لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Building Your Emotional Knowledge Base
“Howya doing? Fine, you say? I’m okay myself.” That is our basic emotion vocabulary, and it is indeed basic. But you don’t need to be a linguist to improve your emotional vocabulary, as most of us are starting out with some command of a feelings vocabulary; a little bit of knowledge will go a very long way.
A Vocabulary Primer
How many emotions are there, and how do we describe them? On the side of simplicity, we can use what are known as two-factor emotion models. One researcher, James Russell, developed a system in which emotions were arranged around a circle, with two major dimensions describing points in emotional space: pleasantness of the emotion (pleasant to unpleasant) and the energy level (calm to intensely aroused).[1] To help you develop your basic emotional vocabulary, we’ve created Figure 10.1. It plots emotions along two simple dimensions: feelings (positive to negative) and energy (high to low).
Figure 10.1: Basic Emotional Vocabulary.
Now, when someone asks, “Howya doing?” you can reply, “I’m feeling pleasant and have a moderate amount of energy,” or “I have a highly aroused, unpleasant feeling,” awkward as such wording might seem in daily interactions. These statements describe your feeling rather than give it an exact word. If we connect these two dimensions of feelings to emotion terms in the first case, you might just say that you are “happy” and in the second “afraid.” It’s a start, but it’s still fairly limited. We need more information.
Causes of Basic Emotions
We learn the meaning of many signals at an early age. Have you ever been to an ocean beach to swim in the surf? On days when the water is calm, with small waves breaking on shore, the lifeguards fly green flags to mark the safe and guarded sections of the beach. They place red flags in areas off-limits to swimmers. When parents take a child to the beach for the first time, they often point at the flags and teach their child what the flags signal. Emotions serve a similar function as these beach flags. Emotions warn us of possible danger or of good things to come. However, emotions are usually more subtle than these brightly colored flags fluttering in the breeze, and, unfortunately, most parents do not explicitly teach their children how to interpret these emotional signals. We are left to learn them on our own, and some of us learn well, whereas others among us miss a few important lessons. No matter what our emotional training, we can all benefit from a review of what emotions mean and what they signal. We start our discussion with basic emotions: anger, happiness, fear, surprise, and sadness.
Anger
Anger is not necessarily a bad emotion to have. Anger arises out of a sense of wrong or injustice—a sense that someone is being unfair to us or to others. Without anger, we would tolerate injustice, inequality, and prejudice. However, anger can lead to destruction and violence, and what we believe is an injustice may be due to misperceptions. We can raise anger in others to create a senseless mob, ready to attack, seemingly devoid of a reason to do so or devoid of reasoning in general.
There is, then, an intelligent use of anger and an unintelligent use of anger. An unintelligent use or cause of anger is one in which our survival is not being threatened but we lose all ability to reason and to think—we are blind with anger. That is a powerful image: a blind rage. We are so angry that we do not see, and not seeing, we are wantonly destructive, lashing out at whatever and with whomever we come into contact. A more intelligent use of anger grants us the power and the energy to confront an evil, to right a wrong. An intelligent use of anger is to use it as a force that stands up to a bully, that changes the world in order to make it a better place. Anger does have a cost. The effects of anger on physical health are fairly well established.[next chapter, when we help you acquire emotion management strategies and skills. In that chapter, we will show how to use anger intelligently.
Happiness
The ancient Stoics distrusted feelings of joy or delight, believing that such feelings were superfluous. Joy or happiness is not irrational, as these emotions move us to embrace others and approach them. The achievement of a goal results in happiness, and happiness is a signal that we have done something good that we value. We are happy when our values are met, and happiness is a signal to pay attention to our life. Happiness tells us that we have achieved a goal and have been successful at something. We feel happy when we close a sale, make a great presentation, or get a terrific job offer. These feelings inspire and motivate us to try it again and repeat our success.
Fear
next chapter.
Surprise
When events do not unfold according to plan, we are surprised. Surprise warns us that our plans are not going to work because the unexpected has occurred. Surprise brings our attention to bear on a new problem. Surprise serves a reorientation function. We drop whatever we were doing and thinking about, and pay attention to the source of the surprise. Eyes widened, we try to find out what’s going on.
