What are emotions?
To get into the mood for this chapter, please watch this short animated video about emotions:
“Alfred & Shadow – a short story about emotions”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=SJOjpprbfeE
The assumption that the rational excludes emotions has long been considered outdated in psychology. The neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Antonio Damasio points out that without our feelings we would not be able to make any decisions at all – and without decisions we would not be able to decide and carry out any action. Nevertheless, feelings are often ignored in conflict analysis and even in conflict management. Even in the tools we have dealt with so far, emotions and feelings appear rather marginally.[1]
When we speak of emotions, we quite often mean feelings. But the term feeling is not always unambiguous. We then talk about good and bad feelings. With this evaluation, we lose sight of the fact that emotions are very often something helpful, a resource, an enriching source in our lives. That is why the word emotions is more accurate, because it contains what it is all about: motion. Emotions have a potential, they give us the power to do something, and are therefore resources.[2]
There is neither a unified theory of emotion nor an interdisciplinary accepted definition of the concept of emotion, but several partly overlapping theories of emotion, each with a different focus and different methods. [3] For us, it is first important that emotions are current states of persons and thus differ from (emotional) dispositions. The emotion fear is something other than a basic anxiousness. Every emotion has a certain quality (e.g. sadness instead of anger) and a certain intensity (weak to strong). And emotions are usually directed towards an object (real or imagined). We feel ashamed about something, look forward to something, etc.
The occurrence of emotions means that the occasion situation is important for the feeling subject […], and emotions specify in what way the occasion situation is important and whether and how the feeling subject might react. [4]
Source:
[1] Vgl. António R. Damásio: Descartes’ Irrtum – Fühlen, Denken und das menschliche Gehirn. List, München 1994
[2] Glasenapp: Emotionen als Ressourcen: Manual für Psychotherapie, Coaching und Beratung. Mit Online-Materialien von Jan Glasenapp, Weinheim: Beltz, 2013
[3] Traue, H.C., Horn, A. B. Kessler & H. (2005) Emotion, Emotionsregulation und Gesundheit. In Schwarzer, R. (Hrsg.) Gesundheitspsychologie. Enzyklopädie der Psychologie. Göttingen: Hogrefe, S. 149-171
[4] Mediation: Psychologische Grundlagen und Perspektiven, Montada & Kals, 2007