Emotions Definition
Emotions can be defined as psychological states that comprise thoughts and feelings, physiological changes, expressive behaviors, and inclinations to act. The precise combination of these elements varies from emotion to emotion, and emotions may or may not be accompanied by overt behaviors. This complex of states and behaviors is triggered by an event that is either experienced or recalled. Someone insults you. Depending on the nature of the insult and your perception of the extent to which it was or was not intended to hurt you, you might feel angry or annoyed. If you feel angry, your face may redden, your heart may beat faster, your fists clench, and thoughts of retribution occur to you. In some cases you might take action against the person who was insulting. Days later, recalling the insult may re-evoke at least some features of the original emotional reaction. Similarly, clear-cut cases of emotion could be given for fear, joy, love, disgust, and sadness, among many others. However, there are also emotions that are less clear-cut, in that they do not always involve changes in physiological or motivational states and do not always result in behavioral change. Take the example of regret. Having made a decision or taken a course of action that turns out badly, one may well feel strong regret, but this subjective experience will typically not be accompanied by changes in physiology or behavior. Read more about Emotions.
Emotions Research Topics:
The Social Life of Emotions
Although much of the research on emotion has a distinctly social psychological flavor, emotion researchers have started to address more explicitly social psychological issues, and social psychologists have started to incorporate emotional concepts and measures into their study of mainstream social psychological issues. Thus, on the one hand, there are emotion researchers who study social or self-conscious emotions, such as shame, guilt, embarrassment, envy, and jealousy—emotions that depend on a real or imagined social context. The importance of this work is that it treats emotion as embedded in a social context and thereby helps to counterbalance the tacit assumption in much theorizing that emotion is essentially a private experience that arises from socially isolated individuals’ assessments of the implications of events for their personal well-being. Also noteworthy in this connection are emotion researchers who study the impact of culture on emotional experience and expression. What this type of research makes clear is that the ways in which cultures promote certain kinds of values (e.g., honor) or self-construals (e.g., the self as an autonomous agent) have an impact on the conditions under which emotions are experienced and communicated.
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