CHAPTER
11

Emotions in Motion

In This Chapter

The powerful love between Romeo and Juliet, the bitter rivalry between Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, the passion of Martin Luther King Jr. …. When it comes to the human species, emotions move us—and sometimes rule us.

So how do couples maintain their love in the face of constant danger? How do the spouses of firefighters and police officers kiss them good-bye every day, knowing that this could be the last time they see them alive? In the face of stress, do we learn to ration our emotions? Do we gradually lose our ability to feel?

This chapter explores the psychology of emotions: how we feel and express them, how our culture influences them, what purpose they serve, and how we can handle our moods more effectively.

Hooked on a Feeling

Whether we admit it or not, our emotions guide much of what we do; they focus our attention, help us record experiences more strongly in our memory, and arouse us.

Most of us equate emotions with feelings. We feel angry, sad, afraid, or happy. But in reality, emotions are much more complicated. When we feel an emotion, we experience a complex pattern of physical arousal, feelings, and thoughts in response to a personally significant situation.

Imagine your boss humiliating you in front of your co-workers. Not only would you feel angry, but you would also think angry thoughts. You might find yourself plotting revenge or obsessing over why he did what he did. Your heart also would beat faster and your blood pressure would rise.

Your emotions would stimulate you to take action. You might yell or cry in the privacy of your office. If it happened often enough, you might quit your job. Or you might decide to reframe your boss’s rude behavior as his problem and not take it so personally. No matter what you do, you are responding to your emotions; they have signaled danger and geared you for action.

BRAIN BUSTER

So you think you can hide your feelings from your children? Think again. By age five, children can recognize surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, anger, and fear about as well as most college students.

Situations that are perceived as highly threatening or highly rewarding will also be highly emotional. So how angry you get about your boss’s rude behavior will depend on how personally significant the situation is to you. If your boss’s opinion is important to you or if his comments challenge your sense of self-worth, you’ll feel much angrier than if you discount what he says or refuse to take it personally. Similarly, if you had a great time on a first date, you’re going to be more disappointed if she never calls you again.

Deadlines, transitions, and approaching endings also add fuel to our feelings. In one study, participants were asked to picture themselves having a disastrous dinner at a close colleague’s home; she burns the meal and nothing goes as planned. Half the participants were told to imagine that the colleague was retiring and moving to another city the next week, while the other half were advised that it was “dinner as usual.” Even though both groups imagined the same event, the “retiring” group said they would feel more closeness, more patience, more respect, more sadness, and less irritation toward their well-intentioned but culinary-challenged colleague.

Adjust Your Attitude and Improve Your Love Life!

For many of us, one of the easiest mistakes to make in our relationships with other people is to assume that there’s a “right” amount of emotional intensity for any situation (which, of course, is usually the amount we are feeling). Someone who feels more strongly than we do is overreacting. And of course, when we try to “help” him by pointing this out, he blows a fuse!

Certainly, some people are hotheads, and some people are unusually sensitive. However, most of the time, people have emotional reactions that are consistent with the importance of the topic to them. You might not mind being called “Baldy,” but to someone who invests a lot of self-esteem in his physical appearance, that teasing comment can be highly threatening and provoke strong feelings. So the next time someone “overreacts,” don’t waste your energy trying to change his feelings. Try changing your own attitude!

PSYCHOBABBLE

Romantic love is much more than lust. In fact, brain images of newly in-love young men and women showed neurons firing in the areas of the brain associated with motivation and reward, which may be why we feel “driven” to win the affection of our loved one. Sex and love involve two quite different brain functions.

Where Did These Feelings Come From?

Let’s face it. Love may not make the world go ’round, but it sure helps people put up with each other. It gives us rose-colored glasses in the beginning of a relationship. It gets us through the hassles of meeting someone, courting him or her, getting married, and fighting over the remote control. Could parents put up with all the sleepless nights, poopy diapers, and Barney videos without that incredible emotional bond with their child? Evolution thought not.

Our emotional capacity may also have been naturally selected. Emotions drive us to behave in certain ways. They are specialized mental states designed to deal with recurring situations in the world. Our ancestors with the strongest feelings may have been more motivated to defend their turf, protect their young, and impress their mate than those who were less passionate. As a result, they were the ones who survived.

