Emotion

To me, there is no one thing that can describe emotion. Human emotion is very complex in that there is no one single thing that must be present and if present means that there must be an emotion associated with it. Emotions are sometimes there for purposes of communication in that nearly all emotions have a signal in our faces or voice that informs others to an extent what we are feeling. I also think that emotions can signal to other species (such as dogs) what we are feeling.

The six universal human emotions

From studying emotion, I’ve learned that some are universal across people, such as anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise and enjoyment. However, these can often be broken down in several, very distinct categories. For example, enjoyment can be broken down into relief or amusement. These emotions share the same basic facial expression (a smile along with the flexion of muscles around our eyes), but in terms of voice, they are expressed very differently.

Also, another aspect I think is important in defining emotion is that neither observers nor the person feeling the emotion can always pinpoint the object or event that triggered the specific emotion. Emotions can be triggered by almost anything, whether it’s from one’s memory to imagination to the weather, people can become emotional about almost anything (sometimes you don’t even know why you’re emotional). Emotions can also occur very briefly. They aren’t voluntary in that they seem to just happen to us - from one moment to the next you may be happy and then sad.

In the Youtube clip above, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson of UNC discusses positive emotions. Hopefully in the future, we will be able to use fMRI and other techniques to look at the activity of the brain associated with specific emotions and be able to decipher what exactly a particular emotion.