Emotions are those mental processes in which a person experiences his attitude to certain phenomena of the surrounding reality; Emotions also reflect various states of the human body, his attitude towards his own behavior and his activities.
Emotions have the following characteristics.
Subjective nature. The attitude that is expressed in emotions is always personal, subjective in nature and differs significantly from the awareness of those objective connections between things that are established in the process of learning about the world around us.
Looking out the window, we see that the garden is covered with snow, and we establish a connection between the appearance of snow and the time of year in the judgment “winter has come.” This connection between the objects of external reality is established by us in the process of thinking.
But, having reflected this objective connection through thinking, one person can experience a feeling of joy that winter has come, and another, on the contrary, a feeling of regret that summer is over. These various feelings express people’s subjective, personal attitude to objective reality: some like a given object or event and give them a feeling of pleasure, while others do not like the same object or event and cause displeasure.
Extreme variety of quality features. The following, rather incomplete list of emotional states, since they are expressed in human speech, allows us to judge the extremely large number and variety of emotions:
- - feelings of hunger, thirst, pleasant taste, pleasure, disgust, pain, lust, possession, sexual feeling;
- - a sense of determination, self-confidence, carelessness, security, courage, bravery, bravery, courage, a sense of risk;
- - a feeling of self-satisfaction, vanity, ambition, conceit, arrogance, shamelessness, arrogance, a sense of superiority, pride, vanity, contempt, condescension;
Plastic. An emotion of the same quality, for example, joy or fear, can be experienced by a person in many shades and degrees, depending on the reasons that caused it, the objects or activities with which it is associated. A person can experience joy when meeting a friend, in the process of work that interests him, admiring majestic pictures of nature, watching fun and relaxed children playing, reading a book, etc. - but all these manifestations of joy are very different in their quality and degree.
Connection with intraorganic processes. This connection is twofold: 1) intraorganic processes are the strongest causative agents of many emotions, 2) all emotions, without exception, in one form or another find their expression in bodily manifestations. The close connection between emotions and the vital processes of the body was noticed a long time ago. Even Descartes, speaking about emotions (love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness), argued that “they all relate to the body and are given to the soul only insofar as it is connected with the body.” Emotions signal everything that is useful and harmful for the body, and directly motivate a person to activities aimed at preserving the integrity of his body and maintaining life. At the same time, emotions, being associated with increased and decreased blood circulation, have a great influence on the functioning of the brain: “emotions have a much more noticeable effect on cerebral circulation (blood) than even very energetic mental work” (Moceo).
Connection with the direct experience of one's own “I”. Even the weakest emotions capture the whole person as a whole, accompanied by acute sensations of one’s own personality in its organic integrity and in opposition to the external environment. Since in his relationships with the environment a person passively experiences changes caused in him by external influences, his emotions acquire the character of emotional states; when emotions are associated with active manifestations of personality and are expressed in activities aimed at changing the environment, they act as relationships to external reality. And emotional, relationships and emotional states are always experienced by a person as his direct experiences, which, with all their effectiveness and enormous role in a person’s life, often remain unconscious, constituting the deep foundations of his personality, his inclinations, interests, temperament and character.
1.1 The concept of emotions, the idea of emotions
The concept of emotions and feelings.
Emotions (from the Latin emoveo - stunning, exciting) are a special class of mental phenomena, manifested in the form of a direct, biased experience by the subject of the life meaning of these phenomena, objects and situations in order to satisfy his needs.
Emotions are often an early reaction to a situation and its assessment. As a result, under the influence of emotion, a person reacts to contact with the stimulus that has not yet occurred. Thus, emotion acts as a mechanism for anticipating the significance of a particular situation for an animal or a person.
Emotions are a differentiated assessment of different situations. Unlike emotional tone, which gives a generalized assessment, emotions more subtly show the meaning of a particular situation.
When a person perceives objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, he always relates to them in some way, and this is not a cold, rational attitude, but a unique experience. Some events cause him joy, others - indignation, some things he likes, others cause him displeasure, he loves some people, is indifferent to others, hates others; something makes him angry, something he is afraid of; He is proud of some of his actions, ashamed of others. Pleasure, joy, grief, fear, anger, love - all these are forms of a person’s experience of his relationship to various objects; they are called feelings or emotions. Feelings or emotions are a person’s experience of his relationship to what he knows or does, to other people and to himself.
The source of emotions is objective reality in its correlation with human needs. What is associated with the direct or indirect satisfaction of human needs - both the simplest, organic, and the needs determined by his social existence - evokes positive emotions in him (pleasure, joy, love). What prevents the satisfaction of these needs causes negative emotions (displeasure, grief, sadness, hatred).
The importance of emotions and feelings in human life and activity is extremely great. They encourage a person to be active and help overcome difficulties in learning, work, and creativity. Emotions and feelings often determine a person’s behavior and the setting of certain life goals. An indifferent person, indifferent to everything, is not able to set and solve large, vital tasks, or achieve real success and achievements.
Not the least place is occupied by emotions and feelings in educational activities. An emotionally excited story from a teacher or emotionally rich material causes an emotional upsurge in schoolchildren, and in this state their perception is heightened. A boring lesson causes apathy; students in such lessons do not perceive the material well.
