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Basic or basic emotions according to K. Izard. Basic emotions 10 basic emotions according to Izard

Basic or primary emotions are 10 basic emotions: five positive and five negative. Everything about Positive emotions and Negative emotions and their types, as well as characteristics. Psychologists very often use such a concept as fundamental (basic, primary) emotions. After all, an emotion is considered fundamental if it has its own mechanism of origin (a specific internally determined neural substrate), is expressed outside by special mimic or neuro-mimic means and is a subjective experience (i.e., has a phenomenological quality).
Fundamental emotions include 10 basic emotions: five positive and five negative.

Positive emotions:

1. Interest (curiosity, interest) - an emotional state, promotes the development of skills, abilities, gaining knowledge, motivates learning. Interest is a positive emotion that motivates learning, the development of skills and abilities, and creative aspirations.

2. Joy is an emotion in which we become self-confident, begin to understand that we do not live in vain, that our life is full of deep meaning. We feel loved, needed, we are happy with ourselves and the world. We are full of energy, we are confident that we will overcome any difficulties. Joy is a positive emotional excitement that arises when the opportunity arises to sufficiently fully satisfy an urgent need, the likelihood of which until that moment was low or uncertain.

3. Surprise is generated by a sudden change in stimulation. It is caused by sudden, unexpected events. Surprise is a sharp increase in nervous stimulation arising from some unexpected event. The emergence of this emotion contributes to the instant orientation of all cognitive processes to the object that caused surprise.

4. Shame is characterized by an awareness of the discrepancy between one's own thoughts, actions and appearance, not only with the expectations of other people, but also with one's own ideas about proper behavior and external image. Shame arises as an experience of inconsistency (real or only apparent) between the norm of behavior and actual behavior, predicting condemning or sharply negative assessments of others. Shame motivates the desire to hide, to disappear.

5. Guilt - an intense feeling of being wrong about a person or group of people. Guilt can be felt on its own when a person realizes that her act conflicts with her character. Guilt stimulates the thought processes associated with the awareness of guilt and the search for ways to remedy the situation. Guilt is an emotion similar to shame in that it also results from a mismatch between expected and actual behavior. However, shame can give rise to any mistakes, while guilt arises when violations of a moral nature, moreover, in situations in which a person feels personal responsibility.

Negative emotions:

1. Grief in its composition is predominantly an emotion of sadness, and the main reason is loss (temporary - separation, permanent - death), real, imaginary, physical or psycho - logical. Grief strengthens social bonds and group unity. Grief is an emotion caused by a complex of reasons associated with irreparable life losses.

2. Anger - an emotional state that proceeds in the form of affect and is caused by the sudden appearance of a significant obstacle to the satisfaction of an extremely important need for the subject, has a sthenic character. Anger can cause a desire to punish, can help to mobilize forces, generate a sense of confidence in the correctness of their own actions.

3. Disgust - an emotional state, it is caused by objects (objects, people, circumstances, etc.). Collision with which (physical interaction, communication, etc.) is in conflict with the moral or aesthetic principles and attitudes of the subject. Disgust, which is combined with anger, in personal relationships can motivate aggressive behavior, the desire to get rid of someone or something. Disgust often arises with anger, but it has its own characteristics and is differently subjectively experienced.

4. Contempt is a cold emotion, behavior, soup is another emotion that does not arouse public approval. By neglecting a person, we feel superior to her. This is more than indifference, contempt is always satiated with a sense of the value and significance of one's own "I" in comparison with the "I" of another person. Contempt is an emotion that reflects the loss of another person or a whole group of their importance for the individual, the experience of the latter of its advantage over them.

5. Fear is an emotion that arises in situations of threat to the biological or social existence of a person and is aimed at the source of real or imagined danger. An individual in a psychological state of fear, as a rule, changes his behavior. Fear causes a depressive state in a person, anxiety, the desire to avoid an unpleasant situation, sometimes paralyzes her activities. Fear is an experience conditioned by the receipt of direct or indirect information about a real or imaginary threat, the expectation of failure in performing an action due to a situation that has arisen. It is believed that fear is one of the strongest negative emotions. Fear can paralyze a person, and vice versa, mobilize her energy.
Some authors distinguish intellectual emotions, sometimes they are called emotions of a higher order due to their direct connection with the process of creativity as a level of human activity. Important intellectual emotions are doubt, confidence, guesswork, surprise, pleasure, etc. Intellectual emotions can be both positive and negative.

My classification of emotional processes S.L. Rubinstein built on three levels:
1. Organic emotional sensitivity- associated with organic needs. This is an emotional coloring, an emotional tone of sensations.
2. Object sense level- expressed in the conscious experience of a person's relationship to the world (through a relationship to a certain object). This includes intellectual, aesthetic, moral and other emotions that distinguish between the dependences of the subject area to which they are addressed.
3. The level of generalized worldview feelings... These are humor, irony, a sense of the tragic, comic, sublime, etc., which can act as more or less separate states, but mainly reflect the ideological attitudes of a person.

