Week Six: Emotions

Hmm, I've never been asked to define something like "emotions." I mean, we obviously all know what they are; we all feel them (hopefully). But to concretely define them is something much more difficult. I guess I'd say emotions are mindstates that one is in, in response to their environment/some stimulus (interactions with others, events happening in their environment, mood).

Like Ekman said, there are five basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear/surprise. but there are so many varying levels of each of the basic emotions. Take happiness for example - I'd categorize things ranging from pride to feeling in love to avenged to that general contentment after having a great meal to the umbrella emotion, happiness, but they each are there own separate entity. And that's why it's hard to standardize emotions - each is personal and unique.

P.S. Emoting in text is very difficult (especially when sarcasm is involved), so I suggest everyone use emojii (see above picture). It's got a huge selection of emoticons that mean the same thing to everyone! It's pretty cool how something that is really just a variation of yellow circle denotes a certain emotion, and can completely change the tone of someone's text.

"You're so cool " vs. "You're so cool "