External expression of emotions.
By changing a person’s life, emotions are expressed in a number of external manifestations. Strong feelings are associated with changes in blood circulation - in a state of anger or fear, a person turns pale, as the blood drains from the outer layers of the skin. From shame or embarrassment, a person blushes, blood rushes to the face. Fear increases sweating, the heart begins to beat intensely or, conversely, “freezes.” With anger and joy, breathing quickens.
Emotions are also manifested in expressive movements: facial expressions (expressive facial movements) and pantomimics (expressive movements of the whole body - posture, gesture), as well as in the so-called vocal (voice) facial expressions (intonation - expressive pauses; raising or lowering the voice, semantic stress ). Different intonation when pronouncing, for example, the word “what” can express joy, surprise, fear, confusion, anger, indifference, contempt, etc. By facial expressions and pantomime, in particular, we judge the emotions experienced by a person.
Experiencing joy, a person smiles, laughs, his eyes shine, his arms and legs find no rest. In a state of intense anger, a person’s eyebrows frown, his face turns red, his movements become abrupt, his breathing becomes heavy, and his voice becomes threatening. And grief is very expressive in appearance - the person is all bent over, drooping, his shoulders are drooping, there is a sad line at his mouth, he is sobbing or, conversely, numb with grief.
Of course, less strong and deep emotional experiences do not manifest themselves in such a sharp external form. And in those cases when a person has learned to control expressive movements, restrain them, emotions and in general may not appear outwardly.
To express the deepest and most complex emotions and feelings, humanity has created art in the process of development: music, painting, sculpture, poetry. Works of art, reflecting the great feelings of artists, writers, composers, always excite and evoke emotional responses in people.
Features of emotions
Positive and negative emotions. Emotions are the direct experience of a person’s relationship to objects and phenomena of reality. This attitude can be positive, negative and indifferent. An indifferent, indifferent attitude is usually not associated with any emotions. If some objects, phenomena, facts meet our needs or the requirements of society, they evoke in us a positive attitude and positive emotions. If not, they cause: a negative attitude and corresponding experiences. Thus, human emotions have a positive or negative nature. A person’s positive attitude towards something is expressed in such emotions as pleasure, joy, happiness, fun, jubilation, love. A negative attitude is expressed in the emotions of displeasure, suffering, sadness, grief, disgust, fear, hatred, anger.
It should be noted that personal and public, social assessments of emotions, both positive and negative, do not always coincide. For example, emotions such as remorse and shame are experienced by a person as unpleasant, sometimes even painful states, but from a social point of view they are useful, necessary and, therefore, positive, since they contribute to the moral growth of the individual. Equally, emotions such as hatred, anger, disgust receive a positive assessment if they are directed at antisocial phenomena, at the enemies of our people and state, at racists and neo-fascists.
Emotions are complex and interconnected. In some conditions, it is even possible to experience opposing emotions at the same time.
Individual differences in the manifestation of emotions also depend on the volitional qualities of a person. A strong-willed person always strives to master his emotions, not to relax under their influence, and in some cases not to succumb to emotions at all if he is aware of their negative social significance.
Ideas about emotions as a structure of knowledge about emotional phenomena
Representations are images of objects, scenes and events that arise on the basis of their recall or productive imagination; the sensory-objective nature of representations allows them to be classified by modality (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, etc.)
D. Russell, exploring ideas about a generalized emotional phenomenon (a person’s understanding of emotions), introduces the concept of script, which is a model of the phenomenon being studied. An emotional script is a knowledge structure, a “knowledge schema” about an emotional phenomenon. This may include knowledge regarding the causes of emotions, physiological changes, external actions, motives, vocal and facial expressions. From the point of view of D. Russell, the emotional script is a representation of emotion in varying degrees of generality.
The author in his study criticizes both the biological point of view about the existence of innate emotional categories, and the cultural one, where children do not have an innate conceptual scheme of emotions and start with “tabu1a rasa”. As a result, D. Russell proposes a “position in the middle”: children begin to interpret emotions, having a certain number of “prescriptions”. For example, a child’s perception of the content of emotions in two dimensions - “hedonic shock” and “activation”. These two dimensions provide the basis for distinguishing and categorizing emotional phenomena in very young children. A small child, according to D. Russell, when faced with the emotion of fear, perceives it as unpleasant and exciting, without differentiating it from disgust or anger. Only with age does a person begin to operate with such emotional categories as fear, anger, love, that is, he learns emotional scripts.
At the first level (from birth to 2-4 months), children can distinguish certain gestures and changes in the face and voice of another, responding to them in a differentiated manner.
At the second level (4 - 8 months), the ability to differentiate different classes of emotional expressions and distinguish them from each other appears.
At the third level, children begin to assign meaning to classes of emotional expressions.
At the fourth level, the child begins to associate pairs of significant elements (a type of facial expression with a certain type of vocal changes).
At level five, children begin to link together emotional sequences consisting of behaviors, expressions, situations, and words.
