“Emotion is a relative term, related to a person’s mood, temperament, personality, and disposition” (Emotion, n.d). However, emotions do vary from our moods. Mood may be described as extended state of emotional effect. “Moods differ from simple emotions in that they are less specific, less strong, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event” (Mood, n.d). Joy, anger, fear, grief etc all are different types of emotions.
Here are Some Common Emotions:
- Happiness: A positive emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, contentment, and satisfaction.
- Sadness: A negative emotion associated with feelings of loss, disappointment, or grief.
- Anger: An intense emotional response triggered by perceived threats, injustice, or frustration.
- Fear: An emotion related to danger or threat perception, leading to a fight-or-flight response.
- Surprise: A sudden reaction to unexpected events or stimuli.
- Disgust: A strong aversion to something unpleasant or offensive.
Emotions can be complex and nuanced, and individuals experience them differently.
Emotions in History: Scholars in the “history of emotions” have conceptualized emotions as a network of relations between bodies, material culture, ideas, language, and environment.This approach recognizes that emotions are influenced by various factors beyond individual feelings and thoughts.
Major Theories of Emotions:
- Evolutionary Theory: Suggests that emotions evolved because they were adaptive for survival and reproduction. For example, love motivates seeking mates, while fear prompts fight-or-flight responses2.
- James-Lange Theory: Proposes that physiological responses (e.g., increased heart rate) precede conscious emotional experiences. In other words, our bodily reactions shape our emotions.
- Cannon-Bard Theory: Argues that physiological responses and emotional experiences occur simultaneously, independently of each other.
- Schachter-Singer Theory: Emphasizes cognitive appraisal—how we interpret situations—alongside physiological arousal to create emotions.
- Cognitive Appraisal Theory: Focuses on our evaluations of events and their significance in shaping emotional responses.
- Facial-Feedback Theory: Suggests that facial expressions influence our emotional experiences.
Emotions are complex and multifaceted, and these theories provide different perspectives on how they arise and function.
Components of Emotions
Basically there are three components of emotions:
Cognitive component
It is also defined as a subjective feelings or strong sense of internal emotion.
Physiological component
“Itconsists of structures of the brain structures, and a system of neurons which include the whole nervous system and the neural transmitters. It also includes the endocrine system. When a persons under goes a set of motions, they trigger the nervous system, this can lead of effects such as goose bumps, heart rate increasing, rise in adrenal activity and also may cause inhibited digestion in some cases. The physical changes that emotions render on our body can be noted and recorded as external evidence in few types of medical examination e.g the polygraph test measures autonomic arousal which lots of people experience when they tell a lie. The reason for these phenomena is that the galvanic skin response (GSR) measures fluctuations in electrical conductivity of the skin that occurs when sweat glands increase activity. Said change is actually detected in the test. However It is not considered an exact indicator of lying or truth telling because some individuals who lie do not exhibit autonomic arousal on the contrary some people may display the same symptoms when telling the truth. In the human body the system which links our emotions with the brain structures through the limbic system. During emotional arousal it is said that amygdale in particular is active. This in term modulates the cortex. If we study in depth we realize that basically there are two neural pathways which are linked with emotional.
Behavioral component
“The behavioral component may be defined as an expression of emotions in terms of external appearances like facial expressions and body language. Happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness and disgust are good examples of behavioral component of emotions. In the eyes of few scientific experts there seems to be a connection between the muscular response that generates from a facial expressions and the feeling when a human under goes a certain emotion. This phenomenon may be termed as the facial- feedback.
Hypothesis. For instance a case of simple smiling, might render you in a state of comfort and mental happiness, on the other hand if u start frowning over a situation it may lead to your becoming sad” (Emotion, n.d).
According to the diary of emotional behavior shown above the calculation of the emotional experience across the analytical period rendered the following results:
During the analytical period the positive emotions were much pronounced. During my three day emotions diary ‘joy’ shows the highest frequency, meaning that it is the most frequent emotion. The diary shows that on day 1 at 9 am, I got up in the morning, had breakfast and was relaxed, calm and satisfied. On day 2, again I felt joyful and fresh when I had a descent over night sleep, thus I woke up and had a cup of tea. My third day once again was full of positive emotions. Additional positive emotions that were felt throughout this analytical period are happiness, contentment and hopefulness. This shows that most of the times my leading emotions were the positive ones. The physiological effect of these positive emotions that I went through was that I felt calm and relaxed.
It is important for any person that he or she does not get paused or jammed over one emotion, the emotions of a person vary from time to time and this variation definitely depicts the repetition of the neural processes. In my case along with the positive emotions I also felt negative emotions, which included: frustration, worry, irritation and pessimism.
According to the Fredrickson “the emotion must necessarily generate specific action tendencies”. The revelation of my diary of emotions displays the physiological and cognitive components of emotions. It also shows that every emotion is complemented by some kind of expression. For instance when I felt frustrated and angry on day 1 then I just threw things and left the things scattered around. This showed that the negative emotions lead to said hilarious set of actions or behaviors. The diary also reveals some cognitive components. For instance, on day 3 when I experience the emotion of joy I went to the market and want to buy something nice and good for my house. It was only because positive emotions are accompanied by positive thinking.
Now talking about the physiological components in the diary of emotions there are loads of them. In addition to the visible physiological components there were also some invisible or imperceptible physical processes such as the chemicals oozing by the body’s different glands and the neural processes. The visible physiological components which are listed in the emotions diary are: soreness in the body and headache.
According to Thompson (2007) “Negative emotions can influence our thinking and actions and affect us physically. A person’s negative viewpoint and the fears that lie beneath it can cause psychological illness and physical disorder. Pessimistic mental states are the root of physical changes in the body”. In the same way, the physiological change (headache) mentioned in my diary of emotion is the result of negative emotion. The negative emotions which lead to this bad physiological affect consist of: frustration, anger and pessimism.
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, interpret, demonstrate, control, evaluate, and use emotions effectively in communication and relationships1. Here are some key points:
Components of EI:
- Emotional Awareness: Recognizing and naming one’s own emotions.
- Emotion Regulation: Managing emotions, including down-regulation (reducing intensity) when necessary.
- Empathy: Understanding and recognizing others’ emotions.
- Social Skills: Using emotions to relate well with others.
Roots of Emotional Intelligence:
- Developed by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer in the 1990s, popularized by Daniel Goleman.
- Some psychologists debate its explanatory power due to the challenge of capturing it via psychometric tests1.
Benefits of High EI:
- Self-Awareness: Emotionally intelligent individuals are conscious of their feelings, leading to high self-confidence and realistic self-perception.
- Self-Regulation: They think before acting, maintaining steady emotion regulation.
- Empathy and Social Skills: Tuned into others’ emotions, they make better friends, parents, leaders, and partners.
EI is a valuable skill for personal and social well-being!
Conclusion
For a few moments if we tend to imagine our selves without emotions and our set of behavior and expressions coupled also gone, would we still feel our selves as human? Or would we be behaving more like the robots and terminators that we see in Hollywood movies. So what is that makes us different? Which gives us a unique taste of life?
Basically these are the emotions which give us a feeling that we are alive. In our daily lives all of us feel a lot of positive and negative emotions. Both types of emotions impact our thinking and physiological health. Positive emotions give us good health whereas negative emotions give us bad health. But an important component is that, we should not allow the negative emotions to rule our health badly, we should hunt for ways to use positive emotions to hack it with negative emotions and moods, this helps in improving our thinking, responses and physical health, because positive emotions lend a hand in plummeting the effects of negative emotions on our physiological health.