I’m reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. One of the things he talks about is how snap decisions (quick emotional reactions to stimuli) are so fast because they skip over certain parts of your central nervous system. This is why these decisions are often unwise/unreasonable; they skip the part of your brain that does logical reasoning. This is necessary for fight/flight decisions but not great for emotionally-charged conversations.

In retrospect, this seems obvious.