Kelsey 1
Gabriel Kelsey
Ms. Miki Hodge, Ed. S.
ENGL 1110
22 October 2025
Intensity
The world is a scary place. Guns cock as riots swarm the streets. Piercing gang sounds
echo throughout America. Blood seeps grotesquely from people who suffer from the worldwide
problem of violence in poverty. These words pierce into the soul. Their deep emotion carries
deep power that can alter the logic of life. Erika Hayasaki’s article This is Your Brain on Poor
provides an insight to this unsettling reality of life and the detrimental effects of experiencing
violence through poverty. Her writing structure and language engineers a distress that obscures
the logic. The intense emotional language without clear processing time creates an ineffective,
emotionally-centered, and ironic argument within Hayasaki’s work that lacks both an appeal to
the audience and logical solutions, instead of emotional ones, that can truly make change.
Hayasaki’s 2016 work builds on the study by USC neuroscientist Immordino-Yang that
proposes poverty affects critical thinking, emotional awareness, judgement, and social and
emotional processing within people’s brains. She integrates the proposal into the personal
experiences of Stephanie and Vannessa Vergara, students affected by violence and poverty, that
illustrate both empirical and scientific effects of violence in poverty. Specifically, Yang notes
constant violence and stress alters the brain’s perception of what “normal emotion” is, putting a
strain on the amygdala to focus on emotion instead of critical processing and thinking. Then, the
article explores the risks and limitations of the findings before finally concluding with
hopefulness for how society can alter the effects of violence in poverty. The argument is a jungle
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of information about violence in poverty—a thorough and heavily-explored explanation into the
science and real-world effects of the mental weight endured by those in poverty.
Hayasaki’s thorough explanation into science is also thorough in intensity. Despite its
emotional appeals, her ferocious emotional writing coupled with deep topics creates a distress in
the reader. Naturally, distress obscures her logic. Her work highlights S. and V. Vergara’s
experiences by using negative trigger words such as metal detectors, police dogs, riots, getting
jumped, beat until she bled, gang members, code-red lockdown, and shooting. Then, she
transcends her audience into a state of being affected by violence that shakes the reader
tremendously. “Imagine they are likely to beat you, rob you, rape you, shoot you. Your stress
hormones would be constantly amped up…” Hayasaki vigorously writes (43). Her sharp and
impactful language coupled with the second person requires space for the reader to breathe, as
the shock paralyzes their body. The problem is, however, the intensity does not fall to allow for
this breathing space. Combining the trigger words with an intense writing style—“overdrive,”
“stigma,” “fuel misguided beliefs,” “unsafe and dilapidated buildings”—distracts the reader from
the argument. The reader is too shocked to understand the structure, logic or critical points. They
need processing time. In their mind, their neighbor has a knife to their neck where one vocal
tremble could slice their head off like Medusa. Hayasaki’s emotion is powerful. But being
bombarded with powerful language all of the time requires process time that takes away the solid
understanding of her logic and argument.
After the emotional vigor is a transition to a completely different study and more
impactful claims. Often in her writing, Hayasaki litters logic in the middle of emotional scenes.
As a result, the combination of logic and emotion creates an unclear and hard-to-understand
message for her article. For instance, interesting information about S. Vergara’s life immediately
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follows her memories of shootings, gang members, riots, and blood (Hayasaki 41). Complex
science about neurotransmitters and the amygdala immediately follows, “being held up at
gunpoint” (Hayasaki 42). Yang’s critical argument about violence in poverty immediately
follows, they will “beat you, rob you, rape you, shoot you” (Hayasaki 43). The transitions
between logic and emotion do not allow for breathing room. In a state of emotional processing, it
is harder to understand the message correctly. The brain tends to skew, distort, and
overcomplicate logic due to the intrinsic power of intense emotion. Simply, humans cannot
successfully multitask processing complex logic and heart-pounding emotion at the same time,
especially considering the article is five pages long, single spaced. In context, Hayasaki’s work is
written for a magazine. Stereotypically, a magazine reader relaxing with a cup of coffee while
watching The Big Bang Theory is not in the mindset to handle such emotional and logical power
at the same time. In the show, friends cannot handle when Sheldon and germs have to coincide;
similarly, humans cannot handle the intensity of logic and emotion at the same time. It is too
much, and as a result, the message is obscured.
Furthermore, the high intensity fuels a negative mindset about the world. The constant
message of violence and duress continually feeds the false narrative that the world is a sad place,
filled with rancor and vehement and hopelessness. And while disparities exist, they should not
define our writing or society as a whole. Hayasaki presents statistics and emotional appeals in a
light that removes light from the world. She negatively mentions, “It’s true that some minority
groups living in poverty ‘greatly exceed’ the U.S. average” (Hayasaki 43). A writer cannot
change a statistic. But they can change the way they present it. Coupled with the constant
mention of violence, gunpoint, riots, and gangs lurking just beyond school walls, Hayasaki fills
the reader with anguish—an anguish regarding our world, the one that we, as humans, created, to
Kelsey 4
be filled with life, prosperity, and light. As depression, anxiety, and suicide statistics are at all
time high, constant mentions that our world is filled with negativity are devastating punches to
the heart, mind, and soul. It is devastating to listen to podcasts regarding violence in the Middle
East. It is devastating to watch the news and see murders, wars, and government chaos. It is
devastating to read about a violent world. The paper is a constant attack on the reader's
perception of the world. Hayasaki frames her argument to focus on negativity for over half the
paper. Presumably, she wanted to show the world its violent problems with the intention that the
reader can feel hope and make change. However, violence does not create hope. It makes people
scared.
