Importance of Emotions
Discuss about the Psychology of Emotions.
As the human beings live their daily life, they experience a different variety of emotions. Emotions are the subjective state of being that is mostly described as feelings. There are times when these words emotions and moods are used at different places and interchangeably too but the psychologists use such words only for referring two different things (So, Achar, Agrawal, & Duhachek, 2015). Characteristically, this word emotion refers to the subjective and affective state which is comparably deep and occurs with response to something that human beings experience. Mostly emotions are taken to be a conscious experience and it is intentional. On the other hand, mood always refers to the long and less intense state which does not happens as the outcome of something which is experienced by humans. The states of the mood might not be recognized being conscious and they also do not carry the intentions that are linked with emotions. One can feel a lot of emotions such as a lot of joy or depth of despair. One might easily feel angry when he or she is betrayed or feel the fear when they are threatened etc. This report will focus on a few of such emotions which are related to the psychology (Mesquita & Janxin, 2014).
Emotions are the feelings which can take an important place in human beings life. They play a very significant role as to how a person think and behave. They can also compel us for taking various actions whenever needed and emotions also manipulates the decision of the human beings about one’s life irrespective of them being small or big (Mortari, 2015). There are three significant components which are related to the emotions. These are required to be understood in order to understand the importance of the emotions. Emotions of human beings can be of subjective component which refers to the way humans experience emotions, psychological component which refers to the reaction of the human bodies towards the emotions and expressive component which refers to the behavior human response in towards the emotions (Pedragosa, Biscaia, & Correia, 2015). There are very dissimilar elements which can be played in the function and purpose of the emotional responses. The emotions of the human beings can be short lived like a person being annoyed with the colleague but it was just a flash of anger or it can be long lasting like sadness towards life or a lost relation (Stuhr, 2013).
Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions
There are several factors as to how emotions are important to human beings. They are as follows:
- Motivation: When a person has had an exam which was nerve wrecking, he might have had felt lots of anxiety as to if he will be able to perform nicely in that exam or not. As these emotions are so dominating on the person’s mind, he or she would study even more because of these emotions. Since, all these emotions were there in a person’s mind, he was motivated to do better and for that he studies more(Olsson, 2003). This went to a positive side that he wanted to score good in the exam. Sometimes, human beings can take particular actions for experiencing the positive emotions and reducing the possibility of feeling bad emotions. Example: One might seek for social activities or some new hobbies which can give a sense of joy, satisfaction and enthusiasm. Whereas one would possibly ignore the scenarios which may lead to boredom, grief loneliness and anxiety (Ketonen, 2017).
- Survive Thrive and Danger Avoidance: Charles Darwin who was the naturalist has this belief that emotions are the alteration which allows animals and the humans for surviving and reproduction. When humans are angry, they most likely for confrontation which is the source of the irritation. When a person experience fear, he will most likely run from the threat. Emotions serve as the adaptive role in the lives of the humans by motivating people in acting quickly and take the actions which will increase the opportunity of the survival and success (Kim, 2012).
- Take up Decisions: The emotions of the human beings play a major role in the influencing of the decisions they make from what exactly they decide to do. It can be anything from having their breakfast to some major life decisions. Some researchers also found out that human beings with particular types of brain damage which affects their capability in experiencing emotions also have a reduced ability in making good decisions. Even in the situations when a person believes the decisions are guided solely by logic and rational has this significant role(Bayer & Hekimoglu , 2017).
- Allow humans to understand each other: When one interact with the other people or society, it is significant to provide the clues which will help those people understand as to how that person is feeling. Such clued may include emotional expressions via body language like different facial expressions which are linked with the certain emotions that one is experiencing. It some other cases, this includes the direct involvement stating as to how humans feel. Certain self-emotions gives vital information to others, similarly, expressions of those who are around us gives information of others(Haselton & Ketelaar , 2005).
There are approximately 34,000 emotions in the world which people an experience. This is a huge number. Via years of studies, Plutchik who was an American Psychologist found that there are 8 major emotions which functions as the base of all other emotions. They are joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, fear, anger, surprise and anticipation.
The basis of this theory includes 10 postulates. They are:
- Human Beings and Animals: The brain in the mid of the humans is a little similar to the mammals. This gives out the conclusion of the experiences that human feels are the same as that of animals.
- History of Evolution: Emotions came from the process of evolution at the time of monkeys or humans.
- Survival Matters: The major job of the emotions to play is to support human beings endure.
