There is no standard response or a simple answer. Millions of people around the world are driven by emotions. There are millions of others who don’t let their emotions take any ounce of control of what they do, think or decide. Then there are those who are at times influenced by emotions and at times remain immune. Let us not confuse rationale moves and emotional responses nor mix them up because they can exist separately. They may get tangled up and people do get perplexed when their emotion and logic are at loggerheads but let us only focus on the former here.

Impact of Emotions

Let us understand the impact of emotions to decipher how they can or cannot control us. An emotion is almost always associated with a memory. Normal psychological reactions at the moment are often traced back to the first instances when one experienced the same emotion. It could be surprise or joy, a sense of accomplishment or painful realization. The human mind tends to compartmentalize every experience. The most vivid memories are those that are emotional and the mind has different segments separating one type of emotion and hence memory from another.

Should the emotion be strong enough and the subsequent realization be unnerving, it can control us. Imagine a person who has had a nerve-wracking experience while driving or swimming. It is absolutely natural for the person to be a little shaky taking the wheels again or hitting the pool. If a person has had bad experiences following a certain type of decision, say trusting people, then he or she would try to avoid trusting people in the future. There would be a sense of chronic mistrust developed out of those emotional memories associated with people misusing or abusing their trust.

Emotions & Events

Since emotions do have a degree of control on us, partly or completely but never negligibly, even among those who seem to have scant regard towards emotions, it is necessary for an event to hit the right emotional chord for it to be memorable. The best event planners around the world try to offer the audience or attendees an experience that is emotional and by that virtue they make the event memorable. Whether it is a presentation or a panel discussion, a video or a series of images, a certain setting or reprising a certain world within the venue that will psychologically teleport the attendees to an era or time that they are fond of, inducing emotions in events will always make the latter more memorable.