What are emotions?
Emotions, often called feelings, include experiences such as love, hate, anger, trust, joy, panic, fear, and grief. Emotions are related to, but different from, mood. Emotions are specific reactions to a particular event that are usually of fairly short duration. Mood is a more general feeling such as happiness, sadness, frustration, contentment, or anxiety that lasts for a longer time. Although everyone experiences emotions, scientists do not all agree on what emotions are or how they should be measured or studied. Emotions are complex and have both physical and mental components. Generally researchers agree that emotions have the following parts: subjective feelings, physiological (body) responses, and expressive behavior. The component of emotions that scientists call subjective feelings refers to the way each individual person experiences feelings, and this component is the most difficult to describe or measure. Subjective feelings cannot be observed; instead, the person experienci
Emotions are human beings’ warning systems as to what is really going on around them. Emotions are our most reliable indicators of how things are going in our lives. They are also like an internal gyroscope; emotions help keep us on the right track by making sure that we are led by more than cognition. If you have a list of core emotions what are they? There are more emotions that we feel than we can label. Emotions are fundamentally not cognitive/verbal, so as soon as we try to name them, we begin to be cognitive instead. When we start to talk about emotions, we’re losing some parts of them. In our curricula, we encourage our kids to develop as broad a feeling vocabulary as possible so kids can express themselves. But for some kids, when you say “how did that feel?”, the answer is, “that feels like the time when I got lost at the mall.” And you can’t capture that time by saying, “I was scared.” That feeling and that event and that situation are all wrapped up together. What is the dif
1 When Abby got to school, there was a stranger in her classroom. The stranger was tall and had long hair in a ponytail. He was wearing glasses. Abby decided he looked funny. She went to her desk and sat down. 2 Abby’s teacher, Mrs. Ricco, told the children to put their science books away. She told them they were going to have a special lesson. 3 Abby wasn’t sure she wanted a special lesson. The stranger must be part of the lesson, she decided. Maybe he was going to tell them about outer space. Maybe he came from outer space! Sometimes Abby was grumpy in the mornings. 4 “This is Mr. Lockman,” Mrs. Ricco said. “He is a counselor. He is here to talk to us about emotions.” 5 “What’s an e-motion? I know! It goes a-motion, b-motion, c-motion, d-motion, and e-motion!” Ernie grinned. Ernie always liked to joke around. He thought he was very funny. 6 All the children laughed. They thought Ernie was funny, too. 7 Mr. Lockman laughed. “That’s a good idea,” he said, “but it isn’t exactly right. A
and how can they be measured?” Social Science information, 44(4): 695-729. • Shank, Roger, and Kenneth Mark Colby, eds. 1973 . Computer Models of Thought and Language. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. • Searle, John. 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Solomon, Robert. 1980. “Emotions and Choice.” In Explaining Emotions, edited by Amélie Rorty, 251-81. Los Angeles: University of California Press. • —–. 1984. The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotions. New York: Doubleday. • —–. 1999. “The Philosophy of Emotions.” In Handbook of Emotions, ed. Mark Lewis and Jeannette Haviland-Jones, 3-15. New York: Guilford Press. • Stocker, Michael, with Elizabeth Hegeman. 1992. Valuing Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Tappolet, Christine. 2000. Emotions et Valeurs. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. • —–. 2003. “Emotions and the Intelligibility of Akratic Action”. In Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet
