Answers #3.
Basic properties of emotions.
Basic properties of emotions:
1) Versatility
2) Partiality
3) Integrity
4)Plasticity
5) Adaptation
6) Summation
7) Ambivalence
8) Dynamism
9) Communication skills
10) Contagiousness-
11) Anticipation
12) Mnesticism-
13) Irradiation-
14) Generalization
.
the structure of emotions includes 3 main dimensions:
● excitement-calming;
● voltage-resolution.
An impressive component.
mixed emotion X,
Thus, experience -
Expressive component.
● speech (intonation, etc.),
lower face conventional facial expressions
From sound media
Physiological component.
Classification of feelings.
The traditional division of feelings into lower and higher does not reflect actual reality and is due only to the fact that emotions that reflect the biological essence of a person are also taken as feelings. Feelings reflect the social essence of a person and can reach a high degree of generalization (love for the Motherland, hatred for the enemy, etc.).
Assuming, what sphere of social phenomena becomes the object of higher feelings, they are divided (for example: Rudik, 1978) into three groups: moral, intellectual and aesthetic.
Feelings are called moral
which a person experiences in connection with the awareness of the compliance or non-compliance of his behavior with the requirements of public morality. They reflect varying degrees of attachment to certain people, needs to communicate with them, and attitude towards them. Positive moral feelings include feelings of benevolence, pity, tenderness, sympathy, friendship, camaraderie, collectivism, patriotism, duty, etc. Negative moral feelings include feelings of individualism, selfishness, enmity, envy, gloating, hatred, ill will, etc.
Feelings are called intellectual
associated with human cognitive activity. K. K. Platonov (1984) refers to these as inquisitiveness, curiosity, surprise, the joy of solving a problem, and P. A. Rudik - a feeling of clarity or vagueness of thought, surprise, bewilderment, a feeling of conjecture, a feeling of confidence, doubt. From this list it is clear that we are talking more about cognitive or intellectual emotions than about feelings in the above understanding.
Feelings are called aesthetic
associated with the experience of pleasure or displeasure caused by the beauty or ugliness of perceived objects, be they natural phenomena, works of art or people, as well as their actions and actions. This is an understanding of beauty, harmony, the sublime, the tragic and the comic. These feelings are realized through emotions, which in their intensity range from mild excitement to deep excitement, from emotions of pleasure to aesthetic delight.
K.K. Platonov also highlights practical (praxical) feelings,
which include interest, boredom, joy, the pangs of creativity, satisfaction with achieving a goal, a feeling of pleasant fatigue, passion for a task, and excitement. As can be seen from this list, most of the phenomena named by Platonov relate either to emotions or to intellectual processes (understanding something), so his attempt to expand the list of feelings should be considered unsuccessful.
Thus, the question of the specific composition of feelings remains open. Most of the so-called feelings are emotions, and many are not emotional attitudes at all, that is, they do not express a biased attitude towards someone or something. These are many of the moral sentiments highlighted in ethics.
It should be noted that the question of which of the biased psychological phenomena relates to emotions and which to feelings is sometimes difficult to resolve. The fact is that the same phenomenon can act both as an emotion, as a short-term and acute experience, and as a feeling, as a long-term attitude - an attitude towards a given object. For example, you can be jealous of someone at the moment and show all the signs of an emotional state, or you can consider a person as a rival for the possession of something as a permanent prospect, and experience a certain stable attitude towards him, i.e., a feeling. Therefore, we can talk about the emotion of jealousy and the feeling of jealousy.
Physiological theories of emotions (peripheral theory of James-Lange), biological theory of P.K. Anokhin, the central theory of Cannon-Bard, the anatomical and physiological theory of J. Gray, behaviorist theory).
Answers #3.
(Questions 1-21 from the textbook “Emotions and Feelings.” 2nd edition: 2013. Ilyin E. P.)
The concept of emotions, their functions. Differences between emotional and cognitive processes.
Emotions- a special class of mental processes occurring in the form experiences , reflecting a person’s attitude towards the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of his current needs.
In Russian psychology, two aspects of the concept are distinguished emotions – reflections and relationships: emotions are a specific form of reflection of reality, in which a person’s subjective relationship to the world is expressed.
Functions of emotions- this is their narrow natural purpose , work performed in the body. Researchers of this problem identify the following functions:
1. Evaluation, manifests itself in the fact that emotions are a language, a system of signals through which the subject learns about the significance of what is happening; they do not reflect objective phenomena, but express subjective attitudes towards them. They signal the benefit or harm to the body of a particular stimulus, phenomena that are indicated by a positive or negative sign even before they are subjected to a conscious, logical assessment.
2. Signal , consists of notifying the body and other people about the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the subject’s needs.
3. Protective , consists of warning the subject about a real or imaginary danger (emotions of fear, disgust, etc.).
4. Mobilizing. Emotions can be stimulants (motives) of activity and behavior, and also influence changes in motives.
5. Organizing function emotions - the ability of emotions to redirect the main forces, resources and attention of the body to the organization of some activity, to concentrate these processes on the subject content. However, emotions can lead to disorganization of human behavior and activity - a person who finds himself in the grip of emotions loses his head. Modern psychology believes that emotion itself does not have a disorganizing function, i.e. disruption of activity is an indirect manifestation of emotions. This is due, first of all, to excessively expressed physiological changes in the body that accompany emotions.
