Feelings, like water, can be as strong as a tidal wave or as gentle as a ripple.
Like the waves on the ocean, they rise and fall and can swamp you if you're not careful.
A skilled sailor can use the tides to go anywhere they want whereas a bungler is doomed to follow
where the waves lead them.
To help us all sail true, here are 10 more psychological facts about human feelings.
One: Emotional Signals.
Erving Goffman, a trailblazing social scientist distinguished two types of emotional signals;
intentional and unintentional.
He called these two types of signals "given and given off" which serve as forms of communication.
Goffman named his theory after the drama that actors perform on stage where they try to
portray the characters emotions and hide their own.
Even the best actors have trouble with this.
An example of a "given" sign may be that loud laugh you make at your boss's joke.
A "given off" sign would be your eyes unintentionally squinting in annoyance at his bad sense of
humor; "really, he's making jokes about the Jersey Shore in 2019?”
Two: Prototypical Emotional Experiences versus General Emotional Effect.
Imagine running away from a bear, pretty scary huh?
Now take away the bear, suddenly you're just running a cross-country race.
Emotion scientists have recently begun to make a distinction between prototypical emotions
that are directed at a definite thing for example fear and emotions that aren't directly
at anything in particular, such as a feeling of general well-being.
Anxiety is a notorious form of undirected emotional effect.
People who have anxiety, often can't name exactly what they are anxious about but scientists
hope that by distinguishing between these categories of emotion, we can come up with
better therapies.
Three: Feeling Good and Feeling Enthusiastic.
Benedek kurdi, a Harvard psychologist believes that all images can be related on two levels,
how good they make you feel and how enthusiastic they make you feel.
In technical terms, the good feeling is called "Valence" and the enthusiastic feeling is
called "Arousal".
Knowing this helps us figure out whether we're feelings say, pleasantly tired, which is low
arousal but high valence or lazy which is low arousal and low valence.
In one case, you should put your feet up while on the other, you should get back to work.
Some more examples; a picture of two swans makes people feel good but not all that enthusiastic
whereas a picture of fireworks makes people feel about as good but a lot more enthusiastic.
Where do pictures of kittens fall?
Both very good and very enthusiastic.
Of course, the internet already knew that.
Four: The Emotional Life of Punctuation.
Compare these two text messages; "I’m done" or "I’m done!".
They feel different, right?
One is the beginning of a breakup text and the other is someone celebrating the end of exams.
Psychologists believe that punctuation and text messages can replace nonverbal cues used
in conversations.
While texting became popular, some people worried that it would lead to us forgetting
how to relate to each other.
It turns out that text messaging isn't the end of the world.
However, while we can communicate some emotions over text, it may be best to save important
conversations for in-person because in-person conversations have much more nonverbal signs.
Five: Emotional Vocabulary.
Lisa Feldman Barrett is a psychologist on a mission, she wants to help people use less
medication, fight less frequently and feel better overall.
How?
By increasing the size of their emotional vocabulary.
According to her, someone who can distinguish between feeling righteous indignation and
feeling lousy is better equipped to respond to those feelings in a skillful way.
People who use large vocabularies of words for emotions, visit the doctor less and are
less likely to lash out when they've been offended.
Who knew that the path to happiness begins in reading the dictionary?
Six: Emotional Amplification.
Yesterday, bob missed his bus and was late to work.
Scientists believe that the emotions he felt about that depend on a process called emotional
amplification.
If it's easy to imagine a good outcome such as making it to work on time, he would be
really annoyed when something bad happened but if it's hard to imagine things going well,
he wouldn't be too bothered at a bad outcome.
The next time you get annoyed about something, you can console yourself that you are on the
right track.
If you were completely hopeless, you wouldn't get annoyed in the first place.
So maybe his friends should tell him that they admire him for trying so hard to be punctual.
Seven: The Amygdala.
Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four is the Human Torch.
But did you know that you're the human fire alarm?
Well, in a way you are.
Each of our brains has a region called the amygdala.
This area becomes active when we feel strong emotions.
Scientists use the word "salient" to refer to these very strong emotions.
In psychology, salience refers to any perception that stands out from the rest.
Negative emotions like fear and anger are naturally very salient, so they make our amygdala
light up.
I guess we all have a bit of spidey sense.
Eight: Emotions and Decision-Making.
Psychologists are starting to discover that our decision-making process is intimately
wrapped up in our emotions, in both good and bad ways.
Even decisions that seem cut and dry such as "I’ll bet $20 on black at the roulette
table" are highly charged with feeling.
Our emotions serve as guides; those nagging feelings of "this is too risky" or "I don't
feel sure about this" are worth listening to.
While early generations of scholars believed that emotions always interfered negatively
with decision-making, we now know that they can sometimes help.
But just to be safe, if you're feeling emotional, maybe it's a good idea to stay away from the
craps table.
Nine: Emotional Appeals in Political Campaigns.
Politicians aren't known for being the most honest people but there does seem to be a
method to their madness.
Researchers studying the 2004 U.S. presidential election found that political ads generally
followed a set pattern.
Early in the campaign, ads focus on invoking pride.
Near the end of the campaign, ads focus on provoking fear.
The message seems to be, if you want someone to go with you for the long haul, appeal to
their pride and if you want them to take action, appeal to their sense of self-preservation.
Ten: Display Rules.
Have you ever told someone a joke and been met with a stony face and when you ask them
why they didn't find it funny, they say "I actually find it hilarious"?
Cultural psychologists study something called emotional display rules.
Different cultures have different norms about expressing emotions.
In some cultures, emotions are expressed very obviously.
We refer to these cultures as ones that amplify emotions, whereas in others, they are not
expressed at all even when they're strongly felt.
These cultures are said to negate emotions.
When you're speaking to someone from another culture, it's wise to give them the benefit
of the doubt, a comedian has to know their audience.
This has been 10 more psychological facts about human feelings.
Some people feel gloomy about the future and say that technology is making us lose our
touch with our creative emotional sides, but as being learned emotions are far from absent,
they are with us by instinct, are present with us whenever we make decisions and even
show up in scans of our brains.
There's a quote which says that emotions should be owned, felt, than allowed to leave, i can
think of no better advice.
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