Emotions 101

What is an emotion?

It’s a loaded question — there’s actually not a universally agreed upon definition, but for our purposes here today, an emotion is a neurobiological phenomenon that explains or provides information about a person’s state of being, their relationship to another person, the outside world, signals a need, threat, or desire.

Experiencing joy or happiness releases a flood of neurochemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin into the brain. Anxiety and anger both activate the amygdala (involved in emotional response and fight-or-flight), motor cortex (involved in movement), anterior cingulate cortex (involved in social behavior regulation and emotion), and the hypothalamus (hormone regulation) is signaled to release adrenaline into the body (1). Your heart rate skyrockets, pupils dilate, muscles tense, your blood vessels constrict, and your air passages expand — your body enters fight-or-flight.

Paul Eckman, one of the founding fathers of affective (emotion) science names seven basic emotions we can infer from facial expressions: Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise, and contempt. These emotions lay the foundation for higher order social emotions like pride, envy, jealousy, embarrassment, and others.

Emotions are information. Anxiety is fear of the future, fear of uncertainty. It’s our body’s way of trying to protect us from a real or imagined threat. Dr. Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, defines stress as having too many demands and not enough resources. It’s our body’s way of signaling we have too much on our plate.

We can think of envy as anger directed at someone for having something we don’t — envy signals desire. Jealousy is fear of loss, usually within the context of a close relationship. We often feel jealous when we our partner spends significant amounts of time with someone other than us. There’s a certain connotation that comes with the words “envy” and “jealous”. It’s natural to experience these emotions, it’s the social brain working as intended. If you’ve ever felt envious of someone or experienced jealousy, congratulations, you’re human!

There are also more technical ways to quantify emotional state:

• Valence: Positive vs. Negative. This measures the pleasantness of an affective or emotional state. Excitement is a high valence emotion since dopamine is flowing freely, you have a smile on your face, and a sparkle in your eye. You might be anticipating a long-awaited experience like a vacation or reconnecting with someone close to you. In contrast, sadness is low valence — your serotonin dips, you might have tears running down your face, and feel lethargic; Unpleasant.

• Autonomic Arousal: Calm vs. Alert. This measures nervous system activity. Hyperarousal, or extended periods of heightened alertness, is a symptom of mental health disorders like generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and sometimes even severe chronic stress. Emotional states that induce fight-or-flight are high arousal. Anxiety is high arousal and can manifest as irritability, physical symptoms like heartache, high resting heart rate, insomnia, and fatigue. Feelings of serenity or peace would score very low on autonomic arousal since it reflects a very calm state of being.

• Sensory Scale: Interoception vs. Exteroception. This indicates where a feeling is coming from. Interoceptive feelings come from within the body. Statements like, “I’m hungry”, “I’m tired”, “I’m anxious”, “I’m happy”, are all interoceptive since they describe an internal affective state or sensation. Exteroception is an external sensory experience — it comes from outside of the body. “The light is bright”, “The room is cold”, “The chair is soft” are all exteroceptive. We naturally alternate between both of these states, but some people are biased toward one from of sensory awareness.

• Dominance: Emotional and Situational Control. This typically refers to control over a situation or environment, but can also indicate emotional control. It can be reflected in language, vocabulary, and tone. Words like “confident”, “authority”, “knowledgeable” are all high control, high dominance words. They communicate a sense of control over the self, situation, or environment. Words like, “defenseless” and “poor” communicate the opposite. Measured, steady voices accompanied by deliberate gestures are often perceived as higher dominance than expressiveness and reactive communication styles. Neither is necessarily better or worse, just different.

We’re not defined by our emotions, but rather what we do with them. It’s why self-awareness and reflection are so important. We experience emotions before becoming consciously aware that we’re feeling something. The limbic system sends signals to the motor cortex to act on and express emotional state before the prefrontal cortex (higher order cognitive processes, executive function, sense of self, etc.) is made to become aware of this information (2). 

Exercises like mood journaling, talking with someone about your feelings, labeling how you’re feeling, and reading about emotion in blog posts like this all help us build a healthy relationship with our emotions. Humans are emotional creatures. To feel is to be human. It’s part of why we created Eccia — to provide a safe space no matter who you are, where you are, what you’re feeling, or when you’re feeling. We all deserve a space to express our emotions without judgement because we’re human.

(1) Goleman, D. (2006). Social intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.

(2) Picard, R. W. (1997). Affective computing. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=265013