6. Regulation as a function of emotions or the ability of emotions to regulate reality, which manifests itself through two complementary functions. First function “consolidation - inhibition”(P.K. Anokhin), 2 - affective trace formation”(A.N. Leontiev), reinforcement (P.V. Simonov), indicates the ability of emotions to leave traces in the individual’s experience, consolidating in him the actions and influences that aroused them. Further, in the actualization of fixed experience, emotions also play a significant role and perform
7. anticipatory function , since the actualization of traces usually precedes the development of events, and the resulting emotions signal their possible outcome.
8. Analysis of various opinions on this issue allows us to highlight the main function of emotions - their participation in controlling the behavior of humans and animals. S. L. Rubinstein (1946) wrote that emotions are a subjective form of the existence of motivation (needs).
The role of emotions- this is the nature and degree of participation of emotions in something, determined by their functions, or their influence on something other than their natural purpose. The role of emotions for animals and humans can be positive and negative. The positive role of emotions does not directly correlate with “positive” emotions, and the negative role does not correlate directly with “negative” emotions. The latter can serve as an incentive for human self-improvement, and the former can be a reason for complacency.
In psychological science, there is a tradition of isolating emotional processes into a separate sphere, opposed to the cognitive sphere (mind - heart, feelings - cognition, intellect - affect).
Recognition of emotions as a special class of mental phenomena is associated with the problem of determining their specificity (differences from cognitive or motivational-need processes). Emotions accompany, evaluate and express a subjective attitude towards the cognizable content, i.e. One of the main characteristics of emotions is objectivity, which is the main criterion for classifying emotions as a separate class of mental phenomena.
The main differences between emotional and cognitive processes also include the following::
1) relationships that are expressed in emotions are always personal, subjective in nature and differ significantly from those objective relationships between objects and phenomena of reality that are established by a person in the process of learning about the world around him. The same object or the same phenomenon of reality can sometimes evoke a completely opposite subjective attitude;
2) emotional phenomena are less influenced by social factors and are more associated with innate mechanisms. They are also less mediated by speech and other sign systems, less conscious, less manageable and controlled than cognitive processes;
3) qualitative features (modalities) of emotional phenomena - joy, fear, anger, etc. - are specific and differ from the qualitative features of the cognitive sphere (for example, sensory modalities);
4) emotional phenomena are closely related to human needs. cognitive processes are determined to a lesser extent by needs;
5) emotional phenomena are closely related to various physiological processes and conditions (vegetative, hormonal, etc.). Cognitive processes interact to a lesser extent and in different ways with the functioning of various physiological systems;
6) emotional phenomena are included as an obligatory component in the structure of the personality as its main (“nuclear”) formations. Therefore, various emotional disorders lead, as a rule, to various personality disorders. Cognitive processes determine the structure of the personality to a lesser extent: their violations (for example, partial cognitive disorders) are compatible with the preservation of the personality as such.
As J. Reikowski notes, in everyday experience, order, harmony, and organization are usually attributed to the functioning of intellectual processes, while emotional reactions are characterized by uncertainty, unpredictability and chaos. However, at present there is reason to believe that everything is just the opposite: it is thinking that can proceed freely, in an uncertain and unpredictable way, while the functioning of emotions is subject to strictly defined patterns, and everything that is determined by them is quite stereotypical, stable and - despite on the variety of forms - similar.
Thus, emotions - this is a special class of mental phenomena that reflect in the form of direct experience(satisfaction, joy, fear, etc.) the significance of external and internal events for the subject and regulating his activities and behavior in accordance with them.
Basic properties of emotions.
Basic properties of emotions:
1) Versatility- independence of emotions from the type of need and the specifics of the activity in which they arise. Anxiety, joy, and anger can arise when any need is satisfied.
2) Partiality(subjectivity) - the dependence of a person’s response to various events in his life on his subjective attitude towards them (determined by his needs, attitudes, experience, temperament, etc.). The same reason evokes different emotions in people depending on their individual typological and personal characteristics and the situation in which they find themselves.
3) Integrity- unification into a single whole of all body functions. This property of emotions, according to P.K. Anokhin, allows, even before the form, type, mechanism and other parameters of certain influences are determined, to instantly assess their usefulness or harm to the body and quickly respond using a certain quality of the emotional state , thereby contributing to the successful adaptation of the individual.
4)Plasticity- an emotion of the same modality can be experienced with different shades (intensity, duration, sign, etc.). For example, a person can enjoy fear, revel in his sadness, etc.
5) Adaptation- dulling, reducing the severity of experiences with long repetition of the same influences. For example, frequently rewarding employees in the same way leads to the fact that they stop reacting emotionally to these rewards.
6) Summation- combining individual emotions into more complex emotional formations. Emotions associated with the same object are summed up throughout life, which leads to an increase in their intensity, strengthening of feelings, as a result of which their experience in the form of emotions becomes stronger. Often the process of summation of emotional experiences is hidden and is not realized by the person (the “last straw” effect).
7) Ambivalence- inconsistency of emotional experience associated with an ambivalent attitude towards something or someone, i.e. a person can experience both positive and negative emotional states at the same time.
