The main emotional states that a person experiences. Coursework: Psychology of Emotional States

The most diverse manifestation of emotional states is observed in life. The following types of emotional experiences are considered to be the most significant: affects, actually emotions, feelings, moods, emotional stress.

1) Affect- the most powerful type of emotional reaction. Affect is an emotional state of an explosive nature, proceeding rapidly, characterized by a change in consciousness, a violation of volitional control. Examples of affect are intense anger, rage, horror, violent joy, deep grief, despair.

One of the main features of affect is that this emotional reaction irresistibly imposes on a person the need to perform an action, but at the same time the person loses a sense of reality, and he ceases to control himself. In a state of passion, the functioning of all mental processes changes. In particular, attention changes dramatically. Its switchability is reduced, and only those objects that are mediocrely associated with experience fall into the field of perception. All other stimuli that are not associated with the experience are not in the field of attention of a person, they are not sufficiently aware of them, and this is one of the reasons for the uncontrollability of a person's behavior in a state of passion. In a state of passion, it is difficult for a person to foresee the results of their actions, since the nature of the course of thinking processes changes. The ability to predict the consequences of actions is sharply reduced, as a result of which purposeful behavior becomes impossible.

The cause of affect is the state of internal conflict, the contradiction between attraction, desire, desire and the inability to satisfy it. Affects are especially pronounced in children. Affects negatively affect human activity, sharply reducing its organization. In a state of passion, a person loses power over himself. However, anyone can cope with affect in the early stages of its development. The main thing is to delay an affective outburst, to restrain yourself.

2) The next group of emotional phenomena is actually emotions. Emotions differ from affects, first of all, in duration. If the affects are mostly short-term in nature (for example, an outburst of anger), then emotions are more lasting states. Another distinguishing feature of emotions is that they represent a reaction not only to current events, but also to probable or remembered ones.

In many situations, in addition to pleasure and displeasure, there is a feeling of some voltage, on the one hand, and permissions or relief, on the other side. Another manifestation of emotional processes is excitation and tranquility. An agitated emotional state is usually active in nature, associated with activity or attempts to do it. Excessive excitement can, however, frustrate purposeful activity, make it chaotic, chaotic. Calm is associated with decreased activity, but also serves as the basis for its appropriate use.

Attempts were repeatedly made to highlight basic "fundamental" emotions... In particular, it is customary to highlight the following emotions.

Joy- a positive emotional state associated with the ability to sufficiently fully satisfy an urgent need.

Astonishment- emotional reaction to suddenly arisen circumstances that does not have a clearly expressed positive or negative sign.

Suffering- a negative emotional state associated with the received reliable or seemingly such information about the impossibility of satisfying the most important vital needs.

Anger- an emotional state, negative in sign, as a rule, proceeding in the form of affect and caused by the sudden appearance of a serious obstacle to the satisfaction of an extremely important need for the subject.

Disgust- a negative emotional state caused by objects (objects, people, circumstances, etc.), contact with which comes into sharp conflict with ideological, moral or aesthetic principles and the subject's attitude.

Contempt- a negative emotional state that arises in interpersonal relationships and is generated by the mismatch of life positions, views and behavior of the subject with life positions, views and behavior of the object of feeling.

Fear- a negative emotional state that appears when the subject receives information about a real or imagined danger.

Shame- a negative state, expressed in the awareness of the correspondence of one's own thoughts, actions and appearance not only to the expectations of others, but also to one's own ideas about appropriate behavior and appearance.

It should be noted that emotional experiences are ambiguous. The same object can cause incoherent, conflicting emotional relationships. This phenomenon is called ambivalence (duality) of feelings... Usually ambivalence is caused by individual features complex object in different ways affect the needs and values ​​of a person.

There is a certain balance between negative and positive emotions. If we have experienced negative emotions, there is a desire to experience positive ones.

Emotions can be more than just positive or negative. PV Simonov singles out mixed emotions when both positive and negative shades are combined in the same experience (for example, getting pleasure from fear in the "room of horrors").

3) Another group of emotional states are human moods. Mood- a stable emotional state that affects human activity. Through the mood, a person, as it were, reflects his attitude to reality. Mood is the longest lasting or "chronic" emotional state that colors all behavior. Mood is distinguished from emotions by less intensity and less objectivity. The reason for the mood is always there, but it is not always realized by a person. A person's mood reflects an unconscious generalized assessment of how favorable circumstances are for him at the moment. The mood can be joyful or sad, cheerful or depressed, cheerful or depressed, calm or irritated, etc.

The mood significantly depends on general condition health, from the work of the endocrine glands and, especially, from the tone of the nervous system. The reasons for this or that mood are not always clear to a person, and even more so to those around him. But the reason for the mood always exists and to one degree or another can be realized. It can be the surrounding nature, events, activities performed and, of course, people.

4) stress- a state of prolonged and strong psychological stress associated with emotional overload. The concept was introduced by the Canadian physiologist G. Selye to designate an extraordinary reaction of the body to any strong impact... His studies have shown that various adverse factors (cold, pain, fear, humiliation) cause the same type of complex reaction in the body, which does not depend on what kind of stimulus is acting on it at the moment. Stress never is zero, in moments of indifference, it is simply minimal. Stress is a common reality in our life.

Types of stress:

1) physiological: the body's response to stress - the release of adrenaline, hormones into the blood thyroid gland etc. Prolonged exposure to stress shortens life and causes illness.

2) psychological: informational(a high degree of responsibility with a lack of time) and emotional(threat, danger, resentment, a person is left alone with his problems for a long time).

Different people may react differently to stress.

Frustration- a mental state characterized by the presence of a stimulated need that has not found its satisfaction. The state of frustration is accompanied by negative experiences: disappointment, despair, anxiety.

Distinctive features of frustration: surprise, uncertainty, change in the usual course of events.

The level of frustration depends on the strength and intensity of the influencing factor, the state of the person and the forms of response to life difficulties that have developed in him. Resistance to frustrating factors ( tolerance) depends on the degree of his emotional excitability, type of temperament, experience of interaction with such factors.

Higher senses. As noted by A. V. Petrovsky, feelings are one of the main forms of a person's experience of his attitude to objects and phenomena of reality, which is distinguished by relative stability. Feelings arise as a generalization of many emotions directed at an object. Feelings, in turn, influence emotions. Strictly scientific use of the term "feelings" is limited only to cases when a person expresses his positive or negative, ie. evaluative attitude to any objects. At the same time, unlike emotions that reflect short-term experiences, feelings are long-term and can sometimes remain for a lifetime.

