Feelings: how they arise and what role they play in a person’s life

What are the feelings?

Let's first consider what feelings are. Each person experiences a different set of feelings, which, in principle, is absolutely normal. Feelings depend on the character, type of temperament, social circle and sphere of human activity. In practice, we often encounter such feelings as joy and sadness, shame and fear, anger and disgust, boredom and interest, admiration and pleasure, resentment, surprise, etc.

Psychologists define several criteria and categories of feelings. Three main criteria by which the classification of feelings is formed:

1. Valence . According to him, feelings are positive, negative and neutral.
2. Intensity . This includes weak, medium, and strong feelings.
3. Sthenicity . Here we distinguish between feelings that increase activity and those that cause passivity.

There is also the concept of “higher feelings”.

Intellectual feelings

Based on knowledge of people, the desire to satisfy curiosity, the search for truth and solving specific mental problems. These include interest, curiosity, a sense of mystery, doubt, bewilderment.

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What highest feelings can a person have?

What higher feelings can a person have and how are they expressed? The classification divides the highest feelings into moral, intellectual, aesthetic and practical. A person experiences moral feelings towards other people; they are formed depending on the environment and the degree of socialization. This area includes love, friendship, hatred, gratitude, conscience.

Intellectual feelings arise in the process of work, when a person experiences satisfaction from work or dissatisfaction with the result.

Aesthetic feelings come to a person when he sees something beautiful and pleasing to the eye. This could be an artistic or creative work, an attractive person, or a natural phenomenon with bright colors.

Praxic feelings characterize a person’s own attitude to work, activities, and any kind of activity.

One way or another, it is difficult to fit feelings into a specific format and specify them. Feelings are a person’s individual reaction to an ongoing event, attitude or some object.

The criteria for the formation of feelings are correlated with the main emotion that manifests itself in a certain situation.

Types of feelings, their manifestations and classification

Due to the fact that the very concept of feelings and their derivatives still remains open, there are different categories and types of them. The most frequently used classification today is the reflection of feelings as the social essence of a person, which divides all psycho-emotional experiences into 3 groups.

Feelings in psychology are divided into 3 groups: moral, intellectual and ethical.

They are:

• moral;
• intellectual;
• ethical.

There are also subcategories such as social, practical, legal and professional feelings, which overlap with the three above.

Moral or ethical feelings

Moral feelings are the basis of every society. They have historical and cultural roots, determined by norms of behavior that have been formed over centuries. Their existence is determined by the need for each person to feel involved in the team.

Moral feelings presuppose the optimal behavior of people in order to be understood, and they also form the basis of collective and individual consciousness.

By adhering to the principles of moral behavior, a person, as a social being, feels satisfaction and acceptance of himself by others. Moral feelings form a sense of attachment, community and collective idea with which all members of society are identified.

The basis for understanding moral feelings was first described by the English philosopher Adam Smith in the 18th century. He gave his own classification of their importance, but the peculiarity of moral feelings is their changeable nature, therefore, today, the importance and value of moral norms has changed significantly.

Also, not all moral sentiments have the same importance and may vary in a given society, depending on what cultural and social goals are considered to be a priority.

The most common and universal moral feelings today are:

Thus, moral feelings are fundamental to the formation of harmony in interpersonal existence, regardless of the presence of common interests with other people or not.

On the opposite side, there are antisocial feelings that have a destructive effect on relationships between people.

These include feelings:

• anger;

• anger;
• hatred;
• antipathies;
• contempt;
• enmity;
• envy;
• ill will.

Intellectual feelings

Unlike moral feelings, which give a person a sense of community, intellectual feelings are associated with cognitive activity.

Thus, intellectual feelings are not only the psychological component of each person, but also form his worldview and thought processes, contributing to mental education and the development of creative thinking.

The emergence of intellectual feelings in every person, according to psychologists, is based on the physiological premise of an orienting reflex associated with the need to explain all the processes around oneself, which everyone perceives with the help of the senses.