8) Dynamism- temporary development of emotional reactions, which consists in the phase nature of their course, i.e. in the build-up of tension and its resolution. Emotional tension increases in a situation of anticipation or with the continuous impact of an unpleasant stimulus on a person, which develops into an emotional explosion. When an event occurs, the tension that has arisen is resolved and fades away.
9) Communication skills- transfer of information from one participant in communication to another through emotional expression (intonation, tempo, timbre, etc. As K. Izard notes, a child, long before he can understand speech addressed to him and pronounce individual words, is able to inform others about your internal state using means of emotional expression.
10) Contagiousness- transfer of emotions to other people (general joy, panic, etc.)
11) Anticipation(anticipation) - forecasting the probabilistic outcome of significant events before they occur.
12) Mnesticism- memory for emotions when repeatedly exposed to or imagining the situation in which they arose.
13) Irradiation- the ability to spread an emotional experience from the circumstances that originally caused it to everything that a person perceives. To a happy person, “all smiles” seem pleasant and joyful.
14) Generalization- the emergence of emotions under the influence of indifferent stimuli similar to emotiogenic ones. A negative emotional reaction to a dog due to a bite or loud barking is transferred to similar objects (to any other dog, a similar toy, etc.). Generalization occurs not only on the basis of the physical and semantic similarity of stimuli, but also extends to objects that appeared simultaneously with the source of emotional experience. This indicates the possibility of forming a conditioned reflex connection between the experience and the entire emotiogenic situation as a whole, due to which even neutral elements of this situation acquire the ability to evoke certain emotions. Moreover, the individual most often tries to avoid everything that may be associated with the situation that caused strong negative experiences, thereby preventing the possibility of the formation of others (positive or neutral).
3.Structure of emotions. Content characteristics of the structural components of emotions.
The idea of the complexity of the psychological structure of emotions was first formulated by W. Wundt. In his opinion, the structure of emotions includes 3 main dimensions:
● pleasure-displeasure;
● excitement-calming;
● voltage-resolution.
Subsequently, these views on the structure of emotions were developed and, to a certain extent, transformed in the works of other foreign and domestic psychologists. Currently, the following components are called the main ones in the structure of emotions:
1) impressive (internal experience);
2) expressive (behavior, facial expressions, motor and speech activity);
3) physiological (vegetative changes). This view on the structure of emotions is shared by E.P. Ilyin, K. Izard, G.M. Breslav, A.N. Look, R. Lazarus, et al.
Each of these components in various forms of emotional response can be expressed to a greater or lesser extent, but all of them are present in each holistic emotional reaction as its components.
An impressive component.
According to S.L. Rubinstein, experience is a unique event of inner life, a manifestation of the individual history of a person. The main function of experience is the formation of a specific, subjective experience of a person, aimed at identifying his essence, place in the world, etc.
According to the sign, emotional experiences are divided into positive and negative , i.e. pleasant and unpleasant. This polar division of experiences by sign is generally accepted.P. V. Simonov talks about mixed emotion X, when both positive and negative connotations are combined in the same experience (getting pleasure from experiencing fear in a “chamber of horrors” or riding a “roller coaster”). There is a conventional division of emotional experiences according to different durations: fleeting, unstable (for example, appearing on a second or two of annoyance in a basketball player who did not hit the ball in the basket), long lasting, lasting several minutes, hours and even days (for example, in first grade children, negative experiences after evacuation from school, provoked by a “bomb” planted in it, were observed for three days) and chronic (which occurs in pathology).
It is significance that is the most essential criterion for understanding the essence of the concept of “experience,” since experiences can also be unconscious. In this case, significance can act both as a source and as a result, a product of the experiencing process.
Thus, experience - this is a manifestation of a person’s subjective attitude to any external or internal event of his life, expressing the nature (usefulness, necessity, danger, etc.) and the degree of its significance for the subject.
Expressive component. Emotional experiences have a certain expression in a person’s external behavior: in his facial expressions, pantomime, speech, and gestures. All means of emotional expression can be divided into:
● facial expressions (expressive facial movements),
● speech (intonation, etc.),
● sound (laughter, crying, etc.),
● gestural (expressive hand movements)
● pantomimic (expressive movements of the whole body).
Mimic means of expression. The human face has the greatest ability to express various emotional shades. With the help of facial expressions, i.e. coordinated movements of the eyes, eyebrows, lips, nose, etc., a person is able to express the most complex and varied emotions. P. Ekman and K. Izard described the facial signs of primary, or basic, emotions (joy, grief, disgust-contempt, surprise, anger, fear) and identified three autonomous zones of the face: forehead and eyebrow area, eye area(eyes, eyelids, base of nose) and lower face(nose, cheeks, mouth, jaw, chin). There is also the so-called conventional facial expressions as a generally accepted way of expressing emotions in a given culture. Also, each person has a certain repertoire of facial reactions that is characteristic only of him, repeated in a variety of situations: closing or opening his eyes wide, wrinkling his forehead, opening his mouth, etc. J. Reikovsky identifies the following main factors in the formation of facial expression of emotions: 1) innate species-typical facial patterns corresponding to certain emotional states; 2) acquired, memorized, socialized ways of expressing feelings, subject to voluntary control; 3) individual expressive characteristics characteristic only of a given individual.
Speech means of emotional expression.
The expression of emotions through various speech means has acquired great importance in human relationships. The main characteristics of speech emotional expression are: intonation, clarity of diction, logical stress, rate of articulation and pausing, clarity of voice, lexical richness, free and accurate expression of thoughts.
