The Emotions - Different Types of Emotions

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

While the original program is active, the relevant perception processes of each basic emotion feed the integrative part (portion or stage or component) of the basic emotion. For each topic (or perception or subject of perception) after the perception stage is completed (i.e. a verdict is reached about the contemplated topic), the integration process of that emotion can reach its conclusions and pass them on.

The integration stage consists mainly of the assessment of the perceived stimuli, with regard to the specific aspect of life for which it takes charge. The integration stage terminates in one kind of message or another, conveyed to the behavioral part (portion or stage or component) and, parallel to it, sends the appropriate messages to the intra-organismic component as well as the expressive and the experiential components.

(These post integration processes are not only receptors of input but also sources of output, as they supply feedback to the integrative component, feed each other with important information and supply input to nearly all the rest of the emotional subsystem. Actually, none of the systems of the brain are independent. They are constantly in one kind of contact or another and are regarded as entirely different entities only for ease of conceptualization and research. They are called subsystems - and not systems - wherever this aspect needs to be stressed.)

The specific emotional experience of each moment of our life is, in essence, the sum of the sensations created by the activity of the biological sub-strata of life (among which the contribution of the basic emotions is the greatest) and the recycled traces of past ones from our memory, projected on various locations of the body.

Usually, the overwhelming majority of the changes in our felt sensations are induced by the Activation Programs2 of the Basic Emotions3 - whether as "originally emotional sensations", or as ones which are emotional responses to purely physiological ones with which they tend to integrate.

Therefore, at any point on the time continuum, the sum of the sensations felt, and the emotional experience we are aware of are nearly identical. It also means that the differential treatment and conceptualization of the felt sensation, regarding many of them as "not related to emotion", is mostly arbitrary.

Most of the time, the level of activity of the emotional system functions in the middle range and not at its extremities. The most frequent verbal labels of these intensities are names of moods and feelings. These tend to answer the question "how are you", with the lengthy answer: "I am in a bad mood" or "I have strange feelings".

In these situations, it is harder to discern the relative contribution of each basic emotion. This is the main reason for the use of the somewhat "abstract" labels of adverbs and other qualifiers that accompany mood, feeling, sensations and experience - instead of names of emotions.

The weakness of the discrimination power of our awareness in the emotional domain is most clearly revealed when one tries to apply it to common mild emotional experience. The power of discrimination of the focused awareness with regard to classification and labeling of feelings and sensations is even worse and is restricted to the few most prominent basic emotions in situations of high emotional arousal. Therefore we cannot rely too much on this faculty when we want to study or manage the climate of our emotional experience.

The activity of the system of the basic emotions creates, in its various combinations, a huge divergence of specific emotional mixtures, that are constantly changing. Though we are not aware of it, we never experience twice the same emotional mixture. Even the vocabulary of the most "emotional" language does not include names for more than a fraction of this variety. These are the main reasons we find it hard to give a name to the feelings of a specific moment or at least to define it in words.

The gap between the small number of basic emotions and the abundance of the specific emotional mixtures of daily life can be translated into numbers: according to scientists investigating the emotional phenomena, we have between 10 to 20 different basic emotions. According to some of these scientists we can encounter in one day thousands of different emotional mixtures, drawn from the pool of the most common tens of thousands of emotional mixtures.

The mathematically-oriented reader can appreciate the total number of possible mixtures if he takes into account the number of possible permutations for 10 basic bipolar emotions even if each has only 4 steps between the two poles: 1) substantially towards on pole; 2) mildly so; 3)mildly towards the other direction; 4) substantially towards the other pole. The result is 410 which is more than a million.

This might seem to be impossible if one does not take into account that, in the stream of emotion, change is the rule not the exception. Usually, even an extremely intense emotional mixture lasts in its original state (as to quality and intensity) no longer than 10 seconds.

In this stream of emotion, only in extreme cases is the weight (and thus the quality) of one of the basic emotions so prominent that it "leaves all the others in the background". In cases like this, people (and scientists too) tend to regard that mixture as a "pure" expression of that basic emotion.

The level of activity of the system of basic emotions is constantly changing, both absolutely and relatively to the other subsystems of the brain. Sometimes, the level of activity of one or a few basic emotions rises until the individual seems to be flooded by a certain emotion, or a specific mixture. This condition is usually of only a short duration. However, when the homeostasis controls fail, it can last a whole hour or even longer.

Usually, even the highest levels of emotions experienced in daily life by adults are not so intense and do not flood the individual. When they do occur, one can discern in them the simultaneous expression of three or four basic emotions.

For instance, when injustice is inflicted upon us, we feel intense anger that usually "leads" the resulting "emotional convoy". Nearly always this "convoy" includes sorrow for what has been done. Frequently these two emotions are accompanied by helplessness, especially if it was a happening we had foreseen but could not prevent or if we could not extract ourselves from a bad situation. Very often we also feel shame or regret too - if there was an opportunity to evade the disaster which we neglected or overlooked. Sometimes, the emotional convoy includes hatred toward the wrong-doer if he is perceived as an enemy or a rival.