Emotions are powerful and impactful in all aspects of our lives. Everything we do and experience leads to an emotional response. And our emotional responses impact our thoughts and actions. It’s always a two-way street.
Emotions have the power to lead us on a path to healthy well-being. But they also have the power to deteriorate our well-being.
In this Guide to Emotions, you’ll learn what emotions are, how they function in our brain and throughout our body, how they can build us up or tear us down, and how to build emotional intelligence and emotional awareness. In other words, you’ll learn how to understand and use your emotions to achieve healthy well-being.
Guide to emotions
Emotions defined
What are emotions? Let’s start with a simple definition. Emotions are reactions, both positive and negative, to circumstances in our life that we experience in a biological, psychological, and social way. They involve muscle tension, hormone release, facial expressions, cardiovascular changes, cognition, attention, and more.
Emotions comprise of three parts: transient, biopsychosocial, reactions.
- Transient simply means impermanent or temporary. The emotions we feel change on a pretty regular basis. You may notice that your emotions can change from happy to sad rather quickly. Similarly, they sometimes change so fast we aren’t aware of it right away. The reason is emotions typically last between 60-90 seconds!
- There are three parts to biopsychosocial. First, bio refers to the fact that emotions are biological. They involve a physiological response in our body through our central and autonomic nervous systems. Psycho refers to the psychological or mental processes involved in processing and regulating our emotions. Social indicates that social situations often bring out or elicit emotions.
- Reactions refer to the fact that emotions are reactions to circumstances we experience in our life. We respond emotionally in some way or another to every experience we have in order to adapt to or cope with that experience. This reaction affects our future well-being.
Emotions vs. moods
Sometimes we use the words emotions and moods interchangeably, but they are in fact different.
As mentioned, emotions are transient. They are short-lived, lasting an average of 60-90 seconds long. Moods, on the other hand, last longer periods of time.
Additionally, emotions typically occur in response to a specific event or trigger. A mood can occur without any apparent cause or reason.
Ultimately, the distinction is minor and rarely important.
Why are emotions important?
Emotions are feedback mechnisms. They help us adapt and respond to the world around us. Without them, we wouldn’t know how to escape from danger, care for a loved one, reject food or a dangerous object, approach something helpful to us, or similar reactions that ensure our safety and well-being.
Types of emotions
Positive vs. negative emotions
We often think of emotions as being either positive or negative. Some people don’t like referring to them this way because all emotions are okay. They may refer to emotions as comfortable/uncomfortable or pleasant/unpleasant. It’s important to note that regardless of how you differentiate them, all emotions are okay.
Some people mistakenly believe that positive and negative emotions are on a continuum, where on one end lay positive emotions and on the other end negative emotions. That simply isn’t the case. Emotions are much more complex than that.
In fact, we can feel a positive emotion and a negative emotion at the same time. And positive experiences can lead to negative emotions and negative experiences can lead to positive emotions.
Here are some of the differences between the two:
| Negative Emotions | Positive Emotions |
|---|---|
| Allow people to respond to threats, dangers, or environmental problems | Expand thought-action repositories/repertoires |
| Create narrow focused-thinking and directed-action | Create broader, more open thinking |
| Increased cardiovascular reactivity | Correlated with health and well-being |
| Negative emotions high in intensity can be harmful and cause health problems | |
| Narrow focus can lead to excessive focus on negative experiences | |
Basic emotions
Basic emotions are a specific class of emotions that share characteristics that differentiate them from other emotions. These characteristics include unique physiological signatures; special changes in attention and mental activities; the same reliable, nonverbal signals used to express them; and subjective experience.
There are six basic emotions, or primary emotions, including anger, disgust, fear, enjoyment (or happiness), sadness, and surprise. These basic emotions exist within a basic emotions framework.
Although they are considered basic, I’d like to stress that the word basic definitely doesn’t mean simple.
Secondary emotions
Secondary emotions refers to emotions that are either a blend of primary emotions (basic emotions) or those that are culturally specific. Secondary emotions are more complex than primary emotions, and develop with age (due to cognitive development) and social learning. Unlike basic emotions, they are not universal. In other words, their expression can vary by age, gender, and culture.
A few examples of more complex, secondary emotions include embarassment, shame, pride, jealousy, and gratitude.
A couple of examples of culturally specific emotions include:
- schadenfreude – A German emotion which refers to feeling joy at another person’s misfortune
- hagaii – A Japanese emotion which refers to helpless anguish tinged with frustration
- litost – A Czech emotion which refers to the combination of grief, sympathy, remorse, and longing
The science behind emotions
As mentioned in the definition above, we experience emotions in a biological, psychological, and social way. Let’s explore the science!
Biological basis of emotions
I think most of us understand that we experience emotions in our body. Not only do we tend to express emotions on our face, we also experience other physiological signs of emotions.
Physiological reactions
Physiological reactions are responses that our bodies have when we experience a certain emotion. These reactions serve differing purposes.
