Emotions and feelings are often confused with one another, but how do they differ?

What are feelings?

Feelings refer to the perceptions of sensations that are felt in the body. There are many processes that take occur in our bodies that can create sensations. Our perceptions of those sensations constitute what we know of as feelings.

Because there are processes that are going on in our bodies all the time, we can perceive those sensations all the time.

It is important to note that there are large individual differences among people on how perceptive they are to those sensations. Some people are very perceptive whereas some people are not.

Feelings can be related to emotions. For example, we can have angry feelings and sad feelings. However, we can also feel cold, feel hot, feel tired, and feel hungry.

What are emotions?

Emotions are a special class of mental phenomenon where they are reactions to events that have special meaning to us.

Emotions are reactions to meaningful events and emotional reactions include cognitive and physiological changes. These changes occur in our thinking and perceptions as well as in our physiology. All of which help prime our bodies to act in a certain way.

Because these changes involve cognition and physiology, they also creation sensations in us that we can perceive. Since we’re perceiving these sensations all the time, we also have feelings when we’re emotional. In fact, we can have unique and strong feelings when we’re having an emotion. Thus, many people equate feelings with emotions.

In reality, feelings are one component of emotion (along with others) and feelings go on all the time. You can have non-emotional feelings and they generally are continuous readouts of our internal states. Emotions are specific reactions to certain events that include feelings.

Why do we have emotions?

Emotions help us react in some situations with minimal conscious awareness. They help us freeze or flee when there’s an immediate danger, to fight when there’s an obstacle to our goals, or to repel spoiled, rotten, or contaminated things, like spoiled milk, before we ingest them.

Thank god we don’t go through such time consuming, risk-benefit calculations for many life or death events and situations – those that have implications for our health or safety. Those with that system survived and remain here today; those without that system were selected out of existence by nature.

We’ve discussed how each of the basic emotions are triggered by a universal, underlying psychological theme. In the very same way, each of the basic emotions have a unique function, that is, each helps us do something fairly specific. All of these aid us ultimately in our survival. Thus, getting a handle on the function of each of the basic emotions gives us an idea of why we have each of these emotions in the first place, and what roles they played in getting us here.

Here’s a brief list of the functions of each of the seven basic emotions that are universally expressed:

For more on how emotions help achieve these functions, read this past blog post!

How many emotions are there?

One of the biggest misunderstandings about the 7 universal facial expressions of emotion is that people think that means we have only seven emotions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, facial expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise are universally recognized and expressed. But humans have many other types of emotions as well. These include pride, shame, guilt, embarrassment, triumph, worry, hate, love, jealousy – the list of emotions goes on and on.

This poses a dilemma. On one hand, decades of science have demonstrated that there’s a special category of emotions known as basic emotions. As we have discussed previously, different scholars classify different emotions into their list of what’s “basic.” We use universal, observable, nonverbal signals in the face as our criterion for classifying emotions as basic, which is why we believe there are 7 basic emotions. Other scholars have other approaches. Basic emotions are not necessarily better; they’re just different.

On the other hand, a quick search of emotion words will reveal that there are hundreds of emotion-related words in English. And this is true in all other languages as well. We can relate to all those emotions lists; they’re all important to our everyday social lives.

To learn how we can reconcile this dilemma, read this past blog post!

The post What’s the Difference Between Emotions and Feelings? first appeared on Humintell.

A longstanding debate about whether animals have emotions and feelings is being reshaped by new tools and concepts. Although animals can’t tell us how they feel, researchers like David Anderson, a biology professor at Caltech, believe that a connection exists between animal and human emotions.

In his book The Nature of the Beast: How Emotions Guide Us, Anderson describes research from his lab that suggests the brain circuits underlying human emotions have a lot in common with circuits found in mice and even fruit flies.

The Importance of Non-Human Emotions

Understanding whether non-human animals have emotions — and how they are formed if they do — could provide new insights into the mental health of humans, including understanding certain psychiatric disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

But emotion is tricky to study.

There isn’t a formal, widely held definition of what an emotion is, and neuroscientists, biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and philosophers all have different views on its definition.

Although you can’t ask animals what they’re feeling, researchers who study animal “emotion” in reality actually study human analogs of emotion.

What is an Emotion?

Dr. Matsumoto defines emotions as quick reactions to events that may impact our survival. They are unconscious, immediate, involuntary, automatic reactions to things that are important to us.

Most emotion scientists believe that emotions are triggered by how we evaluate events. These events include not only what happens around us, but also thoughts and feelings in our heads, because those thoughts and feelings can themselves trigger emotions.

This evaluation process is known as appraisal, and over the decades there have been tons of research that have led to many different appraisal theories of emotion. Although there are differences among them, these theories generally state that there are different emotions are triggered (or elicited) by different ways we appraise or evaluate events, and that different emotions are triggered by different appraisals.