According to the functional criterion, the content of which is the assessment of the meaning of various phenomena of life, two groups of emotional phenomena are distinguished: leading and derivatives.
Leading emotions signal the meaning of the object of a certain need. They precede activity and ensure the transformation of the object of need into a motive. This class includes biological, social and psychological emotions proper.
Derived emotions arise already in the process of activity and show the attitude of the individual to what contributes or hinders the satisfaction of his needs. Such emotions arise in specific situations and assess the meaning of the phenomena caused by the subject's attitude to the leading motive of the current activity. These are, for example, the emotions of success - failure, signaling to an individual about the degree of success in his activity. In turn, derived emotions are divided into ascertainable, predictive and generalizing.
Emotions ascertained“Designate” successful or unsuccessful attempts of an individual to achieve a goal, predictive ones - they function in situations, are repeated many times. Based on the ascertained, they signal the possible result of a particular option of action. Generalizing emotions interact with the facilitators and stimulate activity in anticipating quick success or inhibit the anticipation of possible difficulties and failures.
On a structural basis, emotional phenomena are divided on the: emotional tone of sensations, actually emotions, affects, mood, passions, stress and frustration.
Emotional tone- the simplest form of emotions, which has the form of vague sensations accompanying vital influences of gustatory, temperature, painful and other nature. Most often this is a feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and they assess the degree of favorableness of the effect on the body of certain stimuli (V. Wundt, M. Groth).
A genetically late form of this type of emotion is an emotional sensory tone, due to which a particular object can be pleasant, funny, boring, gentle, etc.

Each of the fundamental emotions has an inherent adaptive function and unique motivational qualities that are extremely important for each individual and for the entire species.

Emotions are called fundamental because each of them has: (a) a specific internally determined neural substrate, (b) characteristic mimic or neuromuscular expressive complexes, and (c) a different subjective experience or phenomenological quality. None of these three components form emotion on their own. A holistic emotion (or a complete emotional process) requires all three components, although in one of them - an expressive complex - both duration and intensity are weakened by socialization. In essence, every fundamental emotion is a system formed by these three components and their interactions. Ten fundamental emotions have been empirically identified and described (Darwin, 1872; Ekman, Friesen, Ellsworth, 1972; Izard, 1971; Tomkins, 1962).

Two kinds of phenomena make it difficult to study fundamental emotions. First, emotions usually activate the entire organism, rather than remain a process limited to a single system. For example, activation of sympathetic mechanisms that accompanies one emotion may activate other sympathetic mechanisms that serve other emotions. Secondly, emotions tend to appear in certain combinations, or complexes. Fundamental emotions are important in an individual's life, but alone, not in combination with other emotions, they exist only for very short periods of time - before other emotions are activated.

Although fundamental emotions are considered innate and intercultural phenomena, it is recognized that sociocultural factors play a significant role in determining emotional expression. As Ekman (1972) has shown, each culture has its own "rules of expression" of emotions, and their violation can have more or less serious consequences for the individual. These cultural rules may require the suppression or masking of some emotional expressions and, conversely, the frequent manifestation of others. Westerners often smile when they yat, and the Japanese are obliged to smile, even when experiencing grief. Both cultural and gender differences determine the situations in which you need to laugh and in which you need to cry. Similarly to the rules for the expression of emotions in different cultures, social attitudes towards emotional experiences also differ (Izard, 1971).

As each fundamental emotion will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters, they will be briefly described here, mostly on a phenomenological level.

1. Interest-excitement (Fig. 2.5), the most frequently experienced positive emotion, motivates learning, development of skills and abilities and creative aspirations. In a state of interest, a person's attention, curiosity and enthusiasm for the object of interest increases. Since a person is the most changing and unpredictable object of our world, the interest aroused by other people facilitates social life and contributes to the development of emotional bonds between individuals.

2. Joy (Fig. 2.6) - the maximum, although not necessarily permanent, desired emotion. It appears to be a by-product of events and conditions rather than a direct desire to obtain it. An active state of joy is characterized by a sense of confidence, self-worth, and a sense of being in love. According to Tomkins (1962), joy arises from a strong decrease in the gradient of neural stimulation.

3. Surprise (fig. 2.7) has some features of emotion, but it is not emotion in the full sense of the word. Unlike other emotions, surprise is always a fleeting state. It appears due to a sharp increase in nerve stimulation that occurs due to some sudden event. Astonishment promotes the release of the nervous system from the previous emotion and directs all cognitive processes to the object that caused surprise.

4. Grief-suffering (Fig. 2.8) - an emotion, experiencing which a person becomes discouraged, feels loneliness, lack of contact with people, self-pity.

5. Anger (Fig. 2.9) is a fundamental emotion, the control over the expression of which is given special attention in the process of socialization. The external manifestation of anger is easily discernible: with anger, the blood "boils", the face begins to burn. The rapidly mobilized energy tense the muscles and induces a feeling of strength, a sense of courage or self-confidence. Although anger has played an important role in the evolutionary process, its functions in modern humans are small.

6. Disgust (Fig. 2.10) often arises with anger, but has some of its own distinctive motivational characteristics and is differently subjectively experienced. Physical or psychological wear and tear ("something goes bad") tends to be disgusting. Disgust combined with anger can stimulate destructive behavior, as anger motivates "attack" and disgust motivates the desire to "get rid of someone or something."