From sound media The most characteristic expressions are laughter and crying.
Laughter is an expression of several emotions, so it has different shades and meanings. Laughter in humans begins with inhalation, followed by short spasmodic contractions of the chest, abdominal barrier and abdominal muscles.
Physiological component.
Emotions have specific physiological mechanisms. They are sometimes very difficult to implement. Experiences of more or less strong emotions lead to a number of changes in the body. Examples: faster or slower heartbeat, change in breathing rate, dry mouth and throat, sweating, trembling, feeling weak in the stomach.
Most of the physiological changes that occur during emotional arousal are a consequence of the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, when it prepares the body for emergency action. The sympathetic department is responsible for the following changes: increased blood pressure and increased heart rate, increased breathing, dilated pupils, increased sweating, decreased salivation, increased blood sugar levels, increased blood clotting rate, raised hairs on the skin, etc.
The sympathetic department adapts and adjusts the body to energy expenditure. When the emotion subsides, the energy-saving functions of the parasympathetic department begin to predominate, returning the body to its normal state.
The fact is that any “active” emotion is accompanied by excitation of the sympathetic department.
Thus, subjective experiences are closely related to physiological processes. Emotion is in many ways a subjective reflection of physiological changes in the body.
In essence, the storm is nothing!
In a storm, only stronger hands.
And the sail will help and the keel.
It's much harder not to go crazy with boredom
And be completely calm.
"Time Machine"
Concept and functions of emotions
Emotions are a process of impulsive regulation of behavior based on reflecting the significance of external influences, their beneficialness or harmfulness for human life.
Emotions arise in response to phenomena in the environment that meet or do not meet human needs. When needs are not met, negative emotions arise, and when a particular need is satisfied, positive emotions arise. The emotion of success (positive) strengthens a person’s desire to achieve a goal, the emotion of failure (negative) slows down and sometimes disorganizes activity.
Scientists have come to the conclusion that emotions carry out energetic mobilization of the body. For example, joy is accompanied by increased innervation in the muscles, while small arteries expand, blood flow to the skin increases, the skin becomes warmer, accelerated blood circulation facilitates tissue nutrition and helps improve physiological processes. Joy makes you look younger, as optimal conditions for nutrition of all body tissues are created. On the contrary, the physiological manifestations of sadness are characterized by a paralyzing effect on the muscles. As a result, movements are slow and weak, blood vessels are compressed, tissues are bleeding, chills, lack of air and heaviness in the chest appear. Sorrows make you look very old, since they are accompanied by changes in the skin, hair, nails, teeth, etc. So, if you want to maintain youth longer, then do not lose your peace of mind over trifles, rejoice more often and strive to maintain a good mood.
A person cannot live without emotions. Those people whose lives are too monotonous, who are deprived of the opportunity to receive strong emotions from time to time, even negative ones, begin to experience real emotional hunger. The absence of strong emotions leads to decreased performance. Imagine an athlete who is frankly indifferent to training and performances, who does not experience the joy of victory and the bitterness and shame of defeat. It is difficult to expect that there will be a result from this.
Trying to overcome emotional hunger, a person may subconsciously strive to commit dangerous and risky actions. Any risky action, especially one associated in our minds with some kind of danger, evokes strong emotions. Wanting to experience an emotional uplift or get a dose of adrenaline, some storm dangerous mountain peaks, others rush at breakneck speed along the highway, go on risky journeys, get involved in adventurous stories, etc. A person, trying to satisfy the need for strong emotions, creates problematic situations for himself and often subsequently does not know how to cope with them.
Many who lack strong emotional experiences replenish their emotional hunger by watching horror films, action-packed action films, TV series, i.e. emotionally experience the passions of other people.
So, everyday strong emotions will be destructive for a person, but it is impossible to completely eliminate strong experiences from our lives. Emotions play a very important role in human life and activity.
Signaling function of emotions.
Executive function of emotions.
Emotions are also important for controlling human behavior, being one of the psychophysiological mechanisms of this control. After all, the emergence of one or another attitude towards an object affects motivation, the process of making a decision about an action or deed, and the physiological changes accompanying emotions affect the quality of activity and a person’s performance. Emotions often mobilize us to active activity; with the help of emotions, we effortlessly switch to another type of activity; strong emotions can maintain high performance for a long time.
Protective function of emotions
Associated with the emergence of fear. It warns of real or imaginary danger, thereby facilitating better thinking through the situation that has arisen and a more thorough determination of the likelihood of success or failure. Thus, fear protects a person from unpleasant consequences for him, and possibly from death.
Academician P.K. Anokhin emphasized that emotions are important for consolidating and stabilizing the rational behavior of animals and humans. Positive emotions that arise when achieving a goal are remembered and, in the appropriate situation, can be retrieved from memory to obtain the same useful result. Negative emotions extracted from memory, on the contrary, prevent you from making mistakes again. From the point of view of P.K. Anokhin, emotional experiences have become entrenched in evolution as a mechanism that keeps life processes within optimal boundaries and prevents the destructive nature of a lack or excess of vital factors.
Mobilizing function of emotions
The point is that strong emotions allow the body to mobilize all forces, even deeply reserved ones. For example, fear can help mobilize a person's reserves by releasing additional amounts of adrenaline into the blood, for example, when fleeing. Contributes to the mobilization of the body's strength and encouragement and joy.