At the sixth level, children form more generalized scripts from mastered sequences.
Emotional representations as a factor in mental development
Even I. Herbart in the 17th century. recognized ideas as a fundamental psychological fact, the primary elements of the individual soul, which are in continuous interaction. He stated the close connection between feelings and ideas, but noted that the nature of this connection is external, i.e. emotions provide a connection between ideas. According to Herbart, relations of confrontation and conflict develop between ideas, therefore, trying to stay in the living space of consciousness, they push each other into the sphere of the unconscious, from where they strive to escape. Based on this, emotion is a psychological disorder caused by mismatch, conflict between ideas.
Thus, in I. Herbart’s theory, ideas and emotions do not merge into one formation, even the nature of their existence is different:
representation - primary element (basic);
emotions are a secondary element (connecting).
The combination of these two components of the psyche is the basis for creating the complex phenomenon of “emotional representation”, which has an impact on the psyche. That is, a change in the structure of the representation helps to expand the functional meaning of the representation as such.
The possibility of a relationship between emotional representations and mental processes is supported by many studies. In Russian psychology, representation is considered as a dynamic formation, the activation and functioning of which is in close relationship with perception, thinking, and memory. The representations clearly demonstrate the dialectic of the transition from sensory to logical knowledge. According to B.G. Ananyev, “... representations are both a synthesis of sensory images and a side of the thought process that forms concepts.”
Emotional representations are designated by the authors as affective-cognitive formations based on the fusion of two components: emotional coloring (positive, negative, neutral) and a phenomenon at the cognitive level. In addition, emotional representations are characterized by two levels of manifestation: unconscious and conscious, as well as intrapsychic statics and dynamics.
Statics is determined by the neutral coloring of the emotional representation and the low degree of its intensity. The static state of emotional representations allows them to unite into a passive “cognitive-affective mass”, which performs the function of stabilizing the course of mental development.
In general, this “mass” can be purposefully formed, which can be a mechanism for regulating mental development and the learning process. The composition of the “mass” is ambiguous and unstable, since from time to time there is a transformation of certain emotional representations, a change in their color or degree of intensity, which implies some dynamics that can be both internal in nature (within the emotional representation) and external (the impact on mental processes and the psyche in general).
The internal dynamics are determined by the diffuse connection of the structural components of the emotional representation.
Some of the emotional ideas of high intensity, positive or negative, begin to have a progressive or regressive effect on mental development. Since mental development is defined as a natural change in mental processes over time, expressed in their quantitative, qualitative and structural transformations, emotional representations interact with all components of cognition, personality, and volitional regulation.
The thesis “emotional tone” is already present in sensations and perceptions, since every event, life scene or images of objects and people when perceived have an “emotional assessment” for a person and are confirmation of the relationship between perception and emotional ideas. The specificity and dominant coloration of a child’s emotional representations determine the qualitative characteristics of the emotional tone and his perception of any objects, phenomena, situations.
Of course, there is a connection between emotional ideas and the quality and process of thinking. “The transformation of ideas plays an important role in solving mental problems, especially those that require a new “vision” of the situation.” Consequently, emotional representations may facilitate or enable the performance of a cognitive task.
“Reliance on the representation of well-known scenes, places, events, and persons is one of the most effective mnemonic means (memory means).” A positive connotation of an emotional representation improves memorization, while a negative connotation is associated with forgetting. A person also quickly forgets what is emotionally neutral and has no current meaning for him. A psychological feature of emotional memory is the mechanism of repression.
From the point of view of S. Freud, a person forgets what is intolerable to him and painful to remember. The cause (factor) of repression can be an emotional representation of negative connotation of a high degree of intensity. However, according to some Russian studies, a decrease in the intensity of an emotional representation (forgetting an emotionally charged event over time) can transform the affective experience to the degree of pleasant-unpleasant.
There is an oppositional concept of better memorization (long-term retention in memory) of negative emotions, i.e., negatively colored emotional ideas. For example, the actualization of a negative emotional representation (memory of the situation of experiencing pain) persists for a very long time without decreasing in intensity.
The development of emotional ideas is closely related to volitional processes. Their emotional coloring is reflected at all stages of the volitional act: on the awareness of the motive, decision making and the unfolding of the process of achieving the goal, ending with the implementation of the decision made. The process of achieving a goal can cause various emotional experiences, including negative ones, since emotional ideas are the central phenomenon of motivation.
Some emotional ideas, having arisen, are gradually generalized. The generalization process occurs on the basis of the coincidence of one or two components of cognitive-affective education (sign, modality, content). Often, one high-intensity, emotionally charged performance can impart a certain emotional coloring (positive or negative) to a generalized group. Another mechanism is the attachment of a neutrally colored representation to a generalized group with an emotional sign. In this case, the emotional representation receives the sign of a generalized group.
When updating the child’s emotional experience in various situations, it is possible for the emotional representation to dominate, having a positive or negative impact on the individual course of mental development. Often the sign of emotional representation not only covers generalized semantic and modal groups, but also begins to extend to the process of their formation. At the same time, emotional representations sometimes have an effect opposite to their sign on the development of cognitive processes. A positively colored emotional representation can negatively influence the processes of thinking or perception, and, on the contrary, a negatively colored emotional representation can have a stimulating effect on the development of the psyche.