In psychology, it is customary to distinguish the following types of feelings: moral, intellectual and aesthetic feelings.

Moral (moral) feelings their content is related to man to man and to society. The basis for assessing these feelings is the moral norms that govern the behavior of the individual in all spheres of social life. Moral feelings include: love, compassion, benevolence, humanity and etc.

Intellectual senses express and reflect the attitude of the individual to the process of cognition, its success and failure. These include: doubt, joy of discovery, love of truth.

Aesthetic feelings reflect and express a person's attitude to various facts of life and their display in art as to something beautiful or ugly, tragic or comic, sublime or low.

In the course of life, each of us has certain emotional states. They determine both the level of information and energy exchange of a person and the direction of his behavior. Emotions can control us very much. Their absence is no exception. After all, this is such an emotional state that allows you to describe human behavior as special.

Theoretical basis

The term "emotions" was introduced at the end of the 19th century. The appearance of this concept is associated with the names of the Danish physician and anatomist G. Lange and the American psychologist and philosopher W. James. The authors were not familiar. However, independently of each other, they came to the same conclusions.

According to the developed concept, human emotions can be caused by the following:

Transformations of the motor sphere;
- external influences;
- changes in the field of involuntary acts.

Emotional states are the sensations that arise during this process. According to the James-Lange theory, we are frightened because we begin to tremble, and our tears become the cause of sadness.

Physiologist W. Cannon put forward his own theory of emotions. Criticizing the James-Lange concept, he drew attention to the fact that emotional experiences are primary. Only after their occurrence do physical changes occur. In addition, when the nerve connections of the human body are interrupted, the disappearance of emotions does not occur. According to Kennon, physiological phenomena are designed to tune a person to those situations that will require a lot of energy from him.

There are also theories that explain the emergence of emotions by cognitive factors. They were developed by L. Festinger and V. Simonov. According to these concepts, a person, consciously or not, compares the information he has received about the object that he needs to satisfy his needs with that which he has. At the same time, he has certain emotional states.

Wellbeing

The emotional states of a person are in direct proportion to the nature of her mental activity. At the same time, there is also a feedback. A person in good condition is able to activate his cognitive and volitional activity.

However, the emotional states of a person depend not only on the type of activity performed by him. They are proportionate to the state of health. Feedback can also be observed here. After all, even a patient who is in a very serious condition, during a spiritual recovery, is able to feel absolutely healthy.

Emotion classification

Everything that a person encounters in his daily life evokes a certain attitude in him. Some phenomena or objects contribute to the appearance of sympathy in him, while others - disgust. In this case, a person has a variety of reactions. It can be a violent outburst of passion and barely contained anger.

Emotions are mental processes that reflect the personal significance of a person and are expressed in the form of experiences. They are an assessment of internal and external situations that an individual gives in the course of his life. Based on this, it can be argued that emotions are a subjective concept. They are a complex mental phenomenon.

Exist different kinds emotional states in the form of their course. These include:

Affects;
- feelings;
- the actual emotions;
- mood;
- emotional stress.

Affect

This is the most powerful type of human reaction to this or that event. Affect is understood as a rapidly flowing, intense, but at the same time short-term emotional state. These emotional outbursts include rage and intense anger, violent joy and horror, despair and deep grief. These reactions, as a rule, are able to fully embrace the human psyche and determine his reaction to the situation as a whole.

The main feature of affect is that such an emotional state literally imposes the performance of any action. In such a situation, people lose their sense of reality. They lose control over themselves and are not aware of their actions. These emotional processes and states change some physiological functions... Thus, a person's attention span is reduced. Only the object that is directly related to the experiences falls into the field of his perception. Attention on this subject is concentrated so much that a person is simply not able to switch to something else. In addition, in such an emotional state, it is impossible to predict the consequences of the actions performed. That is why a person behaves inappropriately.

Emotions

Their main difference from affect is that this phenomenon can be prolonged. Moreover, emotions arise not only as a reaction to current events. They also appear during memories.

Emotional experiences have different colors. It can be dissatisfaction and pleasure. There are situations when, on the one hand, there is a feeling of tension, and on the other, relief in resolving the issue. Calm and arousal is another manifestation of emotional states. The first of them is associated with a decrease in activity. Excitation is, as a rule, violent in nature, it arises when performing any work or during preparation for it.

There is a classification of emotions that distributes them according to their impact on the activities that a person conducts. These are two categories, which include:

1. Stenic emotions. Their appearance has a beneficial effect on human activities. Sthenic emotions give additional strength and energy. They also contribute to the appearance of the courage necessary to make statements or actions. Such an emotional state of a person prompts him to many accomplishments. Moreover, to carry out the plan, he uses the internal reserves of the body.

2. Asthenic emotions. They are characterized by stiffness and passivity.

Feelings

Feelings are also included in the list, which includes various types of emotional states. Their main difference from emotions lies in the fact that they, as a rule, are specific and objective. Sometimes there is such a thing as a "vague feeling." In this case, this process is seen as a transitional process from emotions. In addition, feelings are invariably manifested externally. Emotions, as a rule, are a hidden phenomenon.

Feelings reflect the attitude towards any particular object (real or imaginary). And this happens for a long time. A person will not have feelings at all if they do not relate to a certain subject. For example, there is no love if there is no object of affection.

The highest manifestation of feeling is passion. This is a very difficult emotional state. It is considered to be a fusion of motives, emotions and feelings, which are concentrated around a certain object or type of activity.

Mood

Emotional states are different. However, they certainly reflect those individual characteristics that are inherent in the personality. So, a melancholic mood is often minor, and a choleric person is excited. However, the bulk of people, regardless of belonging to one category or another, have averaged mixed indicators of activity. The emotional state of a person depends on his health and mood. The latter factor gives the experiences and activities of people a certain color. In this case, the mood always has its own reason, although this is not always realized by a person. It can change under the impression that arose in connection with various events, facts. People around you, nature, health, work or study can affect your mood.

Emotional stress

This is a special kind of condition. It is characterized by pronounced psychoemotional experiences of various conflict situations that carry a long-term limitation of the satisfaction of biological and social needs.

