What is emotion? How to become a master of emotions?
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Kizhi School” (ID:openmindclub), author菟 Kwai; authorized to reprint.
Usually we always feel that the senses affect the mood. In fact, the mood affects what we see and hear.
Image Source Animation “MaryandMax”
The above is the hero of my favorite clay animation, Max, who has “Asperger’s disease” and can’t understand other people’s expressions. He made a small book to remind himself what kind of face. It is an angry face, what kind of face is a happy face. Of course, this little book didn’t make him live better. After all, there are so many expressions that he can never understand.
Our usual understanding of expressions is similar to Max. Laughing is happy, crying is sad, eyes are so big that it is estimated to be angry. But the latest scientific research has found that there is no absolute correlation between human expression and emotion.
Different people will have different expressions when they feel the same emotion. Even if the same person feels the same emotion at different times, they may have different expressions. This scientist who specializes in emotions is Lisa Feder. Lisa Feldman Barrett, who wrote a special book on Emotions to popularize her own theory.
The book is called “Emotion”, but it is completely different from the book that teaches you to defeat bad emotions in 21 ways. Its English name HowEmotionsAreMade seems to be better, because this book is not just about emotions, mainly speaking How the brain works and how ideas are generated.
Professor Lisa put forward the “Emotional Construction Theory.” What is the difference between this theory and the traditional emotional view?
The traditional view is that emotion is the experience of people’s external events, but Lisa believes that our brain has created emotions in advance, and then emotions affect the external events we see;
The traditional view is that there is a certain area in the brain that triggers specific emotions, such as amygdala and fear, but Lisa through extensive analysis and experimentation finds that emotions do not have unique fingerprints, the same environment, the same thing, every The feelings and physical reactions experienced by the individual are different;
The traditional view is that emotions are innate, but Lisa believes that people’s perception of emotions is influenced by cultural practices.
But if you just take the conclusion and leave, you can’t understand the interesting part of this book.
To understand emotions, you must first understand how the brain works and three important things: emotional reality, concepts, and social reality.
Emotional reality
We often think that the future is unpredictable, but in fact our brains are always predicting.
The brain has 86 billion neurons, which form a huge network. The neurons stimulate each other, from birth to death, without sleep.
This intrinsic activity of the brain produces “predictions” that predict not only the need for physical energy, but also the input of sensations and the interpretation of inputs. The brain uses predictions to initiate body movements, so these predictions have already occurred without realizing or perceiving the purpose of body movement.
The brain compares the feelings of prediction and input. If the prediction is correct, it will become a real experience. If the prediction is wrong, the brain can choose to correct the prediction, or be stubborn, and only filter the sensory input that matches its own prediction. In other words, the feeling you experience now is actually predicted by the brain at the moment.
The feelings of prediction include the feelings of the outside world and the feelings inside:
The outside world feels better, including tactile olfactory sense of taste and so on. The inner feeling is a representation of the brain’s perception of blood flowing, the stomach digesting food, and the liver secreting bile.
The inner sensory network of the brain is divided into two parts, one called the body budget allocation area, which can send predictions to the body; the other part is called the primary inner feeling cortex, which is also predicted when the body budget allocation area predicts a motor nerve change. The corresponding sensations, called “inner sensation predictions”, are transmitted to the primary inner cortex, where they are simulated.
When body organs and tissues are normalIn operation, the primary inner cortex receives sensory input from it, compares the simulated and input sensations, calculates prediction errors, and creates inner feelings. Feeling inside is actually the source of most basic emotions, such as: happy, unpleasant, calm, nervous and so on.
The brain’s prediction of physical energy is called the body budget, just like the company’s finance department, predicting revenue and expenditure, maintaining a balance between consumption and intake. There are some interesting points about the body budget:
-
Even if the body doesn’t move, it just simulates movement in the brain, and the body budget changes.
-
Other people will also affect your body’s budget. When interacting with people, each other’s breathing, heartbeat, and other physiological signals will be synchronized. (The mystery of the physiological period of the female bed has been solved by this ( ̄ ̄ ̄))
-
Poverty can make people’s body budgets unbalanced for a long time, and the immune system is overactive. But if there is a supporter, the budget problem will be much reduced.
-
The body budget allocation area sometimes delays the correction of predictions. For example, the most difficult thing to do in long-distance running is the 2km start, the body is already full but still eating. (When you deposit or withdraw large deposits into your body budget – eating, exercising, and hurting, you must wait patiently for your brain’s reaction.