7. Contempt (fig. 2.11) also often appears with anger, or with disgust, or both. These three emotions are called the “hostile triad” (Izard, 1972). In an evolutionary perspective, contempt can develop as a means of preparing to face a dangerous adversary. To this day, the desire to feel superior (stronger, more intelligent, more civilized) can lead to some degree of contempt. One of the dangers of contempt is that it is a “cold” emotion, leading to depersonalization of the individual or group to which contempt belongs, so this emotion can help, for example, motivate “cold-blooded murder”. It is difficult to find any useful or productive function of contempt in modern life.

8. Fear (Fig. 2.12) experienced in his life every individual. The experience of this emotion is extremely harmful for a person: the possibility of "being scared to death" is real. Fear is triggered by a rapid increase in the density of nerve stimulation, bringing the message of real or imagined danger. Intense fear accompanies uncertainty and apprehension. Except in the rare cases where fear is paralyzing, this emotion usually mobilizes energy.

9. Shame (Fig. 2.13) could appear in the course of evolution as a manifestation of a person's need for social connections. Shame motivates the desire to hide and disappear. Shame can also contribute to the emergence of a feeling of mediocrity can be the basis of conformity, but if the emotional connections of the individual are directed "from outside the group," then shame can, on the contrary, require violation of group norms. While strong and persistent feelings of shame can hinder the development of a person's integrity, this emotion often helps maintain self-esteem.

10. Guilt is often associated with shame, and Tomkins (1963) viewed shame, timidity and guilt as different aspects of the same emotion. However, there are major differences between guilt and shame. Shame can appear due to any mistakes, while guilt arises when violations of a moral, ethical or religious nature, and in situations in which the subject feels personal responsibility.

Important questions:

How many emotions are there?

There are many points of view on these issues. For example, William James believed that there are as many emotions as there are words to characterize them, and that each emotion has its own physiological manifestations. Nowadays, most scientists do not share James's position, and some even claim to have only a small number of basic (basic) emotions. In addition, the idea is expressed that, although there are a small number of primary, or basic, emotions, there is still a huge amount difficult emotions, derivatives from the base.

Dividing emotions into primary (basic) and secondary - this approach is typical for supporters discrete model of the emotional sphere of a person... However, different authors name a different number of basic emotions - from two to ten.

K. Izard names 10 basic emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, distress (grief-suffering), fear, guilt, interest, joy, shame, surprise.

From his point of view, basic emotions should have the following mandatory characteristics:

have distinct and specific neural substrates;

are manifested with the help of an expressive and specific configuration of muscle movements of the face (facial expressions);

entail a distinct and specific experience that is realized by a person;

arose as a result of evolutionary biological processes;

have an organizing and motivating influence on a person, serve his adaptation.

However, Izard himself admits that some emotions, attributed by him to the basic ones, do not have all these signs. So, emotion guilt does not have a distinct mimic and pantomimic expression. On the other hand, some researchers attribute other characteristics to basic emotions.

Description of ten fundamental emotions,

forming the main motivational system of human behavior(according to K. Izard)

Emotion	Manifestations in behavior	Reasons for activation	Functions
	Change of environment, animation, novelty	The interested person looks excited, his attention, gaze and hearing are directed to the object of interest. He experiences a feeling of being captured, fascinated, absorbed.	Plays a motivational role in the formation and development of skills, abilities and intelligence, ensures human performance, social interest plays an important role in communication. Increases attention, curiosity, search.
	Social interactions, overcoming obstacles, achievements of goals. Associated with the ability to satisfy a need.	A person experiences a sense of psychological comfort and well-being, he becomes more self-confident.	Joyful experiences foster a sense of affection and mutual trust between people
Sadness (grief, suffering)	Various problem situations, unmet needs, disappointment, death of loved ones, failure to achieve goals, etc.	Sadness may be accompanied by crying or sobbing. A sad person speaks little and reluctantly, the pace of his speech is slowed down. The experience of sadness is described as discouragement, sadness, feelings of isolation and loneliness.	Positive Social Functions: Grief brings people together and strengthens friendships and family ties. Sadness inhibits the mental and physical activity of a person, and thereby gives him the opportunity to think about a difficult situation.
	Restrictions on freedom, obstacles in achieving goals, wrong or unfair actions of others, some irritating factors (pain, feeling of discomfort, etc.)	In anger, a person feels that his blood "boils", his face is on fire, his muscles are tense. The stronger the anger, the greater the need for physical action, the more powerful and energetic a person feels.	Anger mobilizes the energy necessary for self-defense, gives the individual a sense of strength and courage. Self-confidence and a sense of one's own strength stimulate the individual to defend his rights, that is, to defend himself as a person.
Disgust	Physically and psychologically harmful objects that cause discomfort or potentially hazardous substances. In addition, there is a contradiction with any principles or attitudes of the subject.	A person strives to move away from an unpleasant object or to eliminate it.	The biological function of aversion is that it motivates the rejection of unpleasant tasting or potentially harmful substances. The motivating role is to establish relationships between an extremely wide range of stimuli, on the one hand, and the avoidance response, on the other.
Contempt	Disapproval of the actions of other people, a sense of one's own superiority, victory over an opponent, etc.	It is accompanied by a sense of the value and significance of one's own "I" in comparison with the "I" of another person, suggests an arrogant or condescending manner of communication with the object of contempt.	Contempt serves a positive purpose when directed at the people who deserve it.
	Information about real or perceived danger. Uncertainty, misgivings. Pain, loneliness and "sudden change in stimulation", sudden approach, unusualness, height - that is, natural signals of danger. Unstable attachment can also act as an activator of fear.	Attention sharply narrows, focusing on an object or situation that signals danger to us. Fear limits the freedom of human behavior and is accompanied by a feeling of insecurity, insecurity, inability to control the situation.	Fear has important adaptive functions, as it forces a person to seek remedies against possible harm.
Embarrassment	Feeling of insecurity in a situation of social interaction.	A person hides his eyes, turns away, smiling at the same time, and often glances furtively at the person who confused him.	Adaptive: Embarrassment can keep a child from getting too close to unfamiliar objects and unsafe surroundings.
	Awareness of inconsistency thoughts, actions of a person not only to the expectations of others, but also to his own ideas.	Experiencing shame, a person lowers or turns his head, hides his gaze, closes his eyes and fills with a bashful blush.	Shame prompts the individual to the acquisition of skills of social interaction and promotes greater mutual understanding between a person and the people around him and greater responsibility to society.
	Violations of some taken a person of ethical, moral or religious standards.	If a person feels guilty, he has a desire to make amends or at least apologize to the person before whom he was guilty.	Guilt plays a role in fostering social responsibility.
11. Surprise	A sudden unexpected event.	Suspension of activity, activation of the cognitive sphere.	Promotes the release of previous emotions and directs all cognitive processes to the object.

