Lisa MurphyFounder and Luminaria at Limited to Limitless Transformational Consultants

Why Strong Emotions Can Make You Feel Right When You’re Actually Wrong

13 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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1:03

In this talk, Lisa Murphy explains that the human brain is wired to seek a sense of being right, which leads us to cling to our judgments even when they are mistaken. She describes a specific neural formula that generates anger and other strong emotions by providing misleading information, causing us to interpret the feeling of anger as evidence of correctness. Murphy argues that the intensity of anger is actually inversely related to the accuracy of our belief: the stronger the anger, the more likely we are wrong. This challenges the common intuition that strong emotional reactions validate our viewpoints.

Chapters

Our brain is designed to make us want to be right. Okay? So we're always walking around trying to be right about stuff. Well, the problem is that what we're talking about here, when you understand the brain formula that causes anger and other emotions, that formula is usually making you wrong, but we don't want to admit that. We prefer to feel like we're right. And it's even worse because let's say you get angry. Let's say your brain has a mechanism where it It gives you wrong information to make you angry. And then you get angry. Most people today think that their anger tells them that they're right. Oh. And particularly the stronger the anger is, the more they feel justified in that, yes, they've really identified something, you know, that they justifiably should be angry about. It's back, that's totally backwards. It usually means they're more wrong. The more intense their anger is, the more wrong they likely are.