Emotional reasoning is treating a feeling as sufficient evidence that an interpretation is true: I feel guilty, therefore I did wrong; I feel unwanted, therefore nobody wants me.
The feeling is real. The conclusion is doing an additional job.
Guilt isn’t always a receipt for wrongdoing.
You decline a request you genuinely can’t take on. You feel guilty afterwards. That may reflect a value, an old expectation, a real impact or some combination.
What did you promise? What was possible? How did you communicate? Those details help you judge the action more accurately than the strength of the guilt alone.
You don’t have to dismiss emotion to examine its interpretation. In fact, respecting the feeling often means being more curious about what has made it convincing.
Guilt stays with that particular experience. Evidence asks what supports a conclusion beyond how forcefully it arrives.
Noba’s Judgment and Decision Making explores influences on judgement. It offers context for the difference between an experience that feels certain and an explanation that is well supported.