Children's ideas about emotions as a result of their knowledge of emotional phenomena
Ideas about emotions are a complex result of cognitive activity and the individual emotional experience of a child, integrating both approaches described above to understanding the essence of ideas. In the development of ideas about emotions in children, certain features can be identified that significantly distinguish this type of ideas from purely cognitive concepts or social ideas.
First, emotional experience (cognitive and affective) is most significant for the development of emotional representations.
Secondly, in the structure of ideas about emotions there is a component of emotional coloring (emotional attitude to the content), which highly individualizes the figurative representation of the content of each of the ideas.
Thirdly, the activation of emotionally charged ideas influences the individual course of the child’s mental development.
The complex concept of the idea of emotions is a complex, dynamic formation of cognitive-affective components, where the cognitive component is represented by a body of knowledge about a person’s emotional life (the causes of emotions and emotiogenic situations, the expressive standard of emotions of various modalities, the content of various emotional experiences), and the affective component is the sign and the intensity of the child's emotional attitude.
By the end of primary school age, the child develops a structure of emotional ideas, including a generalized system of knowledge about emotions (the cognitive component of ideas) and the individual emotional coloring of each unit of knowledge acquired in the process of individual emotional experience.
Thus, the importance of emotions and feelings in human life and activity is extremely great. They encourage a person to be active and help overcome difficulties in learning, work, and creativity. Emotions and feelings often determine a person’s behavior and the setting of certain life goals. An indifferent person, indifferent to everything, is not able to set and solve large, vital tasks, or achieve real success and achievements.
The importance of emotions and feelings in educational activities is great. An emotionally excited story from a teacher or emotionally rich material causes an emotional upsurge in schoolchildren, and in this state their perception is heightened. A boring lesson causes apathy; students in such lessons do not perceive the material well.
Ideas about emotions are a complex result of cognitive activity and the individual emotional experience of a child, integrating both approaches described above to understanding the essence of ideas. In the development of ideas about emotions in children, certain features can be identified that significantly distinguish this type of ideas from purely cognitive concepts or social ideas. By the end of primary school age, the child develops a structure of emotional ideas, including a generalized system of knowledge about emotions (the cognitive component of ideas) and the individual emotional coloring of each unit of knowledge acquired in the process of individual emotional experience.
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Emotions have a complex structure, no matter how elementary they may seem to us at first glance.
Wundt's three-dimensional theory of feelings. For a long time, the prevailing opinion in psychology was that emotional experiences are characterized by the presence of only two polar and mutually exclusive subjective states - pleasure or displeasure. The outstanding German psychologist of the 19th century, W. Wundt, found that such a division does not reflect the entire complexity of the psychological structure of emotions. He theorized that emotions are characterized by three qualities or “dimensions”—pleasure or displeasure, excitement or calm, and tension or resolution (release from tension).
Each of these three “dimensions” is present in emotion not only as a subjective state defined in quality, but also in various degrees of intensity - from emotional zero (a state of indifference) to the highest degrees of intensity of a given quality. Due to the fact that emotions in their psychological structure are a variety of three “dimensions”, each of which can continuously and widely vary in the degree of its intensity, an infinite variety of emotional states and their shades is obtained.
Wundt’s merit should be recognized in the fact that he moved away from the traditional view of the structure of emotions as consisting only of variations of one “dimension”, raised the question of the complexity of the psychological structure of emotions and pointed out the presence in emotional processes and states of features important for human life and activity, except pleasure and displeasure.
Pleasure and displeasure. These subjective experiences, directly known to every person, constitute the psychological basis of emotional processes: without pleasure or displeasure there can be no emotion. They can be of varying degrees - from very great joy to a weak feeling of pleasure and from slight displeasure to severe grief, but they must be there, otherwise the emotion will cease to be itself.
Pleasure and displeasure are experienced by a person in connection with the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of his needs and interests. They express a person’s positive or negative attitude towards the phenomena of the surrounding reality, as well as towards his own actions and activities.
It is thanks to the elements of pleasure or displeasure that emotions act as the strongest incentives to action. For example, pleasure from the activity performed is accompanied by confidence in one’s own strengths and abilities and encourages a person to work even more energetically and successfully. Displeasure causes a desire to avoid what is associated with this feeling; it often causes an increased surge of energy and encourages a person to fight the circumstances that brought him displeasure.
However, pleasure and displeasure do not always play a positive role. Often, a feeling of pleasure causes complacency and weakening of energy, and displeasure prompts one to avoid difficulties and stop fighting.
Excitement and calm. Many emotions are characterized by a greater or lesser degree of nervous arousal. In some emotions, for example in a state of anger, this arousal manifests itself intensely and vividly; in others, for example when listening to melodic music, to a weak degree, sometimes decreasing to a state of calm.
States of arousal and calm not only give a characteristic imprint to the activity performed by a person, but are also necessary for its better performance. These qualitative features of emotions are of great importance during physical education and sports.