INSIGHT

Are you furious at a loved one? Before approaching her, do something physical (jog, exercise) to blow off steam and reduce physical arousal; then think about it. Watch those thoughts; instead of plotting revenge strategies or reliving what’s happened, set a goal that will help you maintain self-control (for example, “I want to get this resolved before our party tonight”).

In-the-Body Experiences

Your emotions are whole-body experiences. People who are anxious say their heart races, they can’t breathe, they feel jittery, and they can’t sit still. People suffering from profound sadness lose their appetite and can’t sleep. Your body and your mind are constantly interacting with each other, and the messages your body sends can either magnify or inhibit your emotions.

This emotional connection between your mind and your body is formed in your brain. While certain parts of your body respond to different emotions, your brain is the matchmaker that coordinates these bodily changes and emotional feelings. Specifically, the amygdala in the limbic system and the frontal lobes in the cerebral cortex act as your emotional regulators (see Chapter 13).

Animals get pretty whacked out when their amygdalas are removed. For example, monkeys who have no amygdalas demonstrate a fascinating phenomenon known as psychic blindness. They can still see objects, but they seem to be completely indifferent to the objects’ psychological significance. Nothing scares them. Nothing angers them. And they become pretty indiscriminate in their search for pleasure; some of them attempted to eat or have sex with just about anything—alive or not!

Humans aren’t quite that indiscriminate, even without their amygdalas. People who have suffered damage to the amygdala experience a subtle version of psychic blindness in which they lose the ability to detect fear or anger in the voices or faces of others.

INSIGHT

When it comes to interpreting facial expressions, our brains are speed-readers; we can process them in 40 milliseconds or less! Studies show that our brains detect fearful expressions more rapidly than happy or neutral expressions. Perhaps it’s no mystery that we perceive happy faces the slowest. Happy faces, after all, signal safety. If something is safe, we don’t need to pay attention to it.

What We Think About Feelings

You can’t blame (or credit) all your emotions on your amygdala. Your frontal lobes are also critical in your conscious experience of feelings, and they help you get a grip on the way you express them. Your frontal lobes help you plan, and initiate, your responses to your feelings. We probably don’t have fewer emotions than our most primitive ancestors; we’ve just developed the brakes—our frontal lobes—to help control them. Without our frontal lobes, we’d still be bopping each other over the head with clubs!

In Chapter 4, we talked about the nature-versus-nurture debate in child development. Here’s another chicken-or-egg argument, and this is an emotional one: does your body react to your feelings or are your feelings an interpretation of your bodily sensations?

Common sense argues for the first explanation. First we get angry, and then our body gets all fired up. However, William James, the father of American psychology, thought the reverse was true. In his view, we don’t cry because we’re sad; we’re sad because we cry. (James’s beliefs, it bears noting, arose from a single research subject: himself!)

The essence of James’s theory is that our first “take” on a situation (e.g., that a snake is poisonous) and the subsequent physical arousal occurs quickly, automatically, and without conscious thought. James believed that emotions came later, as a result of the physical sensations. The sequence went like this:

  1. You get punched.
  2. Your body responds to the punch automatically.
  3. Your mind registers your bodily response and interprets it to mean you’re angry.

Cognitive psychologist Stanley Schachter took this a step further. He recognized that emotions are dependent on more than feedback from the body. In his view, our perceptions and thoughts about what’s happening influence which emotion we feel (anger, fear, joy), and sensory feedback from the body influences how intensely we feel it (very joyful or mildly happy). If we see a snake, for instance, our belief that snakes are dangerous will cause us to feel fear. And if our body gets all fired up (we start sweating, our heart starts pounding), our fear might turn to terror.

The Emotional Landscape

Our perception of the world isn’t always right, especially if it’s clouded by painful past experiences. For example, when shown pictures of faces, children who have been physically abused were much more likely to think that the people in them were angry—even when they weren’t. When shown pictures of faces, these children were able to accurately recognize the pictures but interpreted the expressions differently; they were much more sensitive to anger.