Emotional stress is mainly of social origin. Moreover, their manifestation is becoming more frequent with the development of scientific and technological progress. A person is affected by the accelerated pace of life, information overload, environmental problems and ever increasing urbanization. It should be borne in mind that emotional stress negatively affects the body, causing various pathological changes in it.

Emotional states in children

It is easy to see that babies are usually impulsive and spontaneous. The emerging emotional state of the child is variable and uncertain. However, as the baby grows, everything changes. Emotions become more lasting, stable and strong. This is due to the changes that general character activities of the child. In addition, the increasingly complex attitude of the preschooler to the world around them plays an important role here. This reveals a certain interdependence and relationship between cognitive and emotional processes, which are the two most important aspects. mental development personality.

Emotions play an essential role in the formation of the moral behavior of a person. But it should be borne in mind that any motives will acquire an incentive force only under the influence of emotional experience, which a child can receive only with the active participation of an adult. Parents and educators should be aware that negative emotional states caused by negative experiences contribute to the appearance of various deviations in the child's behavior. This must be taken into account in the upbringing process.

Emotional states of adolescents

Children from 13-14 years old have special feature... It is characterized by the intensity and severity of emotional states. A teenager is able to literally bathe in his own grief, guilt or anger for a long time. Children of this age have an increased need for sensations. Moreover, all the feelings experienced should be not only strong, but also new. Often this is expressed in love for loud music or leads to the first acquaintance with drugs.

One or another emotional state of adolescents is characterized by the ease of appearance. However, in the process of personality formation, its connections with the outside world become more complex and ambiguous. With an ever-increasing level of a person's organization, his emotional sensitivity rises. And the range of those factors that caused a feeling of excitement in a teenager does not narrow at all with age, but, on the contrary, expands.

Diagnostics of emotional states

Various reactions of a person to certain phenomena are closely related to his physiological indicators. That is why the diagnosis of emotional states relies on heart rate, arterial pressure, skin-galvanic reactions.

Electromyographic methods for diagnosing emotions have been developed and are used. They are carried out by measuring facial expression (facial expression).

Diagnosis of the emotional state is carried out using speech analysis. This takes into account the frequency of the speaker's tone for the entire period and for the selected segment; the interval in which the tone frequency changes; irregularity of the tone line. Analysis of these indicators will determine the degree of a person's emotional reaction.

Diagnostics of the relationship of a person to certain events can also be carried out using psychological methods. Among them are:

1. Questionnaire Shmishek (character accentuation).
2. The person's perceived guilt index.
3. Aggressive behavior.
4. Diagnosis of hostility.
5. Life style index.
6. Diagnostics of self-esteem.

Emotional mental states are determined using many other techniques.

Self-regulation on arousal

Tense emotional states in all people lead to a change in facial expressions, an increase in skeletal muscle tone and speech rate. The person becomes fussy, makes mistakes in orientation. He changes not only breathing and pulse, but also his complexion.

Regulation of emotional states allows you to calm down and take control of your state. The easiest but most effective way is to relax the facial muscles. Such self-regulation of emotional states is needed to control the reactions that arise in unforeseen situations.

So, reflexively (automatically) at the moment of anger, the expression on the face changes, the teeth clench. To eliminate this phenomenon, you need to ask yourself questions: "Are my teeth clenched?", "How does my face look from the outside?" This allows facial muscles to relax.

Improving breathing is considered another important reserve of self-regulation. It differs in different situations. A person sleeping and working, cheerful and angry, frightened and saddened breathes differently. It all depends on our inner state.

The effect on breathing is considered one of the ways of self-regulation of the emotional state. In this case, it is necessary to perform breathing exercises, the meaning of which lies in controlling the frequency, rhythm and depth of inhalation and exhalation. To do this, you will have to hold your breath at different intervals.

It is also possible to regulate the emotional state with the help of visualization. Thanks to it, the imagination is activated, as well as visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile sensations. This allows you to distract yourself from the tense situation that has arisen and restore peace of mind.

The concept of "emotion" is sometimes defined as the integral emotional reaction of the individual, which includes not only the mental component - experience, but also specific physiological changes in the body that accompany this experience. In such cases, they talk about emotional state human (I.B. Kotova, O.S. Kanarkevich). In emotional states, changes occur in the activity of the respiratory system, digestion, cardiovascular system, endocrine glands, skeletal and smooth muscles, etc.

The fact that emotions should be considered as states was first emphasized by N.D. Levitov. He wrote about this: “In no sphere of mental activity is the term“ state ”so inapplicable as in emotional life, since in emotions, or feelings, the tendency to specifically color the experiences and activities of a person is very clearly manifested, giving them a temporary direction and creating what, figuratively speaking, can be called the timbre or qualitative originality of mental life. "

So, the emotional side of states is reflected in the form of emotional experiences (fatigue, apathy, boredom, aversion to activity, fear, joy of achieving success, etc.), and the physiological side - in a change in a number of functions, primarily vegetative and motor ... Both experiences and physiological changes are inseparable from each other, that is, they always accompany each other.

Consider emotional states such as anxiety, fear, frustration, affect, stress, interest, joy.

Anxiety- This is a vague, unpleasant emotional state, characterized by the expectation of an unfavorable development of events, the presence of forebodings, fear, tension and anxiety. Anxiety differs from fear in that the state of anxiety is usually pointless, while fear presupposes the presence of an object, person, event or situation that causes it.

Anxiety cannot be called unequivocally good or bad. Sometimes anxiety is natural, adequate, useful. Everyone feels anxious, anxious or stressed in certain situations, especially if they have to do something unusual or prepare for it. For example, giving a speech to an audience or taking an exam. A person may feel anxious walking down an unlit street at night or when he gets lost in a strange city. This type of anxiety is normal and even useful, as it encourages you to prepare a presentation, study the material before the exam, and think about whether you really need to go out at night all alone.

In other cases, anxiety is unnatural, pathological, inadequate, harmful. It becomes chronic, constant and begins to appear not only in stressful situations, but also for no apparent reason. Then anxiety not only does not help a person, but, on the contrary, begins to interfere with his daily activities.

In psychology, the terms "excitement" and "anxiety" exist as extremely close in meaning to anxiety. However, theoretically, there is a possibility for the separation of excitement and anxiety into experiences that are independent in relation to anxiety. So, on the one hand, anxiety is characterized by a negative, pessimistic connotation (expectation of danger), when describing excitement, experience tells us that it can be both pleasant and joyful (expectation of something good). On the other hand, anxiety, as a rule, is associated with a threat to one's own personality (feeling for oneself), while anxiety is often used in the sense of “feeling for another”.