Emotion Is something that is experienced as a feeling that motivates, organizes and directs perception, thinking and action.

In the works of Darwin and in the works of modern scientists, emotions are classified as fundamental and are equally manifested in representatives of different cultures.

Fundamental emotions are provided by innate neural programs. (The innate mechanism for the expression of anger suggests a grin as a demonstration of readiness to rush at an opponent and bite him; many people in anger, on the contrary, grit their teeth and purse their lips, as if trying to soften or mask the manifestations of anger.)

Mimicry is designed to hide or replace innate types of expression of emotions and is extremely different for representatives of different social strata.

K. Izard singled out the following basic, “fundamental emotions”.

1. Interest (as an emotion) is a positive emotional state that promotes the development of skills and abilities, the acquisition of knowledge, and motivates learning.
2. Joy is a positive emotional state associated with the ability to sufficiently fully satisfy an urgent need, the likelihood of which up to this point was small or at least uncertain.
3. Surprise is an emotional reaction that does not have a clearly expressed positive or negative sign to sudden circumstances. Surprise inhibits all previous emotions, directing attention to the object that caused it, and can turn into interest.
4. Suffering is a negative emotional state associated with the received reliable or seeming information about the impossibility of satisfying the most important vital needs, which until that moment seemed more or less likely, most often proceeds in the form of emotional stress.
5. Anger is an emotional state, negative in sign, as a rule, proceeding in the form of affect and caused by the sudden appearance of a serious obstacle to the satisfaction of an extremely important need for the subject.
6. Disgust is a negative emotional state caused by objects (objects, people, circumstances, etc.), contact with which (physiological interaction, communication in communication, etc.) comes into sharp conflict with the ideological, moral or aesthetic principles and attitudes of the subject. Disgust, when combined with anger, can motivate aggressive behavior in interpersonal relationships, where attack is motivated by anger, and disgust - by the desire to get rid of someone or something.
7. Contempt is a negative emotional state that arises in interpersonal relationships and is generated by the mismatch of life positions, views and behavior of the subject with life positions, views and behavior of the object of feeling. The latter appear to the subject as vile, not corresponding to accepted moral norms and aesthetic criteria.
8. Fear is a negative emotional state that manifests itself when the subject receives information about a possible threat to his life well-being, about a real or imagined danger. In contrast to the emotion of suffering caused by the direct blocking of the most important needs, a person, experiencing the emotion of fear, has only a probabilistic forecast of possible trouble and acts on the basis of this (often insufficiently reliable or exaggerated forecast).
9. Shame is a negative state, expressed in the awareness of the discrepancy between one's own thoughts, actions and appearance, not only to the expectations of others, but also to one's own ideas about appropriate behavior and appearance.
10. Embarrassment.

From the combination of fundamental emotions, complex emotional states arise, such as anxiety, which can combine fear, anger, guilt, and interest. Each of these emotions underlies a whole spectrum of states that differ in their severity (for example, joy - satisfaction, delight, exultation, ecstasy, etc.).

Emotion is one of the fundamental characteristics of a person. Deprived of emotional experiences, a person could not be called a person.