INSIGHT

Our emotions can be manipulated. Research subjects were injected with adrenaline and then exposed to emotion-eliciting stimuli such as a sad movie or an angry story. Adrenaline itself did not produce any particular emotion; the subjects might have felt jittery or jazzed up, but they didn’t associate it with a feeling. However, when the drug was combined with an emotional situation, their emotions were stronger. They felt angrier in response to the angry story and sadder over the tear-jerking movie.

Perhaps these children developed a broader sensitivity to anger because it’s adaptive for them. However, an abused child might also misinterpret a social cue, such as an accidental ball toss during recess, to be hostile and, as a result, try to protect herself by lashing out, calling names, or exhibiting other inappropriate behaviors.

Touchy-Feely Psychology

Our past isn’t the only thing that can jumble up our feelings. Apparently, so can wishful thinking. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me he was attracted to a new co-worker, Linda, and was convinced she felt the same way. “She’s so cute. Whenever I go into her office, she seems so nervous. She gets so distracted when I talk to her; she stumbles over her words, and yesterday, she dropped her pencil. I know she likes me.”

Recently, at a dinner celebrating their wedding anniversary, Linda was talking about their early courtship. “I don’t know why Rob was attracted to me. I was a nervous wreck over having my first job. I was so preoccupied with doing well, I barely even noticed Rob’s existence until he asked me out.” What Rob had optimistically interpreted as a sign of Linda’s interest in him was a bad case of first-job jitters!

Unfortunately, these kinds of emotional misinterpretations can lead to tragedy. In some date-rape situations, the male may be thinking, “Well, if she really wanted me to stop, she’d scream or hit me or run away” while the female freezes, thinking, “If I scream or hit him or try to run, he might hurt me even worse. Maybe if I just don’t respond, he’ll realize how scared I am and stop.”

BRAIN BUSTER

Because of the strong link between physical and emotional arousal, it’s easy to misinterpret bodily sensations as emotions. Being overheated can be interpreted as feeling anxious, while being tired can feel like depression. This means that taking care of our bodies is one of the best paths to good mental health—being tired or hungry, for example, makes us much more vulnerable to mood swings.

Are Your Feelings Cultured?

All human beings are remarkably similar with regard to the kinds of emotions we feel. We also speak and understand the same emotional language; the facial expression of an unhappy New Guinean is similar to the facial expression of an unhappy North American. But if you’ve ever traveled in another country, you’ve noticed that culture sets the standard for when to show certain emotions and how strongly to show them.

PSYCHOBABBLE

When are emotions real? In one study that measured brain waves, the auditory hallucinations of schizophrenics actually stimulated the parts of the brain that involve motivation and emotion. In addition, there was no corresponding activity in the part of the brain that checks out reality. This brain pattern suggested there would be no way of knowing whether these voices were real or whether an emotional response to them was reasonable.

I’ve worked quite a bit with a Finnish-owned company that has a huge headquarters in the United States. One of the biggest cultural differences between Americans and Finns is in the expression of emotion. In fact, early on, I was given a cartoon titled “The Finnish Expression of Emotions.” Underneath it was a list of numerous emotions—sad, happy, afraid, surprised, angry—and above each emotion was a picture of the exact same stone face!

From an American perspective, the Finnish culture seems to breed a bunch of Mr. Spock clones. From a Finnish perspective, Americans probably seem like a bunch of impulsive, irrational children! While Americans and Finns feel the same feelings, their culture sends very different messages about what a person can do and say about them.

Guilt Trippin’

If someone has ever laid a guilt trip on you, you know what a powerful social influence it can be. Some psychologists believe guilt is designed to keep us from repeating bad behaviors in the future. Others see guilt as a form of social control that motivates us to keep our behavior in line with the moral standards of our community.

INSIGHT

Most of us are poor lie detectors. The best bet to detecting deception rests in perceiving patterns of the liar’s behavior and facial expressions over time. Once you’ve established a baseline of how a person normally behaves, you’re more likely to smell a rat when s/he deviates from the way s/he typically acts.

Emotional Intelligence

Eleanor Roosevelt was known as “First Lady of the World” for decades after her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, died. Biographers, who spent years interviewing her closest friends and family, discovered that Eleanor possessed an uncanny understanding of people, an endless compassion for the underdog, and an incredible ability to motivate and channel her emotions into purposeful goals. In pop-psychology terms, Eleanor Roosevelt was a genius of emotional intelligence.