This dilution more clearly outlines the area that is described by the psychological term "anxiety". First of all, the following points should be emphasized: a negative emotional connotation, the uncertainty of the subject of feelings, a sense of a real threat, as well as an orientation towards the future, which is expressed in the fear of what will be, and not what was or what is.

Anxiety- This is a person's tendency to experience a state of anxiety. Measuring anxiety as a personality trait is especially important, since this property largely determines the behavior of the subject. A certain level of anxiety is a natural and obligatory feature of an individual's vigorous activity. Each person has their own optimal, or desirable level of anxiety - this is the so-called useful anxiety. A person's assessment of his condition in this regard is for him an essential component of self-control and self-education.

Individuals classified as highly anxious tend to perceive a threat to their self-esteem and vital activity in a wide range of situations and react very tensely, with a pronounced state of anxiety. If the psychological test reveals in the subject high rate personal anxiety, then this gives reason to assume that he has the appearance of a state of anxiety in various situations, and especially when they relate to the assessment of his competence and prestige.

Under personal anxiety is understood as a stable individual characteristic reflecting the subject's predisposition to anxiety and suggesting that he has a tendency to perceive a fairly wide range of situations as threatening, responding to each of them with a certain reaction. As a predisposition, personal anxiety is activated when certain stimuli are perceived by a person as dangerous, associated with specific situations of threats to his prestige, self-esteem, and self-esteem.

Situational, or reactive anxiety how the state is characterized by subjectively experienced emotions: tension, anxiety, concern, nervousness. This state arises as an emotional reaction to a stressful situation and can be different in intensity and dynamic in time.

Most often, a person's anxiety is associated with the expectation of the social consequences of his success or failure. Anxiety and anxiety are closely related to stress. On the one hand, alarming emotions are symptoms of stress. On the other hand, the baseline level of anxiety determines the individual's sensitivity to stress.

If the anxiety persists long enough, the person begins to look for the source of danger, eliminates it and repent. If the source of anxiety cannot be eliminated, anxiety turns into fear. Thus, fear Is the result of the work of anxiety and thinking.

Fear is a very dangerous emotion. Phobic fears bring great harm to a person, i.e. phobias. A person can be intimidated to death. Fear can explain the death of African aborigines after breaking a taboo. In ancient times, those sentenced to death died of fear, when the priest passed his hand over the skin of the elbow bend, they thought that their veins had been cut. But fear is not only evil. Fear is a protective reaction of the body, it warns of danger. The fact is that with fear, the stimulation of the nervous system is enhanced.

In this state, it is easier to be active (naturally, with low degrees of fear), which can lead to the development of interest, which often drowns out fear. Fear is given to us by nature for self-preservation. A persuasion such as "I'm not afraid of anything!" - harmful. This is one of the extreme poles, a deviation from the norm. A person completely devoid of fear does not feel any danger. His instinct for self-preservation is dulled. His life can end very quickly. It's okay to be afraid. It is helpful to have the belief that "I can control my fear."

Frustration- the mental state of a person caused by objectively insurmountable (or subjectively so perceived) difficulties arising on the way to achieving a goal or solving a problem; experiencing failure.

Distinguish: frustrator - the cause causing frustration, frustrating situation, frustrating reaction. Frustration is accompanied by a range of mostly negative emotions: anger, irritation, guilt, etc. The level of frustration depends on the strength, intensity of the frustrator, functional state a person who has fallen into a frustrating situation, as well as from the stable forms of emotional response to life's difficulties that have developed in the process of personality formation. An important concept in the study of frustration is frustration tolerance (resistance to frustrators), which is based on a person's ability to adequately assess a frustrated situation and foresee a way out of it.

Levitov N.D. highlights some typical conditions that are often found under the action of frustrators, although they appear each time in an individual form.

These conditions include:

1) Tolerance.

There are different forms of tolerance:

a) calmness, prudence, readiness to accept what happened as a life lesson, but without much complaining about oneself;

b) tension, effort, containment of unwanted impulsive reactions;

c) flaunting with accentuated indifference, behind which carefully concealed anger or despondency is masked. Tolerance can be nurtured.

2) Aggression. This state can be clearly expressed in pugnaciousness, rudeness, cockiness, or it can take the form of latent hostility and anger. A typical state of aggression is an acute, often affective experience of anger, impulsive disorderly activity, anger, loss of self-control, unjustified aggressive actions.

3) Fixation - has two meanings:

a) stereotype, repetition of actions. Understood in this way, fixation means an active state, but in contrast to aggression, this state is rigid, conservative, not hostile to anyone, it is a continuation of the previous activity by inertia when this activity is useless or even dangerous.

b) attachment to the frustrator, which absorbs all attention. The need to perceive, experience and analyze a frustrator for a long time. Here, the stereotypicality of not movements is manifested, but perception and thinking. A special form of fixation is capricious behavior. An active form of fixation is going into a distracting activity that allows you to forget.

4) Regression - a return to more primitive and often infantile forms of behavior. And also a decrease in the level of activity under the influence of a frustrator. Like aggression, regression is not necessarily the result of frustration.

5) Emotionality. In chimpanzees, emotional behavior occurs after all other adjustments to the situation have failed.

Sometimes frustrators create a psychological state of external or internal conflict. Frustration takes place only in cases of such conflicts in which the struggle of motives is excluded because of its hopelessness and sterility. The endless hesitations and doubts themselves turn out to be the barrier.

Frustration is different not only in its psychological content or orientation, but also in duration.

She may be:

Typical for a person's character;

Atypical, but expressing the emergence of new character traits;

Episodic, transitory.

The degree of frustration (its type) depends on how prepared the person was to face the barrier (both in the sense of being armed, which is a condition of tolerance, and in the sense of the perception of the novelty of this barrier).

Affect- a strong and relatively short-term emotional state associated with a sharp change in vital circumstances important for the subject and accompanied by pronounced motor manifestations and changes in the functions of internal organs. Affect can arise on an event that has already occurred and be, as it were, shifted to its end.

