailments

Target
Domain
KNOWLEDGE

New perspectives for knowledge

understanding
ENERGY

KNOWLEDGE

Energy is a field.
Knowledge is a field.
Energy manifests in
Knowledge manifests in
different forms.
different forms.
One form of energy can One form of knowledge
be transformed into
can be transformed into
another form of energy.
another form of
knowledge.
Knowledge dynamics
Energy dynamics
means knowledge
means transformation.
transformation.

Multifield Knowledge Model

Spiritual
Knowledge
Field

SK

Rational
Knowledge
Field

RK

EK

Emotional
Knowledge
Field

Rational Knowledge
It is the result of the
rational thinking and of the
consciousness process.

It is conceived in the
Cartesian perspective.
It can be explicit and tacit,
where tacit knowledge is
the result of the
internalization process.

Emotional Knowledge
Emotional knowledge is a
result of processing
information coming from our
sensory system.
Emotional knowledge
generates emotions and
feelings.
Emotional knowledge is
primarily unconscious.

Spiritual Knowledge
Values = Deeply held ideas of
members about what is right or
wrong, fair or unfair anything
that has personal worth or
meaning.
We are living in a given culture,
which is defined by a set of
fundamental values.
We learn these values through
education in family, school,
church and society.
Values constitute the reference
system of our decisions.

Rational knowledge

Emotional knowledge

Spiritual knowledge

The triple
Helix of
Knowledge

Antonio
Damasio
Neuroscientist
Descartes error
Looking for Spinoza
The feelings of what
happens
Self comes to mind

Emotional Knowledge

Self comes to mind

( Damasio, A. Vintage Books, New York, 2012, p.116)

Emotions are complex, largely automated programs

of actions concocted by evolution. The actions are
complemented by a cognitive program that includes
certain ideas and modes of cognition, but the world
of emotions is largely one of actions carried out in
our bodies, from facial expressions and postures to
changes in viscera and internal milieu

Self comes to mind

( Damasio, A. Vintage Books, New York, 2012, p.116)

Feelings of emotions, on the other hand, are

composite perceptions of what happens in our body
and mind when we are emoting. As far as the body is
concerned, feelings are images of actions rather
than actions themselves; the world of feelings is one
of perceptions executed in brain maps.

The Knowledge Creating Company

(Ikujiro Nonaka & Hirotaka Takeuchi, 1995)

Tacit knowledge is highly personal and hard to

formalize, making it difficult to communicate or to
share with others. (p.8)

Highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches

are an integral part of knowledge. Knowledge also
embraces ideals, values, and emotions as well as
images and symbols. These soft and qualitative
elements are crucial to an understanding of the
Japanese view of knowledge (p.9)

Explicit Knowledge-Tacit Knowledge

Dyad
Knowledge Structure
Knowledge
Transfer Process
Rational
Mind

Non-Rational
Mind

Explicit
Knowledge
Tacit
Knowledge

Direct
Experience

Explicit knowledge

Values
Beliefs

Insights
Images

Emotions

Tacit knowledge

Cognitive Knowledge-Emotional Knowledge

Dyad
Knowledge structure
Knowledge transfer
process
Mind

Heart

Cognitive
knowledge
Emotional
knowledge

Sensory system

Emotional knowledge
Emotional knowledge is created by emotions, and
integrated together with cognitive knowledge into our
mental representation of the world.
Emotions can be simply described as being specific
reactions to events, agents and their actions, or to
objects.
Although cognition and emotion have been treated
most of the time like two distinct entities, they are
inextricably intertwined. Feelings influence thoughts
and actions, which in turn can give rise to new
emotional reactions.

Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P & Caruso, D.R (2004)

Emotional intelligence: Theory, findings, and
implications, Psychological Inquiry, Vol.15, No.3,
pp.197-215

We define EI as the capacity to reason about

emotions, and of emotions to enhance thinking.
It includes the abilities to accurately perceive
emotions, to access and generate emotions so
as to assist thought, to understand emotions and
emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate
emotions, so as to promote emotional and
intellectual growth.

Decision making
Breakthroughs in brain science have revealed that people
are primarily emotional decision makers.
That means that emotional knowledge plays a very
important role in the decision making process
Emotions are central, not peripheral, to both marketplace
and workplace behavior

A Journal of Advertising Research study, involving 23000

USA consumers, 13 categories of goods and 240
advertising messages, concluded that emotions are twice
as important as facts in the process by which people
make buying decisions

Experiment in a British University

There was a tradition for students using the kitchen to pay for their
tea or coffee to which they helped themselves during the day by
dropping money into a honesty box. Students paid in concordance
with a list of suggested prices.
One day, students remarked a poster fixed just above the price list.
For a period of ten weeks, a new image was showed each week,
either flowers or eyes that appeared to be looking directly at
students. There was no explanation for that, and nobody asked any
question about those posters.
Discussions!
Do you think that those posters changed in any way the behavior of
students ? What are your arguments in formulating your answer ?