Compensatory function of emotions
Consists of replacing information that is missing to make a decision or make a judgment about something. The emotion that arises when confronted with an unfamiliar object gives the object an appropriate coloring (whether you met a bad person or a good one) based on its similarity to previously encountered objects. Although with the help of emotion a person makes a generalized and not always justified assessment of an object and situation, it still helps him get out of a dead end when he does not know what to do in a given situation.
The presence of reflective-evaluative and compensatory functions in a person allows one to quickly decide the question of whether to make contact with a person or not.
Disorganizing function of emotions.
Strong negative emotions (anger, fear, malice, etc.) can disrupt a person’s behavior and prevent the achievement of any goal. For example, anger provokes a person to stupidly repeat the same actions that do not lead to success. Strong anxiety makes it difficult to concentrate on a task; a person may forget what he needs to do.
It is no coincidence that such heterogeneous human manifestations as emotions and will are united in one of the substructures identified in the structure of the personality. The need for this is caused by their role in organizing the regulation of human behavior and activity.
An analysis of only motivating reasons (various formations of the motivational-need sphere) does not allow us to answer the question about the role and functions of emotions in the unfolding of behavioral acts, much less explain behavior that contradicts a person’s desires.
Any explanation of human behavior inevitably turns out to be associated with the disclosure of the mechanisms of its regulation. Emotions and will can be represented as mechanisms (regulators). It is impossible to assess their contribution and significance for a person’s conscious control of his actions without a detailed analysis of the content behind the psychological terms “emotions” and “will”.
The concept of “emotions” is often replaced, as a synonym, by the concept of “feelings”, although there are some shades in the meanings that do not allow them to be unambiguously equated. Essentially, they are different forms of manifestation of emotional experiences. To avoid confusion and separate them, the term “emotional experience” will be used as the name for any manifestations of the emotional sphere.
A distinctive characteristic of emotional experiences is their subjectivity. Despite the fact that emotional reactions are manifested in internal experiences and behavior, it is not possible to accurately judge them by their external manifestations. Expressive signs of emotions, such as laughter, tears, muscle tension, etc. are not always clearly associated with the same experience. Even a seemingly obvious reaction such as laughter does not necessarily mean joy, but can also serve as a signal of great tension (“nervous laughter”). The ways in which emotions are expressed depend on the culture in which a person was raised.
The only way to become familiar with the characteristics of an experience is to ask the person experiencing it. But in this case one has to deal with the limitations of speech means, their insufficiency for describing experiences.
The experience of emotions is accompanied by physiological activation, and sudden changes occurring throughout the body and in nervous processes (for example, increased breathing, heartbeat, decreased sensitivity of analyzers, etc.) are not only indicators of the presence of experiences, but largely determine them.
In descriptive terms, emotions can be represented as a person’s biased attitude towards what happens to him and around him. The experience of this relationship is an emotion expressing acceptance or non-acceptance of what is happening. According to the definition of S.L. Rubinstein, “... emotions are a subjective form of existence of a need. The strength and nature of emotions is closely related to needs - emotional experiences reflect some current need and the likelihood or possibility of its satisfaction, which the brain evaluates on the basis of genetic and acquired individual experience.”
Emotional experiences are also associated with other factors. The relationships between emotions and typological features (properties of the nervous system), qualitative features of needs, etc. are known.
Emotions perform a number of functions in the regulation of activity and behavior.
The mechanism of the emergence of emotions can be represented as a reaction to a real or imaginary threat to the satisfaction of needs (negative experiences appear - fear, grief, sadness), or a reaction to a real or imaginary opportunity to satisfy needs (positively colored experiences appear - joy, delight, interest). Thus, both the needs that are relevant to a person and the objective conditions of the current situation take part in the emergence of emotions. The connection and relationship between them is ensured through emotions. In human experiences, the significance of what is happening around us is assessed to satisfy needs, and emotions serve as a system of signals to characterize this significance. From the assessment follows an incentive to act, or an incentive to abandon it, depending on the sign of the evaluation (positive or negative). The motivation is associated with the activation of the entire organism, ensuring an optimal level of its functioning. Regulation of actions occurs through an emotional assessment of their effectiveness. The synthesizing function is associated with the immediate interpretation of data, regardless of the degree of participation of consciousness. In the expressive function of emotions, the most significant is signaling to others about one’s experiences, although external emotional manifestations, as a rule, are unconscious and closely related to both the activation function and socially accepted (normative) ways of expression learned throughout life.
The function of meaning formation is associated with setting “meaning tasks” for a person. The need to get rid of experiences or the desire to experience some experiences forces a person to analyze the reasons for the subjective significance of the events that cause these experiences.
Emotions, performing various functions, are in themselves a value for a person, and the source of this value is the natural need for emotional saturation. Failure to satisfy this need causes a peculiar state of “emotional hunger,” a feeling of boredom and emptiness. Even animals strive for emotional saturation, and for humans, dissatisfaction with the need for emotional saturation is not only unpleasant, but even destructive, both in childhood and in adulthood.
Consideration of the independent value of emotions for a person allows us to better understand the nature of many psychological phenomena. In particular, it becomes clear why sometimes a desired goal (for example, winning a game) brings less pleasure than the activity itself aimed at achieving it (playing a game).