Affect is based on the state of internal conflict experienced by a person, which is generated either by contradictions between drives, aspirations, desires, or contradictions between the requirements that are presented to a person (or he presents them to himself). Affect develops in critical conditions when the subject is unable to find a way out (adequate) from dangerous unexpected situations. A.N. Leont'ev notes that affect arises when something needs to be done, but nothing can be done, i.e. in desperate situations.

The criteria for determining affect according to A.N. Leontiev:

1) pronounced vegetative changes;

2) disorder of consciousness;

3) impulsive behavior, lack of planning;

4) mismatch of affective behavior with personality.

Ya.M. Kalashnik examines the pathological affect and distinguishes three phases in its development: the preparatory phase, the explosion phase and the final phase.

Preparatory phase. Consciousness is preserved. Emotional tension appears, the ability to reflect is disturbed. Mental activity becomes one-sided because of the only desire to fulfill one's intention.

Explosion phase. From a biological point of view, this process reflects a loss of self-control. This phase is characterized by a disorderly change of ideas. Consciousness is disturbed: the clarity of the field of consciousness is lost, its threshold decreases. Aggressive actions take place - attacks, destruction, struggle. In some cases, instead of aggressive actions, behavior becomes passive and is expressed in confusion, aimless fussiness, and meaninglessness of the situation.

Final phase. The final phase is characterized by depletion of mental and physiological forces, expressed in indifference, indifference to others, a tendency to sleep.

Two functions of affect can be distinguished:

1. Possessing the property of a dominant, affect inhibits mental processes that are not associated with it and imposes on the person a way of "emergency" resolution of the situation (numbness, flight, aggression), which has developed in the process of biological evolution.

2. The regulating function of affect consists in the formation of affective traces that make themselves felt when faced with individual elements of the situation that generated the affect and warn of the possibility of its repetition.

The term "stress" dates back to the field of physics, where it refers to any stress, pressure, or force applied to a system. In medical science, this term was first introduced by Hans Selye in 1926. G. Selye drew attention to the fact that all patients suffering from a variety of somatic ailments seem to have a number of common symptoms. These include loss of appetite, muscle weakness, high blood pressure, and loss of motivation for achievement. G. Selye used the term "stress" to describe all nonspecific changes within the body and defined the concept as a nonspecific response of the body to any demand presented to it.

In the modern scientific literature, the most frequently criticized question is how “non-specific” the stress response is. Other researchers (Evеrly, 1978) argued that the stress response is specific in nature, which depends on the strength of the stimulus and the individual characteristics of the organism. The strength of an irritant is understood as the effect on the human body of a significant (meaningful) factor for it, as well as a strong extreme effect.

Thus, stress (in a narrow sense) is a set of nonspecific physiological and psychological manifestations of adaptive activity under strong, extreme influences for the body. Stress (broadly speaking) - these are nonspecific manifestations of adaptive activity under the action of any factors significant for the body.

In 1936, G. Selye described a general adaptation syndrome, which, in his opinion, contributed to the acquisition of a state of habit to harmful effects and maintained this state. Adaptation Syndrome - a set of adaptive reactions of the human body, which are of a general protective nature and arising in response to stressors - adverse effects of significant strength and duration.

Adaptation syndrome is a process that naturally occurs in three stages, which are called the stage of stress development:

1. Stage "anxiety" (stage of mobilization) - mobilization of the body's adaptive resources.

Lasts from several hours to two days and includes two phases:

1) the shock phase is a general disorder of the body's functions due to mental shock or physical damage.

2) the "counter-shock" phase.

With sufficient strength of the stressor, the shock phase ends with the death of the body within the first hours or days. If the adaptive capabilities of the body are able to withstand the stressor, then the counter-shock phase begins, where mobilization takes place defense reactions organism. The person is in a state of tension and alertness. Physically and psychologically, he feels good, is in high spirits. In this phase, psychosomatic diseases (gastritis, stomach ulcers, allergies, etc.) often pass, and they return to the third stage with tripled strength.

No organism can be constantly in a state of anxiety. If the stressor is too strong or continues to act, the next stage of stress ensues.

2. Stage of resistance (resistance). It includes a balanced expenditure of adaptive reserves, supported by the existence of an organism in conditions of increased requirements for its adaptation. The length of this stage depends on the innate fitness of the organism and on the strength of the stressor. This stage leads either to stabilization of the condition and recovery, or to exhaustion.

3. Stage of exhaustion - loss of resistance, depletion of mental and physical resources of the body. There is a mismatch between the stress-generating effects of the environment and the body's responses to these requirements. Unlike the first stage, when the stress state of the body leads to the disclosure of adaptive reserves and resources, and the human body can cope with stress on its own, in the third stage, help can be provided only from the outside, either in the form of support, or in the form of eliminating the stressor exhausting the body.

Depletion of adaptive capacity- a condition leading to the appearance of negative changes in the mental state of a person. These negative changes can cover all levels of mental maladjustment: psychotic and borderline.

The psychotic level includes various types of psychotic reactions and states (psychoses). Psychosis - a deep mental disorder, manifested in a violation of the adequacy of reflection the real world, behavior and attitudes towards the environment. A psychotic state or reaction can occur as a response of the body to a sudden acute traumatic event (death of relatives or information about death, threat to one's life, etc.) and, as a rule, are irreversible (complete recovery does not occur).

The borderline (pre-psychotic) level of stress response includes various types of neurotic reactions (neuroses) and psychopathic states (psychopania). Neuroses - a group of borderline functional neuropsychiatric disorders resulting from violations of particularly significant life relationships a person due to a traumatic situation. Psychopathy is a personality anomaly characterized by the disharmony of its mental makeup.

Now let's look at our emotional needs. Man is programmed to be happy. If he wants to be healthy, active and live long, he must be happy.

Our well-being requires three kinds of stimuli to act on the brain.:

Evoking positive emotions (35%),

Evoking negative emotions (5%) - they stimulate activity, make them look for new approaches and methods. They arise when our activities do not give the desired results.

Emotionally neutral stimuli (60%). Those. the environment should be neutral so that there is no discomfort and the person can focus on their activities.

A distinctive feature of positive emotions is that they keep us in the present, the best time is the present. The past is gone, the future is not yet. Only in the present does the union of soul and body take place. Negative emotions take the soul either to the past or to the future. The body is always in the present.

Psychologically, a person strives for happiness. Emotionally, the state of happiness is accompanied by positive emotions of interest and joy. They are manifested in creative work and love. Interest prevails only in creative work, and joy is, as it were, a reward for success in work. In love, on the contrary: in order to extract great joy, you need to work a little.

