Psychology of emotions. Introduction

Emotions determine the quality of our lives. We show our emotions at work, when communicating with friends, in our contacts with relatives and in our hidden from prying eyes relationships with ourselves and people close to us - that is, in all that is dear to us and of which we sincerely care. Emotions can save our lives, but they can also cause us serious harm. Under their influence, we can perform actions that will seem reasonable and pertinent to us, but under their influence we can perform actions that we will later regret bitterly.
If your boss criticized your report, for which, as you expected, she would have to praise you, how would you have behaved: you were frightened and showed obedience, or would you protect your work? Would it save you from even worse consequences, or did you not quite understand what she was up to? Could you hide your feelings and act “like a professional”? Why did your boss smile at the beginning of the conversation? Did she anticipate the pleasure of being crushed or did this smile reflect her confusion? Did she want to smile with that smile? Or maybe all her smiles have the same meaning?
If you had to have an unpleasant conversation with your spouse, after you found out that he made a costly purchase, without first discussing it with you, could you know if he shows anger or disgust on his face, or gives the face a familiar expression, helping him to safely wait out the minutes of your “overly emotional behavior”? Do you feel your emotions as well as he and other people? Do anger, fear, or sadness evoke those situations that seem to leave other people indifferent, and can you do something with your emotions?
Would you be angry if you heard that your sixteen-year-old daughter is returning home at night two hours after the “curfew for minors”? To provoke your anger: the fear that you felt every time you looked at your watch and understood that she did not call you and did not warn you about being late, or did you have to wait for your daughter to return instead of sleeping in her bed? Speaking with her the next morning about this event, will you control your anger so much that she really thinks that you do not care about the problem of breaking the curfew, or does she see your barely restrained anger and would prefer to occupy a perimeter defense? Can you understand, looking at her face, what is written on it: embarrassment, guilt or challenge?
I wrote this book to answer many of these questions. My goal was to help readers better understand their emotional life and make it more comfortable. It still surprises me that until recently we, both scientists and ordinary people, knew so little about our emotions, especially given the importance of the role they play in our lives. But, as I explain in this book, it is because of the very nature of emotions that we do not fully know how emotions affect us and how to recognize their signs in ourselves and in other people.
Emotions can and often do arise very quickly, and so quickly that our conscious “I” does not take part in the formation in our psyche of what gives impetus to the emergence of emotion at some point in time - or even does not register the source of this impulse. . Such speed can help a person escape in an emergency, but it can also ruin his life if his emotional reaction turns out to be excessive. Usually we are not able to control an event that causes us to experience emotions, but we can, although it is also not easy, change what sets our emotions into action, and how we behave in moments when we experience emotions.
I studied emotions for more than forty years, focusing on the expression of emotions, and more recently on the physiology of emotions. I examined patients in psychiatric clinics, normal, healthy adults and children in the US and in many other countries, watching how these people show excessive, insufficient or inadequate emotional reactions, how they lie and how they say the truth.
The “Emotions in Different Cultures” section presents the results of these studies, which form the basis for my further reasoning.
Next, I ask the question: “Why are we becoming emotionally excited?” If we are going to change what causes our emotional arousal, we should know the answer to this question. What drives every emotion? Can we eliminate every such trigger (emotional stimulus. - Note. Scientific. Ed. )?
If you are driving, and your wife tells you that you have not chosen the best route, then you may experience anger or even anger because she is trying to steer your actions and criticizing your driver skills. Why can't we calmly perceive information without falling into emotional arousal? Why does it cover us? Can we change ourselves in such a way that we don’t get overexcited for nothing? These questions are discussed in the “When do we begin to experience emotions?” Section.
Section 3 explains how and when we can change what causes our emotions. The first step is to identify those triggers under the influence of which we commit acts that do not cause us later nothing but bitter regrets. We also need to be able to determine whether a particular trigger will impede a change, or its effect can be weakened. We do not always achieve success here, but by understanding how emotion triggers arise, we can increase the likelihood of a change in what causes our emotions.
Section 4 explains how our emotional reactions are organized — facial expressions, actions, and thoughts. Can we control our irritation so that it does not appear in our voice or on our face? Why do our emotions sometimes grow like an avalanche and we are not able to control them? We will not be able to control emotions if we do not learn to understand better when we act under their influence; very often we don’t know this until someone speaks against our emotional behavior or until we think about our actions later. Section 4 describes how we can become more attentive to the emotions that arise in us and thus direct our emotional behavior in a constructive direction.
To reduce the number of destructive and increase the number of constructive cases of emotional behavior, we need to know the background and the cause of each emotion. Studying the triggers of both our internal emotions and those that we exchange with other people will allow us to weaken the effect of these triggers or, at least, to know why some of them are so strong that they can make it difficult for anyone to weaken their influence on ours. a life. Each emotion also generates a unique set of sensations in our body. By understanding these feelings better, we can learn in advance about our emotional reactions in order to decide, at our own discretion, whether or not to affect the resulting emotion.
Each emotion also has its own unique signals, which are most clearly manifested on our face and in our voice. It is necessary to conduct many more studies of voice signals of emotions, but the photographs in the chapters of the book devoted to individual emotions show the most subtle and unobtrusive facial expressions that signal when an emotion is only beginning to manifest or when it is suppressed. Through early detection of emotions, we can more successfully interact with people in a wide variety of situations and manage our own emotional reactions to other people's feelings.
Separate sections are devoted to sorrow and grief, anger, surprise and fear, disgust and contempt and various manifestations of pleasure; Each of these sections has subsections on:

• the most typical triggers of emotions;
• emotion functions: what this emotion gives us and how it can create trouble for us;
• the role of emotions in various mental disorders;
• exercises that help readers learn more about their bodily sensations associated with the onset of emotions, and increase the likelihood that readers will be able to choose how they should act in moments of emotional arousal;
• photos of the most subtle manifestations of emotions on the faces of other people, allowing readers to better understand the feelings of others;
• explanations of how to use information about other people's feelings - colleagues, family members, and friends.

The appendix contains a test (see SETT simulator, you should have studied it, the photos show P. Ekman's daughter, Eva), which you can perform before reading the book to find out how well you can recognize the most subtle facial expressions. You can perform the test again when you finish reading the book in order to assess your progress.
You may want to ask why some of the emotions of interest to you are not covered in this book. To this I can answer that I decided to consider only those emotions that we know as universal, that is, experienced by all people. Confusion, guilt, shame and envy are likely to be experienced by all people, but I concentrated on those emotions that have obvious universal manifestations. I look at love in the section on emotions that give pleasure, and rage, hatred, and jealousy in the section on anger.
Science is still studying how each of us experiences certain emotions - why someone has a more intense emotional experience or quickly comes to a state of emotional arousal, and I finish the book with a story about what we are learning, what we can explore and how we can use this information in our own lives.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance that our emotions have for us. My mentor, the late Silvan Tomkins, said that emotions motivate our lives. We organize our lives in such a way as to maximize the experience of positive emotions and minimize the experience of negative emotions. We do not always succeed, but this is how we try to act. He argued that emotions motivate the choice of all our most important undertakings. This statement, made in 1962, when the behavioral sciences completely ignored emotions, is exaggerated, since there may be other motives for our choice. Nevertheless, emotions play an important and very important role in our life.
Emotions may be stronger than what most psychologists naively believe are more powerful underlying motives that guide the course of our lives: hunger, sexual desire and a desire for survival. People will not accept food that disgusts them. They may even die of hunger if they are not given anything else, although to someone the same food may seem very appetizing. Thus, emotions can overpower the desire to satisfy hunger! Sexual attraction is notorious for its vulnerability to the influence of emotions. Because of the fear or disgust that is experienced, a person may never decide to have an intimate relationship or may not be able to permanently end sexual intercourse. Emotions can overcome sexual desire! And despair can suppress the desire to live and lead a person to suicide. Emotions can overpower the desire for life!
Simply put, people want to be happy, and most of us do not want to experience fear, anger, disgust, sadness or grief, unless these negative feelings are caused by the heroes of the performance that we watch, or the novel we read. However, as will be shown later, we cannot live without such emotions; the question is how to live with them, doing as little harm to yourself as possible.

Psychology of emotions. Introduction

Emotions in different cultures

When do we start experiencing emotions?

How to change that, because of what we experience emotions

Behavior under the influence of emotions

Sorrow and grief

Recognizing the sorrow of oneself

Recognizing sadness in other people

Use of the sadness information received

Anger

Violence is an emotional disorder for anger.

Recognizing the anger of oneself

Recognizing anger in other people

Using the information received about anger

Surprise and fear

Recognizing fear in oneself

Recognizing fear in other people

Using the received information about fear and surprise

Disgust and contempt

Recognizing self-loathing and contempt

Recognizing disgust and contempt from other people

Using the received information about disgust and scorn

Emotions of pleasure

Recognizing pleasure from other people.

Lies and emotions

Life with emotions: in conclusion