For a long time, emotions have been treated as something visceral, something which comes "from the gut" rather than the mind. This mode of thinking has ancient roots. In the Western tradition of political thought, it is still very common to contrast "reason" with "emotion"; on the one hand stands ordered, rational reason (something to be aspired to and admired), on the other the pull of irrational, emotional impulses (something to be avoided). This is implicit in Freud's distinction between the id and the superego, for instance. We are very much accustomed to thinking of emotion as something detrimental to informed, factually based decision-making.
This way of approaching the operations of the human mind is clearly present in popular culture and dates back hundreds if not thousands of years, right back to the ancient Greeks. Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek or one of its many movie spin-offs, for instance, knows that the relationship between Captain James Kirk and his assistant Mr. Spock turns on their different ways of approaching the worlds around them. While as a human being Kirk is often passionate and emotional, he is just as often berated by Spock for departing from the dictates of pure reason.
When Kirk is led to an emotional response, Spock frequently responds with the cold admonition "that is illogical,
Captain." Half-human and half-Vulcan, however, Spock himself constantly experiences an internal psychological struggle between his reasoning, logical Vulcan half and his emotional human half.