As the company’s financial meeting clears the account, the brain also summarizes the state of the body’s budget. This is the emotion (not the emotion), whether it is happy or not, and whether the arousal is high constitutes a four-quadrant coordinate:
Image Source “Emotion”
When the budget is out of balance, emotions go to the brain for help. The brain uses past experiences to predict which objects and events can affect the body’s budget and change emotions. Together with the events, these objects form the emotional space. The big difference between animals and humans is that animals have little emotional space.
The brain also gives meaning to emotions and is used to guide the next behavior. When we take the feelings we experience as the world, we will produce emotional reality.
If you wake up in the morning, you open the curtains and see that the weather is overcast and you feel the chest is very stuffy. You may experience depression and feel that it is caused by the weather, howeverIn fact, it is only because of the long-term lack of sleep.
For example, if you participate in an important interview, you are not confident in your play. You see the interviewer squinting at you, and I feel a panic, but in fact, the interviewer just didn’t eat. Breakfast is hungry now, and the reason why you see him frowning is because you predict that you will fail.
Usually we always feel that the senses affect the mood. In fact, the mood affects what we see and hear.
conceptual cascade
What is a concept?
The concept is the classification of all things in the world by human beings, the representation of everything we perceive in the brain. If there is no concept, the world will be chaotic.
So how is the concept formed?
In ancient times, people believed that there were clear boundaries between categories and categories of objects. Objects of the same category together formed a concept, and each instance under the category represented this category with equal accuracy.
But this is obviously not in line with common sense. When we mention fruit, we first think of apples and pears, and rarely think of figs and avocados. (I always think that with the fat content of avocado, it should definitely Classified as meat), then apples and pears are more representative of the concept of “fruit” than figs and avocados.
The prototype theory emerged after the classical view. Prototype theory holds that the concept has a typical description. Other members are a little deformation of this typical member. The human brain obtains the concept by constructing a prototype. But this explanation also has obvious problems. If our definition of fruit is the fruit that can be eaten raw, and the definition of vegetables is the food that needs to be cooked, then the classification of tomatoes and cucumbers will start to be chaotic.
Obviously, concepts are neither fixed nor the most common prototypes in the brain. In fact, there are many different instances in the brain. In some situations, the brain finds similarities between instances according to their own purposes, and then builds concepts.
For example, if you are cooking now, tomatoes can be used for cooking, then tomatoes are vegetables, but if you open the refrigerator now and see what can be eaten directly, then tomatoes are fruits. Another example is a river, a building, a mountain, and a gun. Together they form a concept – “things that can be used for suicide.”
The study of concepts is a continuous lifelong process. When humans are still in their infancy, they will receive a lot of fresh external information. The baby’s brain has a kind of ability called “statistical learning”, which can learn the frequency and regularity of the appearance of the object, and this learning will change the brain of the baby. Loop.
If the “ma” sound always appears in the form of a pile of words, and the frequency of occurrence is particularly high, the baby learns to call the mother. In addition to statistical learning, human beings also have a secret weapon, which is “vocabulary.” Through vocabulary, babies can not only learn from the outside world.Physical laws can also learn the concepts in the minds of others, which is psychological similarity. In addition, the brain has a powerful ability to combine existing concepts and generate a new concept.
The brain saves resources, uses as few neurons as possible to complete the more efficient transfer of information, will count from massive instances, extract similarities, and only pass differences, and those similarities constitute concepts, each concept Both contain countless instances.
When we need to apply this concept, the brain extracts all instances and builds a “prediction” that matches the sensory input by matching the pattern matching selection to the current situation.
In fact, “concept” and “prediction” are the same circuit of the brain, but in the opposite direction, this is the concept cascade:
Image Source “Emotion”
Social reality
Emotional reality, conceptual cascading is a thing that can be done by a human brain. Human beings are social animals. When you give a bunch of things a name, they create a concept and then tell the concept to others, at least Another person recognizes this concept, and each other’s brains together form a social reality.
It requires two abilities:
1. A group of people jointly recognize the existence of a concept, that is, collective intentionality;
2. Language, vocabulary can form concepts, and concepts can be spread through language. Vocabulary also contributes to psychological reasoning: understanding the intentions, purposes, and beliefs of others.
Is the sound real? No, the sound is the vibration of the air. Only when the ear exists, feels the change of air pressure, and converts the vibration into an electrical signal acceptable to the brain, which will produce a “sound”;
Is color true? No, color is the reflection of light of a certain wavelength by an object. Only when the eye is present and the reflected light is converted into an electrical signal can the brain give meaning and produce color.
