In the past, psychology considered the human being as a purely rational being. Nowadays there is the consideration that emotions tend to prevail over reasoning. Under this interpretation, we would be an emotional being that think and not a thinking structure that feel. Many of the decisions we make when skiing are not strictly conscious since the great majority are due to emotional discharges which, in certain cases, come from memory and in others from the actual unprecedented situation.
Although some authors maintain that emotion promotes action and reasoning justifies the decision, this is not always the case since there is a reciprocal influence between the two in which one prevails over the other.
In skiing, behavior includes both the rational and the emotional. While we may believe we possess rational behavior, our emotions are always influencing. Not only do environmental conditions trigger emotions but, more importantly, so does our own interpretation. Dysfunctional behavior comes as a result of inappropriate reasoning of the execution to be performed.
Once we have made a cognitive evaluation of a situation, we can change it but it is difficult to change our affective evaluation. If at first we perceive the characteristics of a slope in a certain way then, on reflection, we can modify our perception of it but we will certainly not do the same with the emotion that we experience because the affect is the Self, it is what we feel and what we take as valid for us. We can change the information of the object or the situation when analyzing it but what we experience is something personal and what we trust.
In many cases, we tend not to perceive reality as it is but in relation to subjective dangers according to the emotional level of the moment. We block out situations we do not like which prevents us from developing a strategy to cope with the risky situation such as a difficult slope, too steep, too much traffic, fear of falling, getting injured or hurting another person. Cognitive perception of a dangerous situation can be differentiated by culture or customs. In different situations our cognitive perception changes, but our emotional reactions do not.
Psychologist Robert Zajonc argued that emotion is a phenomenon independent of cognition and debated that emotional reactions constitute a fundamental part of our evolution in that emotion precedes cognition, that it is independent of reasoning, and that it occurs in a shorter time than cognitive reactions. According to this hypothesis, emotion precedes cognition: we could be afraid of a slope before being aware of it.
In contrast, cognitivists led by Richard Lazarus argue that cognitive interpretation of the situation is fundamental to emotional generation and subsequent behavior. The evaluation of something triggers emotion, so first reasoning is activated and then emotion. The assumption would be that we cannot feel something without seeing it first. Visual perception of an object would anticipate the evaluation of that object, i.e., it is a cognitive process: seeing the slope and evaluating it rationally and then giving way to emotional categorization.
In this cognition-emotion debate it can be considered difficult to separate thoughts from emotions. Cognition can quickly change the initial state of an emotion, which is less controllable than a thought and, once generated, is more difficult to modify than cognition. Generally, reason precedes emotion: before a certain slope pleases or displeases, we should be aware of it and have evaluated certain of its particularities.
Memory and emotion
Our memory is strongly dominated by our emotions. We may fail to notice the type of snow on a slope, the number of skiers, whether it was wide or narrow and other details, but we will certainly remember whether our experience when facing that slope was pleasant or unpleasant.
All of our skiing behaviors are based on minimizing danger and maximizing satisfaction, always passing through the emotional filter. Dangers generate negative emotions, which tend to last longer, and gratifications promote positive ones, which are momentary. The emotional arousal generated by real or imagined danger tends to be more rapid and longer lasting. For some, the fear of a tilt or an excessive speed remains longer etched in memory than that triggered by a reward.
The vast majority of our skiing experiences trigger emotions that are stored in our memory without being aware of it. When a run generates an unpleasant feeling because of a certain element of the terrain configuration or snow condition, it may be due to the emotional memory of another similar run of which we do not have good memories from.
