We all know that emotions play a huge role in our lives. But what many people don’t realize is just how much our perception of those emotions affects us. Our emotions are constantly fluctuating, and it can be difficult to understand why we feel the way we do sometimes. In this blog post, we will explore the psychology of emotion and discuss how our perception determines the course of our lives.
Emotional intelligence is an often overlooked yet extremely important component of success, both socially and professionally. It is a major key to cultivating close relationships, and recognizing, properly processing, and managing not only the emotional state of others, but also your own.
It can improve every area of your life. When you know how to handle your emotions, and recognize what they are telling you, you will discover just how much your values and assumptions control your life, and give yourself the
opportunity to either change or better work with them.
Emotional Intelligence
To be emotionally intelligent is to be able to identify and regulate your own emotions, recognize others’ emotions,
and utilize these skills to interact with others in productive ways.
Emotions have physiological, neurological, and cognitive bases. This means our emotional states are ultimately combinations of bodily sensations, innate brain processes, and reactions to past experiences.
This is why different people can experience different emotional reactions, even when faced with identical circumstances.
This spectrum of possible reactions is why emotional intelligence is often discussed in relation to empathy. Empathy, at its most basic level, is the ability to recognize the emotions another person is experiencing and to respond to them in a socially appropriate way.
Most humans have begun to develop a concept of empathy by the time they are two years old, so you’re probably well on your way to understanding how to apply this, and simply have to cultivate the self-awareness and confidence necessary in order to explore its full potential and channel it most effectively.
The Core of Emotional intelligence
The core elements of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, social awareness, self-regulation, and conflict
management. It is impossible to control your own emotions, let alone anyone else’s.
Thus your goal should be to learn how to properly react to and regulate your own emotions, learn to recognize other people’s emotions, and moderate your reactions to those as well. Even if you can’t control how you feel, or how anybody else feels, the way you feel does not have to, and should not, control you.
This is why self-awareness is so important: it gives you the basis to properly manage your emotions. When you can identify the emotions you feel, you can recognize what situations tend to cause them, and what forms your reactions to each emotion tend to take.
With this knowledge, you can manage your feelings by knowing which situations to avoid, how you might be able to modify an emotional situation, what you can focus your attention on instead, and which of your thoughts and responses can be changed through effort and acknowledgment.
When you react to another person’s emotions, it is important to give them the space to feel what they are feeling. Try to recognize what this person needs, and then provide the reassurance or other assistance they require.
Never try to rush to a solution, or to force one. Don’t withdraw from the situation physically or mentally. Do not engage in condescension – that is, to make this person feel as if they are broken and you are on a mission to heal or “fix” them.
Do not preach to them about what they “should have” done at that moment.
Always keep in mind that all people react to what they value, and this is what all emotions ultimately revolve around. We are happy when we receive or experience something that we personally value.
We become angry or frightened when we have lost, or believe we will lose, something we value. The thing that is valued can range from a physical object to an abstract concept: we are happy when we eat food we like – even if it objectively might not be the most beneficial to our physical health – because we greatly value the pleasure we receive from it.
We fear death because we place enormous value on continuing to live. When you desire something, you have placed value on it. Remembering this can help maintain a sense of empathy, and a clearer understanding of your own, and other people’s, motivations.
Recognizing your own emotional reactions in particular leads to understanding your own values, which helps lead you to figure out how to order your goals and plan your life accordingly.
Perceiving Emotions
The full goal of emotional intelligence is to be able to perceive, utilize, understand, and manage your own and others’ emotions. Accurate emotional perception, therefore, is paramount: if you fail to properly perceive, or recognize, an emotion, then how can you expect to properly interact with that experience and understand it to its fullest potential?
To begin this process, when you experience an emotion, first honestly identify what you are feeling, then examine how your body responds to this feeling. Never be judgmental of your emotional response, and avoid placing a moral weight on it.
The way you respond to any emotion matters far more than the emotion itself. Once you have identified and recognized an emotion, pause inside it, and reflect on it, what triggers it, and where it might have come from based on past incidents.
Write about your experience of this emotion. If you have somebody in your life who you can honestly and nonjudgmentally discuss these things with, reflect on your experience in dialogue with them.
Another important component of emotional intelligence is to give the same nonjudgmental empathy to other people’s emotions as you should to your own. Actions are more important than feelings, because actions are what can be regulated, and what actually lead to material consequences.
An emotion lives only inside you, and is nothing to be ashamed of. The only thing to truly be ashamed of, or to take pride in, is how poorly, or how well, you react to anything inside or outside of yourself.
Emotional Response
The most effective way to manage another person’s emotional response is to properly note that response in the first place. Remain calm and do not react immediately or in a strong way.
