Most neuroscientists distinguish between the words “emotion” and “feeling.” They use “emotion” to describe the brain’s auto-programmed response to certain stimuli, and “feeling” to describe our conscious impression of that response.
Charles Darwin believed that emotions were beneficial for evolution because emotions improved chances of survival. For example, the brain uses emotion to keep us away from a dangerous animal (fear), away from rotting food and fecal matter (disgust), in control of our resources (anger), and in pursuit of a good meal or a good mate (pleasure and lust).
Types of triggers that humans are evolutionarily prepared to fear, such as caged snakes, evoke a visceral response even though humans know they are relatively harmless on a cognitive level. However, humans are less likely to react with fear to dangerous risks that evolution has not prepared them for, such as hamburgers, smoking, and unsafe sex, even though most people recognize the danger on a cognitive level.
Research has shown that the expression and experience of negative emotions (e.g., depression and anxiety) show higher activation in the right frontal cortex and in the deeper brain structures, such as the amygdala, while positive emotions are accompanied by more left frontal cortex activity.
Clothing both affects and reflects emotional states
A recent study suggests a strong correlation between wearing certain clothes and emotional states. For example, it revealed that women who are depressed or sad are more likely to wear baggy tops, sweatshirts, or jeans. Women who had more positive emotions were more likely to wear a favorite dress or jewelry and generally look nicer.
A 1980 study by Robert Plutchik proposed eight primary innate emotions: joy, acceptance, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. He suggests that complex emotions such as guilt and love are derived from combinations of primary emotions.[3]
Most scientists believe that basic emotions are innate rather than learned. For example, people who are born blind and have never seen faces still display the typical facial expressions of the basic emotions.
Colors can profoundly affect emotional responses. While not everyone experiences the same emotion in response to a particular color, most people find reds and oranges stimulating and blues and purples restful. In contrast, gray, brown, black, or white tend to be emotionally dulling. In fact, studies reveal that children playing in an orange room were friendlier, alert, creative, and less irritable than children in playrooms painted white, brown, and black.
Only humans are known to express the emotion astonishment with their mouth agape. However, there appear to be more similarities than differences in the way animals, especially primates, and humans express such basic emotions as anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. In fact, because animals and humans express similar kinds of emotions, Charles Darwin believed the emotional difference between animals and humans is largely one of complexity and not of kind.
Researchers note that when concealing a strong emotion, people tend to let out “micro-expressions,” or sudden leakages, of emotion unbeknownst to themselves very briefly, in as little as a 24th of a second.
Studies show that mothers are less tolerant of crying in boys than in girls, suggesting that the way emotions are expressed by adults are instilled by mothers during the child’s infancy.
Studies show that if people adjust their facial expression to reflect an emotion, they actually begin to feel that emotion.
