Emotions and Feelings
If we are going to talk about these things, we need to define exactly what we mean by them. Scientists, philosophers and psychologists have not come to a definitive or consensual understanding, but there is evidence that not all emotional experiences are the same: some may have less cognitive content (being unconscious or unreflected on) whereas others may have more cognitive content (being either reflected on or including personal and social meanings). Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychologist, made the following distinction between emotions and feelings: he suggested that an emotion was a physical sensation or reaction to the environment whereas a feeling was the product of the symbolisation of experience. A feeling would therefore also include the cognitive meanings of experience: A feeling denotes an emotionally tinged experience, together with its personal meaning. Thus it includes the emotion in its experiential context. It thus refers to the unity of emotion and cognition as they are experienced inseparably in the moment. Rogers’s definition suggests that it may be possible to have an emotional experience (an unreflective, automatic response to the environment) without any cognitive element to it — and that feelings are a kind of unifying bridge between them. The difference can be illustrated by thinking about anger. Let’s suppose a young child has their favourite toy stolen by another child at school. The straightforward emotional response is one of anger at this boundary violation, directed at the offending child: an un-thought-about response. However, when the child returns home to tell her mum about what happened, let’s suppose the mother starts to blame the daughter for what happened: “You should never have taken that toy into school, I told you not to, you can’t trust anyone, I told you this would happen.” Perhaps when the daughter recounts how she hit the offending child, the mother also starts lecturing the child on ‘inappropriate behaviour’ – telling her “never hit another child”, etc. The daughter now has a much more complicated web of meanings surrounding anger – some particular to her own family’s responses, and some from wider societal responses. Anger is no longer a straightforward emotional response to a violation, it is now a feeling that has been reflected upon and which has various meanings attached to it. Other theorists also distinguish (though in different ways) those emotional experiences that have a cognitive element from those that do not. For example, Greenberg suggests that an affect is an unconscious biological response to stimulation; a feeling involves awareness of the basic sensations of affect (either at a simple level, e.g. feeling shaky, or at a more complex level, involving felt meaning); and emotions are experiences that arise when action tendencies and feeling states are joined with evoking situations and the self. As such, an emotion involves the integration of many levels of processing and gives personal meaning to our experience. Denzin distinguishes between emotional unconsciousness and emotional consciousness suggesting that, in the former, it is possible to experience emotions in an unreflective state as contrasted with the latter which is a more reflective state, and in which a person is able to guide, direct, or interpret emotion as he or she is feeling it. Antonio Damasio, who has researched brain function extensively, also maintains that we are not conscious of all our feelings. He describes feelings as arising as the brain interprets emotions, which are themselves purely physical signals of the body reacting to external stimuli. Damasio’s definition (which is in line with that of Carl Rogers) is the one we encourage our authors to follow for the sake of clarity. This entry is adapted from Rosemary Lodge's chapter in The Wisdom of Not-Knowing References Bob Chisholm & Jeff Harrison - The Wisdom of Not-Knowing Norman Denzin - On Understanding Emotion Carl Rogers - On Becoming A Person Leslie S. Greenberg and Sandra C. Paivio - Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy Antonio Damasio - The Feeling of What Happens |
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Responses
This definition was included in a a Triarchy Idioticon email in January 2016. Amongst the responses were the following:
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Ellin Krinsly wrote to remind us of our cultural bias:
"My initial reaction to the definition you present is that it is Western-based coming specifically from an individual, human view, that radiates understanding from a human individual's view of the world.
...A more complex or differently shaded definition that I understand is in performance there is a feeling exchange between performer and audience that is possible, more nuanced, more subtle than just raw emotion, ie joy, anger. The exchange is the possibility of transformation.
And while an individual might experience, fear, delight in response to the ocean, ocean as ocean itself separate from human (separate for the purpose of expressing this concept) is that he ocean itself has feeling. The expanse of the ocean exudes a quality of feeling."
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Ian Ashley wrote to agree with the definitions and to say that "They resonate with double loop learning (Chris Argyris)".
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Terence Love wrote to say that we had misrepresented Damasio and his definitions of feelings and emotions. He pointed us to a paper he had written summarising Damasio's definitions. In the key section of this paper, Terence Love writes:"Emotions
Damasio uses a technical definition of emotion. Emotion consists of the myriad of small changes to an individual's physiology (e.g. blood pressure, muscle tone, facial appearance) that can be triggered and executed without an individual being aware of it. There is nothing particularly unusual or human about emotion - many animals exhibit emotion responses, particularly to changes in their environment - e.g. a cat stands hair on end, arches back and spits when threatened...
Following convention, Damasio divides emotion into different types: the primary (universal) emotions consisting of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust; background emotions such as well-being, malaise, calm, and tension; and secondary (social) emotions such as embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, and pride.
Feelings
The feeling of an emotion refers to the generation of a neurological image (image refers to a representative neurological pattern) representing within, the human organism that state of emotion. This distinguishes the physicality of the emotion, as a set of bodily changes, and the separate internal representation of that emotion - the feeling. We are not necessarily conscious of either of these phenomena.
Sense of self feeling an emotion
The conscious feeling of an emotion requires an additional step: the sense of oneself as an individual (the sense of me) that has that feeling and that emotion. It is perhaps, one of Damasio's most important insights that the 'feeling of self' is essential to affective processes. This feeling of self, consciousness, and the role both play in feelings and emotions is significantly neglected in the literature on affect and affective cognition. Damasio draws attention to the importance of understanding the complex interdependencies between the mechanisms of consciousness and those of feeling and emotions to understand any of their roles in human functioning. ...
