Emotions and Behavior
Now that we have determined what our primary emotion may be, it’s time to look more deeply at what to do with it. I would like this to develop into a long running series. First we identify what our primary emotion may be and then we tackle what steps we may need to do to change it.
As the central theme of this site is focused on knowledge, it’s imperative to understand what our emotions are and how they interact with our thinking and every day life. Emotions are our bodies way of getting us to do things. When we are angry we tend to do something with force. When we are in love we tend to protect those that we love. Emotions are chemicals that get released in our brains that can change our actions based on the situation. Emotions aren’t the only things that deal with chemicals and behavior. When we are hungry our stomachs send information to our brains and we decide to eat. When we hit our funny bone on the desk, done it hundreds of times, our elbow sends a signal to the brain that something happened.
These neural signals in the brain are a marvel of engineering. Regardless if they are evolved or created, they are fascinating. A superhighway of signals running through our brain to get us to do things. Think about that for a moment. Our bodies are sending signals to our brain so that our behavior changes. So that we stop doing whatever it was were doing before, in the case of pain.
Our behavior is, in the most simplest of terms, what we do every day. What our conscious mind decides to do with our body. Our emotions can influence that behavior. If we are angry we will act differently than if we were not. We will change how we interact with the world around us based on the emotion that we are currently feeling.
Fear makes us flight or fight, love makes us want to stay with loved ones, anger makes us want to defend what we have. All of them have a goal. All of them are there to get us to do something so that we survive. Why? Why don’t we know to do those things? Why aren’t we programmed at birth to do everything we need to do in life? Ants are. Antelope’s are. Lots of animals are. We seem to be this mess of emotions pushing and pulling us towards doing a certain actions.
I want to make it clear though, pain is not an emotion. Neither is the desire to eat or sleep. They are alarm clocks in the body. They are parts of our body sending chemical and electrical signals to our brains to get us to do something. The end result is very similar to emotions. They are the bodies way to control us.
Emotions are one of the bodies behavioral control mechanisms. When our bodies recognize something as a danger, the fear mechanism fires off and the fight or flight syndrome takes over. Or when something challenges us, the anger emotion takes over and fills us with energy and the desire to attack. What’s really happening here behind the scenes? Our bodies are releasing chemicals based on observations. Those chemicals cause physical reactions that we call emotions. Those emotions interact with our conscious mind and influence, not control, our actions.
Our conscious mind is really only part of the equation when defining what it means to be human. Sigmund Freud called this the id. The sub-conscious mind. That part of our mind’s that we have no control over. If you think of a giant pyramid, only a small sliver at the top represents the conscious mind. The part of us that is awake and aware. In order to get that part that is awake and aware to do something that benefits the organism the body uses emotions.
OK, so, now what. We know that emotions and behavior are linked. That any one emotion can create a behavioral change in a person. That is a knowledge point. We now have identified a piece of information that we know to be true about ourselves. What can we do with it? Well, if emotions can influence behavior, and with certain behavior we can achieve certain results, can we influence emotions to willfully to generate the behaviorwe want? Yes! As we continue to examine this fascinating topic, we’ll find that knowing how our bodies work gives us a very powerful tool. A tool that we can use to shape ourselves into whatever force we consciously choose to be.
Read about consciousness here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html
Read about the ID and Frued here: http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html
