How Our Emotions Shape Us

Emotions: What Exactly Are These Emotions?

Emotions act like our daily dose of defense mechanisms that tend to shape the moods we go through every day. This is what emotions are in layman’s terms, but as we dive further into the realm of psychology, they become psychological states consisting of three different phases: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral response.

As said by Paul Ekman, we have six major emotions: anger, sadness, joy, fear, disgust, and surprise, which are deeply hardwired into our DNA. Whenever you feel a certain emotion, your body’s best buddy, the autonomic nervous system, starts to act up, making us feel emotions not only in our minds but also physically, fine-tuning our bodies into the emotional realm.

How Emotions Shape Us as Individuals

Emotions tend to give us the devil in the game: the feedback loop. Have you ever wondered why, whenever you go through a bad experience, it tends to ruin your entire day? This is where the “devil” works. Whenever you criticize yourself for getting angry over trivial things, you become even angrier, and the cycle continues like a merry-go-round.

But how do we overcome this? Here comes the angel to save us: neuroplasticity. The “Hebbian Theory” suggests that “neurons that fire together, wire together.” Consistently practicing positive emotional reappraisal, or finding the silver lining in situations, can physically reshape the brain’s neural pathways, making a person more resilient.

The Engine of Choice: Emotions and Decision-Making

There is a common myth that the best decisions are purely logical. Research, however, suggests the opposite. Antonio Damasio’s “Somatic Marker Hypothesis” proposes that emotional signals from the body tell us which options are “good” or “bad” before our conscious mind even finishes analyzing the data.

See how friendly our body is? Perhaps we shouldn’t take it for granted. However, emotions can also cause problems. Intense emotions such as rage or euphoria can “hijack” the prefrontal cortex, leading to impulsive decisions that ignore long-term consequences and often result in poor choices.

How Emotions Impact Us Socially

Emotions are like a pandemic: they not only affect us, but also the people around us. Humans possess “mirror neurons.” When you see someone smile or cry, your brain mimics that neural activity. This is why one person’s bad mood can “infect” an entire room.

This explains why, when a teacher shouts at the class, we instantly become either agitated like them or emotionally numb. However, emotions also have positive social advantages. Emotions like guilt or shame serve an important purpose. They act as “social glue” that encourages us to repair relationships and follow communal norms. Thus, emotions help us both build and break relationships.

See how emotions often act as opposite sides of the same coin.

Conclusion

In conclusion, emotions are like the internal compasses of life. They help us with self-realization, act as our moral guides, and greatly assist us in fostering our day-to-day relationships. To be shaped by emotion is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is the very core of human intelligence.