...Emotions can be seen as higher-level components of homeostatic life regulation processes (regulating metabolism, simple reflexes, motivation, biology of pleasure and pain etc) that produce stereotypically suitable behaviours appropriate to survival (P54). The relative relationships are shown [below]. Consciousness occurs just above the boundary between feelings and high reason.
High reason: Complex customized plans of response are formulated in conscious reason and may be executed as behaviour
Feelings: Sensory patterns signaling pain, pleasure and emotions that may become 'images'
Emotions: Complex stereotyped patterns of response (secondary, primary, and background emotions)
See the full paper here.
====================
Pam Woods wrote to remind us of the difference between sensing and feeling. This is another important distinction, even if the subsequent definition of 'emotional feelings' is at odds with our own definition above:
"Within the context of dance (performance) Valerie Preston-Dunlop (Verve, 1998, ‘Looking at Dances’, p.41) suggests:
[Sensing and feeling are sometimes confused
Because words for them
Are inadequate and imprecise.
Sensing arise from our sensory channels
Our eyes, ears, nose, skin, muscles, and more.]
Feelings are different.
They arise out of our response to what happens to us.
They are variants of emotional feelings,
affective feelings and feeling-states,
all of which dancers experience and use."
========================
Mary Booker wrote to remind us that Carl Jung uses the term 'feeling' and the idea of the 'feeling function' to indicate an evaluative approach to the world that tends to evaluate experience and behaviour in terms of good and bad, right and wrong. This is the cause of much misunderstanding of Jung and an important reminder. However, his use of 'feeling' is clearly distinct from the usual feeling/emotion usage.
She also points out the Buddhist usage, where 'feeling tone' (which may be related to the idea of affect) precedes feeling or emotion.
==================
Ellin Krinsly wrote to remind us of our cultural bias:
"My initial reaction to the definition you present is that it is Western-based coming specifically from an individual, human view, that radiates understanding from a human individual's view of the world.
...A more complex or differently shaded definition that I understand is in performance there is a feeling exchange between performer and audience that is possible, more nuanced, more subtle than just raw emotion, ie joy, anger. The exchange is the possibility of transformation.
And while an individual might experience, fear, delight in response to the ocean, ocean as ocean itself separate from human (separate for the purpose of expressing this concept) is that he ocean itself has feeling. The expanse of the ocean exudes a quality of feeling."
===================
Ian Ashley wrote to agree with the definitions and to say that "They resonate with double loop learning (Chris Argyris)".
===================
Terence Love wrote to say that we had misrepresented Damasio and his definitions of feelings and emotions. He pointed us to a paper he had written summarising Damasio's definitions. In the key section of this paper, Terence Love writes:"Emotions
Damasio uses a technical definition of emotion. Emotion consists of the myriad of small changes to an individual's physiology (e.g. blood pressure, muscle tone, facial appearance) that can be triggered and executed without an individual being aware of it. There is nothing particularly unusual or human about emotion - many animals exhibit emotion responses, particularly to changes in their environment - e.g. a cat stands hair on end, arches back and spits when threatened...
Following convention, Damasio divides emotion into different types: the primary (universal) emotions consisting of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust; background emotions such as well-being, malaise, calm, and tension; and secondary (social) emotions such as embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, and pride.
Feelings
The feeling of an emotion refers to the generation of a neurological image (image refers to a representative neurological pattern) representing within, the human organism that state of emotion. This distinguishes the physicality of the emotion, as a set of bodily changes, and the separate internal representation of that emotion - the feeling. We are not necessarily conscious of either of these phenomena.
Sense of self feeling an emotion
The conscious feeling of an emotion requires an additional step: the sense of oneself as an individual (the sense of me) that has that feeling and that emotion. It is perhaps, one of Damasio's most important insights that the 'feeling of self' is essential to affective processes. This feeling of self, consciousness, and the role both play in feelings and emotions is significantly neglected in the literature on affect and affective cognition. Damasio draws attention to the importance of understanding the complex interdependencies between the mechanisms of consciousness and those of feeling and emotions to understand any of their roles in human functioning. ...
...Emotions can be seen as higher-level components of homeostatic life regulation processes (regulating metabolism, simple reflexes, motivation, biology of pleasure and pain etc) that produce stereotypically suitable behaviours appropriate to survival (P54). The relative relationships are shown [below]. Consciousness occurs just above the boundary between feelings and high reason.
High reason: Complex customized plans of response are formulated in conscious reason and may be executed as behaviour
Feelings: Sensory patterns signaling pain, pleasure and emotions that may become 'images'
Emotions: Complex stereotyped patterns of response (secondary, primary, and background emotions)
See the full paper here.
====================
Pam Woods wrote to remind us of the difference between sensing and feeling. This is another important distinction, even if the subsequent definition of 'emotional feelings' is at odds with our own definition above:
"Within the context of dance (performance) Valerie Preston-Dunlop (Verve, 1998, ‘Looking at Dances’, p.41) suggests:
[Sensing and feeling are sometimes confused
Because words for them
Are inadequate and imprecise.
Sensing arise from our sensory channels
Our eyes, ears, nose, skin, muscles, and more.]
Feelings are different.
They arise out of our response to what happens to us.
They are variants of emotional feelings,
affective feelings and feeling-states,
all of which dancers experience and use."
========================
Mary Booker wrote to remind us that Carl Jung uses the term 'feeling' and the idea of the 'feeling function' to indicate an evaluative approach to the world that tends to evaluate experience and behaviour in terms of good and bad, right and wrong. This is the cause of much misunderstanding of Jung and an important reminder. However, his use of 'feeling' is clearly distinct from the usual feeling/emotion usage.
She also points out the Buddhist usage, where 'feeling tone' (which may be related to the idea of affect) precedes feeling or emotion.