Unlike moral feelings, which are unconsciously copied from other members of society, intellectual feelings develop purposefully during the learning process. They are the basis for a person’s professional growth, and also form an important part of his self-confidence.

The most important examples of intellectual feelings include:

Thus, intellectual feelings are the main source of acquiring new knowledge and developing one’s own creative abilities.

All skills gained through the development of intellectual abilities related to problem solving and the formation of one's own independent thinking.

Aesthetic or higher feelings

Aesthetic feelings are the most ambiguous among all human experiences. Despite constant attempts to create an objective understanding of their criteria and properties, aesthetic feelings remain subjective.

If moral feelings are perceived by a person through unconscious living in society, and intellectual feelings are learned, then aesthetic feelings are the maximum manifestation of individuality and are developed intuitively by each person.

Therefore, the most important features of an aesthetic worldview are individualism and historical context.

The main goal of aesthetic feelings is not the feeling of unity or the search for truth, but the pursuit of perfection, beauty, harmony and understanding of all processes. A distinctive feature of aesthetic feelings is the search for quality.

The level of aesthetic pleasure is manifested not in functionality and practicality, but in an attempt to create and materialize in artistic images the reality that a person contemplates as a source of inspiration.

Therefore, aesthetic feelings describe a person’s attempt to find the beautiful, the sublime, to determine the essence of the comic and tragic.

It is assumed that the manifestation of these feelings is very diverse and can be found everywhere: from the contemplation of nature (the blueness of the sky or the shine of the stars), architecture, painting, poetry and music to the actions of people and the search for pleasure in daily work.

A special feature of aesthetics is that the longer a person searches for the beautiful and sublime, the more he finds and understands it in different manifestations.

This process is characterized by the identification of factors, characteristics, connections and awareness of the emotional experience of the individual towards the interested subject, which she has endowed with special interest.

Aesthetic feelings are always subjective and specific; they are formed by a person in order not only to realize the actual importance of an object or phenomenon for society, but also to endow it with a special meaning.

The main elements that form aesthetic feelings are:

Feelings in psychology, such as aesthetic, moral and intellectual, are the highest cognitive properties of every person.

By developing certain elements of higher feelings, a person not only realizes his place in society and feels part of the collective consciousness, he is also able to develop individual needs and the desire to implement his ideas.

Emotions

Emotions and feelings are different psychological concepts. If feelings are an attitude towards something or someone, then emotions are a way to express this attitude. Feelings are sensations that are longer lasting and more stable. Emotions are temporary in nature and relate to an event occurring at a specific moment. For example, love is a feeling, and a smile from a joyful meeting with a loved one is an emotion.

However, these concepts are connected and cannot exist without each other, since they are components of the interaction between the activities of the nervous, hormonal, and cardiovascular systems.

Unlike feelings that a person acquires throughout life, emotions are innate or instinctive factors in the psychological portrait. Emotions are unique to humans; no evidence of the manifestation of emotions in animals has been found.

Feelings

Feelings represent a special form of a person’s relationship to ongoing phenomena of reality, establish compliance or inconsistency with various needs, and are distinguished by the stability of their manifestation. Based on sensory perception, it is possible to determine an individual’s emotional attitude to various phenomena, highlight moral values ​​and beliefs, and study a person’s inner world. Feelings and experiences perceive and reflect the occurring phenomena of reality, and then are expressed externally. Personality development is directly related to sensory development, being a necessary condition for emotional development. Together with individual consciousness and educational influences, sensory images are formed and individual personal characteristics develop.