Biochemically state of interest accompanied by the release of endorphins into the blood - substances, in their psychological and physiological action resembling the action of morphines. Therefore, when a person is interested, he is not sick, eats in moderation and does not want to drink. When does it arise state of joy , alcohol is thrown into the blood. At this moment, the person becomes a little stupid, stops working. In the presence of alcohol, recovery processes are the fastest.

Interest is the most commonly experienced positive emotion. Interest, as the American psychologist K. Izard points out, is extremely important in the development of skills, knowledge and intelligence. It promotes the development of intelligence and allows the individual to engage in any activity or develop skills until he has mastered them.

Interest plays an important role in the development of creativity. “A creative person in a state of inspiration loses the past and the future,” wrote the psychologist A. Maslow, “lives only in the present. She is completely immersed in the subject, fascinated and absorbed by the present, current situation that is happening here and now, the subject of her studies. "

The emotion of interest is accompanied by the optimal functioning of all organs and systems. However, it also has a drawback. With prolonged sustained interest, the body's resources can be depleted. Remember how, with unflagging interest, you could read an exciting book or play a game all night. computer game without feeling sleepy. But the next day, your performance declined.

Joy is what is felt after some kind of creative or social meaningful action, which was not produced for the purpose of obtaining benefits (joy is a by-product). According to K. Izard: “Joy is characterized by a feeling of confidence and significance, a feeling that you love and are loved. The confidence and personal significance that are acquired in joy give a person the feeling of being able to cope with difficulties and enjoy life. Joy ... is accompanied by satisfaction with others and the whole world. "

Some scientists believe that pain, fear, suffering are at the other pole of joy. As Tomkins points out, joy occurs when the stimulation of the nervous system decreases. People who cannot experience a sense of joy directly from interesting creative work choose professions associated with increased danger (climbers, installers, high-altitude workers, etc.). When they manage to avoid danger, they have a feeling of joy.

For some people, the whole process of life is associated with joy. They already enjoy being alive. Such people go through life more slowly and calmly. Joy enhances responsiveness and, according to Tomkins, promotes social interaction.

Intense interest keeps you on your toes. Joy, on the other hand, soothes a person. Repetitive joy increases a person's resistance to stress, helps him cope with pain, and be confident in his own strength.

