general characteristics
Emotions are mental states that reflect a person’s attitude to current events, to people and to himself.
Emotional reactions consist of three components: a feeling of experience, changes in physiological processes and the appearance of external expressive complexes. In other words, a person feels an emotion (joy, anger, fear, sadness), experiences changes in the functioning of the body (sweating, heartbeat) and expresses his state with the help of facial expressions and gestures. Emotional states become pathological when their duration, intensity and content do not correspond to the situation and bring physical and psychological discomfort. Psycho-emotional disorders are characterized by unreasonable and inadequate affect, do not fit into the usual time frame, interfere with the performance of social functions, are perceived as painful or are not recognized by the person himself.
What is consciousness
Definition 1
Consciousness is a property of the human psyche that is responsible for the subjective experiences of those events that occur in the external environment or in the body of the person himself.
The issue of consciousness can be approached both in the narrow and broad sense of this concept. In a broad sense, consciousness is understood as the reflection of reality in the human psyche, regardless of whether it is carried out at the biological, social, rational or sensory level. In a narrow sense, consciousness is understood as a function of the brain that is engaged in reflecting events and phenomena of reality in our psyche. Consciousness is associated with human speech, and is also responsible for goal setting and planning.
Are you an expert in this subject area? We invite you to become the author of the Directory Working Conditions
The issue of human consciousness is dealt with in such disciplines as philosophy, psychology, and sciences that study artificial intelligence. Scientists today face a number of pressing questions to which there is no clear answer yet:
- Do patients in a coma have consciousness?
- when does a person become conscious
- can a computer achieve consciousness
Development mechanism
In psychology, there are two groups of factors contributing to the development of psycho-emotional disorders: internal conditions and external influences. Internal conditions include features of the cognitive sphere: thoughts, ideas, fantasies. A negative assessment of events provokes negative emotions. Another group of internal factors are the psychophysiological characteristics of the body. The biological basis of emotions is the neurohumoral processes of the limbic and diencephalic systems of the brain, the exchange of serotonin, adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopamine. An imbalance of these substances leads to the development of affective disorders.
Reactions to external environmental conditions can be innate and conditioned. Genetically embedded ways of responding - fear, aggression - are the basis for the formation of more complex emotional and behavioral patterns. During life, the development of affective disorders is facilitated by the processes of experiencing and consolidating traumatic experiences. Repetition or partial similarity of current events with past ones that caused negative experiences becomes the cause of psycho-emotional disorders.
Features of our feelings
- Feelings differ from cognitive processes in content (feelings are subjective, they are much more difficult to form than knowledge).
- Feelings are qualitatively very diverse. For example, there are only 12 types of sensations, but dozens of feelings. Rudeness and unhealthy interests narrow a person’s emotional world, and self-education, communication with the team, creative work, success at work, sports events, art, and literature contribute to its development.
- Polarity of feelings. Each feeling has its own antipode (its opposite): love and hate, joy and sadness, etc. A person can quickly move from one feeling to another (literally “in 2 seconds”).
- Plasticity of feelings. The same reason (event) causes different feelings - someone is happy and rejoices, and someone is disappointed and sad. The same feelings can be caused by different reasons (receiving an excellent grade and meeting a friend cause positive feelings).
- Feelings are associated with physiological processes in the body and are always accompanied by changes in the activity of internal organs: the nervous system, endocrine glands, etc.
- Feelings are in dynamic unity with practical activity.
Well-thought-out and planned work contributes to a positive mood and highly productive work. Disorganized work leads to low performance and a low mood. A good mood - and things get going. A bad mood and the business suffers. - Emotions are universal for all people on the planet, but there are certain national differences determined by traditions and customs.
Classification
Emotional disorders can be independent disorders or components of other mental illnesses. Pathological intensification of emotions is manifested by an increase in their intensity while maintaining adequate content. This group of disorders includes:
- Depression.
The structure of depressive states is dominated by low mood and depression. Patients feel anxiety and a feeling of inferiority. They perceive everyday difficulties as insurmountable and provoke crying, despondency, and reluctance to do anything. - Mania.
Manic states are manifested by elevated mood, accelerated rate of mental activity, and increased physical activity. A person becomes hyperactive, fussy, strives for achievements, to learn new things, but he lacks concentration and focus. - Euphoria.
In euphoria, people are dominated by carelessness, elevated mood, and infantility. Critical abilities and serious attitude to situations decrease. Passivity and excessive complacency do not allow you to perform daily duties.
Another option for psycho-emotional disorders is weakening of emotions. Regardless of the events taking place - joyful, sad, provoking aggression - people remain indifferent or experience weak feelings that do not correspond to the significance of the situation. Examples of such disorders:
- Emotional flattening.
With some mental illnesses, for example, with schizophrenia, emotions become impoverished - they become monotonous, primitive, and weakly expressed. In severe cases, only some manifestation of dissatisfaction in situations of discomfort remains. Other events - meetings with relatives, the loss of a loved one - do not evoke any emotions. - Apathy.
A state of apathy is typical for patients with depression. There is a general decrease in all emotional reactions. The patient is indifferent to what is happening, unable to experience joy, sadness, fear, anger. Often apathy is combined with a decrease in motor activity and abulia - pathological lack of will, the inability to begin any action.