Types of emotions

Experts distinguish the following types of emotions:

1. Positive . A person experiences joy, satisfaction, gratitude. As an example, a meeting with a congenial or loved one, the joy of a good grade or an award received.
2. Negative . This can include anger, anger, fear. Example: missed the plane, failed the test, met an enemy in the same company.
3. Neutral : when, in fact, it doesn’t matter what happened and why. There is no distinction between good and bad.
4. Asthenic . Those that do not have a stimulating effect on a person do not encourage him to do anything. I didn’t complete the task on time, but there is no point in starting work, since the “deadline” is over and the rating has dropped.
5. Stenic , when, having experienced emotions, a person gets down to business. Here an example could be like this. A woman comes to the store, but the dress she likes in her usual size is catastrophically small. Having experienced a negative emotion, the lady goes on a diet, joins the gym and begins to lose weight. The action has started.
6. Simple emotions. When a person experiences something specific, such as joy or embarrassment.
7. Complex (composite), when based on a whole range of feelings. This can include, for example, irritation, when a person is simultaneously offended, angry, and upset about what is happening.
8. lower emotions when satisfying daily needs: getting enough sleep, eating, quenching thirst.
9. The highest emotions are experienced by those who engage in productive intellectual activity. This includes pride in a child who has passed a difficult exam with “excellent” marks, joy from visiting an art exhibition, etc.

It is known that all emotions are perceived and interpreted differently by specialists, so it is wrong to say that the above types of emotions can simultaneously be attributed to any person or situation. Every emotion, like the current situation, is subjective.

Functions of the senses

Feelings in psychology are an integral part of every person’s life.

They help you form your own understanding of the world, evaluate priorities, and effectively communicate with other people.

Motivational

The motivational function of feelings plays a fundamental role in stimulating a person to action and maintaining his activity.

Mobilizing all experiences and goals, the feeling of desire is an important motivating factor for any action:

• concentration on the task;
• planning;
• formation of the necessary psycho-emotional mood;
• rapid recovery from stress or anxiety.

Signal

The signaling function is a person’s ability to respond to various signals from the environment and his own internal state.

Thanks to this function, a person perceives any information (emotions, feelings, non-verbal communication), and his brain can identify and give significance to certain signals, on the basis of which a value judgment and response is formed.

Estimated

The main task of a person’s evaluative function is to understand what is happening around, to interpret any perception of information (verbal and non-verbal) from a subjective point of view as a desirable or harmful effect on one’s own state.

The evaluative function is formed on the basis of life experience and unconsciously attaches some significance to an object or situation in a positive or negative way.

A function that synthesizes the basics of an image

Feelings in psychology are many different sensory stimuli that perceive information in different ways.

Therefore, the goal of the synthesizing function is to create a holistic and understandable picture of perception from different pieces of information (for example, a holistic perception of a cake with its shape, smell, taste and aesthetics). This function creates the possibility of the harmonious existence of thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Expressive function

The expressive function of feelings is an important part of every person’s communication. It helps not only to perceive non-verbal information while communicating with others, but also provides one's own synchronous expression of feelings and thoughts in order to create a more complete picture of expression.

Is there a single and approved list of emotions?

The list of emotions characteristic of humans is not accepted in the scientific field. There are about five hundred manifestations of feelings and various states that could be included in it. But one way or another, it will never be approved, if only because it is constantly decreasing or increasing.

We suggest you try to observe yourself and make your own list of emotions. You can do this as follows. Keep a notebook in which you write down the events that happen to you during the day every day, but leave a separate column for describing the emotions that were caused by these events.

For example, going to the store for fresh fruit is a joy from the purchase or annoyance from the lack of your favorite apples. Skiing - fear of sliding down a high hill, pride in being able to do it. Summarize the past day: what are you experiencing at a particular moment? What emotions do you feel at the end of the day? Are you satisfied with the time spent or not?

Don't try to pull out emotions that will make you act or inaction, just learn to state the fact. After several days of practice, you will be able to better recognize your own and other people’s emotions, and learn to navigate feelings.

Self-analysis will help you gain control over your own emotions, because there are uncontrollable emotions that arise by themselves and become problematic factors for a person. Having gained knowledge from such research, you will be able to take control of your emotional background.