What is Emotion?
An interesting question that keeps popping up in my mind. I used to ask myself, am I feeling the emotion now? Is it joy, fear, anger…? I just could not explain these feelings I’m capable of expressing. Are these the real emotions within me? After searching all over the internet, read all kinds of books related to human emotions, I find this particular explanation making sense to me, “Emotions are the vibration inside of us”. In a more scientific approach, Emotion = Energy + Motion. Almost everyone would agree that the study of emotions is one of the most sophisticated topic in the history of psychology. But can emotions be studied and understood? The challenge of developing a theoretical approach is important, because emotions are an essential part of who we are and how we survive; emotional distress impels people to seek help, and the primary concern is the repair of emotional disorders.
Our mind and body are intimately connected and cannot exist without each other. The emotions are the activity of the mind which are expressed via the medium of body. Mind expresses its activities/emotions in gross and subtle form via the body. Gross form is the vocal and physical forms in which everybody could perceive. Only a few people with a sharp, focused mind are able to perceive these subtle sensations on the body. Most people sense this sensation when they are really happy, in which one would feel a sensation akin to a wave going over their body. Thus, it is a difficult subject to express in words due to the fact that most of us do not pay attention as our minds are lost in the external world of sensual pleasures.
The next question would be: Where are emotions formed? Based on the study by Dr Robert Plutchik. In his Wheel of Emotions book, he has documented that there are 34,000 emotions being identified yet how many emotions are we aware of? In my point of view, evolutionary theory will provide a way to unify a number of theoretical perspectives. Using tools and pulling together information from other species, we can put emotions in a functional framework, define them in terms of what their adaptive functions might be, and thus understand their biological basis and the apparent connections between them better.
An emotion is not as simple as a state of feeling. Emotion is a complex chain of loosely connected events that begins with a stimulus and includes feeling, p
sychological changes, impulses to action and specific, goal-directed behavior. It is not necessarily easy to detect an emotional substrate in the behavior of lower animals, but neither is it necessary to exclude the possibility. Emotion is far more complex than the subjective experience familiar to a human adult, and the concept of emotion can be applied to lower animals as well as human beings. Emotions have an inherent complexity that is in part related to their evolutional history. Emotions are a chain of events made up of feedback loops. Feelings and behaviors can affect cognition, just as cognition can influence feeling.