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What Are Emotions?

In their book "Discovering Psychology," authors Don Hockenbury and Sandra E. Hockenbury suggest that an emotion is a complex psychological state that involves three distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response.

In addition to trying to define what emotions are, researchers have also tried to identify and classify the different types of emotions. The descriptions and insights have changed over time.

In 1972, psychologist Paul Ekman suggested that there are six basic emotions that are universal throughout human cultures: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness.
In the 1980s, Robert Plutchik introduced another emotion classification system known as the "wheel of emotions." This model demonstrated how different emotions can be combined or mixed together, much the way an artist mixes primary colors to create other colors.
In 1999, Ekman expanded his list to include a number of other basic emotions, including embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement.

Theories of Emotion

Key Elements of Emotions

Your thoughts and emotions can affect your health. Emotions that are freely experienced and expressed without judgment or attachment tend to flow fluidly without impacting our health. On the other hand, repressed emotions (especially fearful or negative ones) can zap mental energy, negatively affect the body, and lead to health problems..

It's important to recognize our thoughts and emotions and be aware of the effect they have—not only on each other, but also on our bodies, behavior, and relationships.

Charles Darwin proposed the evolutionary theory of emotion, which suggests that emotions are adaptive to our environment and improve our chances of survival. For example, emotions like love are adaptive because they promote mating and reproduction. Emotions like fear keep us safe from predators.

The James-Lange theory maintains that our physical responses are responsible for emotion.

If someone sneaks up on you and shouts, for instance, your heart rate increases. Your heart rate increase is what causes you to feel fear.

The Cannon-Bard theory refutes the James-Lange theory, asserting that people experience emotional and physical responses at the same time.

The Schachter-Singer theory is a cognitive theory of emotion that suggests our thoughts are actually responsible for emotions.

Similar to this theory is the cognitive appraisal theory. It posits that someone must first think before experiencing an emotion. For instance, your brain judges a situation as threatening, and as a result, you experience fear.

Types of Emotion

There are various theories as to how many types of emotions humans experience. As mentioned, psychologist Paul Ekman established the following six universal emotions:

Happiness: Many people strive for happiness, as it is a pleasant emotion accompanied by a sense of well-being and satisfaction. Happiness is often expressed by smiling or speaking in an upbeat tone of voice.
Sadness: All of us experience sadness now and then. Someone might express sadness by crying, being quiet, and/or withdrawing from others. Types of sadness include grief, hopelessness, and disappointment.
Fear: Fear can increase heart rate, cause racing thoughts, or trigger the fight-or-flight response. It can be a reaction to actual or perceived threats. Some people enjoy the adrenaline rush that accompanies fear in the form of watching scary movies, riding roller coasters, or skydiving.
Disgust: Disgust can be triggered by a physical experience, such as seeing or smelling rotting food, blood, or poor hygiene. Moral disgust may occur when someone sees another person doing something they find immoral or distasteful.
Anger: Anger can be expressed with facial expressions like frowning, yelling, or violent behavior. Anger can motivate you to make changes in your life, but you need to find a healthy outlet to express anger so it doesn't cause harm to yourself or others.
Surprise: Surprise can be pleasant or unpleasant. You might open your mouth or gasp when you're surprised. Surprise, like fear, can trigger the fight-or-flight response.

Why do we need emotions?

Kendra Cherry, Psychology Expert, summarized the five main purposes of emotions quite nicely: Emotions help us to take action, to survive, strike and avoid danger, to make decisions, to understand others. Moreover, they help other people to understand us.

From an evolutionary standpoint, brain structures that process cognitive information (such as neocortex) are way younger than other brain areas that are modulated autonomously (such as brainstem), one could say that the effect of emotions on human behavior is much greater compared to cognition and rational decisions.

Further, other human’s emotions affect our own by virtue of the information they convey. When we perceive someone’s facial expression to reflect fear, we tend to instantly look out for dangerous or hazardous stimuli in the environment. Likewise, we feel comfortable and safe when sensing happiness in others. Consequently, the emotions, cognitions, and behavior of human beings can easily be affected by emotional stimuli.

Basic And Complex Emotions

In emotional psychology, emotions are split into two groups: basic and complex.

Basic emotions are associated with recognizable facial expressions and tend to happen automatically. Charles Darwin was the first to suggest that emotion-induced facial expressions are universal. This suggestion was a centerpiece idea to his theory of evolution, implying that emotions and their expressions were biological and adaptive. In fact, emotions have been observed in animals by researchers for several years, suggesting that they’re pivotal to survival in other species as well. Basic emotions are likely to have played a role in our survival throughout human evolution, signaling to those around us to react accordingly.

Emotional psychologist Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions that could be interpreted through facial expressions. They included happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. He expanded the list in 1999 to also include embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction and amusement, though those additions have not been widely adapted.