Emotional expression and communication
Expression is about the way we communicate our emotions on the outside. Facial expressions are the most commonly referred to form of emotional expression. Many of these expressions are universal. When we are angry, we furrow our brow, tighten our lips, and grit or show our teeth. When we’re disgusted, we wrinkle our nose and often open our mouth.
Of course, we also use other forms of external emotional expression, such as crossing our arms, stomping our feet, and clapping.
These expressions give cues to others about how we may be feeling. They also help us to understand other people a bit better.
Emotions as signals for action
Our emotions also serve a more vital function: survival.
The same system that allows us to express our emotions also helps us respond to threats or other factors in our environment. This system is called our stress response system.
When we experience some form of stressor, our body responds by producing hormones. These hormones activate our nervous system to help us respond to the stressor in appropriate ways. You may know this as our fight, flight, or freeze response system. When we experience a threat, the hormones our stress response system produces causes physiological changes in our body. For example, our heart rate, breath, and blood sugar increase. In addition, our body’s energy is redirected to our muscles and surface of our skin rather than to our stomach and intestines. All of these happen to allow us to flee from danger! These changes don’t only occur with negative emotions. Consider the
physiological responses you experience when you’re joyful or excited. Again, you may experience an increased heartrate, sweaty palms, and so on.
Neurology and emotions
It was once believed that our amygdala was the sole brain region responsible for our emotions. In fact, it’s often referred to as the emotion center. The reason for this is it plays a vital role in the processing of emotions. Importantly, it’s also responsible for helping us respond to danger, as described above.
However, we now understand from research that emotion and cognition are not separate entities. Multiple brain regions are involved with emotional functioning.
For example, our prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an invaluable role in emotion management. The PFC provides us the ability to think critically, appraise a situation, and problem solve. These functions are helpful and necessary for emotion regulation. It essentially functions as a control center for our emotions.
There are other areas of the brain found to be involved with emotional processing, such as the posterior right hemisphere, the ventral striatum, the anterior cingulate, and the insular cortex.
I won’t get into the details here as neuroscience and neuropsychology fall way outside my area of expertise. Suffice to say that emotions and cognition work hand-in-hand. You truly cannot separate the two.
The role of psychology and cognition
Now that we’ve covered the neurological aspects of emotions, let’s discuss what else goes on in our mind. After all, we’ve learned that our emotions don’t occur in a vacuum. Emotions are not simply reflexive. So let’s talk about our thoughts and how thoughts create emotions.
Much of what we feel depends on context and perception. In other words, our emotions depend on what we think about whatever it is that’s eliciting an emotion. Let’s look at an example.
Let’s say you have plans to have lunch with a friend. You made plans a while ago and you had to adjust your schedule to accommodate it. You’ve really been looking forward to this lunch.
And then your friend doesn’t show up. How do you feel? Well, it depends on why you think your friend didn’t show up. You could feel disappointed, sad, angry, or even worried or concerned.
Now let’s consider the context. You’re more likely to be upset, aggravated, or angry if this is a common occurrence and more understanding if it’s never happened before.
You can see from this simple example how your perception may impact your emotional response to something.
The social side of emotion
Reflecting back on our definition of emotions, you may recall that we experience emotions in a social way. But what does this mean? Humans are naturally social creatures. Even the most introverted persons still have social aspects to them. We are influenced by one another, which means we influence each other as well. As mentioned above, what angers me may not anger you. What brings me joy may not bring you joy. Context and perception matter.
Additionally, social circumstances dictate and influence the emotions we feel and how we express them. This is known as display rules.
For example, it may be acceptable to express your anger or frustration with other drivers while sitting alone in your car. I suspect most of us have hollered at someone who’s cut us off before. But the same wouldn’t be true if someone cut in front of us in a store. Start cussing someone out in a store, even if they were in the wrong to begin with, isn’t going to go well for you.
Another example is how we express grief. In some cultures or social situations, openly displaying your grief is not only accepted, it may be expected. Whereas in other cultures or social situations, this wouldn’t be permissable at all. It may be more appropriate to remain stilent and stoic.
Emotion contagion is another way that emotions are social. Consider a time when you felt joyful and calm and then interacted with someone angry or depressed. It’s not uncommon leaving an interaction like that feeling a bit angry or depressed yourself. The emotions we feel and express influence those around us!
The function of emotions
Broaden and build theory
The Broaden and Build Theory states that positive emotions promote more ways of thinking and responding than do neutral or negative emotions. The Broaden and Build Theory has two parts: the broaden hypothesis and the build hypothesis.
Broaden hypothesis
According to the broaden hypothesis, positive emotions lead to increased attention, cognition, and action urges. In other words, positive emotions broaden our attention to what’s perceived in the environment, broaden our range of ideas and concepts, and broaden what we feel like doing in the moment.
Negative emotions, on the other hand, do the opposite. They narrow our attention, narrow our cognition, and narrow our action urges. It makes sense for this to happen, because as we saw earlier, our negative emotions help us respond to threats. And to do so effectively, we need to be focused on the threat and not everything else.
This is helpful when there is real danger to contend with, but less helpful with every day life.