Classification of emotional states. Emotional states have a wide variety of manifestations. According to the degree of intensity and
duration they can be long, but weak (sadness), or strong, but short-term (joy).
According to subjective experience, all the variety of emotions can be divided into 2 categories: positive emotions associated with the satisfaction of a person's vital needs and therefore giving pleasure, and negative emotions associated with dissatisfaction of vital needs and therefore giving displeasure. In terms of content, emotions can be classified into simple and complex, depending on what level of needs are satisfied in a person. The simpler ones include anger, fear, joy, grief, envy, jealousy, the more complex ones - moral feeling, aesthetic feeling, patriotism, etc.
Finally, according to the form of flow, all emotional states are divided into sensory tone, mood, emotions, affect, stress, frustration, passion, higher feelings.
Sensual tone. Simplest form emotional experience - this is the so-called sensual, or emotional, tone. Sensual tone is understood as emotional coloring mental process, prompting the subject to preserve or eliminate it. It is well known that certain colors, sounds, smells can by themselves, regardless of the memories associated with them, cause us a pleasant or unpleasant feeling. So, good music, the smell of a rose, the taste of orange are pleasant, they have a positive emotional tone. If a negative sensual tone turns into painful disgust, then they speak of idiosyncrasy.
The sensual tone, as it were, accumulates the reflection of useful and harmful factors of the surrounding reality. Due to its generalization, the sensory tone helps to make a preliminary and quick decision about the meaning of a new stimulus, instead of comparing it with all the information stored in memory. The sensual tone is often subjective and depends on how the activity proceeds: the partner who constantly loses to us seems more attractive than the one who constantly wins over us. Despite its outward insignificance, knowledge and purposeful use of sensual tone allows you to influence a person's mood, improve labor productivity, study intensity, etc.
Mood. Mood is understood as a general emotional state that colors all human behavior for a long time. Mood is an emotional reaction not to immediate events, but to their significance for a person in the context of his general life plans. This is not a special experience confined to some particular event, but a spilled, general state.
The mood is very varied and can be joyful or sad, cheerful or depressed, cheerful or depressed, calm or
irritated, etc. The reasons for this or that mood are not always clear to the person experiencing them. It is not for nothing that they talk about unaccountable sadness, causeless joy, and in this sense, a mood is an unconscious assessment by a person of how favorable circumstances are for her. But this reason is always there and can be determined. It can be the surrounding nature, events, activities performed. The mood significantly depends on the general state of health, on the work of the endocrine glands and, especially, on the tone of the nervous system.
Moods can vary in duration. Stability of mood depends on many reasons: a person's age, individual characteristics of his character and temperament, willpower, the level of development of the leading motives of behavior.
Long-term mood can color a person's behavior for days or even weeks. Mood can become a stable personality trait - on this basis, people are divided into optimists and pessimists.
At the same time, the mood can be short-term, which is especially pronounced in childhood... Without an established hierarchy of motives, children easily succumb to mood changes: any emotional impression gives rise to unstable, variable, capricious moods. With age, the mood becomes more stable - the influences that are significant for the personal sphere cause a change in mood.
Emotions. Emotions are a direct, temporary experience of a feeling. So, for example, the feeling of love for football is not an emotion. Emotions will be represented at the stadium by the state of admiration that the fan experiences when watching a good game of athletes or the emotion of indignation, indignation at a lazy game or inexperienced refereeing.
Emotions can be triggered by both real and imaginary situations, are able to anticipate events that have not really occurred yet, and arise in connection with ideas about previously experienced or imaginary situations.
From the point of view of influence on human activity, emotions are divided into sthenic and asthenic. Stenic (or "hypersthenic") emotions include euphoria, mania, anger, anxiety; among the "asthenic" ones are sadness, melancholy, apathy, fear.
Stenic emotions stimulate a person's activity, induce him to actions, statements. And, conversely, asthenic emotions are characterized by stiffness and passivity. Therefore, depending on the individual characteristics of a person, emotions can influence behavior in different ways. So, in a person experiencing a feeling of fear, an increase in muscle strength is possible and he can rush towards danger. The same feeling of fear can cause a complete breakdown, and fear can cause knees to buckle. Grief may
cause apathy, inactivity in a weak person, while a strong person doubles his energy, finding comfort in work and creativity.
Emotional experiences can be ambiguous, contradictory. This phenomenon is called ambivalence (duality) of feelings. Usually, ambivalence is caused by the ambiguity of the object itself (for example, you can respect someone for their performance and at the same time condemn someone for their irascibility). Ambivalence can also be generated by the contradiction between stable feelings for the subject and situational emotions (for example, love and hate are combined with jealousy).
The main, fundamental emotions include pleasure, joy, suffering, surprise, disgust, anger, contempt, shame, interest, fear.
The oldest in origin, the simplest and most common form of emotional experience among living beings is the pleasure obtained from the satisfaction of organic needs (or the displeasure associated with the dissatisfaction of organic needs). Almost all organic sensations have their own emotional tone. The close connection that exists between emotions and the activity of the body is evidenced by the fact that any emotional state is accompanied by many physiological changes in the body.
Joy is a positive emotional state associated with the ability to sufficiently fully satisfy an urgent need, the likelihood of which until this moment was small or uncertain.
Suffering is a negative emotional state associated with the information received about the impossibility of satisfying the most important vital needs, which until that moment seemed more or less likely, most often proceeds in the form of emotional stress.
Surprise is an emotional reaction that does not have a clearly expressed positive or negative sign to sudden circumstances. Surprise slows down all previous emotions, directing attention to the object that caused it, and can turn into interest.
Disgust is a negative emotional state caused by objects, contact with which conflicts with
ideological, moral or aesthetic principles of the subject. Disgust, if combined with anger, may interpersonal relationships motivate aggressive behavior.
Anger is a negative emotional state that proceeds in the form of affect and is caused by the sudden appearance of a serious obstacle to the satisfaction of an extremely important need for the subject.
Contempt is a negative emotional state that arises in interpersonal relationships and is generated by the mismatch of the subject's life positions with the life positions of the object of feeling. The latter appear to the subject as vile, not corresponding to accepted moral norms and aesthetic criteria.
Shame is a negative emotional state, expressed in the realization that one's own actions and appearance do not correspond to the expectations of others or one's own ideas about appropriate behavior and appearance.
Interest (as an emotion) is a positive emotional state that promotes the development of skills and abilities, the acquisition of knowledge, and motivates learning.
Fear is a negative emotional state that appears under the influence of information about a possible real or imagined danger. Unlike the emotion of suffering, caused by the direct blocking of essential needs, the emotion of fear is caused only by a probabilistic forecast of possible unhappiness.
Each of these emotions can be manifested by a whole spectrum of states that differ in their severity (for example, joy can be manifested by satisfaction, delight, exultation, ecstasy, etc.).
From the combination of fundamental emotions, complex emotional states arise, such as anxiety, which can combine fear, anger, guilt, and interest.
Affect. In critical conditions, when the subject is unable to find a quick way out of a dangerous situation, a special type of emotional processes arises - affect. This is the most powerful emotional response considered. Affect
- a strong and short-term emotional state, accompanied by pronounced motor manifestations and changes in the functions of internal organs.
Any feeling can be experienced in an affective form. This includes cases of affective delight at the performance of a favorite ensemble, and the affective anger of fans at the stadium, and religious ecstasy, etc. Sometimes the affect manifests itself in a tense stiffness of movements, posture, speech. Such can be horror, despair. Or, if a person unexpectedly receives good news, he gets lost, does not know what to say.
One of the essential functions of affect is that it represents stereotypical actions fixed in evolution, a way of "emergency" resolution of situations: flight, torpor, aggression, etc.
Affect arises as a result of an already committed action and expresses its subjective emotional assessment from the point of view of achieving the substituted goal. The development of affect obeys the following law: the stronger is the initial motivational stimulus of behavior and the more efforts had to be spent to implement it, the less the result obtained as a result of all this, the stronger the affect arising.
The cause of affect can be a conflict, a contradiction between a person's strong desire for something and the objective impossibility of satisfying the arisen urge, and the person is not able to realize this impossibility or cannot reconcile with it (anger, rage). The conflict can also consist in the increased requirements for a person at the moment, and his feelings, lack of confidence in his abilities, underestimation of his capabilities.
A distinctive feature of affect is a weakening of conscious control, a narrowness of consciousness. Affects, as a rule, interfere with the normal organization of behavior, its rationality. At the same time, thinking changes, a person loses the ability to foresee the results of his actions. In affect, a person seems to lose his head, his actions are unreasonable, they are performed without taking into account the situation. Losing power over himself, a person, as it were, surrenders to the experience.
In addition, the main characteristics of attention change, only those objects that correspond to experiences are retained in the field of perception. All other stimuli are not sufficiently understood, and this is one of the reasons for the practical uncontrollability of this state.
Affects are capable of leaving strong and lasting traces in long-term memory. Unlike affects, the work of emotions and feelings is associated mainly with short-term and RAM... Affect arises abruptly, suddenly in the form of a flash, accompanied by strong and erratic motor activity, a kind of discharge occurs in action. Emotional tension accumulated as a result of the occurrence of affectogenic situations can add up and lead to a strong and violent emotional release, which, by relieving tension, often leads to a feeling of fatigue, depression, depression.
Emotional stress. Emotional stress is
a state of excessively strong and prolonged psychological stress that occurs in a person when his nervous system gets emotional overload. Emotional stress appears in situations of threat, danger, resentment, etc. Stress disorganizes human activity, disrupts the normal course of his behavior. Stress, especially if it is frequent and prolonged, has a negative impact not only on the psychological state, but also on physical health person. They represent the main "risk factors" for the onset and exacerbation of diseases such as cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases.
G. Selye identified 3 stages in the development of stress. The first stage is the anxiety reaction - the phase of mobilization of the body's defenses, which increases resistance to a specific traumatic effect. In this case, a redistribution of the body's reserves occurs: the solution of the main task is ensured by secondary tasks. The person copes with the load with the help of
functional mobilization, without structural changes. At the second stage, the stage of stabilization, all parameters that were unbalanced in the first phase are fixed at a new level. External behavior differs little from the norm, everything seems to be getting better, but internally there is an overexpenditure of adaptation reserves. If the stressful situation continues to persist, the third stage begins - exhaustion, which can lead to a significant deterioration in well-being, various diseases and even death.
The data obtained by British researchers are indicative in this respect. They found a high mortality rate from coronary heart disease in senior executives, test pilots, surgeons, jet pilots, and city bus drivers. It is the constant stay in a stressful situation that shortens the life of people in these professions.
A person's behavior in a stressful situation depends on many conditions, primarily on the psychological characteristics of a person. People with different features nervous systems react differently to the same psychological stress. In some people, there is an increase in activity, mobilization of forces, an increase in the efficiency of activity. The danger, as it were, spurs a person on, makes him act boldly and courageously. On the other hand, stress can cause disorganization of activity, a sharp drop in its effectiveness, passivity and general inhibition.
Frustration. Frustration is a psychological state of frustration, depression, caused by objectively insurmountable (or subjectively so perceived) difficulties that arise on the way to achieving the goal. Frustration is accompanied by a whole range of negative emotions, anger, depression, external and internal aggression.
The level of frustration depends on the strength and intensity of the influencing factor, the state of the person and the forms of response to life difficulties that have developed in him. Especially often the source of frustration is a negative social assessment, affecting significant personal relationships. Resistance (tolerance) of a person to frustrating factors depends on the degree of his emotional excitability, type of temperament, experience of interaction with such factors.
Passion. Passion is another type of complex, qualitatively unique emotional states that are found only in humans. In terms of the intensity of emotional excitement, passion approaches affect, and in terms of duration and stability it resembles mood. Passion is a strong, persistent feeling that determines the direction of a person's thoughts and actions.
The reasons for the formation of passion are quite diverse - they can be determined by conscious beliefs (for example, the passion of a scientist in science), they can come from bodily desires or have a pathological origin (as happens with paranoid personality development). Passion is organically linked to needs, selective and always objective - aimed at a certain type of activity or object. Such, for example, are observed in people a passion for knowledge, a passion for music, a passion for collecting, etc.
The most important characteristic of passion is its connection with the volitional sphere. Passion is one of the essential motivations for action. Assessment of the meaning of passion is quite subjective. Passion can be accepted, sanctioned by a person, or it can be condemned by it, experienced as something undesirable, obsessive. Public opinion plays an important role in the assessment. So, for example, within one culture, the passion for hoarding is condemned as greed, but it can be positively assessed within the framework of another. social group like frugality.
Higher senses. Higher feelings represent a special form of experience. Feelings are personal formations. They characterize a person socially and psychologically. Emotions are relatively weakly manifested in external behavior, sometimes from the outside they are generally invisible to an outsider. They, accompanying this or that behavioral act, are not even always realized, although all behavior is associated with emotions, since it is aimed at satisfying a need. Human feelings, on the other hand, are outwardly very noticeable.
Depending on the subject area to which they belong, feelings are divided into moral, aesthetic, and intellectual.
Moral (moral) are the feelings experienced by people when they perceive the phenomena of reality and compare these phenomena with the norms developed by society. Moral norms depend on traditions, customs, religion, and the dominant ideology adopted in society.
The actions and deeds of people, corresponding to views on morality in a given society, are considered moral, ethical; actions that do not correspond to these views are considered immoral, immoral. Moral feelings include a sense of duty, humanity, benevolence, love, patriotism, sympathy, etc. The immoral ones include greed, selfishness, cruelty, schadenfreude, etc.
Intellectual feelings are called experiences that arise in the process of human cognitive activity. Intellectual feelings include surprise, curiosity, curiosity, a feeling of doubt about the correctness of the decision, etc. Success or failure, ease or difficulty of mental activity causes a whole range of experiences in a person.
The most common situation that generates intellectual feelings is problem situation... Intellectual feelings not only accompany the cognitive activity of a person, but also stimulate, enhance it, affect the speed and productivity of thinking, the content and accuracy of knowledge.
The generalized sense of the new is also referred to as intellectual feelings. It
it is expressed in the constant search for something new both in the field of knowledge and in practical activity. This feeling is associated not simply with the need to receive any new information, but with the need for "cognitive harmony", i.e. in finding the familiar, the familiar in the new, unknown.
Aesthetic feelings represent the emotional attitude of a person to the beautiful in nature, in life and in art. A person experiences aesthetic feelings when perceiving works fiction, musical, visual, dramatic and other types of art. Aesthetic feelings are a fusion of moral and intellectual feelings. The complexity of the problem also lies in the fact that the aesthetic attitude is manifested through other feelings: delight, joy, contempt, disgust, suffering, etc.
It should be noted that the considered division of feelings is rather arbitrary. Usually, the feelings experienced by a person are so complex that it is difficult to categorize them. Thus, the work of a scientist is a kind of fusion of intellectual, moral and aesthetic feelings with a predominance of intellectual ones, and the work of an artist is, apparently, also a fusion of these feelings, but with a predominance of aesthetic ones. Differences in the sensory sphere leave a deep imprint on the entire warehouse of a person's spiritual life.

