Many times confused with feelings and moods, according to the American Psychological Association (APA), emotion is defined as “a complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioral and physiological elements.” Emotions are how individuals deal with matters or situations they find personally significant. Emotional experiences have three components: a subjective experience, a physiological response and a behavioral or expressive response.
Feelings come from an emotional experience. Because a person is conscious of the experience, this is classified in the same category as hunger or pain. A feeling is the result of an emotion and may be influenced by memories, beliefs and other factors.
A mood is described by the APA as “any short-lived emotional state, usually of low intensity.” Moods differ from emotions because they lack stimuli and have no clear starting point.
Defining emotions is a task yet to be completed. Many researchers are still proposing theories about what makes up our emotions, and existing theories are constantly being challenged. Still, there’s a good basis of knowledge to analyze when exploring the topic.
To understand how emotion works on the body, we must differentiate emotion from feeling. When we experience any of the primary emotions - sadness, happiness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust - our experiences express themselves physically, in ways that can be observed by another person.
Feelings, on the other hand, are our conscious perception of all the changes happening in the body, and of very subtle changes that are happening in the way our cognitive apparatus functions.
Most of what happens when an emotion is elicited happens nonconsciously. Often our body may already be in a state that represents anger before we know what is making us angry. The creation of this body state is automatic, largely preset by our genes to respond not to a particular thing but to certain categories of things.
For instance, when we generate states of fear or anger or disgust or happiness, we produce withdrawal behaviors or approach behaviors that have been preserved through evolution because they have proved advantageous to survival. We have inherited this system for sorting out what is good and what is bad, automatically, in order to preserve ourselves.
The power of such nonconscious processing is enormous. Many studies have shown that in normal individuals, the amygdala - a brain structure intimately involved in the fear response and in recognizing fear - will be activated even when a person is not consciously aware of having been presented with a fearful stimulus. The brain can pick up a signal that is well masked at the conscious level.
While there is debate about sequence, there is general agreement that emotions, as mentioned earlier, are made up of three parts: subjective experiences, physiological responses and behavioral responses. Let’s look at each of these parts in more detail.
Subjective Experiences
All emotions begin with a subjective experience, also referred to as a stimulus, but what does that mean? While basic emotions are expressed by all individuals regardless of culture or upbringing, the experience that produces them can he highly subjective.
Subjective experiences can range from something as simple as seeing a color to something as major as losing a loved one or getting married. No matter how intense the experience is, it can provoke many emotions in a single individual and the emotions each individual feel may be different. For example, one person may feel anger and regret at the loss of a loved one while another may experience intense sadness.
Physiological Responses
We all know how it feels to have our heart beat fast with fear. This physiological response is the result of the autonomic nervous system’s reaction to the emotion we’re experiencing. The autonomic nervous system controls our involuntary bodily responses and regulates our fight-or-flight response. According to many psychologists, our physiological responses are likely how emotion helped us evolve and survive as humans throughout history.
Interestingly, studies have shown autonomic physiological responses are strongest when a person’s facial expressions most closely resemble the expression of the emotion they’re experiencing. In other words, facial expressions play an important role in responding accordingly to an emotion in a physical sense.
Behavioral Responses
The behavioral response aspect of the emotional response is the actual expression of the emotion. Behavioral responses can include a smile, a grimace, a laugh or a sigh, along with many other reactions depending on societal norms and personality.
While plentiful research suggests that many facial expressions are universal, such as a frown to indicate sadness, sociocultural norms and individual upbringings play a role in our behavioral responses. For example, how love is expressed is different both from person to person and across cultures.
Behavioral responses are important to signal to others how we’re feeling, but research shows that they’re also vital to an individuals’ well-being. Meaning that expressing behavioral responses to stimuli, both positive and negative, is better for your overall health than holding those responses inside. Thus, there are benefits of smiling, laughing and expressing negative emotions in a healthy way.
The physiological and behavioral responses associated with emotions illustrate that emotion is much more than a mental state. Emotion affects our whole demeanor and our health. Furthermore, our ability to understand others’ behavioral responses plays a huge role in our emotional intelligence.
In emotional psychology, emotions are split into two groups: basic: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust and, and complex like love, embarrassment, envy, gratitude, guilt, pride, and worry, among many others. Complex emotions have differing appearances and may not be as easily recognizable, such as grief, jealousy or regret. Complex emotions are defined as “any emotion that is an aggregate of two or more others.” The APA uses the example of hate being a fusion of fear, anger and disgust. Basic emotions, on the other hand, are unmixed and innate.
What is important to note here is that emotions are a part of nature and have played a big role in our survival throughout human evolution, signaling to those around us to react accordingly. And this is just emotional intelligence which is the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Many researchers believe that emotional intelligence can be improved over time, while some argue that it’s a trait we’re born with or without.
The components of emotional intelligence include:
Appraising and expressing emotions in the self and others: Recognizing or expressing verbal or nonverbal cues about emotion
Regulating emotion in the self and others: Managing emotions so that all parties are motivated towards a positive outcome.
Using emotions in adaptive ways: Using emotion and the interpretation of emotions to result in positive outcomes.
Those who have emotional intelligence open themselves to positive and negative emotional experiences, identify the emotions and communicate those emotions appropriately. Emotionally intelligent people can use their understanding of their emotions and the emotions of others to move toward personal and social growth. Those with low emotional intelligence may unable to understand and control their emotions or those of others. This could leave others feeling badly when they don’t understand their emotions, feelings, or expressions.
Clearly, there are personal and professional benefits to improving your emotional intelligence. High emotional intelligence correlates with better work performance, makes people better leaders and creates the conditions for personal happiness. Based on UWA's | Psychology and Counseling News
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