The good
The build hypothesis highlights the long-lasting effects that positive emotions have on our overall well-being. When we’ve broadened our attention, thoughts, and action urges, we’re more likely to engage in experiences that help us build resources.
What do I mean by that? Well, if we engage in a new activity, such as joining a sport or a social club, we may develop specific physical skills, social skills, knowledge, confidence and so on. We now have these resources available to us in the future.
Having more resources at our disposal during challenging times helps us work through those challenges more easily, thus leading to more positive emotions. And then the cycle repeats.
The not-so-good
Negative emotions make it less likely that we’ll notice the positive things around us, like blooming spring flowers or a newly opened parking spot. We’re more likely to remain focused on the argument we had with a coworker. And we’re less likely to want to play with our children after work.
Build hypothesis
The build hypothesis states that exploring new ideas and experiences leads to the development of skills and resources. It addresses how our emotions can lead to either an upward spiral or a downward spiral. Our positive emotions help you develop and grow over time by way of an upward spiral. Negative emotions, on the other hand, can lead us down a downward spiral.
Upward spiral
When we experience positive emotions, our attention, cognition, and desire for action broaden. This allows us to explore new thoughts and ideas, participate in more activities, and develop connection and relationships.
Doing so leads to building resources in the form of knowledge, skills, and support. Which then lead to an increase in healthy well-being.
Healthy well-being is more likely to result in a greater occurrence of positive emotions, thus repeating the cycle. This cycle is known as an upward spiral.
I want to be clear here that negative experiences don’t suddenly cease to exist. We’re just less likely to focus on them when we’re in an upward spiral. We’re able to resolve or work through our negative experiences rather than being fixated on them. We seek out solutions rather than finding more problems.
Downward spiral
Engaging in negative mood states and emotions repeatedly narrows our self-focus thereby causing us to remain fixated on problems. We become more closed off to solutions and positive experiences.
When this happens, a downward spiral is created.
We experience more negative experiences and emotions, narrowing our focus further so that we continue to see only problems and no solutions (or only negative experiences and no positive experiences). Which in turn leads to more and more negative experiences and emotions.
Similar to an upward spiral, positive experiences don’t cease to exist when we’re in a downward spiral. We’re just less likely to notice them.
Notice
Emotional intelligence
When we use the word intelligence, we typically think of how smart a person is. How much does a person know? But there are other types of intelligence.
Emotional intelligence refers to one’s ability to understand and manage their emotions and the emotions of others.
Someone who is high in emotional intelligence can typically manage stress more easily, they are often socially competent, and they usually have healthy close relationships. As a result, they also typically have higher levels of well-being than those low in emotional intelligence.
There are four dimensions of emotional intelligence, which I’ll cover below.
Emotional awareness
Emotional awareness is about understanding emotions in yourself and in others. These dimensions are foundational for all aspects of emotional intelligence.
Noticing and understanding emotions in oneself involves first noticing your emotions and being able to label them. Second, it involves understanding your emotions and expressing them.
Similarly, noticing and understanding emotions in others involves perceiving and understanding other people’s emotions.
Becoming more familiar with complex emotions is very helpful in this area.
Regulating emotions
Regulating emotions is all about how to effectively manage your own emotions. By manage, I mean being able to increase, decrease, or maintain positive and negative emotions.
For example, when someone with high emotion regulation skills feels angry, they are able to avoid saying hurtful things or becoming violent. Instead they feel their anger and let it subside. And if it’s necessary to express their anger, they do so constructively.
Using emotions to impact performance
This dimension relates to what we learned from the Broaden and Build Theory. It’s the ability to use our emotions as resources or tools to move toward helpful activities and personal performance. It’s using your emotions to do better.
Regulating your emotions is necessary to help you with this.
For example, if your child’s behavior is triggering for you and you become angry, instead of yelling or hitting, you regulate your anger and use your response as motivation to change your approach with your child to better support their development.
Developing emotional literacy skills
Are you feeling emotionally unintelligent reading this? Fret not! These are skills that you can develop. And even if you are already emotionally intelligent, you can continue to build your emotional literacy skills.
Some of the most important skills are outlined below.
Summary
We’ve covered a lot of information here! So let’s summarize.
Emotions are rather complex and come in many forms. Some emotions are positive or pleasant. Others are negative or unpleasant. A handful of emotions are universal, but there are so many more complex emotions that are much more nuanced. The emotions we feel can vary depending on so many factors, such as context, culture, and even whether or not we’re feeling well in the moment.
It’s important to note that our emotions are biological at their core. They’re a biological response to our experience in the world. All emotions are okay.
And emotions serve two valuable functions. First, they help to keep us safe. The provide us with the necessary bodily resources to flee from danger. But second, they provide us with information to help us know if our needs and values are being met.
When unmanaged, our emotions can negatively impact our health and well-being.
But we can use our emotions to lead us on a path of growth, ultimately resulting in healthier well-being.
We can improve our emotional well-being by developing emotional intelligence skills, such as emotional awareness and emotional regulation.
