Psychology of Emotions: Nature and Classification

• The subject is the psychology of emotions, specifically the nature and classification of emotions.

Defining Emotions and Related Concepts (Pio-Abreu, 2002)

• Humor: Described as something one "walks with," encompassing feelings like sadness, joy, and anxiety.
• Emotion: Defined as something one "stays with," indicating being emotionally moved by something.
• Affect: Characterized as something one "has," including feelings such as love, compassion, pride, and hate.
• Sentiment: Considered the combination of humor, emotion, and affect, holding significant importance in understanding the psyche.

Nature and Classification of Emotions

• Emotions are triggered by events (person, situation) that are cognitively evaluated, though not always consciously.
• Emotions involve subjective experiences and can be accompanied by physiological reactions like changes in heart rate, muscle tone, facial expressions, gestures, movements, and vocal expressions.
• Emotions translate into a tendency for action, such as fleeing in fear.
• Expressions of emotions can trigger reactions in others, potentially leading to new emotions.
• Sentiments are internal and private states, not outwardly observable like emotions; sentiments last longer and are less intense compared to emotions.
• Emotions are outwardly directed and public, serving a communicative function with high intensity and short duration.
• Affect is expressed through emotions and organized by repeated emotional experiences.
• Affects such as love or hate, are experienced intensely as emotions.
• Affects are linked to the past and built over time, while emotions are realized in the present, both involving a relationship.

António Damásio's (2020) Perspective

• Emotions: They are involuntary internal and external actions triggered by external stimuli, real or recalled, supporting homeostasis, such as reacting to threats with fear or anger, or signaling success with joy.
• Emotions also produce emotions and feelings and are produced when we recall events.
• Sentiments: They are mental experiences accompanying the body's homeostatic states, whether primary (hunger, thirst) or triggered by emotions (fear, anger, joy).

Further Insights on Emotions

• Emotions represent the external and dynamic manifestation of one's internal affective state, making them observable.
• Emotions are evaluated by type, intensity, extension, variability, and congruence with the context of conversation.
• Psychiatric disorders can significantly alter mood or emotions, like major depression or anxiety disorders.

Classical Authors' Perspectives on Emotions

• Emotions: Arent intense affective phenomena that arise quickly and fade quickly.
• Sentiments: These phenomena are stable affective states resulting from an intellectulization of emotions; they lose intensity through rational analysis, becoming stable, lasting, and less intense.
• Passions: They are intense affective phenomena, as emotions are, but they remain unintellectualized for a relatively long time, which causes extreme intensity work to nervous system with a possibility of exhaustion and disruption
• Behaviorist Authors: They focuses on systematizing physiological reactions accompanying affective states of consciousness.
• "Immediate Affective Response" corresponds to emotion, while secondary affects are at the origin of the intellectualization of emotions, with their persistent effects being sentiments and passions.

Basic Emotions

• There is no universal scientifical definition of emotion.
• Basic emotions consensus is greater, but definition and number can vary with theories.
• Ortony & Turner (1990) defined criteria for basic emotions: Distinctive physiology, Universality, and Innatism
• Fundamental emotions or elementar emotions can be used to construct non-basic emotions
• Elementar emotion can not be decomposed

Components of Emotions

• Components of emotion include:
  • Cognitive - awareness of the emotions
  • Evaluative - values, interests, and objectives
  • Physiological - heart rate, breathing and paleness
  • Expressive - tone of voice, facial expressions, body language etc
  • Behavioral - aggression, avoiding or controlling oneself
  • Subjective - state of emotion

Emotion avaliation

• The emotion avaliation should consist of these indicators:
  • Expressive Behaviour
  • Physiological Indicators
  • Experienced emotion and describing it

Suggested films and games related to emotions

• The document contains a list of films and games related to emotions