Introduction
I believe that I am a quite sensitive person so I easily get influenced by the mood. There are some days that I particularly feel so outgoing and special for no reasons even if I only slept for three hours. This mood makes me think that the world is a nice place to live and study. On this kind of day, no matter what people do to me, I am always polite and gracious. On the other hand, there are some days that I feel so stressful and pessimistic even if I had seven hours of deep sleep. On these days, whenever there’s an annoying sound, I become so sharp and mad throughout the whole day. So I wonder why I have emotions, what shapes my emotions and why I get so easily distracted by emotions.
Definition of emotions
First of all, I am going to define what emotions are. There are many controversies over the definition of emotions. Some scientists contend that perception and conscious are included in processing emotions while the others suggest that emotions are physiological actions which are without consciousness. Moreover, researchers are also divided into two groups, whether emotions are only experienced by humans. A book ‘Discovering psychology’ by Don Hockenbury and Sandra E. Hockenbury, states that an emotion is a combination of is a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral expressive response. After repeated tons of researches, scientists concluded that emotions are the word describing physiological conditions that do not have anything to do with consciousness. In other words, they are part of the autonomic nervous system. On the other hand, the state of mind based on perception and previous understanding are called feelings.
Basic emotions and secondary emotions
Even though there is an ongoing debate about the number of basic emotions, most scientists generally accept that there is an emotion for every single human experience. Psychologist Paul Eckman proposed that there are six basic emotions which are anger, fear, surprise, disgust, joy and sadness. Humans express their emotions through facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures and so on. Based on these six basic emotions, people develop secondary emotions which are known to be more than 27.
Roles (functions) of emotions
Emotions create significant changes all through the body, mainly in muscle tone, energy level, body temperature, blood pressure, tone of voice and facial expressions. These changes signal our bodies to be ready to have special responses. They signal organs to exaggerate pain, pleasure respiration rates and so on. Emotions are delivered to other people verbally and nonverbally. Some people can directly say and express their emotions while some people might use body gestures and facial expressions to indicate their moods.
Then, there should be reasons why we have emotions. Based on many pieces of research and progress that scientists have made over the past, they believe that there are five main functions of the existence of emotions.
First of all, emotions make us take action. Scientists contend that emotions motivate us to take action. For instance, when I face a really big exam, I would be anxious of the result of the exam and how it will affect my report. This would make me study for the exam. Since I know what ‘Being anxious’ is, I take action to improve the expected situation. Also, people tend to take actions in order to have positive moods rather than negative moods. When people are about to fall in depression, they would do what they love to do because that makes them happy. An emotion ‘Depression’ makes people do what they love to do in order to prevent depression.
Second, emotions help us thrive and survive and avoid danger. Charles Darwin, a naturalist and the starting point of modern evolutionary study by natural selection, was also one of the earliest scientists who actually worked on the emotions of animals and humans. He believed that emotions are one of the evolution processes for animals and humans to survive. This is because emotions make our bodies be ready to hastily respond to some particular situations, therefore, it maximizes the chances to be safe. For example, when people feel fear they act really quickly to flee the dangerous situation.
Third, emotions support us to make decisions. We make a plethora of decisions in a day, I have to decide what I will have for my breakfast, which pair of shoes I am going to wear and so on. Then, scientists found that emotions affect us in making decisions. According to the research, researchers have proved that people with the disorder in their emotions have a lower probability of making rational decisions than other people. Scientists contend that this is because ‘emotional intelligence’ which states the ability to understand and control emotions take an important role in decision making.
Fourth, emotions make us interact with other people by understanding and accepting others and last, emotions make others understand us. When we communicate with other people, understanding others’ feelings and moods are the keys to communication. In order to make others understand me, I should express my feelings. When we express our own emotions through gestures and facial expressions, it not only conveys my emotions to other people but also tells others what I expect others to act.
Therefore, we need to learn how to control emotions to maximize the advantages of having emotions.
Brain part
As I have explained in ‘Explore the brain’ category, part of the brain called ‘limbic system’ controls emotions. Researchers have not made any consensus on the full parts of the limbic system, but there are three generally accepted organs. They are amygdala, which is responsible for emotional memories and response. Second organ is hippocampus, which is in charge of keeping memories. Last part is hypothalamus which manages the release of hormones. There is one additional organ that is recently considered to be important in emotions, limbic cortex. Limbic cortex is divided into two parts and they both influence judgment and motivation. Then, there are more specific organs that produce specific emotion in a particular situation. It is not surprising anymore that there are many separated parts of the brain for different functions.
How does the brain control fear?
Fear helps people to have a proper response to threatening situations. This response starts from the amygdala and followed by the hypothalamus. Therefore, people with a disorder of amygdala tends to respond inappropriately against dangerous situations. The hypothalamus signals adrenal glands to release hormones and it eventually increases heart rate, breathing rate and perspiration.
How does the brain control anger?
Anger is one of the helpful signals to prepare against dangers. As same as fear, when the amygdala stimulates the hypothalamus, it starts. Also, the prefrontal cortex is included in processing anger. Thus, when there is an issue in the prefrontal cortex, the person has a high tendency of having difficulty to control aggression and anger.
Interesting facts about the brain and emotions
As I repeated so many times above, scientists have not made any agreement on numerous things over neuroscience especially the brain and emotions. This is because there are so many challenges and difficulties to keep the record of emotions. Therefore, they often use the word ‘trick’ in order to explain the relationship between the brain and emotions.
“How emotions trick our brain”
There are two or three main reasons why scientists were not able to clarify the neuroscience of emotions. First, emotional responses are too various, so it is not possible to find universal pieces of evidence. Everyone acts differently even if they are in the same situation and they have the same emotions. Not everyone in the world sweats when they are nervous and not everyone becomes red when they are angry. There are many possible reactions in one situation. Moreover, the study on babies showed that their facial expressions are more likely to be the same in anger and fear. They are indistinguishable
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Second, emotions and expressions vary by different cultures. In other words, different cultures have different emotions. For example, German language has three distinct angers with different meanings while Mandarin has five words for ‘anger’. Furthermore, some cultures do not have a clear concept of ‘emotion’ for the events.
Then how are emotions made?
The most important role of the brain is to keep the body awake for any contingency. It is proved that the brain spends 60-80% of energy to predict what is going to happen and what action the body should take. Their predictions about the world and also predictions about the body so the person can live safely and healthily. However, we do not notice the thousands of predictions our brains issue. This is a sort of budgeting system.
This physical budgeting system seems to appear mentally as well and mental predictions are called emotions. Therefore, emotions depend a lot on situations and past experience. Even if the reactions seem to be the same, it might be totally different emotions in different situations. When you feel hot as your teacher gave you more homework, that emotion might be anger. However, if you feel hot when your semester finishes and you are 100% free from the work, that is excitement. Also, if you fall down and you feel hot, that is because you are embarrassed. This is why scientists assert that emotions are built at the moment.
In conclusion, emotions are a combination of three elements, body budget system, current situation, predictions from past experience. We can take control over unconscious emotions by modifying one element of a combination.
Do emotions influence our thinking?
As I wrote above, emotions are not related to consciousness. Therefore, emotions appear prior to thoughts. This is the main reason why researchers contend that emotions take the key part of thinking. Since thinking and decision-making are directly linked, it is clearly shown that emotions influence our thinking. When there is no time to think and go through every single detail, we tend to decide based on our emotions and feelings. This triggers us to have quick reactions in a short period of time and lower the negative results.