This unintended effect of fear is ironic given the topic. Hayasaki’s article explains how
constant, high-intensity emotion lowers critical thinking because the brain directs more attention
to emotional processing (40-45); but ironically, she presents constant, high-intensity emotion,
which, lowers critical thinking in her own argument because, in exactly the same light, the brain
directs more attention to emotional processing. She throws stones while living in a sumptuous
glass palace! The writing style evokes hypocrisy, as it proves her exact point that constant
emotional processing hinders the brain’s ability to logically process and digest ideas. Reading
“...to beat you, rob you, rape you, shoot you” (Hayasaki 43) or “being held up at gun point”
(Hayasaki 42), evokes similar feelings to what Vergara felt during her emotional
turmoil—feelings, that require emotional processing instead of logical processing. Now, getting
shot at is not the same as reading an intense paper. Nonetheless, Hayasaki still has obscured,
ironic, and hypocritical logic.
Emotion does not only shape Hayasaki’s ineffective logic; the paper’s structure does as
well. The structure of Hayasaki’s writing is innately shaped to feed the ineffective dichotomy of
Kelsey 5
high intensity, ferocious emotional writing with logic. As a reader travels through the paper, they
are met with two major genres of writing: a research paper and an empirical analysis,
interweaving the logical half and the emotional half into one ineffective article. Hayasaki opens
with a researched-based paper: an introduction to the study, the possible outcomes of the study, a
review of literature, and then this study’s new approach (40-41). In a sharp twist, two personal
examples with real-life experience, however, then illustrate the science (Hayasaki 41-43).
Potentially, Hayasaki wants to illustrate her main points using emotion to foster empathy and an
actual response; however, the result is a confusing entanglement of logic and emotion discussed
previously. For this to work, logic has to undermine the emotion in order to build credibility
within the argument. Consequently, however, the emotional-processing-mess-left reader now has
to process complex logic, theories, and studies in the midst of emotional action. This is the same
reader, as well, sitting on a toilet seat stressed about being late for work. Some magazine readers
are not adept enough to sort through and analyze the argument to get its points; they read for
pleasure. Pleasure should not mean being bombarded with complex information that the reader
can barely discern from the intense emotion because of poor writing choices. Hayasaki, in an
attempt to appeal to emotion, has blundered the clarity of her argument by using an ineffective
two-genre structure.
Near the end of the article, Hayasaki changes her writing style. The abrupt shift from
emotional, vigorous language into a spirited, empathetic style is an ineffective attempt at
providing a solution. Her goal is to take the intense emotion from before and translate it into
real-world empathy and light, as she elucidates S. Vergara’s success due to the empathy provided
within her family. However, Hayasaki flips the switch too late. One breath does not heal five
minutes without air. If the article has been intensely discussing how strongly violence affects
Kelsey 6
brain development within poverty, the solution appears to readers that society should stop
violence, not ameliorate its effects. The conclusion discusses empathy and showing warmth to
people who have been affected by violence, instead of providing a solution of how to instill
warmth and kindness in everybody to stop violence in the first place. Audiences, especially
magazine readers, tend to believe the solution to procrastination is to start the work earlier, not
learn how to cram; they attack the root of the issue. So, the attempt to palliate the intense
emotional trauma with the blanket statement, “be kind,” does not make the audience feel whole.
Now, Hayasaki’s spirited, empathetic style is beautiful, packed with imagery and light. For
instance, “[Stephanie] Vergara remembers their frugality as delicious home-cooked meals like
pork, potato and carrot tacos” (45), she notes. Despite the warm language, however, after
unresolved emotional intensity, the lyrical writing cannot fill the gap for real and root-attacking
solutions. Some magazine readers could still be stuck processing the emotional vigor from two
pages ago; the abrupt shift and simple solution acts as tape to the water hole.
Hayasaki’s heavy, intense emotional language obscures logic in her article This is Your
Brain on Poor. The dual-pronged structure feeds into this ineffective cycle, providing empathy
without active, everyday solutions. The human brain is absolutely horrific at trying to process
logic and emotion at the same time—whether that be in addiction, arguments, or grief. Violence
in poverty is fed on emotion; Hayasaki’s article is fed on emotion. Violence in poverty is a result
of emotional processing obscuring logic; Hayasaki’s ineffective article is also a result of
emotional processing obscuring logic. Emotions and logic do not mix. The world surely is a
scary place. The combination of emotion and logic just makes us perceive it as worse.
Kelsey 7
Work Cited
Print.
Hayasaki, Erika. “This is Your Brain on Poor.” Newsweek 02 September 2016: 40-45.
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