Emotions are important for regulating the behavior of all living beings, but moving up the evolutionary ladder turns out to be associated with the replacement of stereotypical emotional reactions with more complex and varied ones. In people, emotional manifestations acquire many shades, their diversity increases with age and enrichment of life experience. Each person has his own emotional structure, his own basic palette of feelings in which he reflects the world.
The forms of experiencing feelings include: emotions, moods, passions, stress, affects, frustrations, feelings.
Emotions- a short-term emotional experience, objectively related. The subject of emotions can be not only real, but also imaginary. Emotions have a pronounced coloring, positive or negative.
Mood- the general emotional state of an individual, not, as a rule, associated with any specific event, but associated with the individual’s unconscious assessment of how circumstances are currently shaping up for him. Many factors are involved in the emergence of mood: well-being, vitality, relationships with others, memories, sympathies, etc. Mood stability is very variable. Prolonged bad mood has a depressing effect on the course of mental processes.
Passions- strong, persistent, long-lasting feelings that completely embrace a person, as if possessing him. Passion is characterized by the strength of experience combined with composure and concentration of thoughts on one goal. When experiencing passion, a person feels to a large extent subordinate to it, a passive being, despite the fact that it emanates from him. Passion is an impulse, a passion, an orientation of all the forces of the individual towards one goal. Passion can come from bodily desires or from a person’s beliefs.
Frustration- a mental state of oppressive tension, anxiety, despair, etc., arising beyond the threshold of tolerance due to a long-term inability to satisfy needs that are significant to a person, or a sudden loss of the opportunity to satisfy them.
Sources of frustration can be external or internal obstacles in achieving a goal, loss or deprivation, deprivation of something personally significant. The state of frustration is very deep and persistent, accompanied by significant and prolonged disorganization of mental processes (decreased memory, deterioration in the ability to think logically, etc.). The intractability of frustration lies in the fact that a person cannot eliminate its causes, therefore he must change himself (rebuild the system of relationships, values, motives), and this is always a long and complex process. A person either consciously seeks compensatory outlets, or unconsciously resorts to various options for psychological defense.
Stress- a special form of emotional experiences that arises under the influence of unfavorable life circumstances (stressors). Stressors include both psychological adverse influences - situations of threat, danger related to the well-being of interpersonal relationships, social status, self-esteem (in a word, those influences that the person himself regards as threatening), and influences that destroy the integrity of the human body (excessive physical overload , pain, very low or extremely high temperature, etc.).
The state of stress leads to changes in the course of mental processes, transformation of the motivational structure of activity, changes in speech and motor behavior. Stress is always a negative emotional experience and is associated with a total mobilization of forces to find a way out of the current situation and to achieve the necessary adaptive effect.
There are three stages in the course of a stressful state:
An alarm reaction during which defenses are mobilized.
Resistance stage - reflects complete adaptation to the effects of the stressor.
The exhaustion stage inevitably occurs if the stressor is strong and lasts for a long time.
Under stress, complex mental processes occur to assess danger and search for means to prevent it. Emotional stress increases excessively. People differ greatly in their characteristics of stress resistance (resistance to stressors). The experience of stress reveals to the maximum all the adaptive capabilities of a person, which can be purposefully increased by learning ways to respond to various stressful situations.
Affect- excessive neuropsychic overexcitation that suddenly arose in an acute conflict situation, manifested in temporary disorganization of consciousness and in extreme activation of impulsive actions.
Affect is caused by very strong and unexpected stimuli when the person is not prepared to react to them. Affect can be characterized as an emotional explosion in conditions of a lack of information necessary for adequate behavior. In this state, the inhibitory process suffers, excitation randomly spreads to the subcortical zones of the brain, emotions lose control from consciousness. Affect is accompanied by significant, both physiological and psychological changes, which leads to specific external manifestations: sudden movements, harsh voice, impaired clarity of consciousness - its “narrowing”, memory lapses, etc.
Subjectively, affect is perceived as a state that arises against the will of the person himself, independent of his desires; actions seem to break out on their own, completely impulsive, uncontrollable.
The causes of affect can be serious insults, threats, gross physical violence, etc. People with an imbalanced nervous system and a predominance of the excitation process are more prone to affect, but this tendency can be successfully overcome with the help of self-education. Volitional control in the initial stage of development of affect allows this state not to develop in the future.
Conscious regulation of behavior, on the one hand, is awakened by emotions, but on the other hand, it resists current emotions. All volitional actions are performed in spite of strong competing emotions. A person can act while overcoming pain, thirst, hunger, resentment, and fatigue.
The lower the level of conscious regulation (the less influence the conceptual-evaluative activity has on emotional-evaluative activity), the more freedom emotional-impulsive actions receive. They do not have conscious motivation, and, consequently, goals formed by consciousness, being uniquely predetermined by the nature of the influence. Emotions dominate where conscious regulation is insufficient: when there is a lack of information for the conscious construction of action, when there is insufficient equipment with acceptable methods of behavior.
Feelings- one of the main forms of a person’s experience of his attitude to what is happening. They are distinguished by stability and constancy, arising as a generalization of emotions. Feelings are complex integral formations that have a subject-related relationship. They are organized around certain objects, persons, subject areas, and areas of activity. The feelings themselves are differentiated depending on the subject areas to which they relate. There are moral, intellectual and aesthetic feelings.
Moral (aesthetic, moral) feelings express a person’s attitude towards himself, other people, and universal human values. The pinnacle of their development is conscience.
Intellectual (cognitive) - are generated and developed in the process of learning the world, express a person’s attitude to learning new things, and the pinnacle of their development becomes a generalized feeling of love for truth.
Aesthetic feelings are manifested in the ability to be guided in the perception of the surrounding world by concepts of beauty. The love of beauty lies at the basis and is the pinnacle of the development of aesthetic feelings.
The process of the formation of human feelings is associated with the entire formation of the inner world; in ontogenesis, they arise much later than emotions and begin to have an increasing influence on emotional and behavioral manifestations.
Classification of emotions. Forms of emotional response.
Emotions(from lat. emovere - excite, excite) - This is a special group of mental processes and states in which a person’s subjective attitude to the external and internal events of his life is expressed.
A person not only perceives the surrounding reality, but also actively reacts to it and has an appropriate impact. Cognizing reality, a person, one way or another, relates to it. Some events, phenomena, objects please him, others upset him, irritate him, others outrage him, cause indignation, and even attacks of rage.
Emotions (from the Latin emoveo - to shock, to excite) are the reaction of the human psyche to the influence of internal and external stimuli, which has a pronounced subjective coloring.
Emotions, as a rule, are a relatively simple direct type of mental reflection, occurring in the form of experiences of personal significance and assessment of external and internal situations of human life. This reflection is of a clearly subjective nature; each of us cries in our own way and laughs in our own way. Emotions can be a reaction not only to immediate events, but also to probable and remembered ones; they reflect events in the form of a generalized subjective assessment and can anticipate the result and action.
Currently, the following components are called the main ones in the structure of emotions: 1) impressive (internal experience); 2) expressive (behavior, facial expressions, motor and speech activity); 3) physiological (vegetative changes). This view on the structure of emotions is shared by E.P. Ilyin, K. Izard, G.M. Breslav, A.N. Look, R. Lazarus, et al.
Functions of emotions
Signal function emotions are expressed in conveying to the interlocutor information about one’s mental state, one’s attitude to the current situation, and one’s readiness to act in a certain way.
Regulatory function emotions is to stimulate the activity of the individual. Emotions associated with negative experiences, as a rule, reduce performance. It is known that one minute of interpersonal conflict in a team generates 20 minutes of post-conflict experiences and a 25% decrease in employee productivity. Conversely, high mood increases labor productivity.
Protective-mobilization function emotions is associated with a feeling of impending danger for the individual. She helps him prepare in time for a difficult situation. In this case, preparation occurs not only at the level of analytical reflection on the search for protection options, but also at the level of psychophysiological changes in the body (the release of additional amounts of adrenaline into the blood, bringing the corresponding muscle groups into a tense state, etc.).
Evaluation function emotions allows a person to form a subjective generalized assessment of current events, recognize them as one or another level of usefulness or unacceptability, and evaluate their compliance with his current needs.
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Types of emotions
| Characteristics of emotions | Types of emotions |
| 1 Sign | Positive, negative, ambivalent |
| 2 Modality | Joy, fear, anger, etc. |
| 3 Impact on behavior and activity | Stenic (increasing activity), asthenic (decreasing activity) |
| 4 Degree of awareness | Conscious, unconscious |
| 5 Objectivity | Subjective, non-subjective |
| 6 Degree of randomness | Voluntary, involuntary |
| 7 Origin | Congenital acquired Primary, secondary |
| 8 Development level | Inferior, superior |
| 9 Duration | Short term, long term |
| 10 Intensity | Weak, strong |
Forms of emotional response:
affects, emotions, feelings and moods.
Affects– these are strong and relatively short-term emotional states, accompanied by pronounced behavioral and physiological manifestations. Actions in a state of passion, as a rule, implement “emergency behavior.” Self-control is sharply reduced.
Emotions- a relatively longer and weaker experience manifested in external behavior. Expresses the individual’s evaluative attitude to the perceived information.
Fundamental emotions (according to K. Izard)
Interest - an intellectual emotion, a feeling of involvement that increases a person’s ability to perceive and process information coming from the outside world, stimulating and regulating his activity.
Joy - an emotion characterized by the experience of psychological comfort and well-being, a positive attitude towards the world and oneself.
Astonishment - an emotion caused by sudden changes in stimulation that prepares a person to deal effectively with new or sudden events.
Sadness - the experience of loss (temporary/permanent, real/imaginary, physical/psychological) of the object of need satisfaction, causing a slowdown in mental and physical activity, and the general pace of a person’s life.
Anger - an emotion caused by a state of discomfort, limitation or frustration, characterized by mobilization of energy, high levels of muscle tension, self-confidence and generating readiness for attack or other forms of activity.
Disgust - emotional reaction of rejection, removal from physically or psychologically harmful objects.
Contempt- a feeling of superiority, value and significance of one’s own personality in comparison with the personality of another person (devaluation and depersonalization of the object of contempt), increasing the likelihood of committing “cold-blooded” aggression.
Fear - an emotion characterized by a feeling of insecurity, uncertainty about one’s own safety in a situation of threat to the physical and (or) mental “I” with a pronounced tendency to escape.