Fundamental emotions are provided by innate neural programs. However, growing up, a person learns to manage innate emotionality, to one degree or another to transform it. In a person experiencing an emotion, it is possible to record a change in the electrical activity of the muscles of the face, brain, a change in the functioning of the circulatory and respiratory systems. Emotions can darken the perception of the surrounding world or color it with bright colors, turn the train of thought towards creativity or melancholy, make movements light and smooth, or, conversely, clumsy. Each emotion affects a person in its own way.

Interest- a positive emotion, it is experienced by a person more often than other emotions. Plays an important motivational role in the formation and development of skills, abilities and intelligence.

Interest is the only motivation that ensures human performance and is necessary for creativity. From the very first days of a person's life, his interest can be manifested with one single facial movement - raised or slightly drawn eyebrows, moving his gaze towards the object, slightly parted his mouth or pursing his lips. It is short-lived, lasting from ½ to 4-5 seconds, while the experience of the emotion itself usually lasts longer.

The interested person looks excited, his attention, gaze and hearing are directed to the object of interest. He experiences a feeling of being captured, fascinated, absorbed. The phenomenology of interest is also characterized by a relatively high degree of pleasure and self-confidence, and a moderate degree of impulsivity and tension. The pattern of emotions experienced in a situation of interest often includes the emotion of joy. It is the emotion of interest that makes the individual engage in a certain type of activity or the development of a certain skill for a long time. Interest forces the individual to differentiate and describe those aspects of the world that he would like to know and explore.

The emotion of interest has three functions. Biological is that interest serves as a source of energy for behavior. Motivational functions can be classified into one of two types. The first type is associated with internal processes that impel the individual in a certain direction or toward a certain goal. The second type is associated with social motivation, that is, with the process by which the emotional expression of an individual motivates the behavior of those around him and the people interacting with him. Social function: a person is, first of all, a social being, for his well-being and civilization a certain degree of social organization and order is required.

The emotion of interest plays an important role in motivating success. Interest is necessary for the development of skills, it is he who motivates human activities aimed at improving innate abilities.

Joy- one of the simplest emotions in terms of facial expression and the ability to decipher this expression. The simplest smile results from the contraction of just one pair of muscles - the zygomatic ones. These muscles contract, pull back and slightly raise the corners of the mouth.

Joy makes a person with a special acuteness feel his unity with the world. It is a heightened sense of belonging, of one's own belonging to the world. In a state of joyful ecstasy, a person feels extraordinary lightness, energy, he wants to fly, and sometimes he really feels himself soared, and then everything takes on a different perspective, a different meaning, a different meaning for him.

Social function of joy. If communication with some person brings you joy, then you will surely trust this person, rely on him. Forming a sense of affection and mutual trust between people is an extremely important function of the emotion of joy.

The biological function of joy. When we experience joy, all the systems of our body function easily and freely, the mind and body are in a relaxed state, and this relative physiological calm allows us to restore the expended energy.

Joy arises spontaneously when a person achieves some goal, achieves some important result for himself.

Sadness... The psychological basis of sadness can be a variety of problem situations that we encounter in everyday life, unmet primary needs, other emotions, as well as images, ideas and memories. Congenital mimic expression of sadness is characterized by the inner ends of the eyebrows raised and brought to the bridge of the nose, the transverse wrinkles on the forehead and the drooping corners of the mouth. The main and universal problem of sadness is the feeling of loss that occurs as a result of the death of a loved one or separation from him. The experience of sadness is commonly described as discouragement, sadness, feelings of loneliness and isolation.

The emotion of sadness has a number of psychological functions. The experience of grief brings people together, strengthens friendships and family ties; sadness inhibits the mental and physical activity of a person and thereby gives him the opportunity to think about a difficult situation; it informs the person and the people around him about the trouble, encourages the person to restore and strengthen ties with people.

There are three ways to regulate sadness: activating another emotion to eliminate or reduce the intensity of the sadness experienced, cognitive regulation (switching attention and thinking), and motor regulation (through voluntary muscle tension and physical activity).

Anger... Feelings of psychological and physical lack of freedom, as a rule, cause an emotion of anger in a person. Any obstacle in the way of achieving the intended goal can cause anger. A forced temporary suspension of activity is perceived by a person as an obstacle, restriction, failure.

Anger can be caused by the insult inflicted, wrong or unfair actions and deeds of others. The facial expressions of anger include highly characteristic contractions of the frontal muscles and movements of the eyebrows. The eyebrows are lowered and drawn together, the skin of the forehead is pulled together, forming a slight thickening on the bridge of the nose or just above it. In an adult, deep vertical wrinkles lie between the eyebrows. In anger, a person feels that his blood "boils", his face is on fire, his muscles are tense. The feeling of his own strength prompts him to rush forward, to attack the offender. The stronger the anger, the greater the need for physical action, the more powerful and energetic a person feels.

Anger mobilizes the energy necessary for self-defense, gives the individual a sense of strength and courage. Self-confidence and a sense of one's own strength stimulate the individual to defend his rights, that is, to defend himself as a person. Thus, the emotion of anger serves a useful function. In addition, mild, controlled anger can be used therapeutically to suppress fear.

Disgust and contempt... The emotion of disgust is a differentiated aspect of the primitive avoidance mechanism. It is rooted in those ancient parts of the brain that provide taste and eating behavior.

