The role of human emotions in science and research | Ilona Stengel

Do human emotions have a role to play in science and research? Material researcher Ilona Stengel suggests that instead of opposing each other, emotions and logic complement and reinforce each other. She shares a case study on how properly using emotions (like the empowering feeling of being dedicated to something meaningful) can boost teamwork and personal development — and catalyze scientific breakthroughs and innovation.

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30 Comments on The role of human emotions in science and research | Ilona Stengel

  1. This is when a natural scientists (physics?) ventures inside the realm of social sciences. Here results are not measurable like natural sciences but are none the less a science. Human value system are exposed and applied.

  2. Science are observations. Not a creation. Smh. Emotion is important to humans. But there isn’t a reason to express ones own personal emotions on an observation. We didn’t learn about a bunch of scientist emotions. We learn about their own observations. The moment they use emotion in their observation, is the moment they can explain what they observing therefore god. Look at many top scientist of history. Every time they got stumped and started to get emotional they used god as an explanation of why something is the way it is.

    • Emotions are like superstition, a remnant of times past.
      God, love, hate, devil, happy, spirit, wrath, sad…
      Every emotion is like a chapter of someones “holy” book.
      Let it end.

  3. so you basically said nothing, and the title of your talk is so misleading, I’m yet to see someone arguing against the group spirit, fraternity or whatever human aspect that a team of scientists can be engaged in. dedication and believing in the work you do is not really what anyone would call “emotions in science”.

    • But scientists can get emotional, and that’s normal. Emotion can affect the speed and scope of science projects, but never the conclusion. Just don’t let emotion interferes with your judgment, which should be based on evidence and logic and nothing else.

    • Yes, i agree. In the video she talked about how emotions changed the way of how they worked, but not how their logic worked. Maybe what she says could work in other contexts. Like for example take a group of musicians, maybe if they know that there’ll be plenty of time to play together they won’t be as tryharding as if they knew they’re going to disband (not by members initiative but let’s say because they don’t have the budget to continue to rent instruments and a studio). In this case, maybe the musicians will work more, be more implicated in what they do, and product better results because they know they won’t be able to do it in the future, and because they like it and they are sad they have to stop. This looks a lot like what she describes in the video. But of course that may be false. Also music is not about pure logic (or is it?), and maybe this is something to take into consideration.

  4. That graph is incredibly misleading. There’s no scale on the y-axis, and the spacing of dates in the x-axis is inconsistent.

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