emotions

Talking about emotions means dealing with a vast and relatively recent topic. In fact, it was only Darwin, after the mid-1800s, who wrote about emotional expressions. His observations pointed out the similarity between humans and animals and the universality of some of them. So emotions are essential to provide information and ensure the survival of the individual.

What are emotions?

According to most modern theories, emotions are a multi-component process, that is, articulated in multiple components and with a time course that evolves.

Emotions are mental and physiological states associated with psychological changes, internal or external stimuli, natural or learned.

Emotions are the signal that there has been a change, in the state of the internal or external world, perceived as relevant.

The main components that constitute an emotion are:

• physiological (or arousal) activation of the organism (for example, changes in heart and respiratory rate, sweating, pallor, redness, etc.);
• the cognitive evaluation (or appraisal) of the triggering stimulus;
• verbal expressions (for example the emotional lexicon) and non-verbal expressions (facial expressions, posture, gestures, etc.);
• behavioral reactions (such as fleeing or attacking) that the subject uses in response to an event.

What emotions?

Many have studied emotions trying to define and categorize them, but the work developed by Paul Ekman is particularly relevant.

This American psychologist tells of having been in a remote village on the heights of Papua New Guinea to study the Fore, a pre-literary indigenous people, and to verify whether it was possible to find among them the same emotions experienced by other peoples.

It was precisely by following this Tribe that Ekman could see how the basic expressions were universal because they can be found in different populations, even in a population so isolated from the rest of the world as the Fore. So he decided to draw up a list of emotions divided into primary and secondary.

The primary or basic emotions are:

1. anger, generated by the frustration that can be manifested through aggression;
2. fear, emotion dominated by instinct whose objective is the survival of the subject to a dangerous situation;
3. sadness, originates following a loss or from an unreached purpose;
4. oy, a positive state of mind of those who consider all their desires to be satisfied;
5. surprise, originates from an unexpected event, followed by fear or joy;
6. disdain, feeling and attitude of total lack of esteem and disdainful refusal towards persons or things, considered as having no moral or intellectual dignity;
7. disgust, repulsive response characterized by a specific facial expression.

These are innate emotions, present from birth, and can be found in any population, for this reason they are defined as primary or universal.

Secondary emotions, on the other hand, are those that originate from the combination of primary emotions and develop with the growth of the individual and social interaction

They are:

• joy, feeling of full and lively satisfaction of the soul;
• envy, an emotional state in which a subject feels a strong desire to have what the other person possesses;
• shame, an emotional reaction that occurs as a result of the transgression of social rules;
• anxiety, emotional reaction due to the foreshadowing of a hypothetical, future and distant danger;
• resignation, disposition of mind of those who patiently accept a pain, a misfortune;
• jealousy, an emotional state that derives from the fear of losing something that already belongs to the subject;
• hope, a tendency to believe that phenomena or events are manageable and controllable and therefore addressable towards results that are hoped for as best;
• orgiveness, substitution of negative emotions that follow a perceived offense (eg anger, fear) with positive emotions (eg empathy, compassion);
• offense, moral damage that occurs to a person with deeds or words;
• nostalgia, a state of malaise caused by an acute desire for a distant place, for a thing or for someone absent or lost, of a finite situation that one would like to relive;
• guilt, remorse or psychological turmoil experienced by those who believe they have behaved in a manner contrary to their moral code;
• disappointment, mood of sadness provoked by the observation that expectations, cultivated hopes are not reflected in reality.

Thus, the latter are more complex emotions and need more external elements or heterogeneous thoughts to be activated.

What are emotions for?

Emotions mainly perform 3 fundamental functions:

1. They physically prepare us to act. They are quick, automatic responses and push us to implement a certain behavior that is fundamental for our survival. Let's try to imagine crossing the street and seeing a high-speed car arrive. Fear instinctively leads us to quicken our pace or to go back to save ourselves. What would happen if the choice was due to a reasoning like: "ok, a car is coming. Does not seem willing to brake. At this speed, if I don't move, it invests me. It pays to take me off the street. Is it better to run on the sidewalk or go back? And if I run stumbling? " In the time we dedicate to these arguments, the machine would have already invested us.
2. Communicate to others how we feel. The facial expressions, the tone of our voice, our posture, gestures and our actions provide an important signal to those around us about how we are. Research shows that when words and body language do not match, our interlocutors tend to trust more than the information provided by our non-verbal expressions.
3. Communicate to ourselves as we are. They are signals that warn us of how we are and that tell us whether or not we are reaching our personal, emotional and interpersonal goals.

In other words, emotions play a self-regulating role (understanding of one's own psychophysiological changes and impulse to action) and a relational function (communicating one's emotional reactions to others). In evolutionary terms, their main function is to make the individual's reaction more effective in situations where an immediate response is needed for survival, a reaction that does not use cognitive processes and conscious and therefore slower processing.