Table of Contents
What is the best definition of emotion?
: a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body. : a state of feeling. Emotional experiences have three components: a subjective experience, a physiological response and a behavioral or expressive response. Feelings arise from an emotional experience. Because a person is conscious of the experience, this is classified in the same category as hunger or pain. Before then, relevant mental states were categorised variously as “appetites,” “passions,” “affections,” or “sentiments.” The word “emotion” has existed in English since the 17th century, originating as a translation of the French émotion, meaning a physical disturbance. Facial expressions that give clues to a person’s mood, including happiness, surprise, contempt, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger. There are four kinds of basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger, which are differentially associated with three core affects: reward (happiness), punishment (sadness), and stress (fear and anger). William James’ (1884) theory of emotion proposed that there are a set of basic emotions (such as anger), and that each of these emotions has its own associated physical state (emotional measurement).
Who defined emotion?
In practical terms, Joseph LeDoux has defined emotions as the result of a cognitive and conscious process which occurs in response to a body system response to a trigger. The wholesome picture of emotions includes a combination of cognition, bodily experience, limbic/pre-conscious experience, and even action. Let’s take a closer look at these four parts of emotion. Anger, Fear, Sadness, Disgust & Enjoyment Understanding our emotions is an important part of good mental health. Below is a diagrammatic representation of the five basic emotions, which contains different words to describe the varying intensity of feelings in these five domains. Most people believe we have many emotions. However, according to Dorothy Lee, all our feeling and reactions are based on just two basic emotions – love and fear. The closer you can come to identifying your emotions as love or fear, the closer you are to determining which emotion is driving you. Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of the 100 most cited psychologists of the twentieth century.
What is an example of emotion?
They include sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. The patterns of emotion that we found corresponded to 25 different categories of emotion: admiration, adoration, appreciation of beauty, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, … Happiness. Of all the different types of emotions, happiness tends to be the one that people strive for the most. More recently, Carroll Izard at the University of Delaware factor analytically delineated 12 discrete emotions labeled: Interest, Joy, Surprise, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Self-Hostility, Fear, Shame, Shyness, and Guilt (as measured via his Differential Emotions Scale or DES-IV). The heart is considered the source of emotions, desire, and wisdom. Emotions are not innately programmed into our brains, but, in fact, are cognitive states resulting from the gathering of information.
What is emotion and feelings?
An emotion is a physiological experience (or state of awareness) that gives you information about the world, and a feeling is your conscious awareness of the emotion itself. Emotion is a subjective state of mind. Emotions can be reactions to internal stimuli (such as thoughts or memories) or events that occur in our environment. Emotions are not the same thing as moods. A mood is a state of mind that predisposes us to react a certain way. The first concerns the intrapersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role that emotions play within each of us individually. The second concerns the interpersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role emotions play between individuals within a group. Different networks in the brain can create the same emotion. And yes, emotions are created by our brain. It is the way our brain gives meaning to bodily sensations based on past experience. Different core networks all contribute at different levels to feelings such as happiness, surprise, sadness and anger.
What are emotions in one word?
Some common synonyms of emotion are affection, feeling, passion, and sentiment. While all these words mean a subjective response to a person, thing, or situation, emotion carries a strong implication of excitement or agitation but, like feeling, encompasses both positive and negative responses. Originating in the neocortical regions of the brain, feelings are sparked by emotions and shaped by personal experiences, beliefs, memories, and thoughts linked to that particular emotion. Strictly speaking, a feeling is the side product of your brain perceiving an emotion and assigning a certain meaning to it [7]. Emotional information is stored through “packages” in our organs, tissues, skin, and muscles. These “packages” allow the emotional information to stay in our body parts until we can “release” it. Negative emotions in particular have a long-lasting effect on the body. Psychologists say that love is the strongest emotion. Humans experience a range of emotions from happiness to fear and anger with its strong dopamine response, but love is more profound, more intense, affecting behaviors, and life-changing. The Schachter-Singer two-factor theory of emotion is another variation on theories of emotions that takes into account both physiological arousal and the emotional experience. According to this theory, emotions are composed of two factors: physiological and cognitive.
What is the difference between emotions and feelings?
A fundamental difference between feelings and emotions is that feelings are experienced consciously, while emotions manifest either consciously or subconsciously. Some people may spend years, or even a lifetime, not understanding the depths of their emotions. Emotions are very short-lived feelings that come from a known cause. They are displayed through sudden physical body language and facial expressions, such as by smiling when happy or crying when sad. Different types of emotions include: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Behavior is different from emotions but is very strongly influenced by them. One way that behavior is affected by emotions is through motivation, which drives a person’s behavior. Emotions like frustration and boredom can lower motivation and, thus, lower the chance that we will act. Emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. Emotion has a particularly strong influence on attention, especially modulating the selectivity of attention as well as motivating action and behavior.
What is the role of emotions?
Emotions drive our actions – for example, a fight, flight or freeze response. Emotions tell others that we’re dealing with stressors and may need support. Emotions have wisdom. They tell us something important in our life is changing or needs attention. Emotions bring people together Emotions are cues for other people to understand us more and relate to our experience. By expressing our emotions, we are giving other people important information related to who we are as a person, what we care about and value, and/or what we might be needing in certain moments. Generally, people tend to view anger as one of our strongest and most powerful emotions. Anger is a natural and automatic human response, and can in fact, serve to help protect us from harm. While angry behavior can be destructive, angry feelings themselves are merely a signal that we may need to do something. It transforms our life from a series of plain tasteless events and facts into a living, breathing experience. Your feelings affect your brain, heart rhythms, entire body, energy, thoughts and relations.