Definitions
Emotion: a relatively brief episode of coordinated brain, autonomic and behavioral changes that facilitate a response to an external or internal event of significance for the organism.
Feelings: the subjective representation of emotions. (Emotion Science)
Repression: the dissociation of a memory and/or feeling from consciousness...repressed material may often be expressed indirectly in nonverbal behavior.
Self-deception: a state in which certain beliefs and feelings are not subject to awareness (The Communication of Emotion).
Stoics: Those who believe that emotions can cognitively be cured because they are something you must give assent to (Philosophical Psychology)
James-Lange Theory: somatic and visceral changes occur when an emotional stiumulus is perceived and that 'our feeling of these same changes as they occur is the emotion.' We do not cry because we feel sorry; we feel sorry because we cry. (The Communication of Emotion)
Points of Personal Interest
What we notice and remember is not the mundane but events that evoke feelings of joy, sorrow, pleasure and pain.
Descartes suggested 6 basic emotions - love, hatred, desire. joy, sadness and admiration
Ancient Greeks suggested 5 basic/discrete emotions - happiness, fear, anger, disgust and sadness (Emotion Science)
Stoics suggested 4 basic emotions - appetite, fear, pleasure and distress
Stoic perspective - crying doesn't mean you've been maltreated. Crying means you're crying.
Stoic techniques for "dealing" with and controlling emotions:
Show that you are not the only one dealing with something similar to what you're dealing with
Relabel things - Traffic becomes a festival. Fat becomes beautifully rounded. Relabeling can go either way depending on desired result.
We Stoics have got it all wrong. We are too intellectual. If we are to understand the emotions, we have got to remember Plato telling us that there's not just a rational part of our soul; there are also emotional parts of the soul, one to do with domination, aggression, indignation, and so on...By all means, educate people to make correct judgements educate their reason, but that on its own is not going to cure their emotions (Philosophical Psychology)
Brain stimulation can cause emotion out of the blue. Case of a man who killed his own wife, mother and 14 strangers because he had an unidentified brain tumor placing pressure on a certain area of his brain.
Muscle tension reveals emotion - forearm tension when discussing hostile content, leg tension when discussing sexual content.
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips, betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
Deception and leakage clues occur more in the body than on the face.
If...the expression of emotion is inhibited, others have difficulty in gauging the emotional state of the sender, and they thus cannot coordinate their own behavior appropriately, or give appropriate feedback (The Communication of Emotion).
Brain Stuff
Spontaneous facial expressiveness is greater in subjects who show evience of right-hemisphere dominance...there is evidence that right-hemisphere processing is involved in the recognition of emotion in others.
Those of a hysteric cognitive style (right-hemisphere) tend to look left when answering reflective question.
Someone verbally saying "I love you" will be processed differently by each hemisphere. The left will process the words while the right will process the body language and tone of voice.
Right hemisphere is fully expressed in daydreams and night dreams when the left hemisphere is relaxed and no longer censoring the right hemisphere's expression.
Damage to the left hemisphere appears to result in an increase of facial expression supporting the idea of the left hemisphere serving as a censor.
left hemisphere may block right hemisphere experiences from verbalizable experience. (The Communication of Emotions).
Survey of My personality findings
On a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being very reserved and 5 being very outgoing, where do you think I fit?
Majority said 3 - Somewhat reserved and somewhat outgoing and 4 - Mostly outgoing
On a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being less intelligent and 5 being more intelligent, where do you think I fit?
Majority said 5 - more intelligent
On a scale from 1 to 5, 1 be easily affected by feelings and 5 being emotionally stable, where do you think I fit?
Majority said 2 - sometimes easily affected
Same scale, 1 being Very Humble and 5 being Very Assertive, where am I?
Majority said 3 - sometimes humble and sometimes assertive
1 being very practical and 5 being imaginative.
Majority said 3 - sometimes practical and sometimes imaginative
1 being Very relaxed and 5 being Very tense, where do I fall?
Majority said 4 - somewhat tense
1 being Very Shy and 5 being Very Venturesome.
Majority said 4 - somewhat venturesome
1 being Very group-dependent and 5 being Very self-sufficient.
Majority said 4 - somewhat self-sufficient and 5 - very self-sufficient
1 being very trusting and 5 being very suspicious.
Majority said 1 - Very trusting
What I found most interesting, that you can't see here, is the inconsistency in the findings. There was no single answer in any of the categories that was overwhelmingly the most chosen. This suggests that several people perceive me differently...
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