What is Emotion?
The concept of 'emotion', which has many interpretations and definitions in psychological terms, has been on people's agenda for years. In my opinion, emotion is a phenomenon that provides movement in the individual both psychologically and physiologically. These changes in brain chemistry affect the person physiologically. Although we fit emotions into patterns, these movements will create different effects because we are all unique. In a book I read, he said: 'The way you name an emotion also affects your life.' In fact, we are good observers from birth. If a child sees his angry mother violently throwing the vase on the ground and frowning, he will begin to believe that anger can have such effects in his brain, and he will be inclined to show his own anger with these behaviors. Crooks and Stein (1991) systematized emotion primarily as 'stimulus – response to stimulus – interpretation of response'. Many theories have emerged since then. But why did all this effort to make sense not allow a person to have direct control over their emotions?
Our emotions, which are famous for their dominance over our behaviors, are reflected on our faces. So, can we say that emotions are universal? Actually, this idea started with Darwin (1872-1998). Paul Ekman (1971) has proven this. In order to understand facial expressions, it is important to be able to understand 'macro' and 'micro' expressions. Microexpressions are not conscious, they are automatic. Therefore, it is independent of culture. Macro expressions, on the other hand, are the reflections of what we have learned from our early life experiences on our faces and behaviors.
Each individual is unique and unique. Emotions can also be diversified for this reason. What we feel can sometimes seem complicated to us. For example; Anxiety and fear trigger physiologically similar mechanisms. Your heart starts beating fast, you sweat. Sometimes you can feel many emotions at once.
So it is important for a person to understand what one feels as well as how one feels. If the emotions we name affect the way we experience the emotion, they must also indirectly affect our behavior. So, do we control our emotions or our behaviors?
According to studies, individuals remember their negative memories more when they are in a sad mood, and negative memories can mediate the individual's feeling worse (Taesdale, 1983). Why does the brain do this? It can be a representation of the legacy left to us from our ancestors. We, too, create adaptations to avoid pain. Maybe our mechanism of avoiding negative emotion is a coded information inherited in our brains.
We can say that revealing emotions, that is, putting them into action, is better than suppressing them. Because this situation causes us to reflect that we are aware and able to express our emotions, both to our brain and to our physiology. But some emotions can be very strong. For example; anger and jealousy. Revealing such intense emotions can cause internal and external turmoil in some cases. Behavior control is important here. Although the individual cannot directly dominate his emotions, he is quite successful in dominating his behavior.
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