End-year special: Why emotions can drive a second emotional response(2)

A child sees his mother smoking and is soon found with a twig in his mouth, copying the way she holds and inhales from a cigarette. A sociable imitation of another person’s behavior is termed mimicry. A woman crying on the streets sometimes makes one shed a tear. The sensation of crying was carried to the brain and fed back to your senses as pity that you’d want to share with.

The two examples above demonstrate that emotions can influence others. Emotions can spread like gangrene. Happiness spreads faster than anger. Patriotism is contagious. Anger makes others to like you less and to feel dissatisfied with your company.

The contagious effect of the emotions is particularly noticeable in group settings. We all love inviting gregarious and charming Sandra to our parties but allow introverted Alex to his lonely musings. An angry member of a group can spoil the group climate and create an atmosphere of negativity. Teams that were coached by a leader in a positive mood developed one.

When anger is directed at you, you can use the tools of effective listening to defuse the anger or fuel it by responding in kind.

All these are a second emotional response which are reactions to an observed emotion.

As humans, we register emotions in the brain, process them and decide to react emotionally or make other interpretations of these registers.

The next blog article,Series 3: How emotions play a part in decision making, describes emotions role in shaping decisions.

The rest of the series:

How to use emotions to Human Advantage (Introduction).

Series 1: How emotions can function as message bearers.

Series 2: Why emotions can drive a second emotional response.

Series 3: How emotions play a part in decision making.

Series 4: Information processing of emotional signals.

Series 5: The social context in responding and interpreting emotions.

Series 6: Implications of using emotions as social information tokens.

End-year special: How emotions can function as message bearers (1)

Emotions are our responses to internal or external events. A woman having a headache demonstrates it by either touching her hands to her head or saying it out that she has a headache. When we see a crime being committed on the street, our faces register signs of dismay and shock. On my face, your face, by body movements, by choice of words, by a silent whisper, a nod of the head, a smile of approval, a loving kiss, a hateful glance, emotions are expressed in countless ways that the senses can perceive and receive a message.

Some emotions are spontaneous. In my middle high school classes, it amazes me how the children sometimes begin drumming on the desks or exclaiming in alarm in reaction to some information in the lecture or to an answer to a question. Some are also premeditated.

Whatever the case may be, emotions are message bearers in that they convey to the observer the feelings, goals, needs, desires and social intentions of the creator of the emotion. Whether love at first sight exists or not, the reaction expressed by an observer to sex or other visual stimuli, was as a result of a emotion produced.

If happiness is appraised as a favorable and benign emotion that we all are attracted to, then what is anger? An expressive emotion that translates into a frustrated goal and taking the blame out on others.

Emotions surely convey messages and not just few, but lots of messages. Emotions then are worth studying and understanding if we want to build healthy social relationships.

The next blog article, Series 2: Why emotions can drive a second emotional response, describes the influential role of emotions in social life.

The rest of the series:

How to use emotions to Human Advantage (Introduction).

Series 1: How emotions can function as message bearers.

Series 2: Why emotions can drive a second emotional response.

Series 3: How emotions play a part in decision making.

Series 4: Information processing of emotional signals.

Series 5: The social context in responding and interpreting emotions.

Series 6: Implications of using emotions as social information tokens.

End-of-Year special: How to use emotions to Human Advantage (Introduction)

MJ captivated thousands with his emotional music.

Source:Wikimedia Commons.

If you watch any video of Michael Jackson, you’d be amazed at how he creatively uses his emotions – his voice, face, hands and body movements – to convey messages that are meant to influence you. Emotions are not only meant to influence others in social relations, it also determines our reactions and personal feelings. Take for example a man who sees a snake on his path. He feels the emotion of fear and decides either to run or look for a stick to kill it. Emotions regulate and coordinate humans and their relationship with others. Emotions could trigger a fight or a flight response.

A nation could go to war riding on the wave of emotions.

Understanding how our emotions determine our existence and using them to human advantage both at an intrapersonal and interpersonal level is then important. This end-of-year special series of blog articles will describe a model developed by Van Kleef that was developed towards this end, but on the interpersonal level. The model is named Emotions As Social Information (EASI) model.

The EASI describes human emotions as signals from one’s face, voice, bodily posture, choice of words etc that were expressed to influence the observer and trigger either an emotional response or trigger his brain to make deductions on what message(s) the emotion was meant to convey based on his information processing ability and social context.

The six series of blog articles that are focused on this theme are:

How to use emotions to Human Advantage (Introduction).

Series 1: How emotions can function as message bearers.

Series 2: Why emotions can drive a second emotional response.

Series 3: How emotions play a part in decision making.

Series 4: Information processing of emotional signals.

Series 5: The social context in responding and interpreting emotions.

Series 6: Implications of using emotions as social information tokens.

Puzzle: Can you make out what is X?

Can you solve the puzzle below, for x?

What is X?

Hint: You can change the angle of view - 90, 180 degrees, turn it upside down, whatever, to make out a different series.

I can't wait for the first correct answer!