Emotions

            Emotions, feelings, sensations, weird thing-in-ma-bobs that makes you feel funny. Whatever you call them – we all have them. Emotions are a universal thing, meaning everybody in the world experiences them.

            From various studies done all over the world by different researchers, using different methodologies, and in different settings, and cultures it is evident that emotions are indeed universal. The seven basic universal emotions include: Joy, Surprise, Contempt, Sadness, Anger, Discussed, and Fear.

            From these core basic emotions other emotions can develop, for example: from the emotion joy comes excitement, bliss, happiness and so forth. 

            So we all have these emotions and we all experience them, but here comes the catch – Everybody experiences emotions on a personal level differently… Whaattt???? Yes, it’s true, we as unique individuals can experience the same emotion in different ways.

            We all know what anger is, have seen it, have a picture of it in our heads and have in some point in our lives been angry - like this morning in traffic. However, because we are all different and unique individuals, we experience the emotion of anger each in our own different ways. As an example, if there are two people in a room and they are exposed to exactly the same stimulus that make them feel the emotion of anger, these two individuals will experience the same emotion of anger differently. One might lash out and try to break something, while the other person will simply try to bottle that anger up.  

            Here are some things that might influence our different experiences: personality, age, past experiences, context and a whole host of other things. Interestingly something like the weather can also have an influence on how we experience emotions. A study done in 2013 (Hsiang et al.) states that there is a link between human aggression and high temperatures. Thus the higher the temperature, the more conflict and violence were present.

            With our current high temperatures, that does not look good. So have a glass of ice water, cool down, and remember: Feel the feeling, but choose the behaviour…