In the process of evolution of the animal world there appeared a special form of manifestation of the reflective function of the brain - emotions.
They reflect the personal significance of external and internal stimuli, situations and events for a person, i.e. what concerns him/her, and are expressed in the form of experiences.
In psychology, emotions are defined as a person's experience of his or her attitude to something at the moment (to the present or future situation, to other people, to himself or herself, etc.).
The concept of "emotion" is also used in a broad sense, when it means an integral emotional reaction of a person, including not only a mental component - experience, but also specific physiological changes in the body, accompanying this experience. Emotions are also present in animals, but in humans, they acquire a special depth, have many shades and combinations.
Emotions are also divided into positive and negative, that is, pleasant and unpleasant.
In our lives, emotions can be both positive (joy, delight) and negative (anger, grief, fear).
Depending on personal (tastes, interests, morals, experience) and temperamental features of people, as well as the situation in which they are, the same reason can cause them different emotions.
Emotions differ in intensity and duration, as well as in the degree of awareness of the reason for their appearance. In this regard, the moods, emotions and affects themselves are highlighted.
Mood is a weakly expressed, stable emotional state, the reason for which a person may not be clear. It is constantly present in the person as an emotional tone, increasing or decreasing their activity in communication or work.
Actually, emotions are more short-term but rather pronounced experiences of joy, grief, fear, etc. They arise from satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the needs and have a well-recognized cause of appearance.
Affect is a very intense and short-term emotional state, which is caused by a strong or particularly important stimulus for a person. Effect is most often a consequence of conflict. It is always violent and accompanied by a decrease in the ability to shift attention, a narrowing of the field of perception (the focus is mainly on the object that caused the effect).
Affect does not give much thought to the consequences of what is happening so that human behavior becomes impulsive. This person is said to have no memory of himself or herself and to have been in a state of remembrance. After effect, there is often a loss of strength, indifference or remorse. Frequent displays of effect in a normal environment indicate either a person's poor upbringing or a nervous-psychiatric condition.
The role of emotions
1) Reflective-evaluation role of emotions. Emotions give subjective coloring to what is happening around us and in ourselves. This means that different people can react emotionally to the same event in completely different ways. Emotions help to evaluate not only past and current actions and events, but also future ones, including in the process of probabilistic prediction (anticipation of pleasure when a person goes to the theater, or anticipation of unpleasant experiences after the exam, when the student has not had time to prepare for it properly).
2) The guiding role of emotions
In addition to reflecting the reality surrounding the person and his or her attitude to this or that object or event, emotions are also important for the management of a person's behavior, being one of the psychophysiological mechanisms of this management. Playing a controlling role in human behavior and activity, emotions perform various positive functions: protective, mobilizing, authorizing (switching), compensatory, signaling, supporting (stabilizing), which are often combined with each other. The protective function of emotionsis associated with the emergence of fear. It alerts the individual to the real or perceived danger, thus helping to better reflect on the situation, more carefully determine the likelihood of success or failure. Thus, fear protects the person from unpleasant consequences for him, and perhaps from death.
3) Mobilizing function of emotions
is manifested, for example, in the fact that fear may contribute to the mobilization of human reserves by releasing additional amounts of adrenaline into the bloodstream, for example, in its active-defensive form (escape). It helps to mobilize the body's strength and inspiration, joy.
4) The compensatory function
Of emotions is to compensate for information that is missing for making a decision or making a judgment about something. The emotion arising from collision with an unfamiliar object will give this object a corresponding coloring (a bad person or a good person has met) due to its similarity to the previously encountered objects.
5) The signal function
Of emotions is related to the impact of a person or animal on another living object. Emotion, as a rule, has an external [removed]expression) by means of which a person or an animal informs another about its condition. It helps mutual understanding in communication, prevention of aggression from another person or animal, recognition of needs and conditions existing at the moment in the other subject. The signal function of emotions is often combined with its protective function: a frightening appearance in a minute of danger contributes to the intimidation of another person or animal.
6) Disorganizing the role of emotions
Fear can disturb the behavior of the person connected with the achievement of any purpose, causing at it passively defensive reaction (stupor at strong fear, refusal from performance of the task).
Positive role of emotions is not associated directly with positive emotions and negative - with negative emotions. The latter can serve as an incentive for self-improvement of a person, and the first - to be a reason for complacency, complacency, complacency. Much depends on the purposefulness of the person, on the conditions of his upbringing.
Disorganizing the role of emotions is visible also at anger when the person aspires to reach the goal at all costs, bluntly repeating the same actions which do not lead to success.