The mimic expression of disgust is unmistakably recognizable even on the baby's face. In addition to frowning eyebrows, we observe a raised upper lip and a lowered lower lip, as a result of which the mouth takes on an angular shape. The tongue sticks out slightly, as if pushing out an unpleasant substance that has got into the mouth.

With age, a person begins to control his mimic reactions, including the reaction of disgust. A person not only learns to hide his disgust or hide it behind the expression of other emotions, but also acquires the skill to "portray" disgust when in fact he does not feel it. With the help of one mimic movement, you can let someone know that something in their behavior is causing us disgust.

The biological function of aversion is that it motivates the rejection of unpleasant tasting or potentially harmful substances. It also plays a motivating role in establishing relationships between an extremely wide range of stimuli, on the one hand, and the avoidance-rejection response, on the other.

Disgust forces us to avoid potentially unpleasant objects or "nasty situations" without directly affecting our senses. With the help of mimic expressions of disgust or individual mimic movements, a person signals to another person that he must change his appearance, manners or behavior, otherwise he risks being rejected. The emotion of disgust probably plays a role in maintaining body hygiene as well. People have an aversion to dirty clothes and the smell of dirty bodies, both their own and those of others. Disgust also plays a role in setting standards for sexual behavior. A person may experience self-loathing, which leads to a decrease in self-esteem and self-rejection.

The emotion of contempt is associated with a sense of superiority. In an evolutionary perspective, contempt was a way of preparing an individual or group to face a dangerous adversary. All prejudice and so-called cold-blooded murders are motivated by contempt.

Situations that activate anger often simultaneously activate the emotions of disgust and contempt. The combination of these three emotions can be seen as a triad of hostility.

Fear and anxiety... Fear is an emotion that many people think of with horror. A person can experience fear in a variety of situations, but they are all felt, perceived by a person as situations in which his peace of mind or safety is threatened. An intense experience of fear is remembered for a long time.

There are a number of stimuli and situations to which we are biologically predisposed to respond with fear. It is pain, loneliness, and a sudden change in stimulation. But as he gains experience, a person begins to be afraid of a variety of situations, phenomena and objects. When a person experiences fear, his attention sharply narrows, focusing on an object or situation that signals danger to us.

Intense fear creates the effect of "tunnel perception", that is, significantly limits perception, thinking and freedom of choice. In addition, fear limits a person's freedom of behavior. In fear, a person ceases to belong to himself, he is driven by a single desire - to eliminate the threat, to avoid danger. Fear sometimes causes numbness, complete inability to move.

The second immediate effect of fear - its ability to motivate flight - is understandable and understandable. This means that the reaction of stupor and flight performs a protective function. There is no stronger motivation for finding a safe environment than fear. A moderately expressed emotion of fear helps us avoid situations that threaten our physical and mental selves. According to the ethologist Aibla-Eibesfeld, fear makes the individual seek help.

Fear management techniques

1. Desensitization. Developed by Walp in 1969. It is aimed at reducing individual sensitivity to objects and situations that cause fear in the individual, using relaxation with repeated presentation of frightening stimuli.
2. Implosion therapy, or explosion therapy. The patient is asked to present the most traumatic event in his life using special diagnostic interviews.
3. Modeling. The technique involves observing the experience of someone else's experience and imitating it.
4. Technique of mutual regulation of emotions. In order to learn how to control your fear, you need to train in yourself the ability to experience and the expression of emotions that oppose fear.

Embarrassment... In embarrassment, a person, as a rule, turns away from the interlocutor, hides his eyes, in a word, tries to avoid direct social stimulation. The experience of embarrassment is accompanied by an acute sense of inadequacy and, possibly, a sense of inadequacy. The emotion of embarrassment is often accompanied by the experience of a variety of both positive and negative emotions. The emotion of embarrassment can carry adaptive functions. It can keep the child from getting too close to unfamiliar objects and unsafe surroundings. It also has a regulatory effect on the autonomic nervous system, preventing overexcitation.

Extreme manifestations of embarrassment have maladaptive meaning. Shyness significantly limits the circle of friendships and thereby deprives a person of social support. In addition, embarrassment limits curiosity and discourages exploratory behavior, especially in social situations. While the positive components of embarrassment can perform adaptive functions, the negative components show a close relationship with depression and anxiety.

Shame... Experiencing shame, a person lowers or turns his head, hides his gaze, covers his eyes and fills with a bashful blush, which often exacerbates the experience of shame, since it attracts the attention of both the person and those around him to the face. Reports of physiological responses accompanying the experience of shame indicate arousal of the sympathetic nervous system. Shame makes a person feel insignificant, helpless and untenable, a completely lost loser. Sometimes even sincere praise can make a person feel ashamed.

The emotion of shame has a twofold function. Shame means that the individual is inclined to consider the opinions and feelings of those around him. Thus, shame promotes greater mutual understanding between a person and the people around him and greater responsibility to society. In addition, shame encourages the individual to acquire skills, including social interaction skills. Shame exposes the "I", makes the "boundaries of the ego" transparent. But at the same time, it develops the skills of self-control and learning independence. Confronting and overcoming shame helps a person gain a sense of personal identity and psychological freedom.