Similarly, money, work, politics, law, etc., are all social reality. The entire civilization of mankind is based on social reality.
So is the emotion real?
What is the mood?
Emotional reality, concept, social reality, the three are the necessary conditions for the formation of thinking. What is emotion in the end is easier to understand, just like the color sound money law, it is the emotional reality constructed by human emotions, extracting similarities to form emotional concepts, and through the social reality generationThe generation continues.
When you are still a baby, you will continue to accept and learn the classification of emotional examples such as happiness, anger, and horror, and form a concept of emotion through the body prediction loop. When you need to use this emotional concept in the future, the brain automatically retrieves all instances and performs a whole brain simulation. The instance closest to the current situation will win and become your experience—an emotion.
Because of this feeling of emotion, it will be regarded as something that exists in reality. This process will adjust your body budget to give you a healthy life, and at the same time, in the process you will also affect the physical budget of the people around you.
For individuals, emotions can create meaning, guide actions, and regulate the body’s budget; for groups, emotions can synchronize and communicate, form collective intentionality, and influence other people’s behavior.
Therefore, if you blame yourself for being emotionally serious, it is too unnecessary. It may just be that the concept of emotions you master is too rough, there is no way to experience more subtle differences, or it is too seriously affected by emotional reality; If you want to strip emotions and be a pure “rational person”, it is too stupid, but it may become hesitant.
The emotion you experience is what the brain decided to let you experience at the moment.
However, when you lack a concept of emotion, you will not be able to perceive the corresponding emotional response. This involves “emotional granularity”. People with high emotional granules have a better emotional system. If a particular vocabulary can express the current mood, the brain will be more efficient in determining the winning instance.
How to become a mood master
Lisa also gives a lot of advice to become a master of emotions:
1, keep your body budget in good condition
a. Healthy eating, regular exercise, adequate sleep;
b. Keep your body comfortable: massage, bath;
c. Doing yoga (with slow breathing during physical exercise) can reduce the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and increase anti-inflammatory cytokines;
d. Improve the living environment, do not go to places with high noise and crowds; contact with green plants and natural light; indoor potted plants;
e. Reading good novels, watching movies, the default mode network is activated;
f. Take turns to have dinner with friends, giving and gratifying to the body budget.
2, constantly update the concept of enrichment – enhance emotional intelligence
Image source unsplash
Expand emotional vocabulary and improve mood granularity
a. Traveling, reading, watching movies, early adopters, and stimulating the brain to integrate existing concepts and form new concepts;
b.Learn new vocabulary (vocabulary concept, concept to drive prediction, predictive adjustment of body budget, body budget to determine your feelings);
c. Read some infrequently read books, listen to thought-provoking broadcasts, and learn emotional vocabulary in other languages;
d.Inventing emotional vocabulary yourself;
e. Practice thinking about your feelings in life and find different possibilities for action.
Record your positive experiences every day, reinforce the concept of positive practice, and make them more prominent in the mindset; don’t think about unpleasant things over and over again.
Psychological concepts can regulate the body’s budget, but when it doesn’t work, you should move your body (connect with the physical society).
a. Don’t sit for a long time, get up and exercise from time to time, play music and dance at home, go for a walk in the park;
b. Change location or environment, move to other cities or communities;
c. Deconstruct the experience and reclassify your feelings: Analyze the feelings caused by emotions into simple physiological feelings, such as interpreting anxiety as a rapid heartbeat. Then use a rich conceptual system to re-categorize, perhaps the heart beats quickly, not anxious but expecting, or excited;
d. Meditation helps to reclassify feelings;
e. Develop awe, such as awe of nature and awe of life.
3, socialize, build experiences with others
If you look at these suggestions, I will feel quite chicken soup, but after understanding the principles, this bowl of chicken soup can be done quickly, and has begun to force himself to fall asleep before 11 o’clock every day, which is better than the doctor’s words. !
Reading this book, there is a small surprise. The theory of emotional construction and the theory of personal constructs that I studied and studied before seem to be a perfect combination. Both are based on the theory of construction and have the assumption of a scientist. Have a prediction first, then experiment.
A good scientist will adjust the hypothesis and the next prediction through experimental results, and a poor scientist may ignore the experimental results or repeat the same experiment over and over again.
In this case, you can use Kelly’s personal construct analysis to study emotions. It seems to be a good way to analyze the emotional granularity. If you practice with other people, you may find those that you don’t usually feel. Emotional concept. ■