What emotions are made of

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Useful information about the nature of emotions and how to recognize them correctly.

Are emotions given to us at birth or are they acquired?

It is generally accepted that emotions are an innate mechanism. Something happens, neurons receive a signal, and we give out a stereotypical uncontrollable emotion. We frown when we are angry and smile when we are happy. And the whole world does the same, because it is inherent in nature. It turns out that we are born with the ability to read emotions from faces.

Neuroscientist Lisa Barrett disputes this concept. She argues that analyzing facial expressions alone is not enough to define emotion. The same emotion can manifest itself in different ways, there are no mandatory patterns. Emotions are what we learn and what our brains construct.

How and why do emotions arise?

In the course of evolution, the human brain has been continuously learning to control the body. The brain constantly faces a choice of what to direct the body's resources to: we weigh what this or that reaction will require of us and what it will give us. Our brain tries to calculate how the body will react to this or that stimulus and how much energy can be spent on this reaction.

When the sensations are very strong, we use emotional models to process incoming signals from our senses. This is how we construct emotions.

What is emotion?

Emotion is the totality of our knowledge about some experience and feelings that we experience about this.

Emotion can be felt only when there is an idea about it. For example, in the culture of the Tahitians there is no concept of "sadness". Instead, they have a word for "sick like a cold." This is what they experience in situations in which we would be sad.

How do we learn emotions?

In early childhood, parents form the concept of emotion.

Children do not need to be taught feelings, they already have them. The child knows how to experience pleasure, calmness, anxiety. But to express emotions (for example, to be sad when something bad happens) children learn from adults. In later life, we continue to improve this skill and replenish the set of emotions.

Is it true that if an emotion has no name, then it cannot be experienced?

You can, but it's more difficult than evoking a familiar emotion. Do you know what myötyäpää (Finnish shame) is? Even if not, you must have experienced it. Another thing is that without a corresponding concept, the brain will need more effort to construct an emotion.

But if you know the word and hear it often, you start to turn on the corresponding emotion automatically. The command “turn on Finnish shame” is shorter and clearer than “turn on shame for another person when he did something stupid”.

Can you learn to manage emotions?

Learning to switch your emotional state with one click will not work, but you can achieve certain success.

Expanding your emotional range is helpful. The more emotions we possess, the more subtly we feel their shades and the more accurately we can choose an adequate one. For example, it is helpful for people with chronic pain to distinguish between suffering and discomfort to separate physical pain from experience.

Is it possible to read emotions from the face?

You can try, but very often we are wrong. If you ask people to guess the emotion by first covering the lower half of the face in the photo, and then the upper half, the answers will be contradictory: in the upper part of the same face, many will see sadness, and in the lower half - joy.

To identify emotion, you need to pay attention not only to the face, but also to gestures, voice and behavior. In addition, we show emotions in a very individual way. The joy in the performance of a Scandinavian is very far from the manifestations of the joy of an Italian.

How about a scornful expression on your face? Owners of "complicated cabbage soup" often complain that they just have such a face

The so-called bitch face is actually neutral facial expressions. If you disassemble it into its components, nothing negative will be found. But people tend to draw conclusions based not only on facial expressions, but also on their attitude towards a person.

Can a computer be taught to recognize emotions accurately?

If you start exclusively from facial expressions, for example, recognize frowning eyebrows or pouting lips and on this basis define emotion as anger, then nothing good will come of it. But if you go further and teach the computer to analyze not only faces, but also posture, gestures and, most importantly, context, the results can be quite impressive.