All physical exercises are associated with emotions, characterized by varying degrees of arousal and calm. For example, fast running is accompanied by strong emotional arousal.
During a physical education lesson, a teacher can offer students a game and thereby not only give them a certain pleasure, but also cause them the required degree of emotional arousal. During the game, students become excited, behave noisily, animatedly, their eyes sparkle, their faces blush, their movements become faster and more energetic. When the physical education lesson comes to an end, after which classes in other subjects should begin, the teacher offers students calm, measured movements in order to remove an excessive degree of emotional arousal and bring their body to a calm state.
Voltage and resolution. These states are characteristic of emotions experienced in complex activities associated with the anticipation of the onset of important events or circumstances for a person, in which he will have to act quickly, energetically, overcoming significant difficulties, sometimes realizing the danger of upcoming actions.
Emotions of tension and resolution often manifest themselves in sports activities, most clearly in sports competitions. They are experienced as tense anticipation of certain events and actions. For example, at the start, waiting for the signal to run, an athlete experiences a strong emotional state of tension. Outwardly, this state is expressed in composure, as if in stiffness of the whole body, in the absence of sudden movements, in slow breathing, etc., although internally the athlete is in a state of very great activity. The emotion of tension in this regard is the opposite of a state of excitement, during which a person outwardly manifests himself very violently, makes sudden, impetuous movements, speaks loudly, etc.
The opposite features characterize the emotion of resolution from tension. When the intensely awaited signal to run is given, the tension is replaced by an emotional state of liberation from the tension that just existed. The emotion of resolution is externally expressed in increased activity: at the moment of the signal, the athlete makes a sharp energetic jerk forward, the stiffness of movements just observed is instantly replaced by fast movements of maximum intensity, the muscle energy restrained until this moment is released and manifests itself in movements of great intensity.
As already mentioned, any mental process performs the functions of reflection and regulation. But we can distinguish processes with a predominant function of reflection (these include cognitive processes) and mental processes with a predominant function of regulation (these include emotions and will).
Emotions– mental phenomena that reflect in the form of experiences the personal significance and assessment of external and internal situations for human life. Emotions serve to reflect a person’s subjective attitude towards himself and the world around him.
The most essential feature of emotions is subjectivity. A holistic definition of emotions must take into account three aspects:
a) internal experience;
b) physiological activation (processes taking place in the nervous, endocrine and other systems of the body);
c) observable expressive complexes of emotions (external expression in behavior).
Externally, emotions are manifested by facial expressions, pantomimes, speech patterns and somato-vegetative phenomena.
Different authors attach different importance to these components of emotions. Thus, K. Izard identifies emotional expression as the main component. S.L. Rubinstein, A.N. Leontyev see the essence of emotions in subjective experience. Subjective experience contains the subject’s attitude to objects, phenomena, and events. Emphasizing the priority of the experiencing component, the authors focus on the reflective aspect of emotions. Indeed, emotion refers to the processes of reflection, but a specific reflection. J. Reikowski, in particular, points out that emotions reflect changes that have the nature of a violation and mobilize the body so that it can cope with the event that has happened. Thus, this author focuses on the regulatory function of emotions. “The emotional process is a special kind of regulatory processes that are updated under the influence of events that cause a change in the state of the organism or in its relationship with the environment, or change the current state of balance between the subject and the environment.
There are several theories to explain why emotions arise. American psychologist W. James and Danish psychologist G.N. Lange put forward a peripheral theory of emotions, based on the fact that emotions are associated with certain physiological reactions. They argue that we don’t laugh because it’s funny to us, but because we laugh because we laugh. The meaning of this paradoxical statement is that an arbitrary change in facial expressions and posture leads to the involuntary appearance of the corresponding emotion. These scientists said: portray anger - and you yourself will begin to experience this feeling; start laughing - and you will feel funny; try to walk in the morning, barely dragging your feet, with your arms down, your back bent and a sad expression on your face - and your mood will really deteriorate.
Although it is impossible to deny the existence of a conditioned reflex connection between the experience of an emotion and its external and internal manifestation, the content of the emotion is not reduced only to physiological changes in the body, since when all physiological manifestations were excluded in the experiment, the subjective experience was still preserved. Physiological changes occur in many emotions as a secondary adaptive phenomenon, for example, to mobilize the body’s reserve capabilities in the event of danger and the fear it generates, or as a form of release of tension that has arisen in the central nervous system.
W. Cannon was one of the first to show the limitations of the James-Lange theory, noting two circumstances. Firstly, the physiological changes that occur during different emotions are very similar to each other and do not reflect the qualitative uniqueness of emotions. Secondly, W. Cannon believed, these physiological changes unfold slowly, while emotional experiences arise quickly, that is, they precede the physiological reaction. True, in later studies by P. Bard, the last statement was not confirmed: emotional experiences and the physiological changes that accompany them arise almost simultaneously.
