Most people wonder why or how people react or respond to stimuli showing either happiness, anger, aggression, sadness or even surprise. Those wonders should be put to rest now because I am going to elaborate the mechanism by which individuals express their feelings about or for something or somebody. Emotions are the human behavior or acts that they express once an event takes place (Hernández et al., 5). Scientifically, emotions are the psychological construct that coordinate and unite the activities experienced by individuals synchronized into a pattern. Thus, when a person perceives or becomes aware of something, a physiological process takes places in the brain stimulating the body to function responding to a specific stimulant that triggered the body, and hence one expresses what they feel. For instance, if you have met your fiancé and you have been apart for weeks, the moment you see him or her the body gets the signal triggering a memory of how crucial he is to you. The body will feel excited, and you can respond with a smile, running into him or her and once you are together you will express the feeling either verbally or physically. All the people that will be around you will be able to note that you are happy because you will be joyous.
Science has it that for the body to react, there must be something triggering it and sending the signal to the brain. This is because the central nervous system controls emotions. Occurrences such as obstacles, threats, objects, loss and potential mates are among the stimuli that make people react or show emotions. People also react to messages, and they may show aggression or happiness depending on the type of news they had. Therefore, emotions are experienced through a lifetime of an individual unless he or she has a mental disorder. People can learn to control their emotions, especially as age advance since they understand that other people react when one expresses extreme feelings.
Various theories have been developed to describe the meaning and mechanism by which people express their feelings. One of such theory is by James-Lange, and he suggested that events usually occurs first, followed by emotions and then expression. Thus, according to James, something has to happen first to stimulate the body making the person express surprise, happiness anger and any other expression that somebody can show (Laird et al., p.28). Since the signal sent to the brains are received and responses sent to illicit appropriate body action, the act might take long before they happen and the rate at which they occur is also slower compared to the brain response. Another theory of emotion is by Schachter-Singer, he suggested that the reactions of the body are usually undifferentiated such that emotions are recognized from the labels assigned an individual. For instance, a neurotransmitter called epinephrine is involved in sending responses from the brain, and when it kicks in, people react by fight, flight, fear or faint. The emotions behind this reactions can only be explained by the individual who experienced them depending on the label he or she has assigned to a certain response. For instance, upon an experience of a terrifying event, some people can experience fear, runaway or collapse. The other theory of emotion is facial feedback. It suggests that it is possible to manipulate, intensify, and dampen a sentiment be manipulating the expression on the face. What the theory implies is that one might experience anger but covers it with a smile on the face such that people would not notice. People usually "put on a mask" to prevent others from jumping to conclusions about them.
Most people don't understand that they have the capability of communicating their emotions to other individuals even without mentioning about what they feel. There are six universal emotions that all people experience or have experienced in their lifetime and they include, sadness, surprise, happiness, anger, fear, and disgust. Depending on what someone expresses, people make judgments and they end up tying your character with the feelings you express. For instance, if you get angry very quickly and react people easily might say you are aggressive or paranoiac. The manner in which people communicate is automatic and hence to becomes hard for people to hide their trues character (Quinto, et al., p.530). Also, the emotions that we express enables us to function socially. Therefore, if someone is always happy and rarely gets angry quickly can end up making a lot of friends compared to others who get angry and are in most time sad. Such people cannot be able to socially interact with others effectively as a result of the sad mood they set. Thus, it is prudent for people to learn on how to regulate what they express to others to make their life comfortable and acquire numerous friends for interaction.
There are various strategies that one can put in place to control or regulate their emotions and they include selection of stimulation, modification of situation, change of cognition, deployment of attention as well as modulation of response (Reeck, et al., p.48). Applying this strategies can enable one to be able to relate to others positively and with anyone. For instance, selecting a stimuli can enable one to block a negative response such as aggression. There are those actions that can make someone to feel angered but also if taken positively can be that someone was trying to do you a favor. Consider a child who has not completed his homework for three consecutive days and does not have valid reason to offer. Grounding such student from other co-curriculum activities that they like or notifying their parents for grounding at home can make some students very angry and hate the teacher. Another student can take the action of the instructor positively and see that the teacher wants him or her to be responsible in future and thus take it positively and change. Moreover, modification of a situation can also make people to react in a manner that people can tolerate. For instance, instead of quarreling people can choose to control the situation and talk to settle down their differences leading to reconciliation or peaceful termination of a relationship. Attention deployment can take place by someone being selective to what they concentrate on to avoid receiving negative stimuli and responses (Reeck, et al., p.49). Cognitive change can be applied to modify the emotions expressed by an individual via changing the meaning of a certain perceived event. For instance, if your ex-girlfriend used to send chills all over your body upon seeing her that can change after you broke up. Thus, the body cannot respond like it used to and thus the tactic can be applied to many other events. Response modulation occurs when someone limits the extent of emotion being expressed. Laughing too much and loudly in a social setting can draw attention from other people present which could be embarrassing.
The rationale for modulating emotions is to increase the tendency of eliciting positive emotions from other individuals. There are numerous benefits of one having positive feeling, and one of them is sociability. This is the phenomenon where people even those you don't know can have a pleasant time chatting with you. An individual also attains a lot of attention and cooperation from other as well as little aggressive moments (Hernández et al., 5). Someone also turns out to be generous and hence social life becomes too enjoyable because in the process one makes friends some of him may reciprocate the favor and be always be there for you in times of need. The other benefit is that one acquires the skills need in problem-solving, and hence it becomes hard for people to fall out due to simple misunderstandings.
In conclusion, emotions are part of our lives and have great influence in social life. People should know how to moderate and control the emotions they experience as well as intercept the stimuli that can influence negative responses. The manner in which we handle ourselves communicates a great deal to others, and hence people should be cautious not to send the wrong message to the public. Thus, social interaction should be done in a manner that advocates unity, empathy, and happiness. Hiding our facial expression can also help in modifying the message being sent to others regarding what we experience and hence when necessary this tactic should be applied.
References
Laird, James D., and Katherine Lacasse. "Bodily influences on emotional feelings: Accumulating evidence and extensions of William James’s theory of emotion." Emotion Review 6.1 (2014): 27-34.
Quinto, Lena, William Forde Thompson, and Alan Taylor. "The contributions of compositional structure and performance expression to the communication of emotion in music." Psychology of music 42.4 (2014): 503-524.
Reeck, Crystal, Daniel R. Ames, and Kevin N. Ochsner. "The social regulation of emotion: An integrative, cross-disciplinary model." Trends in cognitive sciences 20.1 (2016): 47-63.
Hernández, Maciel M., et al. "Balance in Positive Emotional Expressivity Across School Contexts Relates to Kindergartners’ Adjustment." Early Education and Development 29.1 (2018): 1-13.