To confront shame, people use defense mechanisms of aversion, suppression, and self-affirmation. A person who is unable to resist the experience of shame is almost certainly doomed to sadness and even depression.

Guilt falls on the heart with a heavy burden. It stimulates thought processes, as a rule, associated with the awareness of wrongdoing and with enumeration of opportunities to correct the situation. Feeling guilty, a person bows his head low or hides his eyes. The experience of guilt is accompanied by a gnawing feeling of one's own wrongness in relation to another person or to oneself. The experience of guilt is characterized by a high degree of tension, moderate impulsivity, and a decrease in self-confidence.

The specific function of guilt is that it stimulates a person to correct the situation, to restore the normal course of things. Without guilt and shame, people would not follow the norms of morality and ethics. The emotion of guilt plays a role in the development of personal and social responsibility; guilt or expectation of guilt is directly related to the need and desire to observe the rules of fair play. The emotion of guilt helps to feel the suffering, pain and anguish of the person offended by us, it makes us look for suitable words and deeds that can save a person from the pain we have caused. Guilt makes you feel responsible and thus contributes to the growth of the personality, its maturity and psychological consistency.

Emotions are essential for human survival and well-being. Without emotions, that is, not being able to experience joy and sadness, anger and guilt, we would not be fully human. Emotions have become one of the hallmarks of humanity. The evolutionary significance of emotions lies in the fact that they provided a new type of motivation, new behavioral tendencies, a greater variability of behavior, necessary for the successful interaction of the individual with the environment and for successful adaptation.

• What are emotions.
• What a person feels.
• Complex emotional states.
• Mood and feeling - what's the difference.
• Fundamental human emotions.
• Characteristics of emotions.
• Emotions for Plutchik and Izard.

What are emotions.

We all experience emotions and feelings, and therefore each of us has a rough idea of ​​what it is. Or at least he thinks so.
Nevertheless, we rarely think about how many there really are and how, for example, joy differs from pleasure, and anger from anger. And it is not difficult to understand why, after all, when experiencing emotions, we automatically consider them an integral part of ourselves, which means that something is self-evident. Unfortunately, it often happens that exactly those things that seem too obvious to us are most often left without attention.

Another reason is that we often experience complex emotional states or shades of feelings, when we can hardly say what exactly we are experiencing - whether joy, or just satisfaction, and it also happens that a seemingly negative feeling, such as nostalgia - sadness causes us something similar to both joy and sadness at the same time. And what about a whole cocktail of emotions, for example, from disappointment, grief and anger, and this is nothing more than a well-known offense to everyone.

Everything that is connected with emotions can only seem simple and elementary, but in fact it is quite difficult to understand and realize the range of feelings that we experience “here and now”. In the best case, we can single out only a few of our emotions, which seem to us the most significant at this moment, and even then, if they are sufficiently pronounced. And probably everyone is familiar with the state when it is difficult for us to say what we feel - either good, or bad, or joyful, or sad, but in general it is not clear how.

Why do we need to know about our emotions?

The logical question is, does an ordinary person living a normal social life need to understand such things as the intricacies of their emotions?

Most people in their entire life never think about such topics, although many understand that emotions are one of the essential components of our life.
So what of that? Is there a problem that we use many things, often without knowing how they work?

I think this question can hardly be answered with certainty. After all, any knowledge initially exists for a reason, but because of its expediency, because we need it for something. And if you are interested in a question, then there is probably a reason for that, and it makes its study expedient.

In general, this question is largely rhetorical. Ask yourself other questions - "who am I", "why do I live", "what is my place in the world."
These are several so-called existential questions, and there are two categories of people, for one these questions are empty whims, for others, perhaps, one of the most important in their lives. And if you fall into the second category, then the question of emotions will not bypass your interest.
Why is it important?
Because the question of emotion is the question of how I feel. But this is exactly what our life consists of, no less. And this is worth understanding.

Such a difficult question - how do I feel now?

Try to answer this seemingly simple question and most likely you will be confused. Because not only will you not be able to isolate your emotions separately, but also you will not be able to describe your state, so that you yourself say - yes, this is exactly what I really feel. Why doesn't it work? Because this is probably the most difficult task in the world. Have you ever wondered how a talented writer differs from a mediocre one? But the whole point is that he has that rare gift that is able to convey the inner state of a person to the reader reliably. However, even such capable people can hardly make us feel emotions in an exhaustive way.
It's all about the nature of the emotional background, because it is always nothing more than a complex mixture of different emotions, and even if we could name each of them separately, then in aggregate it will always remain what we can only give a vague name.

Despite all that has been said, we can try to imagine any life situation and try to reproduce our possible reaction to it, from the standpoint of "what generally happens in this case in the field of my consciousness."
And perhaps in the course of this work we will be able to sort out the issue of emotions.

Reconstruction of the event.

