I am a physicist, so I don't know anything about emotions. How would you define them? I watched some TED and one guy said that men do not understand the difference between emotions and feelings.
What is the difference? Ukrainian Wikipedia writes that feelings have objects, while emotions do not. Is that true?
Anoter TED talk. A lady says that there is no network in the brain responsible for emotions. I kind of like that, but some other people talk if there is some.
I am confused. Is there a consensus about definitions?
The scientific study of emotion is very complicated, with a long history in Psychology and it gets especially complicated when you’re trying to answer theoretical questions like, “what is an emotion.” Generally, in studies of emotions (e.g., regulating emotions to control anger, identify the emotion people are feeling from just pictures of their eyes), women perform better than men. But, like every gender difference, this is statistical with two overlapping bell curves. The variation of emotion skills among men, and among women is far, far, greater than the average difference between the sexes.
I’d say probably the most well-established theoretical model of the structure of emotions in Singer-Schacter's Attribution model. We have physiological arousal (sensation) due to biological processes, like stress (e.g., when we come across a bear in the woods). We make an attribution to our physiological arousal and behavior (e.g., “oh, I must be SCARED of the bear.”). In this respect, though there are certainly regions of our brain that are central to emotional experiences (e.g., amygdala), there is *not* a particular set of neurons that experience a particular emotion. Hopefully that really brief explanation helps, Igor. ~ Kevin
PS: Here is a free online psychology textbook, scroll down to “emotion & motivation” for several essays written by experts to introduce the topic:
http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection
Thank you. Before reading, I'd like to outline ,my own pristine ideas.
Emotions are physiological responses to the command in the brain. I like the idea that a guesser in our minds, gives signals to glands commanding them to produce secrets that prepare us to what will occur.
This is very slow. The guesser on the other hand, is fast. Therefore, when grasping beauty or listening to musics emotions lag behind.
Hi I would like to define Emotion as: (Noun) A natural instinctive state of Mind deriving from one’s circumstances, Mood or relationship wit others. Or
Instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning and knowledge.
Synonyms are feeling sentiment response reaction passion others.
Regards
Thank you Ahnsan, but I am afraid this is not precise enough. I'd like to know how emotion is distinct from mood and feeling. Piling everything together leads to confusion.
- Badges
- Science topic