Sadness
Disappointment or loss results in sadness. When we do not achieve our goal, or when something we care about is taken away from us, we mourn its loss. Mourning allows us to grapple with the idea that we will not have the thing we wanted. There is also an interpersonal aspect to sadness. When we are sad, we are not a threat to anyone else. Our sadness invites the support and assistance of other people, just at the critical time when we need it most.
Causes of Social Emotions
Social, or secondary, emotions are more culture-bound than the basic emotions are. Although we can understand fundamental causes for these social emotions, we also have to understand the norms of the group or society in order to figure out when these emotions occur.
Disgust
Disgust is a social emotion. It serves the purpose of keeping others in line. Disgust defines the limits of what we find acceptable behavior or behavior that is too far out to be tolerated. Given that there is a strong cultural component to disgust, it’s important to recognize that what disgusts one person will not disgust another person. Although disgust likely originated to keep us from eating things that might poison us, it has evolved into a complex emotion with multiple causes. An act that disgusts us is one that goes against our core beliefs of what is proper and improper. Disgust ensures that our societal values are held intact. When we are no longer disgusted by something, it is a sign that our values have changed. If our sense of disgust grows regarding an act, it is also a sign that our values have changed and that a behavior that once was acceptable is no longer.
Shame and Guilt
Shame indicates that you have not lived up to your personal ideals or values; in this way, it is similar to guilt. But there are a few important differences between these feelings. Shame and guilt start out the same. You begin with a failure to achieve an objective or a moral standard of importance. For example, perhaps you promised one of your direct reports that you’d look into his pay raise for next year. The problem is, you didn’t do it in time because you forgot. The result is that you feel guilty because you made a promise and you failed to keep it without a good reason. This failure was avoidable. Both shame and guilt make us feel uncomfortable. And they should. They can serve as a reminder that we messed up and need to apologize to the person we let down, and to make sure we don’t fail again. Shame and guilt can keep us on the right track. Psychologist June Tangney, based on earlier work by Helen Block Lewis, argues that the fundamental difference between shame and guilt is one of attentional focus. In guilt, the emphasis is on the act: “Look what I did.” But in shame, the emphasis is on my personal failing: “Look what I did.”[3]
Embarrassment
Embarrassment is another one of the more complex emotions. It combines a number of simple emotions, including guilt and shame. In embarrassment, guilt is made public, and there is a bit of surprise at being found out when you’ve made a social blunder. We are embarrassed, then, when we realize that we have violated some social taboo or social norm. We understand this, expect to be punished for it, and seek to appease the other person through submission, namely, showing embarrassment.[4] What possible purpose is served by feeling embarrassed, ashamed, or guilty? Such emotions make us feel terrible, and others around us may feel uncomfortable, too. However, embarrassment serves a very useful function by preventing fights and disagreements. If we accidentally say or do something to upset or to hurt another person, the other person may become angry with us. We know that anger can motivate fighting and, knowing that the fight could all be a horrible mistake, we need to show that our actions were in error and that we regret them and apologize for them. Embarrassment is a visible apology to the other person for messing up. Consider not how you feel when you are embarrassed but how you look. You hunch over and look downward. Your shoulders are raised in a shrug; your lips form an awkward smile. You seem smaller somehow, weaker and less important. It is much harder to stay mad at a person who shows embarrassment than otherwise. When we show embarrassment, we seem so sorry for what we did. So people who show signs of embarrassment may be less likely to be punished, whether they are children who have misbehaved or criminals who face a jury or judge for sentencing. [1]Russell, J. A. “A Circumplex Model of Affect.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1980, 39, 1161–1178. An alternative circular model but with different labeled dimensions was proposed by Watson, D., and Tellegen, A. “Toward a Consensual Structure of Mood.” Psychological Bulletin, 1985, 98, 219–235. [2]Miller, T. Q., Smith, T. W., Turner, C. W., Guijarro, M. L., and Hallet, A. J. “Meta-Analytic Review of Research on Hostility and Physical Health.” Psychological Bulletin, 1996, 119, 322–348. [3]Tangney, J. P., and Dearing, R. L. Shame and Guilt. New York: Guilford Press, 2002. For earlier work, see Lewis, H. B. Shame and Guilt in Neurosis. New York: International Universities Press, 1971. [4]For a charming book on embarrassment, see Miller, R. E. Embarrassment: Poise and Peril in Everyday Life. New York: Guilford Press, 1996.