An interesting hypothesis about the reasons for the appearance of emotions was put forward by P.V. Simonov. He argues that emotions arise as a result of a lack or excess of information necessary to satisfy a need. The degree of emotional stress is determined by the strength of the need and the amount of information deficit necessary to achieve the goal. Emotions contribute to the search for new information by increasing the sensitivity of analyzers (sense organs), and this, in turn, leads to a response to an expanded range of external signals and improves the retrieval of information from memory. As a result, when solving a problem, unlikely or random associations can be used that would not be considered in a calm state. This increases the chances of achieving the goal. Although responding to an expanded range of signals whose usefulness is not yet known is redundant, it prevents missing a truly important signal that, if ignored, could cost one's life.
CLASSIFICATION OF EMOTIONS
The following types of emotional phenomena are distinguished:
Emotional tone of sensations(feeling tone of sensations) is a form of positive emotions that has no objective relevance. Accompanies vital sensations, such as taste, temperature, pain. It represents the earliest stage of the development of emotions in phylogenesis.
Negative emotions- a form of emotion that subjectively appears as unpleasant experiences. They lead to the implementation of adaptive behavior aimed at eliminating the source of physical or psychological danger.
Within the framework of cognitive psychology and psychotherapy (A.T. Beck, A. Ellis), the specificity of emotions is determined through certain intellectual actions:
- anger occurs when obstacles arise on the way to achieving a goal and serves to awaken the energy required to destroy the obstacle;
- sadness occurs in a situation of loss of a significant object and serves to reduce the level of energy for its further use;
- fear helps to avoid danger or mobilize for an attack;
- contempt maintains self-esteem and dominance behavior;
- shyness signals the need for privacy and intimacy;
- guilt establishes a subordinate role in the social hierarchy and indicates the possibility of loss of self-esteem;
- disgust leads to the repulsion of harmful objects.
Actually emotions- longer lasting conditions. They can be a reaction not only to accomplished events, but also to probable or remembered ones. Emotions reflect events in the form of a generalized subjective assessment and anticipate the result of an action.
Affect– the most powerful emotional reaction. It completely captures the human psyche, predetermining a single reaction to the situation as a whole. Distinctive features of affect: situational, generalized, high intensity, short duration.
Feelings– even more stable mental states that have a clearly defined objective character. In Soviet psychology, a common assertion is that feelings reflect the social nature of a person and develop as significant relationships to the world around him. Often, only a specific form of the flow of an experienced feeling is called an emotion.
Asthenic feelings- a form of emotions in which the leading experiences are depression, despondency, sadness, and non-localized fear. They indicate a refusal to fight difficulties in a situation of increased emotional stress.
Stenic feelings - positive emotional states that are associated with an increase in the level of vital activity and are characterized by the emergence of feelings of excitement, joyful excitement, uplift, and vigor.
Mood- the longest lasting emotional state that colors all human behavior. The basis of a particular mood is the emotional tone, positive or negative. Mood is characterized by cyclical changes (rise and fall of mood), but too pronounced fluctuations may indicate mental ill-being, in particular manic-depressive psychosis. It is believed that mood is an integral characteristic of an individual’s system of activities, which signals the processes of implementation of activities and their consistency with each other. The main mental states include vigor, euphoria, fatigue, apathy, depression, alienation, and loss of sense of reality.
Emotional manifestations can also be pathological:
Stress– an emotional state caused by an unexpected and tense situation. An organism in this state is characterized by a complex of reactions to adapt to new conditions:
1) anxiety reaction;
2) resistance;
3) exhaustion.
According to G. Selye, stress is an integral part of human life; it cannot be avoided. For each person there is an optimal level of stress at which the greatest effectiveness is achieved.
Depression- an affective state characterized by a negative emotional background, changes in the motivational sphere, cognitive ideas and general passivity of behavior.
Emotional lability- characterized by a slight change in mood from somewhat sad to elevated without any significant reason. It is often observed in diseases of the heart and blood vessels or against the background of asthenia after somatic diseases.
Dysphoria- low mood with irritability, anger, gloominess, increased sensitivity to the actions of others, with a tendency to outbursts of aggression. Occurs in epilepsy.
Emotional ambivalence- characterized by the simultaneous existence of opposing emotions. In this case, a paradoxical change in mood is observed, for example, misfortune causes a joyful mood, and a joyful event causes sadness. It is observed in neuroses, character accentuations and some somatic diseases.
Apathy- painful indifference to the events of the outside world, one’s own condition; complete loss of interest in any activity, even in one’s appearance. The person becomes sloppy and unkempt. People with apathy treat their family and friends coldly and indifferently. With relatively intact mental activity, they lose the ability to feel.
Agitation– a psychopathological disorder in which affective tension caused by stress (accident, threat to life) uncontrollably turns into movement. Characterized by motor restlessness and need for movement. It may be accompanied by a feeling of emptiness in the head, an inability to reason and act logically, as well as autonomic disturbances, such as rapid breathing and heartbeat, sweating, trembling hands, and pallor. It also acts as a concomitant phenomenon in many mental illnesses (catatonia, anxiety neurosis, active depression, involutional depression, senile decline).
Affective stagnation– affective tension that cannot be responded to due to restraint (external circumstances, upbringing, neurosis). The accumulation of affects is subjectively experienced as tension and anxiety. In one or another signaling situation it can be resolved in the form of an affective explosion. Over a more or less long period of time, there is an accumulation of insignificant negative emotions, after which mental discharge occurs in the form of a violent and poorly controlled affective explosion, which is triggered for no apparent reason. But sometimes it can also gradually decrease without any excesses.
Emotions have a complex structure, no matter how elementary they may seem to us at first glance.
Outstanding German psychologist of the 19th century. W. Wundt developed three-dimensional theory of feelings. He put forward the idea that emotions are characterized by three qualities - “pleasure or displeasure,” “excitement or calm,” and “tension or resolution (release from tension).” Emotional states are characterized by either one, or two, or three of these polar states.
Pleasure and displeasure. Pleasure and displeasure are experienced by a person in connection with the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of his needs. They are experienced as a person’s positive or negative emotional attitude towards the phenomena of the surrounding reality, as well as towards his own actions, towards himself and the actions of others. These subjective experiences constitute the psychological basis of emotions.
Through the experience of pleasure or displeasure, emotions act as the strongest motivations for action. For example, pleasure from a game can motivate a person to continue it, and displeasure can motivate a person to stop playing it.
Excitement and calm. Many emotions are characterized by a greater or lesser degree of nervous arousal. In some cases, for example, during a state of anger, this excitement manifests itself intensely and vividly; in others - for example, during rest - to a weak degree, sometimes decreasing to a state of calm.
Voltage and resolution. A state of tension is characteristic of emotions experienced in cases associated with the expectation of the onset of important events or circumstances for a person, in which he will have to act quickly, energetically, overcoming significant difficulties, sometimes realizing the danger of upcoming actions. The opposite features are characterized by the emotion of resolution, when tension subsides and is replaced either by action or relaxation. For example, a person is preparing to cross the road when the traffic light is green - his body is tense, he is all in anticipation. And then the green light turns on - the person begins to move and the tension is replaced by an emotional state of liberation from the just former tension.
Classification of emotions. Due to their complexity and diversity, emotional experiences are difficult to generalize. In this regard, psychology has not yet created a single generally accepted classification of emotions. Nevertheless, the following classification can be considered the most acceptable:
1. Excitement is a positive emotion that motivates learning, development of skills and abilities, creative aspirations, increases attention, curiosity and passion for an object of interest.
2. Joy – characterized by a feeling of confidence, self-worth and a feeling of love.
3. Surprise - occurs most often due to some new or sudden event, stimulates cognitive processes.
4. Grief is an emotion, when experiencing which a person loses heart, feels loneliness, feels sorry for himself, and seeks to retire.
5. Anger is an emotion that evokes a feeling of strength, a sense of courage and self-confidence, and is the beginning of the expression of displeasure and aggression.
6. Disgust is the desire to get rid of someone or something, and when combined with anger, it can stimulate destructive behavior.
7. Contempt develops as a means of preparing for a meeting with a dangerous, unpleasant, insignificant object; the basis for its occurrence is a feeling of superiority and a disdainful attitude towards people.
8. Fear arises in situations of real or imagined danger, is accompanied by strong uncertainty and forebodings, and motivates avoidance reactions.
9. Shame motivates withdrawal reactions, the desire to hide, to disappear.
10. Guilt occurs when moral and ethical standards are violated in situations where a person feels personal responsibility.
Emotions reflect the significance of various situations for a person, their assessment; the same stimuli can cause very different, dissimilar responses in people. It is by the expressions of emotions that we can judge the characteristics of the emotional sphere of a person.
NEEDS
In psychology, it is generally accepted that needs are the basis of all human behavior. Based on the principles of self-preservation, self-development and self-realization of the individual, need should be considered as a state of a certain lack of something that a person tries to fill, an internal tension of the body that motivates activity and determines the nature and direction of all actions and deeds. And the stronger the need, the greater the tension, the more zealously a person strives to achieve the conditions of existence and development that he needs. According to the apt remark of psychology professor, academician B.F. Lomov, the needs of people dictate their behavior with the same authority as the force of gravity dictates the movement of physical bodies.
needs are called internal (mental) states experienced by a person when he experiences an urgent need for something.
The process of education and development of needs is very complex and multifaceted. Firstly, it may be associated with a change in a person’s position in life, in the system of his relationships with people around him. At each age period, in accordance with the requirements of the social environment, a person takes different positions and performs different social roles. A person only experiences pleasure, feels comfortable and is satisfied with himself when he is able to meet the requirements placed on him.
Secondly, new needs can arise in the process of a person mastering new forms of behavior, mastering ready-made cultural values, and acquiring certain skills.
Thirdly, the needs themselves may develop from elementary to more complex, qualitatively new forms.
Fourthly, the structure of the motivational-need sphere itself changes or develops: as a rule, leading, dominant needs and their subordination change with age.
Fifthly, in contrast to the needs of animals, which are more or less stable in nature and limited in number by biological needs, human needs constantly multiply and change throughout his life: human society creates for its members more and more new needs that were absent from previous generations. Social production creates new consumer goods, thus increasing people's needs.