- Prototype Designs: There are some of the patterns and cliché patterns which can be easily identify that makes up the emotion.
- Basic Emotions: Basic emotions out of all ate the significant and primary ones like trust, fear, grief, disgust, anger etc.
- Combinations: The sum of the primary emotions can give new emotions. Such as Joy plus surprise is equal to delight or joy plus fear is equal to guilt.
- Hypothetical Constructs: Plutchik claims that emotions are constructs or the ideas which help in the description of the particular experiences.
- Opposites: Like there are most things in nature, there is dichotomy in the emotions too. Therefore everyone has its opposite. Like Grief is the opposite of happiness and trust is the opposite of disgust etc.
- Similarity: Similarity means the degree by which the emotions are majorly linked and the ones which are opposite completely.
- Intensity: The degree of the intensity of the emotions develops a different amount of feelings and emotions one can feel. Like trust goes from the acceptance to administration.
There are three major characteristics if one looks at the elements of the wheel. They are:
- Colors: The emotions which are considered primary are actually arranged by colors and launch group of emotions which are similar. The emotions which are primary are located in the second circle area. Emotions which do not have colors are actually the mixture of two major emotions.
- Layers: Moving towards the center of the circle, emotions are intensified. Hence, the colors intensify too. For example: in the center of the wheel, the primary emotions alter from: Anger to rage, anticipation to vigilance, happiness to ecstasy, trust to admiration, fear to terror and surprise to amazement. When we move towards the outer layer, the colors change to less saturated and the intensity of the colors also lowers.
- Relations: Emotions which are exactly opposite to each other are found across from each other. The spaces that they have in between them display the integration and the combination one gets when the emotions which are primary are mixed. Hence one can see the emergence of the emotions such as love, positivity, aggressiveness, remorse, awe, disapproval etc.
The beauty that this tool has is that it has the ability to simplify concepts which are very complex. To solve the dilemma, the first step is to understand them. Still when the question is concerned with the emotions, the process which happens on the subconscious level, to identify and verbalize things seems to be a big task. This is the reason as to why this tool seems to be more useful. This gives the enablement to the user for visualizing the emotions and hence understand as to which are the combinations of the emotions that were created and developed from the outcome (Gomes, 2017).
Once the emotions are objectified and understood, one can get the grip on them and find the way to channel emphasize on the path of emotions one actually wants to sense. There are majorly two methods of using the wheel, either by a two dimensional circle or the three dimensional ellipse. In case of the utilization is done by two dimensional circle, it will enable the person to go deep into the emotions wheel and find out the primary emotions which they are sensing and the way to combine for creating secondary emotions. In case of the three dimensional form is used, the person will be capable to see the emotional depth of the primary and the secondary emotions both.
Plutchik said that emotions are raised because of the particular stimuli which are set off particular patterns of behavior. There are some of the survival behaviors which drive the emotions of people according to Plutchik. They are:
- Protection: Withdrawal, Retreat which are activated by fear and terror.
- Destruction: Removal of the obstacles to the contention of requirements which are activated by anger and rage(Donaldson, 2017).
- Incorporation: Ingesting nourishment which is activated by acceptance.
- Rejection: Removal response to the dangerous material which are activated by disgust.
- Reproduction: Approaches, contacts, genetics exchanges that activates by happiness and ecstasy.
- Reintegration: Action to the damage of nutrient product with grief and sadness.
- Exploration: Investigating the atmosphere which activates by curiousness and playfulness.
- Orientation: Reaction to contact with the non familiar object triggered by surprise.
It means that in case when the emotions are triggered, they are done for eliciting one of behaviors of survival. Obviously, it occurs at the level of sub consciousness level (Hershfield, Scheibe, Sims, & Carstensen, 2012).
Recently I have felt anger and sadness both since a few days. Anger because I was feeling sad from quite a few days and as it is generally known that when a person is sad, it usually turns into the anger (ICP, 2016). I was angry with myself as I was unable to perform the tasks in office place which were required to be done at a specific deadline. This situation was caused because I was not feeling well for fifteen days. I had bad headaches and I was unable to do anything. This caused an irritation in the starting but it soon changed into sadness as I had to hear a lot of things due to this situation in my workplace and from my manager. Once can easily relate to my situation but I was the one who was not really very happy as I am a very ambitious person and I like to do things my way. Hence, these are the two emotions which I felt i.e. Anger and Sadness (Tamir, Schwartz, Kim, & Oishi, 2017).