Marketing research
Traditional research measures: What they say
It discovers: rational, conscious, verbal reactions
Facial coding research measures: What they feel
It discovers: emotional, subconscious, and
non-verbal reactions

Only by scrambling together the rational and

emotional reactions of people do you get a complete
picture of what they are likely to do

New key ideas

Emotion drives reason more than reason drives
emotion.
Feelings happen before thought, and they happen
with great speed
Conscious thought is only a small portion of mental
activity
Visual imagery and other non-verbal forms of
communication predominate

Blink
(Malcolm Gladwell)

The power of knowing, in the first two seconds, is

not a gift given magically to a fortunate few. It is an
ability that we can all cultivate for ourselves (p.16)

The task of making sense of ourselves and our

behavior requires that we acknowledge there can be
as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of
rational analysis (p.17)
Thin-slicing refers to the ability of our unconscious
to find patterns in situations and behavior based on
very narrow slices of experience (p.24)

Thinking fast, and slow

(Daniel Kahneman)

Social scientists in the 1970s broadly accepted two ideas

about human nature.
- First, people are generally rational, and their thinking is
normally sound.
- Second, emotions such as fear, affection, and hatred
explain most of the occasions on which people depart
from rationality.
Expert intuitions strikes us as magical, but it is not.
Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than
recognition.

Thinking fast, and slow

(Daniel Kahneman, 2011)

There are two systems in the mind:

- System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little
or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. Fast
thinking includes both variants of intuitive thought the
expert and the heuristic as well as the entirely
automatic mental activities of perception and memory

- System 2 allocate attention to the effortful mental

activities that demand it, including complex
computations.

The seven core emotions

Regardless of race, ethnicity, age or gender,
peoples face reveal seven core emotions
One is essentially neutral: surprise
One is essentially positive: happiness

Five are essentially negative: fear, anger, sadness,

disgust and contempt

Our ability to express surprise

appears at birth.
Uniquely, surprise is neither
inherently positive nor
negative.
Its valence all depends on what
we perceive after the surprise
has passed.
Face characteristics:

Eyes go big
SURPRISE

Eyebrows fly high

Mouth fails open

Fear is the single most

important emotion.

We seek to escape some

perceived danger in order to
protect ourselves.
Face characteristics:
Eyebrows lift up and in
Eyes widen
Chin pulls wider
FEAR

Lips stretch back horizontally

Jaw drops open

Anger is the fight part of our fightor-flight instinct, and arises

whenever our expectations are
violated.

People seek to remove or otherwise

attack a barrier they believe is
unfairly blocking progress or
undermining their personal identity
and sense of self-worth.
Face characteristics:
Eyebrows lower and knit together
ANGER

Eyes narrow into snake-eyes

Lips will tighten or form a funnel

In business, sadness as
expressed in marketplace is
about buyers regrets.
In the workplace, sadness means
feeling helpless
Face characteristics:
Wrinkles form a mid-forehead
puddle
Eyebrows drop, but inner
corners rise slightly

SADNESS

Corners of eyes crease in a

wince
Lip corners form an upsidedown smile

Simona Halep

Disgust is an adverse reaction

shown when we attempt to
distance ourselves from an
offensive source
It is our way of showing that an
object, person, place or even an
idea stinks
Face characteristics:
Nose turns up and wrinkles

DISGUST

Upper lip rises, sometimes as

part of an upside down smile
Lower lip pulls down and away

Contempt is less physical and more

attitudinal in orientation than disgust
Contempt can be fatal for companies
This emotion reflects deep disdain: a belief
that the other party in the deal is beneath
you
Face characteristics:

The left side of the face is generally more

expressive than the right side, with one
upper corner of the mouth curling into a
sneer
Upper lip rises
Eyes may partly close and turn away

CONTEMPT

A true smiles signature features

are eyes that twinkles or gleam
because the muscles
surrounding them are animated
Face characteristics:
Skin near the outer corner of the
eye pinches together into crows
feet
The upper eyelid slightly droops
and skin under the eye may
gather upward
A TRUE SMILE

The corners of the mouth move

up and out, the cheeks lift
upwards

A social smile is a constructed

smile. We have more ability of
manipulating the muscles around
the mouth, than we do those around
the eyes
Its why we say:
the eyes never lie

Face characteristics:
The face becomes rounder as the
corners of the mouth move up and
out and the cheeks lift upwards
A SOCIAL SMILE

Missing is the activity around the

eyes that would cause them to
twinkle or gleam

Simona Halep

Emotions
Unlike rational thoughts, emotions are action-oriented
It is possible to expand the set of core emotions to
anticipate more situations

Some emotions we effect, while others reflect external

forces dominating us
Specific emotions signal that specific behavioural
outcomes are likely

Main characteristics
A feeling component physical sensations,
including chemical changes in the brain
A thinking component conscious or intuitive
An action component expressive reactions (like
smiles), as well as coping behaviors (like fight or
flight)
A sensory component sights, sounds, etc which
serves to trigger the emotional response

Emotionality vs. Rationality

Emotionality is distinguished from rationality
because the latter only involves one of these four
components: thinking
Rationality is based on abstract thoughts.
Rationality involves conscious, deliberate, evaluative
assessments. A thought is about arriving at a
judgement
The strength of emotions is that they help mobilize
the body to get through an emergency

Emotional intensity spectrum

Happiness Joy
Satisfaction
Surprise Amazement Curiosity
Anger
Rage
Annoyance
Disgust
Loathing
Boredom
Sadness Grief
Pensiveness
Fear
Terror
- Worry

Core emotions
Highly-intensity emotions
Low-intensity emotions

Core motivations
Defend: the oldest, most primitive need is pure
instinct to survive
Acquire: while not a matter of survival, feathering the
nest adds to comfort
Bond: having allies provides both pleasure and
security
Learn: akin to the spiritual/self-growth at the top of
Maslows hierarchy of needs

Thank you for your attention!