Speak to them in a way that shows you are aware of, or genuinely interested in figuring out, what they are feeling. Ask them questions about how they feel, how they are reacting to those feelings, and what led them to feel this way. If possible, react in a non-threatening physical way: comfort them, or mirror their expression or small movements.
Listen to what they tell you, and express your interest in what they are saying. Through this, you can identify what the root issue is – that is, what they actually value, and thus what it is they really want.
Facial Expressions
There are a number of cues that human beings draw from in order to properly perceive and convey their own emotions.
The main, and the most basic way that humans experience and recognize the emotions of others, and communicate their own emotions to others, is through facial expressions.
Emotion-induced facial expressions are universal, but there are seven specific emotional expressions that appear across all of humanity, regardless of background: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, contempt, and disgust.
When properly recognizing facial expressions, it is most crucial to focus on the eyes, eyebrows and mouth. These three areas combined can identify every facial expression. A method to take in another person’s facial expression quickly, to avoid staring, is to softly focus on the bridge of their nose, thus allowing your peripheral vision to take in the movements of the rest of their face.
(Note that there is a tendency for more openly, verbally emotionally expressive people to put much more emphasis on the movement of mouths when it comes to recognizing or expressing emotions, while more emotionally subtle or reticent people have a tendency to focus on reading what is conveyed by others’ eyes, and to communicate more with their eyes.)
The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a map of twenty-six factors of facial movement and how their interactions correlate in order to form the seven universal human expressions.
This system was developed by psychologists in the 1970s and has been used across disciplines ever since, for example: to aid interrogators in discerning honesty and falsehood, by animators in order to make their characters seem more lifelike, and by software developers to build more accurate facial recognition in artificial intelligence.
But you don’t need to be a professional in order to benefit from studying FACS or any other resources concerning facial expression. Recognizing facial expressions is a skill most humans are born with and possess on a basic level, but like any other skill, it can be honed, or even learned.
Having a reliable and accurate read of facial expressions is the most convenient and immediate form of social awareness available to most people. If you are nervous about looking others in the eyes, or at their faces, there are ways to build confidence and skills in that area.
Practice looking in the mirror. Using breathing exercises to calm yourself before you have to speak to people, so you will be less nervous. When surveying a person’s face, you can focus on only one of their eyes.
(It is important to note that prosopagnosia is a condition that affects around two percent of the population. It is characterized by face blindness – that is, the persistent inability to properly recognize faces or to discern facial expressions. If you experience this condition, or suspect that you do, please contact a specialist and research prosopagnosia. There are ways to adapt to this condition, but to explain those in detail is beyond the scope of this article.)
Bringing It All Together
Having a grasp on your basic perceptions of emotions – when it comes to both yourself and those you encounter – sets you on a solid foundation to build up and work toward mastery of emotional intelligence, a skillset integral to bringing clarity and improvement to your own motivations and thus to how you approach to your own life and your relationships with others.
Self-awareness is meant to lead to self-regulation and increased social awareness, which culminates in effective conflict management. Practice acceptance of your own emotions, and figure out strategies to best handle those emotions, and then extrapolate that awareness as empathy in your approach toward other people’s emotional experiences.
When you honestly recognize your own emotional reactions and their root causes, you come to figure out what you truly value, which informs the direction of your life, how you choose to spend your time, and your approach to the world in general.
Recognizing and being curious about other people’s emotional responses clues you into what they truly value. Knowing what someone truly values is an indispensable way to figure out where you clash with them, where you agree with them, and why, and what your best strategies are to approach them in a spirit of cooperation and mutual benefit.
When you cultivate emotional intelligence, you gain clarity and insight into your own choices and reactions, and insight into any assumptions you’ve made about life that could be changed or improved, and the extent to which your past experiences control your present self.
You can build an accurate, workable idea of your weaknesses, strengths and limitations, and the ways those things have shaped you, and how you might reinforce or surpass them. This helps you build firm confidence in your choices, goals and abilities, and in your capacity to understand and interact positively with other people.
It improves all of your interpersonal relationships and fundamentally aids you in not only achieving and acquiring the things you want, but also intelligently helping others do the same – and helping them know how to best help you.
Emotional intelligence is like any other skill: you can work to become better at it, and to improve your understanding of it and how to usefully apply it to your own life. Some people have a more natural tendency toward it than others, but that does not mean that it is prohibitively difficult to learn. (And just because a person is gregarious, outgoing, or a people pleaser does not mean they actually have good social skills or high emotional intelligence!)
For all the valuable benefits it can provide you, it is worth the effort it takes to cultivate.
Wow. Fantastic article. Thank you.