When the mobility of emotions is impaired, a person’s ability to control the duration of the experience changes. This is manifested by stuckness, suddenness, or rapid uncontrollable changes in emotional states. There are several variants of the dynamic aspect disorder:
- Emotional lability.
With affective lability, emotions arise easily, quickly replace each other, and depend on fleeting external events or random memories. Such conditions are considered normal in early childhood, when a child’s tears suddenly give way to laughter, but in adults they are a sign of emotional disturbance. - Explosiveness.
This term refers to emotional explosiveness. After a period of calm, a person suddenly demonstrates anger, irritation, anger, and then just as quickly returns to a state of balance. During explosive outbreaks, aggression and provocation of conflicts are possible. - Inertia.
Synonyms for inertia are stuckness, stiffness. Such people experience one emotion for a long time, cannot be distracted and change it at will, and are in a state of irritability, melancholy, and anger.
The most striking psycho-emotional disorders are disturbances of adequacy. Inappropriate emotional manifestations are classified as pathological according to the content criterion: what a person feels has no connection with his thoughts or external events. This group includes:
- Inadequacy.
With emotional inadequacy, a person experiences and demonstrates emotions that are completely inappropriate for the situation. For example, laughter occurs in response to the news of the death of people, outbursts of anger when meeting a loved one (mother, friend). - Ambivalence.
People with schizophrenia often experience ambivalence of experiences - the simultaneous existence of opposing emotions. This condition is difficult for a healthy person to understand. Outwardly, it manifests itself as a constant, unconditional change of joy and melancholy, tenderness and anger, anger and tearful weakness. - Emotional tension.
Inappropriate experiences may include pointless fear, unmotivated anxiety, an inexplicable feeling of anger or dissatisfaction with oneself. In such conditions, people are in emotional tension, but cannot determine what is causing it. Usually they say: “the soul is restless”, “the soul suddenly sinks into the heels.”
Structure of volitional action
Volitional (voluntary intentional) action
includes the following phases (Fig. 7):
- the emergence of motivation and goal setting (awareness of the goal and assessment of the situation);
- discussion and struggle of motives (choice of a method of action and activity in general);
- decision making (especially difficult in a non-standard or extreme situation);
- execution - achieving a goal (completing a task);
- analysis and evaluation of the results and the process of activity itself.
Rice. 7. Structure of volitional action
Involuntary action
performed without human control, does not require constant conscious regulation and includes:
automatic actions (pulling your hand away from a harmful stimulus, turning your head towards a sharp sound);
instinctive actions (consist of a number of simple automatic actions);
acquired actions (skills).
Will, as one of the most complex mental processes, creates certain mental states in a person (activity, composure, etc.) and is a very important, more or less stable mental phenomenon of the individual, on which the effectiveness of thinking and feeling, as well as the activity of actions, depend. practical actions and deeds.
Modern psychologists consider will from two philosophical positions:
indeterminism (idealistic direction).
- a person is absolutely free and his actions and actions are not limited by anyone or anything;
— will is a limitless spiritual force capable of overcoming any obstacles;
- the will does not depend on the material conditions of life.
determinism {materialist direction)'.
- the mechanisms of volitional actions depend on the lifestyle and nature of a person’s activity, the material conditions of his life, cause-and-effect relationships and relationships in which he is included;
—.will arises and develops according to social, and not biological laws.
3.2.3. Volitional personality traits. We list the main ones:
Determination
- a person’s ability to subordinate his actions to the goals that need to be achieved, mobilization of forces to correctly determine the ways, means, methods and techniques of his activities, i.e. this is the target orientation of decisions made and their implementation.
Decisiveness -
the ability to make timely, informed and firm decisions in various conditions of one’s life and activities. A person who acts hesitantly, hopes for someone’s help, or is confused cannot be called decisive.
Initiative -
a person's ability to act creatively; active and courageous flexibility of actions and actions that meets the time and conditions.
Independence -
the ability not to be influenced by various forces that can distract a person from achieving his goal.
If he unreasonably renounces his opinions and views and easily takes someone else’s point of view, does not act independently, not creatively, then he has not developed the strong-willed quality of independence. The opposite quality is conformism -
opportunism, passive acceptance of the existing order of things, prevailing opinions, etc.
Discipline
- a person’s ability to maintain order and certain rules. A disciplined person knows how to rationally organize his work and rest, and manages everything.
Self-control -
a person’s ability to control his thoughts and feelings, his actions and actions. People who have self-control are balanced and consistent.
Perseverance -
a person’s ability to mobilize his strength for a relatively long and complex struggle against obstacles and difficulties. Without persistence there can be no determination, independence, self-control, or determination.
Energy -
a person’s ability to act quickly and with great exertion of his physical and spiritual strength. An energetic person does not give up in the face of difficulties, always strives for something, makes plans and carries others along with him.
Performance -
a person’s ability to actively, diligently and systematically implement decisions made; the need to complete a task started or received.
To check how well you have mastered the topic “Emotional and volitional regulation of behavior”, take the test:
