What
would life be without emotions? Bleak and dreary most likely. Most people would
agree that emotions, that is, the capacity to feel and to care, and not just to
think, make life worth living. Scientists have come a long way to understanding
what emotions are and have documented what they feel like for most people. That
said, there is still much about emotions that are controversial or debated.
Learn what
emotions are. Emotions are programmed responses
shaped by evolution that allow you to navigate your environment in ways that
were generally adaptive in the past and are probably still adaptive today. Our
ancestors who had the capacity to experience emotions like fear at the sight of
a cliff would have been more cautious and more likely to survive and reproduce
than those without the capacity to be afraid.
- Emotions are divided into the primary categories of negative and positive. Positive emotions are those that occur when there is a potential benefit to be had, or after a benefit has been achieved. Negative emotions occur prior to or in response to situations that incur costs on you.
Know the basic emotions. Most psychologists agree that there are a set of so-called
"basic emotions" that all humans are endowed with, just like eyes,
legs, or arms. The basic emotions include anger, disgust, fear, happiness,
sadness, and surprise.
- Researchers have since expanded the list of emotions to include contempt, pride, shame, love, and anxiety. There may be more basic emotions than that, but the extent to which they are universally experienced or culture-specific is up for debate.
Understand
the role emotions play. Emotions
are incredibly important for our survival, our ability to thrive, and our
ability to make good decisions. The idea that there is a dichotomy between
emotion and reason is false. The way in which emotions can be seen as important
for survival is best illustrated with an example:
- Imagine you woke up one day and you didn't feel embarrassed or have any sense of shame or social anxiety. You generally did not care at all how you acted in front of other people. Chances are, you would lose all your friends if you didn't care at all about how you acted around them. That is to say the emotions, even negative emotions, are very important for our getting along with others and ultimately our survival.
Recognize
how emotions affect decision-making.
Emotions are critically important toward our ability to make decisions.
Emotions provide value or weight to some information, thereby biasing our decision-making
in one direction or another. Several studies have found that people with
lesions to parts of their brain that are involved with emotion, have impaired
decision-making and in some cases impaired moral behavior.
- The most famous of these cases is Phineas Gage (PG), an individual who was involved in an accident in which a metal pole blew through his head, damaging a part of his brain involved in the processing of emotion. Miraculously, PG survived the accident although he would never be the same person again. His personality changed drastically; he displayed flat or inappropriate emotion, made horrible decisions, and was a jerk to be around. One of the main reasons for this shift was that he had damage to a part of his brain involved in emotion.
- One group that has trouble in society are psychopaths. Those with psychopath are often criminal offenders. One of the key diagnostic criterion for psychopath is a lack of emotion, something called callous-unemotional traits. It is a lack of empathy, and guilt, and lacking these emotions tends to lead to antisocial behaviors. That is to say that emotions are important for our sense of morality.
Know that
emotions can become disordered.
Just as you could get a disorder of your kidneys or your eyes; your emotions
can become disordered too. If you feel like your emotions are disordered, be
sure to talk to a mental health professional about treatment options. Some of
the more common disorders of emotion, or mental disorders in which emotions are
affected include:
- Depression: which involves persistent and long-lasting feelings of sadness and a lost of interest.
- Anxiety disorders: General anxiety disorder refers to extended and excessive worry about day-to-day happenings.
- Schizophrenia: can be associated with a lack of emotions or an irritable or depressed mood.
- Mania: which generally occurs in bipolar disorder, refers to an extended period of abnormally and excessively elevated mood. Manic individuals may also be excessively and persistently irritable.
Record
when your emotions occur. Once you
have a sense of when emotions arise and what they feel like, you can take notes
on your emotions to further understand them as they relate to you personally.
To learn more about the specific emotions you experience and what triggers them
in your life, keep a log of when you feel an emotion and what you think
triggered it.
- For example, maybe you felt anger and you recalled that soon before you realized that you had to wait in line for 15 minutes for lunch and you hate waiting in lines.
- You could use this information to increase or decrease the emotions that you want or don't want in your life. For example, if you knew what caused anger in general and for you in particular, and you didn't want to feel as much anger as you currently tend to, you could take steps to avoid situations that trigger that emotion (such as by only buying a small handful of groceries at a time so you can use the express lanes).