Imagine the situation that you are walking through the forest. You are in a hurry to go home, but it seems to you that you have lost your way, and every minute it gets darker and darker around. Dusk falls. Trees and their shadows take on bizarre and even mysterious shapes, shadows lengthen, the sound of your footsteps is hidden by a carpet of pine needles. You are a little tense and anxiety is born in you drop by drop. You have neither a flashlight nor a compass, and you begin to curse your own lack of foresight. Suddenly, when it is almost completely dark, you see a movement ahead of you, some kind of shadow that seems to you either a man or an animal. You got cold and the primitive horror touched you for a split second, but at that very moment the thought came that you are not so far from civilization and the attack of a predator is hardly possible. You calm yourself down and continue to walk slowly forward, and when you pass that place, you see that you have stumbled upon a path leading to the house, and the shadow that scared you so turned out to be a small and harmless neighbor's dog. At that very moment, the moon rose and illuminated the path so that you saw the fence of the house next to you. You breathed a sigh of relief and walked home.

Now let's try to imagine what we could feel in this short period of time, even if it took us, for example, only one minute.

Analysis of feelings during the event.

We walk and we are gripped by anxiety, this is a barely noticeable fear plus the expectation of the unknown. From this we feel a slight chill in the solar plexus and back. We are even slightly nauseous. We feel the ground with our feet, and the light coolness of the evening air, we feel the annoyance that we forgot the lantern and a slight feeling of guilt because we forgot the way. Suddenly we see a shadow and a stream of horror immediately falls on us, hands get cold, back and sweat appears, knees tremble slightly, a story about vampires from a book that we have recently read flashes in our head, but at the same moment a rational assessment of the situation comes and the horror passes, but we feel its trace for some time. We come to the place that scared us and we feel apprehension (calmed down, but still living in us fear) and the hope that there is no one here, that everything seemed to us. And so, we go out on the path, see the light of the moon, a dog and a fence, and a feeling of relief and slight joy arises in us that the situation ended so quickly and safely. Our mood returned to its previous level and we felt the emotional uplift that, perhaps, we felt all the time during today's walk in the forest. We remembered that relatives and friends were waiting for us in the house and in a few minutes we would see them. A feeling of love rises in us, which further raises our spirits and gives warmth, which we literally feel physically.

Here is that, perhaps not a complete list of sensations that we could experience in the described situation.

Now let's see how we felt.

1. We had physical sensations, some of which were generated by emotions (cold, sweating, shivering, warmth), and some by the world around us (sounds, shadows, smells, sensations of cold air and the road under our feet).
2. We have experienced emotions - anxiety, fear, horror, annoyance, guilt, relief, joy.
3. We have experienced more complex complexes of emotions, let's call them feelings and moods.
For example, remembering our loved ones, we experienced love and warmth, and we restored a certain emotional balance - mood.
4. We rationally assessed the current situation and, this assessment obviously influenced our emotional background. In addition, memory mechanisms were involved, for example, we remembered the book we read and most likely recalled similar situations that we may have been in earlier.
But not only that. Suppose that we also used some memory of the emotions we had previously experienced, because otherwise, how would we know that horror is horror, and joy is joy. In addition, we experienced an automatic reaction - a horror that was not at all the result of a rational assessment of events. We just saw a shadow in the forest, and at the same moment, we automatically felt a powerful emotion and an adrenaline rush, which generated physical reactions in the body, such as extreme excitement, trembling knees, sweating and cold back.

These are the consequences of the little thriller we went through. And all this happened in no more than one minute, but in a real situation we could have survived it and much faster.

An analysis of the experience will probably tell you what has become, in general, obvious, the experienced emotions were different from each other. Their consequences were different. Let's analyze how emotions can differ from each other and what they depend on.

Emotions may vary:

- By intensity (anxiety and horror, obviously, belong to the same group, but they are different in intensity).

- Perceived by us qualitatively. For example, as pleasant, unpleasant and neutral (love is usually perceived as a pleasant emotion, and fear as unpleasant - but this is not always the case).

- Emotions are associated with memory and sensations in the body (they can both generate these sensations, and be generated by them).

- They are conditioned. That is, they are connected with the cause and at the same time they are expedient (arise as a result of and for something).

For example, the cause of emotion can be an automatic reaction to danger, like the horror that arose in us without the participation of rational understanding of the situation.
The expediency of such an automatic reaction is inherent in us by nature. This is preparation either for flight or for the battle for your life, for this there is an adrenaline rush.
At this moment, a powerful animal and automatic reaction instantly prepared our body for survival without the participation of our rational mind, which is too slow in such situations.

- Emotions are assessed by us from a rational standpoint. For example, we have an understanding of the name of this or that emotion, with which it is associated, we assess its quality and intensity (note that here we are talking about two different assessments, this is actually a direct perception of an emotion - for example, its intensity, and subsequent rational assessment of what has already been experienced, so we automatically (without the participation of rational thinking) are aware of the difference between fear and horror).

- Also, emotions can be more or less complex, and together create a kind of integral emotional background, which, upon close examination, is a complexly manifested emotional series.
For example, the feeling of guilt that we virtually experienced in the described situation is complex and consists of several more elementary emotions, namely, fear, shame, anger and grief.

Guilt and shame should be distinguished, shame is an emotion about who I am and what I have done, and guilt is only about what I have already done. Naturally, this line is very thin, because actions can be performed in your imagination and thus feel guilty for something that was not actually done.