The term emotional intelligence (EI) was first coined by Yale psychologist Peter Salovey and the University of New Hampshire’s John Mayerto to describe qualities such as understanding one’s own feelings, empathy for the feelings of others, and the ability to use one’s emotions in a productive way. An emotional quotient (E.Q.) is not the opposite of an intelligence quotient; some of us are blessed with lots of both, while some have little of either. Researchers are now trying to understand how the two complement each other—how our smarts about our feelings help us put our intellectual abilities to better use.

Emotional intelligence teaches us that, in the contest of life, we’re much better off being Miss Congeniality than Miss America. Positive interpersonal relationships, we’re finding, are the key to the best of what life has to offer, and our ability to understand ourselves and others gets us that key. In his groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence, psychologist Daniel Goleman outlines interpersonal skills that he believes greatly enhance or hurt our quality of life:

Self-awareness—knowing what we’re feeling when we feel it

Managing our emotions—knowing what to do with our feelings

Motivating ourselves—thoughtfully channeling our feelings in the right direction

Empathy—feeling for others and accepting their feelings, too

Handling relationships—having good interpersonal skills so others feel good about us

PSYCHOBABBLE

Evolution programmed us to respond emotionally to threats in our environment, and we’re still doing it. The percentage of airline travelers who felt nervous about flying jumped from 60 percent to 81 percent in the six months following the 9/11 hijackings.

Why are some people more emotionally intelligent than others? Emotions might be built-in, but they can also be shaped by experience. Even very young children develop a repertoire of sensitive responses when they see others acting compassionately.

If, on the other hand, the feelings a child expresses are not recognized and reinforced by the adults in her life, the child will gradually become less able to recognize them in herself or in others. Not only will this cause problems in her relationships, but she will also have lifelong trouble with something we all struggle with now and then—managing her everyday moods.

Managing Your Everyday Moods

Do you ever wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Do you get in a bad mood for no reason? Do you have a temper that’s hotter than a jalapeño? If you answered yes to all three questions, here’s your diagnosis: you’re moody!

Moods are crucial indicators of your physiological functioning and your psychological experience at any given moment. Your mood is like a clinical thermometer, reflecting all the inner and outer events that affect you.

INSIGHT

A recent study of former NFL football players showed that a low E.Q. is highly predictive of addiction, depression, relationship problems, financial woes, and a tendency toward violence. Athletes with a high E.Q. enjoy a greater overall quality of life, both in the glare of the spotlight and after the spotlight fades. Perhaps if teams invested in a little emotional intelligence training, they’d create winners for life.

Meet the Mood Managers

How do you get yourself out of a funk? Do you listen to music? Exercise? Watch TV? Have sex? Eat? Call someone? Or do you try to avoid people or situations that are upsetting you?

If you use physical exercise as one of your mood-management strategies, go to the head of the class. Studies show that regular physical exercise is one of the most effective mood regulators we have. Even a 10-minute walk can beat the blues and raise our energy level.

Other effective mood managers are listening to music, using relaxation techniques, challenging negative thoughts, enjoying humor, and getting lost in a hobby or other productive activity. Expressing your feelings through writing (such as keeping a diary or journaling) may actually help not only your emotional health but your physical health as well! And as any psychologist will tell you, focusing on others can be amazingly effective in taking the focus off yourself and gaining some emotional perspective!

On the other hand, avoidance, isolating yourself from others, and behaviors such as eating, smoking, and drinking reduce tension in the short run but may increase it over time. Yes, eating dark chocolate can boost your serotonin levels temporarily and make you feel happier for a little while, but, alas, the good feeling is soon gone.

Talking things over with a friend is a good strategy as long as you end your conversation with an action plan and don’t get stuck wallowing in your emotions! Co-rumination—excessively rehashing problems with another person and dwelling on the negative feelings associated with those problems—can lead to increased depression and anxiety symptoms, which in turn perpetuates a vicious cycle of more co-rumination.

Teenage girls are believed to be especially susceptible to the co-rumination factor, perhaps because—some psychologists suggest—they’re more likely than boys to take personal responsibility for failures. High anxiety, coupled with a high-quality friend to talk to, may actually provide a uniquely reinforcing context for co-rumination.