Looking Past Emotions

Anderson says in order to study emotions in animals, scientists first need to set aside their own perceptions of what people typically think of as emotions, such as anger, fear, sadness or joy.

What lies beneath feelings, Anderson says, are brain states that produce certain behaviors. And that’s the part of emotion that scientists can study.

For example, Anderson’s lab has investigated fruit flies that become much more active when they see a moving shadow like the one cast by a flying predator.

In an article for NPR, Anderson states that sort of behavior is typical of a persistent brain state called defensive arousal. It’s present in both fruit flies and people, which is why Anderson believes studying fear in an insect or a mouse can reveal a lot about human emotions.

Anger and Aggression

Another human feeling that probably has its roots in animal emotion is anger.

There’s no way to know if animals have angry feelings, says Dayu Lin, a neuroscientist at New York University. But the sort of aggressive behavior associated with human anger can be found in fish, reptiles, birds and mammals.

Lin has studied the brain areas involved in aggression and one area of the brain appears to be critical. NPR states that in people, this region is near the bottom of the hypothalamus, just above the pituitary gland. And studies show that in mice and other animals, this clump of brain cells is part of a core aggression circuit.

In humans, anger is probably the most common emotion that we have that leads to feelings of regret later. Dr. Matsumoto doesn’t believe anger is inherently a “bad” emotion; getting angry can result in some good in our lives and in society. Anger, and all other basic emotions, exist for a reason.

In our evolutionary history, being angry (and disgusted and afraid and sad, etc.) was functional for us. That is, anger, as all other basic emotions, helped us deal with problems in our lives and in our environments in order to survive. In our evolutionary past, emotions like anger were important in order to deal with many life struggles. All our emotions allowed us to handle incredibly difficult events that required us to think with minimal conscious awareness.

Trauma, Fear and PTSD

Animal emotions are also helping scientists understand certain psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

As stated in NPR, for a person with PTSD, even a minor event can produce a stress and fear response that lasts for hours, Ressler says. And there’s a parallel in animals.

A typical mouse will freeze when it hears a tone associated with a mild electric shock. But if the shocks stop coming, the animal soon learns to ignore the tone.

In both people and mice, trauma appears to alter a brain circuit involving the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. And in rodents, it’s possible to regulate that circuit.

“We now understand specific parts of the circuit that increase fear and other parts of the circuit that decrease fear,” or at least the animal version of that emotion, Ressler says.

The next step, he says, is to figure out how to tweak that circuit to reduce the fear response in people with PTSD.

The post The Connection Between Animal and Human Emotions first appeared on Humintell.

Re-published with permission from Dr. Akira Olsen

The “space age” was a memorable time in the human history. It was the first time man was able to go outside the planet and literarily not only think outside the box; but “go outside the sphere”.

Right now even though the space rush has passed, much of the excitement about space has dwindled, but one question still remains. Is there life outside? Man has not only been looking for signs of life, but also for signs of intelligence.

Two important things, life and intelligence. So, how is life different from intelligence, you may ask. Hear this out.

Life vs Intelligence

A definition of intelligence taken from a combination of dictionaries is the ability to learn, understand and adapt to situations. There is a logical, emotional, cognitive and a host of other aspects to intelligence.

The major thing is that intelligence entails the ability to understand, learn and adapt (apply the knowledge gained accordingly). Intelligence is not necessarily a characteristic of a living thing. As we know the major characteristics of living things are movement, respiration, nutrition, irritability, growth, excretion, reproduction and death.

However, intelligence is not among these characteristics. It can be seen that simple organisms like bacteria and plants don’t show intelligence. At least it is not complex. Some may argue that bacteria may be intelligent because they can adapt to antibiotics. But, they adopt as a result of biochemical reactions and not because of reason.

For example, you don’t need to think about it before you develop immunity to common cold. Intelligence is not just about simply adapting but adapting due to logical reasoning.

The higher the class of living organisms, the more intelligent the organism.

Intelligence cuts across various aspects of our lives. In 1983 a book was written by Howard Gardner. It was called Frames of Mind. This book constitutes what is now called the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. It is now widely accepted in educational contexts.

Gardner first described intelligence as the ability to solve problems or fashion products as a result of cultural settings or community settings.

He defined at least eight distinct but interconnected types of intelligence:

1. Visual-spatial
2. Linguistic
3. Logical-mathematical
4. Interpersonal
5. Intrapersonal
6. Musical
7. Bodily-kinesthetic
8. Naturalist intelligence

Although, it met with initial resistance, it is now one of the most widely accepted theories on intelligence.

Most of us should be able to relate with these. I will try not to bore you with the details of all the types of intelligence but we will talk more on the ones relevant for this topic, which is emotional intelligence.

IQ vs EI

We all know about the term “intelligence quotient” also known as IQ. Young girls, especially college students, take an intelligence quotient test from time to time to (test their intelligence). They are asked tricky questions that will require them to apply their knowledge of mathematics and logic to solve those problems. Then their “intelligence” is measured by their ability to solve these mathematical or logical problems.

What Gardner was trying to say is that this concept is flawed. Some people may be intelligent in one area but completely deficient in another.

Our educational system, parents, school teachers and adults in the community majorly recognizes and rewards those teenagers who have logical-mathematical intelligence (academic or scholarly intelligence), but does not recognize other forms of intelligence in millennial and Gen Z girls like visual-spatial (artistic), emotional (interpersonal and intrapersonal), musical intelligence and so on.

The current systems of measuring intelligence is not holistic. An IQ test only measures one aspect of intelligence out of at least 8 aspects which is Logical-Mathematical intelligence. In fact, going with the multiple intelligences theory, what we call IQ test should actually be called Logical-mathematical quotient test (LMQ test), because it only deals with one aspect of intelligence.

I want us to focus more on emotional intelligence which is probably one of the most important forms of intelligence but unfortunately, one of the least recognized.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

The concept of emotional intelligence became popular somewhere around 1995 with the publication of Goleman’s best-seller book titled Emotional Intelligence.

Also known as emotional leadership, emotional intelligence quotient or emotional quotient; is the ability to recognize and understand both your emotions and the emotions of others and use that information to adjust your thinking and behavior.

There are four dimensions to emotional intelligence. They are:

1. The ability to detect emotions in themselves (intrapersonal intelligence) and others (interpersonal intelligence)
2. Think about the emotion they detect
3. Understand the emotions
4. Use the information to control their own emotions or behaviors

An emotionally intelligent person behaves in a way that improves her/his interpersonal relationships while achieving her/his goals.

It combines at least two of the different types of intelligence — Interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence has to do with the way you relate to yourself, while interpersonal intelligence has to do with the way you relate to others.

Emotional (interpersonal and intrapersonal) intelligence is regarded to be more important than academic (logical-mathematical) intelligence if you want to be more successful in life.

There is a popular saying that “your attitude determines your altitude”. This does not in any way justify being lazy because in this modern world of technology advancement, millennial girls have to keep in trend.

We also need to be academically intelligent and have to be able to solve logical as well as emotional problems in order to be successful. But, that aside, you have to understand why it is more important to be emotionally intelligent.

Anxiety in Teenage Girls

Teenage girls face a lot of pressure from parents, school teachers, friends and peers. Maybe its more of puberty hormones or cultural differences, but millennial girls sometimes feel the people around them don’t understand them.

Maybe that is why more teenagers are having issues with anxiety, depression and other mental issues. They often try to cope with them using harmful practices which may lead them to phone addiction, substance abuse, or even crime. Some of these things can lower both academic and emotional intelligence.

A study has shown that internet addiction lowers emotional intelligence because excessively introverted people become addicted to the internet as a way to avoid social interactions.

This actually lowers emotional intelligence, academic intelligence and has been linked to increased chance of getting depression, obsessive compulsive disorders, mood disorders, and a host of other mental issues that can lead to marital, financial, academic and social problems.

Studies have also shown that people with high emotional intelligence have lesser tendency to develop mental issues like depression and anxiety. An effective treatment regimen for borderline personality disorder based on improving emotional intelligence was seen to be effective.

There are many other factors that must be considered for the treatment of mental disorders but emotional intelligence development may be of very great help in treating many mental health issues.

The more adults and teachers can pay attention to the emotionally intelligence of Gen Z and college students, the more they help them build more resilience to mental health problems such as anxiety disorders.

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Improve your own personal effectiveness by learning the basics of emotional intelligence.

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References

Astrid Schultz, PhD and Sophia Nizielski, Dipl Psych. Emotional intelligence as a factor in mental health. Dept. of Psycology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, 2012.

Batool, Syeda Shaluda. “Emotional Intelligence based treatment in Mental illness: a prospective analysis.” Pakistan journal of social sciences, 2011: 251–259.

Hanafin, Joan. “Multiple Intelligences Theory, Action Research, and Teacher Professional Development: The Irish MI Project.” Australian Journal of Teacher Education 39, no. 4 (2014): 126–142.

Hasan Khoshakhlagh and Salar Faramarzi, PhD. “The Relationship of Emotional Intelligence and Mental disorders with Internet Addiction in Internet Users University Students.” Addict Health 4 (2012): 133–141.

Martin-Diaz, Enrique G. Fernandez-Abascal and Maria Dolores. “Dimensions of emotional intelligence related to physical and mental health and to health behaviors.” Front. Psychol.,, March 2015.

Serani, Deborah, The emotional blindness of Alexithymia, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, April 2014.

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