Shame - the experience of one’s own inadequacy, incompetence and uncertainty in a situation of social interaction, one’s inconsistency with the requirements of the situation or the expectations of others, both contributing to compliance with group norms and having a destructive effect on the very possibility of communication, giving rise to alienation, the desire to be alone, to avoid others.
Guilt- an experience that arises in a situation of violation of the internal moral and ethical standard of behavior, accompanied by self-condemnation and repentance.
Feelings- long-term, stable components of a person’s mental structure, have a pronounced objective nature, and arise as a result of the generalization of emotions.
1. Aesthetic feelings arise when perceiving the beautiful world, be it a natural phenomenon, a work of art, or human actions (a sense of beauty, greatness, baseness, comic and tragic).
2. Intellectual feelings accompany the process of cognition, imagination and creativity (amazement, doubt, bewilderment, neglect, curiosity).
3. Moral feelings characterize the subject’s activity in relation to another person, to people and to society as a whole (a sense of duty, conscience, envy, patriotism, superiority).
4. Praxic feelings arise in practical activities and reflect an emotional attitude both to the results and to the labor process itself.
Moods– relatively weakly expressed, diffuse experiences that are not related to a specific subject, can be retained for quite a long time, and determine the overall emotional tone.
Human activity and behavior always evoke emotions and feelings - a positive or negative attitude towards it. The attitude towards reality is reflected in the brain and is experienced by a person in the form of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, joy, grief, anger, shame. Such experiences are called emotions or feelings. Human emotions and feelings clearly express a person’s spiritual needs and aspirations, his attitude to reality. Emotions and feelings are organically related to each other, but in terms of content and form of experience they are not identical.
Emotion is a general active form of the body’s experience of its life activity.
There are simple and complex emotions. Experiences of pleasure from food, vigor, fatigue, pain are simple emotions. They are characteristic of both people and animals. Simple emotions in human life have turned into complex emotions and feelings. A characteristic feature of complex emotions is that they arise as a result of awareness of the object that has fallen out, understanding of their vital meaning, for example, the experience of pleasure when perceiving music or landscape.
Feelings are specifically human, generalized experiences of relationships to needs, the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of which causes positive or negative emotions - joy, love, pride or grief, anger, shame, etc.
Emotions and feelings are characterized by: quality and polarity, activity and intensity.
Feelings reveal a person’s attitude towards work, events, other people, and himself. The quality of experience distinguishes some emotions and feelings from others, for example, joy from anger, shame, indignation, love, etc.
Emotions and feelings are characterized by polarity. It manifests itself in the fact that every emotion, every feeling under different circumstances can manifest itself in the opposite way: “joy - grief”, “love - hate”, “sympathy - antipathy”, “satisfaction - dissatisfaction”. Polar experiences present a clearly expressed positive or negative connotation. Living and activity conditions evoke feelings of different levels of activity.
There are sthenic emotions and feelings - those that increase activity, force one to activity, and asthenic ones - those that oppress a person, weaken his activity, and demobilize him.
Depending on the individual characteristics of a person, his condition and attitude to the situation, to the objects causing the experience, emotions and feelings manifest themselves more or less intensely and can be long-lasting or short-term.
A characteristic feature of emotions and feelings is that they capture a person entirely. Carrying out instant integration, combining all the functions of the body into a whole, emotions signal beneficial or harmful effects on the body. Thanks to this, emotions have universal significance for the life of an organism.
Covering all types of human experiences - from deeply traumatic suffering to high forms of joy and a sense of life - emotions can become a positive factor in life - increasing the activity of the body, and a negative one - inhibiting all its functions.
The nature of emotions and feelings is organically related to needs. Need as a need for something is always accompanied by positive or negative experiences in their various variations. The nature of experiences is determined by a person’s attitude to needs and circumstances that contribute or do not contribute to their satisfaction. The needs of humans and animals differ in their content, intensity and methods of satisfaction. This determines the difference in emotions between people and animals, even those that are characteristic of both people and animals - anger, fear, joy, sadness, etc. Man as a social being has developed higher, spiritual needs, and with them higher feelings - moral, aesthetic, cognitive, not characteristic of animals. The emotions of animals remained at the level of instinctive forms of life. The feeling of shame, C. Darwin pointed out, is characteristic only of man.
Higher feelings are a reflection of the attitude towards the phenomena of social reality and their experience. According to their content, higher feelings are divided into moral, aesthetic, intellectual and practical. The level of spiritual development of a person depends on the degree of development of these feelings. In higher feelings their intellectual, emotional and volitional components are clearly manifested.
Higher feelings are not only personal experiences, but also a means of educational influence on others.
Moral feelings are feelings in which a person’s persistent attitude towards events, towards other people, towards himself is manifested. Their source is the life together of people, their relationships, the struggle to achieve significant goals.
A person’s moral feelings were formed as a result of the socio-historical life of people, in the process of their communication, and became an important way of assessing actions and behavior, regulating human relationships.
Aesthetic feelings are feelings of the beauty of natural phenomena, the harmony of colors, sounds, movements and forms. Harmonic coordination in objects of the whole and parts, rhythms, consonance, symmetry evoke a feeling of pleasantness, pleasure, which is deeply experienced and ennobles the soul. These feelings are evoked by works of art. Not only in thinking, but also through feelings, a person asserts himself in the objective world.
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