The Emotions - The Emotional Experience

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

The emotional experience

In daily life, we experience simultaneously the presence and activity of all the basic emotions. The results of their recent activity is experienced too, mostly as diminishing echoes. Occasionally, we label a mixture of basic emotions with a single emotional word taken from the list of pairs of emotional words that delineate the extremes of the basic emotional continuum.

Usually, but not always, a mixture is named after the most prominent basic emotion of that time, using words like: sorrow, happiness, pride, shame, fear, security, love, etc. At other times, we refer to a mixture by the name of a milder intensity of the emotional words that delineate basic emotions (i.e. sadness - instead of sorrow; contentment - instead of happiness; liking - instead of love; etc.).

As the number of verbal labels is scant, they are mostly used as pointers to a general direction of a "cloud" of emotional mixtures, without a detailed address for a specific one. When a more precise communication is needed - in life, prose, or poetry - a more pictorial language is used and detailed descriptions of the circumstance are added.

The system of basic emotions is responsible for the most fundamental assessments of life in each of us. Each of them is in charge of an aspect of life that is essential to our survival. The relevance of each event and aspect of the circumstances of the surrounding world - real and fictional, past or future, material or spiritual, directly or circumstantial - is scrutinized by the emotional system. It is assessed and tested simultaneously by all of the 15 or so basic emotions, for its relevance to the 15 aspects of life the basic emotions are monitoring. Part of the results of these assessments reaches our awareness.

The emotional experience we are usually aware of, such as emotion, sensation, feeling, mood, desire, felt sensation of the body and their like, is the main interface between the emotional system and the consciousness.

The combined emotional experience we are aware of at each moment is, in essence, like a parcel of 15 announcements delivered from the emotional subsystem to the subsystem of conscious processes (the aware cognitive15 processes). The flowing stream of emotional experience of which we are aware, is like the melody of a grand chorus containing 15 "voices" that are constantly "singing" to the awareness subsystem of the brain and mind (system).

We can regard the emotional experience we are aware of as the summing up of the plethora of the emotional information and processes we are not aware of. This emotional experience serves several main purposes:

• When it is very intense, it is aimed at concentrating almost all the attention and other resources of the individual in order to deal with a condition suspected or decided upon as an emergency.
• The different emotional intensities and qualities sum up and label the various happenings or other targets of assessment in order to influence their integration and further processing by other subsystems. These subsystems combine the 15 emotional "verdicts" with their own processing. They file them together in memory; use them in the shaping of ad hoc activation programs and the various programs they are based on; build with their "help" new programs and routines; use them to induce minute changes to the ongoing operations of the ad hoc activation programs that are responsible for actual behavior - the regular activities and the one-time ones. And most important of all - they are used as natural biofeedback in order to induce improvements, updates and amendments (accommodation and adaptation) into the emotional supra-programs(9) themselves.
• The enduring emotional experiences - and especially those that are with us for long stretches of time (usually called moods) - are like constant reminders (and verdicts) about the nature of the general condition of the facts of life. They are usually based on many erroneous judgments and illogical conclusions. For instance, an ongoing tension is like a constant sounding of an alarm to remind us that we are in a state of continuous danger. However, many people are extremely or at least excessively tense most of the time, even when they are in supremely secure conditions and benevolent environments.
• The specific emotional experiences of a certain circumstance, with their unique quality and their relative intensities, label both the situation as a whole and its various components. Thus they contribute to the assessment of the relative importance of various components of the situation and its importance in comparison with other situations, past and future.
• The emotional experiences and moods of various intensities and durations, are one of the most important means of demarcating the long lasting aspirations of the individual. They are also used to discern the long lasting ones from those of the short term.
• The most prominent function of the emotional experience is to attract our attention and so divert part of it - or most of it when needed - from other ongoing activities, and focus it on a specific target in order to deal with it more favorably. The added resources may be used to influence behavior, thinking, expressions, the further development of subjective experience itself and a plethora of other processes that do not engage awareness directly.
• The sharp changes in the emotional experience we are aware of, which occur very frequently to some of us and less so for the majority, are a means for hasty changes in focus of attention. Sometimes these sharp changes even transform abruptly the whole state of mind.
• Whether the emotional experiences emerge sharply or gradually, when they are strong, last long enough and are of the appropriate quality, they may dominate awareness for short or even long periods of time... and not let us forget.
• The less dramatic and less prominent milder or "mini" changes in the emotional experience, which do not have a crucial quality, do not dominate the awareness processes and do not receive exclusive attention. They are treated as more or less important announcements, according to their specific nature, to be joined and processed together with the other ongoing preoccupations of the brain and mind system.
• Prolonged emotional experiences, usually called moods, are used for recruiting most of the flexible brain resources (not tied up at the time with more urgent tasks) for dealing with a specific problem (mostly in the background). The consolidating of a "family" of emotional mixtures, as a mood, is a kind of "declaration" by the emotional subsystem: It specifies chronically, recurrently or for a specific period, that something important must be done, or that a certain central problem must be solved.
• The emotional experience, with its various intensities, qualities, durations, etc. is the means by which the genetic apparatus (supposed by some to be shaped by the "natural selection of the species") directs us to survive.

Actually, the emotional subsystem and the aware experiences
it creates is the main (and may be the only)
motivation system of the individual.

In essence, we are not "programmed by our nature" and not educated by our upbringing to do specific things in a specific manner. What we are really shaped into is to feel certain things in certain circumstances, to strive to keep the emotional experience felt within specific boundaries, and to acquire proficiencies (and short cuts) that help us to achieve this aim.

It means that we are not directed to achieving a plethora of specific aims but to preferring certain emotional qualities. Our main survival programs are not intended to achieve specific conditions and perform specific acts, but to achieve more flexible and "abstract" targets of emotional experiences. The best means for this mission is the ability to improvise, based on the plethora of emotional supra-programs built and improved during life.

next: The Activation Programs