Classifications of needs. The concept of need is used in three meanings: as a designation of a) an object of the external environment necessary for normal life (need-object); b) a mental state reflecting a lack of something (need-state); c) the fundamental properties of a person that determine his attitude to the world (need-property).
These types of needs are divided into conservation needs and development needs. Conservation needs are satisfied within the limits of social norms, while development needs tend to exceed these norms.
The ideologist and author of another classification of needs is A. Maslow, who relied on the principle of relative priority of actualization of motives, which states that before the needs of higher levels are activated and begin to determine behavior, the needs of the lower level must be satisfied.
The classification of motives according to A. Maslow is as follows:
Physiological needs: hunger, thirst, sexuality, etc. - to the extent that they have a homeostatic and organismic nature;
Security needs: safety and protection from pain, fear, anger, disorder;
Social connection needs: needs for love, tenderness, social connection, identification;
Self-esteem needs: needs for recognition, approval;
Self-actualization needs: realization of one’s own capabilities and abilities; the need for understanding and comprehension.
Need Satisfaction Mechanism. It should be noted that in dynamics the process of satisfying needs goes through three stages:
1. Voltage stage(when there is a feeling of objective insufficiency in something). Motivation is based on the physiological mechanism of activating traces stored in memory of those external objects that are capable of satisfying the body’s need, and traces of those actions that can lead to its satisfaction. There is no motivation without a state of need.
2. Evaluation stage(when there is a real opportunity to own, for example, a certain item and a person can satisfy his need). This is the stage of correlating objective and subjective possibilities for satisfying needs. Based on innate and, mainly, previously acquired individual experience, prediction occurs not only of the subject of need satisfaction, but also of the likelihood (possibility) of obtaining or avoiding a vital factor, if the latter is harmful to a person.
3. Saturation stage(when tension and activity are reduced to a minimum). This stage is characterized by the release of accumulated tension and, as a rule, is accompanied by pleasure or enjoyment.
Different needs are characterized by different deadlines for their satisfaction. Satisfaction of biological needs cannot be delayed for a long time. Satisfaction of social needs is limited by the duration of human life. Achieving ideal goals can also be attributed to the distant future. The scale of remoteness of goals is reflected in everyday consciousness as the “size of the soul,” which can be both large and small.
MOTIVATION
If human behavior is based on needs that directly impel an individual to activity, then the direction of behavior is determined by a system of dominant motives. The motive is always the experience of something personally significant for the individual.
Motives of behavior can be both unconscious (instincts and drives) and conscious (aspirations, desires, desires). In addition, the implementation of a particular motive is closely related to volitional effort (voluntariness - involuntariness) and control over behavior.
Instinct- this is a set of innate human actions, which are complex unconditioned reflexes necessary for adaptation and performance of vital functions (food, sexual and protective instincts, self-preservation instinct, etc.).
Attraction- most typical for very young children. Attraction is most closely connected with elementary feelings of pleasure and displeasure. Any feeling of pleasure is associated with a natural desire to maintain and continue this state.
Pursuit. As the child’s consciousness develops, his drives begin to be accompanied, at first by a still vague, and then by an increasingly clear consciousness of the need he is experiencing. This occurs in cases where the unconscious desire to satisfy an emerging need encounters an obstacle and cannot be realized. In such cases, the unsatisfied need begins to be realized in the form of a still vague desire for a more or less specific object or object with the help of which this need can be satisfied.
Wish. Its characteristic feature is a clear and definite representation of the goal to which a person strives. Desire always refers to the future, to what is not yet in the present, what has not yet come, but what we would like to have or what we would like to do. At the same time, there are still no or very vague ideas about the means by which a clearly defined goal can be achieved.
Wants are a higher stage in the development of motives for action, when the idea of a goal is joined by the idea of the means by which this goal can be achieved. This allows you to draw up a more or less firm plan to achieve your goal. Compared to a simple desire, a desire has a more active, businesslike nature: it expresses the intention to carry out an action, the desire to achieve a goal using certain means.
Motivational process. Some motives, motivating activity, at the same time give it personal meaning; These motives are called meaning-forming. Others, coexisting with them and playing the role of motivating factors (positive or negative) - sometimes acutely emotional, affective - are deprived of a meaning-forming function; They are conventionally called incentive motives.
Motivational appeal can be provided by:
Mechanisms of motivation formation. The formation of a conscious-volitional level of motivation consists, firstly, in the formation of hierarchical regulation; secondly, in contrasting the highest level of this regulation with spontaneously formed, impulsive drives, needs, interests, which begin to act no longer as internal to the person’s personality, but rather as external, although belonging to it.
The formation of motivation has two mechanisms, within which influence can be carried out in the following ways:
First way – impact on the emotional and cognitive sphere. The main goal is to, by communicating certain knowledge, forming beliefs, arousing interest and positive emotions, lead a person to rethink his needs, change the intrapersonal atmosphere, value system and attitude to reality.
Second way consists of influencing the active sphere. Its essence boils down to ensuring that, through specially organized conditions of activity, at least selectively satisfy certain needs. And then, through a rationally justified change in the nature of the activity, try to strengthen the old ones and form new, necessary needs.