Elements of the Wheel
Now after a few days of this feeling, I feel nothing at all. As soon as I felt good about my health, I was able to complete the tasks my way before the deadline and all that grief and irritation has gone. Now when I think about it, these emotions were of no use. In the end I would say that people have their days. Some are good and some are bad (Zeelenberg, Nelissen, Breugelmans, & Pieters, 2008).
It is said that Women are more patient than men but I have felt quite the opposite of this. I feel like men do not panic in the situation like I have had when I felt anger and sadness. It is known that if men are sick they will not at all even have the feeling for more than 19 hours of their sickness. They will continue doing their work like as usual. If any man would have been in the same situation like me, I do not think that he would have felt that low as I had felt. And also he would not have hampered his productivity like mine came down. He might not have felt irritated when he would go through the low productivity but even if he would have felt irritated, he would have felt angry or sad (Purnamaningsih, 2017).
Anger is the emotion which is always secondary to the males which they use to hide other emotions as a mask. For example there are particular emotions like fear and anxiety or vulnerability or distress which can mostly produce the feeling of the humiliation is men. Now men consider humiliation as a weakness. Most of the men think that showing their weakness would be becoming vulnerable and open to the criticism. They think that they will invite themselves to be attacked if they will show their vulnerability. And anger is the kind of defense of that attack and also this may be a weapon for attacking others (Martinez & Du, 2012).
The similar is the case with the sadness in men. Men mostly do not show their emotions at all to anybody. Hence, if a man would have been in my place he would not have hampered his productivity but he definitely would have felt the anger in a way that it is not seen by others (Kuppens, Realo, & Diener, 2008).
Conclusion
Emotions are complicated state of psychology which includes three of the components: subjective experience, response in psychological manner and response in terms of behavior or gestures. In 1980’s, Plutchik incepted new classification of emotions system which are known as the Wheel of emotions (Andrie?, 2011). This wheel displayed the various emotions and they also could easily be linked with each other to make a new emotion. Robert advised that there are primary emotions which are 8 in number: joy vs sadness, anger vs fear, trust vs. disgust, and surprise vs. anticipation. Now these primary emotions are linked with each other and make a new emotions. For example, happiness and anticipation may conglomerate for creating excitement. This report discusses the importance of the emotions that human beings have tinned their daily lives. Emotions sometimes make people sad but then there are emotions which are also positive such as surprise or joy etc. Hence, there is a lot of importance in the lives of the human beings of emotions. Plutchik as discussed above created a wheel from which the emotions could be decoded and some new emotions are also being generated from the help of that wheel. The Wheel of Plutchik is discussed completely in this report. There is a reflection shared also in this report which includes two emotions of anger and sadness that I felt in a few days and what exactly are they of any importance now. Also, in case if a man would have in my place, how he would have reacted to the situation which I faced is also discussed in this report. It can be concluded that emotions are really significant as one expresses his or her feeling with the help of these emotions. These are the things which gives the humans to express themselves.
Usage of the Wheel
References
Andrie?, A. M. (2011). Positive And Negative Emotions Within The Organizational Context. Global Journal of HUMAN SOCIAL SCIENCE , 11(9).
Bayer , V., & Hekimoglu , D. (2017). The Role of Emotions in Managerial Decision Making Processes under Uncertainty. Retrieved June 27, 2018, from https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=8918459&fileOId=8918462
Donaldson, M. (2017). Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. Retrieved June 27, 2018, from https://www.uvm.edu/~mjk/013%20Intro%20to%20Wildlife%20Tracking/Plutchik’s%20Wheel%20of%20Emotions%20-%202017%20Update%20_%20Six%20Seconds.pdf
Gomes, O. (2017). Plutchik and Economics: ‘… Disgust, Fear, and, Oh Yes, Love.’. Economic Issues, 22(1).
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Mesquita, B., & Janxin, L. (2014). The cultural psychology of emotions. Research Gate.
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Stuhr, P. T. (2013). The Importance of Emotions in Teaching: Developing Positive Emotions in Physical Education. International Journal of Human Movement Science, 7(1), 5-29.
Tamir, M., Schwartz, S. H., Kim, M. Y., & Oishi, S. (2017). The Secret to Happiness: Feeling Good or Feeling Right? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(10), 1448-1459.
Zeelenberg, M., Nelissen, R. M., Breugelmans, S. M., & Pieters, R. (2008). On emotion specificity in decision making: Why feeling is for doing. Judgment and Decision Making, 3(1), 18-27.
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