Emotions

Emotions are very simple to experience, and complex to explain. One piece of writing cannot possibly do justice to everything I want to express about them. Therefore, in this article, I shall stick to the fundamentals - what are emotions, how we experience them, the range of basic and complex emotions, and their purpose.

Most of us intuitively know what emotions are. Over the years, several psychologists and scientists from other disciplines have tried to define emotions. However, there is no unanimous standard definition that I can present here.?

So then what are emotions? Let us break it down into simple units.

When an event occurs that has personal significance for you like Argentina winning FIFA World Cup, or your first child is born, or you lose a loved one, or your car getting dangerously close to another speeding vehicle, or your boss making you work the weekend – you have 1. a physical or bodily sensation, a physiological change and 2. a cognitive response. It may also be combined with 3. a behavioral reaction, albeit it will not always be apparent.

The physiological change or sensation is called the emotion. The cognitive response is called the feeling and collectively the experience is called an Emotional State.

For example, I get angry when something occurs that is unfavorable to me or harms me. I get deeply agitated, a warmth spreads through my body, my temples start throbbing, tears well up in my eyes, and my wrath descends upon the one responsible in form of a sharp tongue lashing with excited hand movements. This is my experience of the emotional state of anger. Yours might be similar – or a highly personalized and completely different version.?

There are some striking similarities in the expression of anger though – furrowed brows, clenched fists, tense lips & jaws, flared nostrils etc. Therefore, universally you would be able to recognize with reasonable certainty if someone is angry.

PAUSE: I would like you to pause here. And think. How do YOU experience various emotional states? How do you experience anger, sadness, joy or surprise? What happens to your body? What are you thinking? How do you behave? What are the universal facial expressions that are cues for you to learn that someone else is in a certain emotional state?

Various psychologists and scientists have enumerated their own versions of basic emotions. Each of these lists varies in its constituents and the basis of their inclusion. For example, Plutchik, who has done pioneering work in the field of emotions has listed 8 basic emotions - acceptance, anger, anticipation, disgust, joy, fear, sadness, and surprise; on the basis of their relation to adaptive biological processes. Paul Ekman has listed only six on the basis of universal facial expressions - anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. William James in 1890 proposed four basic emotions: fear, grief, love, and rage, based on bodily involvement. John B Watson, the father of behaviorism listed only three in 1919 – fear, love, and rage as hardwired emotions. It is safe to assume therefore that depending on the point of view you chose, the basic emotions are going to be logically and astonishingly different.

I like to look at emotions from the POV of having an evolutionary purpose. Governed primarily by our limbic system, they are responsible for human survival and growth. Fear safeguards us from jumping off a cliff, love & happiness form the basis of a family unit & raising the young ones, anger helps us inhibit any wrongdoing against ourselves.

Imagine, if we feared nothing we might get ourselves into some really dangerous situations - fear is a very important and often unappreciated emotion. If we didn’t feel anger, we might get pushed over or taken advantage of. Sadness signals the need for catharsis and asking for help. Emotions tell us instinctively – what needs to be done. That is their purpose. They have kept us thriving through the evolutionary process by helping us adapt, attune, make decisions, establish a moral code, and more.

?Johnathan Turner wrote a comprehensive analysis of Evolution of Emotions from Darwinian (evolutionary) and Durkheimian (sociological) standpoints in the Journal for the theory of social behavior in 1996. Deriving from the work of other psychologists, he mentioned five primary emotions. Each of these primary emotions isn't a singular entity, but a range of emotions that when further combined with others form first-order combinations. These are illustrated in the table below -

The first column in this table lists 5 primary emotions. The second column elaborates on a wide range of emotions that the primary emotion can take form of. For example, sadness can be manifested as (including but not limited to) resignation, ennui or sorrow depending on the situation. When one primary emotion is combined with another, they form the first-order combination - listed in the third column. For example, happiness combined with surprise forms joy & ecstasy; sadness when combined with surprise gives rise to the emotion of being crestfallen.

I share this list for two purposes:

1. To illustrate that as humans evolved, emotions became complex and entwined. We have a much wider range of emotions as compared to other primates. We can experience two seemingly conflicting emotions together at once. For example, happiness and anger occurs together (imagine the glee when your sibling who didn’t share the cake with you is being reprimanded). Happiness and sadness happen together too (the longing and yearning for your beloved). As we evolved, as the social situations around us developed, our emotional states became more nuanced and complex.?
2. To demonstrate the role of linguistics in our experience of emotions. Most languages have exclusive words which describe an intricate pattern of emotions with astounding clarity. For example, until a few years ago, I didn’t know the difference between envy and jealousy and used the words interchangeably - the two are apparently different.

One of the crucial steps towards regulating your emotions, making them work to your advantage, and experiencing everything that they have to offer – is identifying and naming them correctly. Do we even know enough words to determine what is it that we are feeling? Are we attuned enough with our body and mind to listen to them without bias?

I would like to leave you on this note. As soon as I can gather more thoughts, I’d like to share how our experience and the manifestation of complex emotional states impact our lives. How can we regulate them??

In the meanwhile, next time you feel a rush of emotion (any emotion), take a moment to notice – what is it telling you, what are you thinking, what is your body going through, how are you behaving, what is it that needs to be done??

P.S. If I have managed to hold your attention long enough for you to be reading this, kindly indulge me and leave in the comments below your thoughts on emotions, about what you just read, and what more would you like to read. I look forward to hearing from you. ?

References:

Elias, L., & Saucier, D. (2013).?Neuropsychology: Pearson New International Edition PDF eBook: Clinical and Experimental Foundations. Pearson Higher Ed.

Gendron, M. (2010). Defining emotion: A brief history.?Emotion Review,?2(4), 371-372.

Ortony, A., & Turner, T. J. (1990). What's basic about basic emotions? Psychological Review, 97, 315-331.

Plutchik, R. (1980). A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3-33). New York: Academic.

Robinson, M. D., Watkins, E. R., & Harmon-Jones, E. (Eds.). (2013).?Handbook of cognition and emotion. Guilford Press.

Turner, J. H. (1996). The evolution of emotions in humans: A Darwinian–Durkheimian analysis.?Journal for the theory of social behaviour,?26(1), 1-33.