PSYCHOBABBLE

Believe it or not, your problems seem different at different times during the day, depending on your mood and your energy level. See for yourself: write down a personal problem you’re having and then make a journal entry about it at four separate times during the day. Don’t be surprised if the same problem that looked so grim late at night seems less troublesome at midmorning.

Drugs and Emotions

It’s no coincidence that most cases of sexual assault and domestic violence occur when the perpetrator is under the influence of a drug—usually alcohol. Drugs can distance us from our emotions and make us care less about the other person’s feelings or lead us to feel the other person “deserves” punishment. Then we can find ourselves sobering up later in a jail cell, not believing what we’ve done.

The use of certain drugs, such as PCP or ketamine, has been associated with some especially horrific episodes of violence. And you’re better off keeping away from all drugs—including alcohol—when you’re already angry. Some evidence even shows that years of heavy drug or alcohol abuse can stunt emotional growth, probably because we’re using substances to avoid our feelings rather than learning how to deal with them.

Ground to Trauma Control: Do You Read Me?

Rape, a devastating earthquake, the murder of a child—these are experiences that, thankfully, most of us will never encounter. And not surprising, our emotional reaction to extreme trauma can feel like an out-of-body experience when, in reality, it’s our body’s amazing way of helping us cope at a pace we can handle.

Physiologically, many people report initially feeling numb, disoriented, or shocked. Unfortunately, this kind of response can easily be misinterpreted by loved ones as either an inappropriate lack of feeling (why isn’t she crying about what happened?) or a lack of emotional impact (she’s such a strong person; maybe she just didn’t let it get to her). This physical and emotional numbing is often short-lived, however, and can be followed by a flood of emotions including terror, rage, grief, and physiological arousal.

People with posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, are often completely unable to control emotional intrusion into their thoughts. They get caught up in a physiological loop between the amygdala, where we process emotions, and the hippocampus, the main memory-processing center. The emotion triggers the memory, the memory triggers the feelings again more intensely, and we’re trapped in a painful cycle from which we can’t seem to escape.

DEFINITION

Posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat, a natural disaster, serious accident, or violent personal assaults. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged; these symptoms can be severe and impair the person’s daily life.

New research reveals that the brain actually has a built-in mechanism for preventing emotional distractors from interfering with mental functioning. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the executive processing region of the cortex, has the ability to inhibit activity in the emotion-processing cortex, bringing hope for eventual treatment of intrusive thoughts.

Don’t Do Me Any Favors

In the wake of cataclysmic disasters such as terrorist attacks, hurricanes, or school shootings, debriefings—counseling sessions that allow survivors to discuss their feelings and reactions—are often provided for survivors immediately following the traumatic event. In fact, some agencies have routinely and automatically provided debriefing sessions to all survivors of a horrific event.

But new research suggests that the theory that people must express their distress in order to recover from trauma may be not only false, but, for some people, downright harmful. Results of an anonymous web-based survey found that 9/11 survivors who chose not to express thoughts and emotions about the attacks reported fewer diagnosed physical and mental disorders over a two-year period than people who did express their thoughts and feelings right after the event.

Not everyone copes in the same way. The normal recovery time from a trauma varies from person to person and can take up to two years. In fact, a one-size-fits-all approach to trauma counseling can result in the diversion of resources away from people who are truly at risk. This approach may also interfere with an individual’s natural coping process of seeking support from family and friends—a process that some studies have shown to be equally effective in facilitating long-term recovery.

Additionally, families of victims and first responders such as law enforcement officers and firefighters, who are at higher risk for long-term problems, may require special assistance. In particular, cognitive behavior therapy—a type of psychotherapy in which negative thought patterns about the self and the world are challenged in order to alter unwanted behaviors and painful feelings—can help trauma survivors neutralize trauma and learn to re-experience the traumatic event without reliving it.

PSYCHOBABBLE

The number-one cause of PTSD is motor-vehicle accidents. Accident survivors most at risk for PTSD are those who suffered a serious physical injury, witnessed the death or serious injury of a loved one, had reason to fear that they might die during the accident, and have limited social support during the recovery process.

The Least You Need to Know