Psychology

Negative emotions are dimensional

Emotions are both psychological and physiological reactions of the human body to internal and external stimuli. This is a very general definition. Psychological state of emotions involves feelings of stress, depression, anxiety etc. Physiological responses would include fear, anger and nervousness. Primary emotions are the initial body responsesreactions to stimuli. For instance, feeling cheated and unwanted are the primary emotions that could lead to the secondary emotions of anger and lonely respectively. Negative emotions are those feelings which are unhealthy to ones mental or physical state. For example, feeling cheated may affect one psychologically as he may become aloof, or affect their relationships with others.

Negative emotions are classified into broad categories depending on the relatedness of their effects, characteristics and causes. Emotions that affect ones ego, self-worthiness or dignity can form one group that constitute feeling disrespected, embarrassed, inferior, and humiliated ridiculed, teased, dehumanized, criticized etc. Emotions associated with loveimportanceconnection may include feelings of loneliness, insignificancy, rejection, disapproval etc.

The various feelings of negative emotions hang together (relate, connect or co-exist) in the form they appear and show off. Some exhibit similar manifestations such that it is often difficult to differentiate them. For instance, it is not easy to know whether one is experiencing stress, depression or anxiety. If a person was anxious about a possible retrenchment from his or her job, that person could look both depressed and stressed. Different people may ascribe different emotions to himher. One can say she is stressed about the job, another one say She is anxious of losing the job, and yet another one say She is depressed by the possibility of losing her job. Whichever emotion identified, they all more or less accurately describe the mental state of the person. In any case, they all affect ones state of mind in a similar way destabilizing the normal functioning of psychological processes.

However, despite the seemingly continuous thread of interrelatedness, there exists a line of distinction, which can only be established after determining the situations and circumstances under which they are caused. For instance, waiting for exam results can make one anxious, but not depressed or stressed. But again, too much anxiety and preparation for an upcoming exam can lead to stress. After doing the paper and realizing you answered a crucial question wrong, you will be depressed, because you know you have failed. It is really difficult to separate related emotions from each other, given that one leads to the other or increases it. For instance, anxiety is directly proportional to stress.

I think these emotions are dimensional, given the fact that they build upon each other even if the contexts may be different.  If one feels cheated, he can experience anger. But he can also experience anger in another context such as feeling insulted, humiliated or ridiculed. But again, humiliation, ridicule and teasing can make one ashamed. The lack of clear distinctions, therefore, makes most negative emotions to be dimensional. Because of their concurrence (Coan and Allen 2007) they manifest themselves in ways that makes clear distinction difficult. But what emphasize the dimensional aspect are the effects they have on individuals in the end, and generally, negative emotions make people unhappy, what Russell calls displeasure. Whether you are stressed, depressed, angry, annoyed or disgusted, you are DIPLEASED with the state of things. The exact opposite of it is being happy and pleased with yourself, others or events. You cannot be pleased when annoyed, and be displeased when angry what you experience in one emotion is what you experience in all the others of their kind.

Knowledge of the physiology of the human body, culture and developmental process contribute to the understanding of negative emotions as significantly similar. Religion, for instance, condemns outbursts of anger. Since it is perceived as an inappropriate behavior, individuals with these convictions adapt to other means of showing or expressing anger. Instead of verbal altercations or physical aggression, they compress it and lock it up within them. However, nature dictates that at a given point, when emotions have piled up beyond ones capacity to contain it, it finds an alternative outlet. But it has to be subtle, in such a way that the offending person either misses it or if they notice, it is un-harmful to both the offender and the offended. Very often, you have seen people take a long time to respond to questions that make them angry. In a physiological perspective, the bodys response to anger is usually overt, such as aggression, raised voice or use of foul language. An angered person can turn violent and attack the offender or break objects if the offending agent is not near, or stronger than the person. It is common for mothers to vent their anger on children after a quarrel with their husbands. But in cultures where physical confrontation is disapproved of, anger can be expressed through physiological changes noticeable on the person blood-shot and dilated eyes, twitching muscles, chewing lips, clenched teeth and increased breathing. However, you realize that these symptoms if you permit the use of the term, are also characteristic in situations of fright and high tension, especially during a fifth. Thus, the body responds in a similar way to different situations. My argument to their similarities is based on the fact that it is not easy to determine whether blood-shot eyes in an angry person are the same thing as blood-shot eyes in fright. Further, you cannot tell if the fighting people are angry at each other, annoyed with each or hate each other. Now again, you realize that hate and annoyance are recipes of anger and conversely, anger can make one to be annoyed or feel hatred towards others. It is a mess of intertwined and interdependence emotions that can not quite fully be separated.  Whatever the case whether annoyed, hateful, angered or disgusted, individuals may respond in one way if they do not intend to be offensive, they try to hide it. Regardless, these emotions get expressed but in more subtle ways. They become detached from conversations, cold and unreceptive.

Similarly, people contain anger differently at various stages of development. At the formative years, childrens response to anger is instinctive and biological. The reason is because their problem solving skills are undeveloped, and have not developed a rational mechanism of responding to negative emotions. In fact, they cannot think about what they are feeling, how it affects them, how to counter it and how their responses could affect them and others. In most cases, angry children become withdrawn, aggressive or emotional the last bit may confuse given we are talking about emotions in general. What I mean is that they express anger either by crying or sulking. They can also refuse to talk to the offending person.

Adults are a bit complicated. Their ability to mask it means that only a keen observer can detect it. Their responses are usually careful, meant to overshadow any element of anger. In a live face-off debate during the American presidential campaign, Democrat candidate Barrack Obama made claims that portrayed a McCain presidency as no different from that of Bush. Obama was trying to associate him with the failures of the Bush administration, and he seemed to realize it. I think Obamas attitude provoked a range of emotions in McCain annoyance, anger, disgust, insulted, undermined, criticized, offended- in fact I reckon all of them at once. Now consider his response Senator Barrack Obama, you are not running against President Bush you should have done that or said these things four years ago. I cant make any accusation with this statement alone it was his tone that made all the difference. McCain was angry, disgusted, annoyed.any of the above but he was not pleased at all. His response was just a mask that hid his emotions. But until we ask him to state his feelings personally, we can never know for sure what he specifically felt, as to make him unhappy, for his tone indicated he was.
And this leads me to this conclusion about negative emotions they share a number of dimensions that make it difficult to distinguish. The fact that we cant clearly determine their differences makes them, even if partly, similar to each other. Hate anger disgust I think of either, and I feel the same.