The Emotions - Emotions Overview

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

The essence of emotional phenomenon

Emotions have one aspect which is most known to each one of us, and whose existence and emotional nature are indisputable, that is, what we perceive with our internal-body-senses (like muscle tension, pain, pressure, etc.) when we feel. In other words, the bodily sensations accompanying the activation of fear, anger, happiness, etc. i.e. the subjective experience of emotion we are aware of.

The most known to us about the emotional expressions of others, come from their facial expressions and the inflection in the voice intonation. When the facial expression or the pitch and melody of the voice are clear and unequivocal, it is possible to deduce the main emotion that person is experiencing. Most of us do this quickly, surely and frequently within the "reality" of daily living. Alas, we seldom do it for the expressions of more than the two or three prominent emotions.

Another expression mode of other people from which we can learn about their emotions, moods, feelings, etc. is their verbal communication, "live" or "recycled". Many emotional contents are communicated by means of verbal messages such as conversation, singing, writing, and exclamations like: "help!", "damn it!", etc.

However, one can rely on the verbal expressions only in very specific instances. Immense quantities of prose, poetry, and scientific essays were written about this form of communication and the amount of truth to be gleaned from them. There is a great difference between the amount of truth conveyed by the two kinds of communication of emotions, i.e. the verbal and the non-verbal, and the level of clarity of that information.

However, the most essential difference between these two communication channels is not in their truth value, but in the richness of their content and the immediacy of their transfer. Each one of us who tries hard to convey an emotion finds it nearly impossible to describe in a few words or a crude sketch, what the feeling is.

Verbal language is indeed not fit for conveying precise emotional content, even when deceit or any other kind of censorship is not intended, even when one is most gifted in verbal communication, and even when one does one's best.

The essence of emotional phenomena does not consist solely of the internal activity, which is responsible for most of the subjective experience and external expression; it also has a few other important components some of which can also be observed in daily life.

There are those which are expressed through changes induced into the pattern of muscle activity of the body, capable of taking part in intentional behavior - like walking and manual work - and are easy to observe. These components are expressed also in less purposeful behavior of recreation and leisure, that are prone to include more idiosyncrasies and are thus more obvious to the observer.

Some expressions are also involved with subtle patterns of activity such as balancing the body, the tension from vigilance, etc. that are only apparent to the eye of a keen observer. Others are even less discernible as they involve smaller areas of the body and tender tissues, for the tracing of which both the scientists and the unsophisticated lay observers need electronic instruments like the Electro-Myo-Graph - E.M.G.).

The activity of components of the emotional system is expressed also in the "Autonomic Nervous System", which is responsible - among other things - for blushing, paleness, cold sweat etc.

For instance, the systematic bio-electric rhythm of parts of the brain, tested by the Electro-Encephalo-Graph (E.E.G.) is used in medicine to trace anomalous effects of tissue damage (Epilepsy included). However, this rhythm is also related to the emotional system and its activity. Therefore, the E.E.G. is used in research as a means of measuring systematic changes induced by various psychoactive drugs and other interventions to the emotional climate.

The emotions include within their intra-body activity and behavior very subtle physiological expressions that can be traced only with the help of bio-chemical tests and electronic gadgets. These observations are very common within the medical field but not only there.

The internal influence of the activity of the emotional system is expressed even in subtle chemical changes. These changes are difficult to relate unequivocally to emotion and to malfunctioning of the emotional system in each of their occurrences. It is even harder to discern and assess the relative contribution of the emotional system in cases where other systems of the body are significantly involved.

For example, the plethora of "psychosomatic" disturbances; the variations caused to the semi-stable hormonal rhythms of women; the unwanted changes induced in the levels of the brain's neuro-transmitters (especially in the autumn); etc. It is still very expensive to conduct studies in this field and many moral, ethical and technical problems are involved.

How are the emotions of daily life created?

It is worth stressing here that the term emotions has many "relatives". These are mostly different names for the same processes - providing different "nicknames" to the same phenomenon in the various circumstances in which they are expressed or demonstrated. This is done mainly because of the idiosyncrasies of the language, the insufficient development and accumulation of human knowledge, and the influence of prejudice. The most common names for emotional processes in English are: Emotions, Moods, Feelings, Sensations and Passion.

At the beginning of life and at the appearance of each of the emotions the first activations of which occur at later points of the maturation process, we can see a direct connection between a small number of patterns of stimuli, and the activation of each of the basic emotions.

In this early period, the "innate emotional programs" (or plans - as depicted by the well known investigator and theoretician Bowlby) are active all the time and respond to the right input in a reflex-like fashion. At the beginning of life, these programs (plans) are solely responsible for the management of the multi-neuronal integration subsystems of emotion - a specific program for each basic emotion.