Knee-Jerk Reaction

Date: November 10, 2021

Our daily life is a continuous learning process. Admit it or not, in a day to day of interacting with others, we used to learn new stuffs. And I just want to share with you another addition to my vocabulary "knee-jerk reaction".

Yesterday, my colleague and I are talking about my other colleague who used to chase us from time to time every time he wants something to be done immediately.

We understand his concerns and not complaining about it, however, we also have our own projects and priorities that needs to be delivered. However, his daily chasing over mail seems already annoying, so we cannot avoid to make a small rant about him. He is soooo "kulet"!. That as if we're not doing any other stuffs when he demanded updates from us.

And upon our conversation, my colleague just suddenly mentioned about the "knee-jerk reaction".

Image source

He mentioned that somehow that colleague of us has this kind of attitude. This is the first time I've heard about this idiomatic expression, so to make sure my reply is aligned, I did a research on what does it mean.

According to the free dictionary, knee-jerk reaction is an immediate reaction made without examining causes or facts.

My literal translation of this is "impulsive behavior". As you may see on the below definition of impulsive behavior based on healthline.com, it is almost the same on how the idiomatic expression "knee-jerk reaction" is being defined.

Oftentimes, we don't realize that we're becoming impulsive in making decisions. We've been carried away by our emotions, which sometimes lead us to an undesirable situation.

Impulsive Buying

You might experienced this already, that while walking around a mall, (you don't have any plans to spend money or buy some stuffs but you're there for specific reason) however, you accidentally spotted a thing that's on 50% sale!. And out of curiosity, you came across to check and inspect on that specific product.

Then all of a sudden, you picked up the item and payed for it without hesitation or without thinking if that item is really needed or just an extra load of your house.

That's what impulsive buying is. You don't have any plan to buy that thing, but temptations are all around and hence in just a finger snap, you realized that you have that item in your hand already.

Impulsive Rating

You bought a thing that you really like from an online seller. And when you tested it, you found out that it's working as expected. Without doing further inspection of the product, you then gave the seller a 5 star rating because the item that you purchased is proven to be working.

But then soon enough when you started to use the other functionality of the item, you noticed that there's actually a damage and you suddenly realized that the item is not worth it!.

I often experience this one. I once bought a blue tooth speaker from Shopee and as soon as I have received the parcel, I tested if I can connect successfully via blue tooth. After proving that the connection can be easily established and the sound is good, I gave the seller a perfect rating. But then within the same day, I realized that the volume control is not working properly. So until now, I am dealing with that broken volume control whenever I am using that speaker.

Impulsive accusations

I believe we all have experienced this.

Sometimes, we tend to judge a person without looking for further justification if our judgement of that person is correct or not.

We used to accuse them even though we don't have enough evidence to prove our accusations. We used to accuse a person because of our anger or the emotions we wear during the time of confrontation.

Let's say in a crowded area where there's mix of professional people and few beggars. When I say professional, let's say they all wear formal dresses and wear ties. And then you suddenly lost your phone from your pocket, let's say. As soon as you realized that your phone is missing, who do you think will you accuse of stealing your phone? Will you ever accuse the person who wear ties and formal dress? Of course not! right? Because back in your mind, you thought that "why would they ever steal your phone if they can afford to buy it because they are well dressed".

In our day to day struggles in this universe, we may experience knee-jerk reaction depending on the situation that we're dealing with. Impulsive behavior causes us to over react as well.

But the important thing is, at the end of day, we should have learned from it and so that the next time, we could try to avoid committing the same mistake or showing insignifant reaction to a specific situation.

We should always make a pause and think for a while before doing any actions.

I have to end this article quickly because I heard from the other room that my kids are fighting again and looks like I need to do my another task as a mother - to be their referee. I heard someone's crying already.