Landonwerks Inc.

Contrary to what you might believe, this is not a moral character flaw inherent to you or the person  you’re arguing with, it’s a by-product of what the human brain does under stress or threat.

Here is what happens. By design, under stress, blood is shunted away from the neo-cortex, which is the part of your brain involved with intelligence, rationality and creativity and more blood is directed to your limbic/primitive brain which is involved with reflexes, instincts and emotions. This highly effective survival mechanism has evolved over millennia. When measured in milliseconds, the neocortex is slower to action than the limbic/primitive brain.

Imagine a fresh tiger paw print on the ground in front of you. If you use your neocortex by spending time assessing if the owner of the print was a Siberian tiger, or a Bengal tiger, or perhaps a rare Abyssinian albino tiger, chances are good that you will end up as dinner. If, when you first spot the paw print, you use your limbic/primitive brain and crouch down, scanning the under-brush for a flash of orange, looking for where to hide, chances are good that your genes will remain in the pool for generations to come.

Under stress the slower part of our brain goes off line and the faster more reactive part of our brain comes on line. Under stress we get less intelligent and more emotional and reactive.