clearly recognizing it, without having a massive heart of hearts attack?
There is no telling. One thing is certain, however: As time passes, the
various alternatives to Tim are disappearing. She had better determine
soon whether she is making a mistake.
Easier said than done, of course. She must answer an extremely in-
tricate question: “Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time,
would I make the same choice?” The problem lies in the “Knowing
what I now know” part of the question. Just what does she now know,
accurately, about Tim? How much of what she thinks of him is the
result of a desperate attempt to justify the commitment she made? She
claims that since her decision to take him back, he cares for her more,
is trying hard to stop his excessive drinking, has learned to make a
wonderful omelet, etc. Having tasted a couple of his omelets, I have
my doubts. The important issue, though, is whether she believes these
things, not just intellectually—we can play such mind games on
ourselves—but in her heart of hearts.
There may be a little device Sara can use to find out how much of her
current satisfaction with Tim is real and how much is foolish consist-
ency. Accumulating psychological evidence indicates that we experience
our feelings toward something a split second before we can intellectu-
alize about it.^21 My suspicion is that the message sent by the heart of
hearts is a pure, basic feeling. Therefore, if we train ourselves to be at-
tentive, we should register it ever so slightly before our cognitive appar-
atus engages. According to this approach, were Sara to ask herself the
crucial “Would I make the same choice again?” question, she would be
well advised to look for and trust the first flash of feeling she experi-
enced in response. It would likely be the signal from her heart of hearts,
slipping through undistorted just before the means by which she could
kid herself flooded in.^22
I have begun using the same device myself whenever I even suspect
I might be acting in a foolishly consistent manner. One time, for instance,
I had stopped at the self-service pump of a filling station advertising a
price per gallon a couple of cents below the rate of other stations in the
area. But with pump nozzle in hand, I noticed that the price listed on
the pump was two cents higher than the display sign price. When I
mentioned the difference to a passing attendant, who I later learned
was the owner, he mumbled uncon-vincingly that the rates had changed
a few days ago but there hadn’t been time to correct the display. I tried
to decide what to do. Some reasons for staying came to mind—“I really
do need gasoline badly.” “This pump is available, and I am in sort of
a hurry.” “I think I remember that my car runs better on this brand of
gas.”
I needed to determine whether those reasons were genuine or mere
84 / Influence