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…