Any need, including a cognitive need, is given to a person through emotional experiences.

Emotions are elementary experiences that arise in a person under the influence of the general state of the body and the course of the process of satisfying urgent needs. This definition of emotions is given in a large psychological dictionary.

In other words, “emotions are subjective psychological states, reflecting in the form of direct experiences, sensations of pleasant or unpleasant, a person's attitude to the world and people, to the process and the result of his practical activity”.

A number of authors adhere to the following definition. Emotions are mental reflection in the form of direct, biased experience, the vital meaning of phenomena and situations, conditioned by the relation of their objective properties to the needs of the subject.

According to the authors, this definition contains one of the main features of emotions, which distinguishes them, for example, from cognitive processes - the direct representation in them to the subject of the relationship between a need and the possibility of its satisfaction.

A.L. Groisman notes that emotions are a form of mental reflection that is on the verge (to the content of the cognizable) with physiological reflection and is a kind of personal attitude of a person both to the surrounding reality and to himself.

Types of emotions

Depending on the duration, intensity, objectivity or uncertainty, as well as the quality of emotions, all emotions can be divided into emotional reactions, emotional states and emotional relationships (V.N. Myasishchev).

Emotional reactions are characterized by a high rate of occurrence and transience. They last minutes, are characterized by a rather pronounced quality (modality) and sign (positive or negative emotion), intensity and objectivity. The objectivity of an emotional reaction is understood as its more or less unambiguous connection with the event or object that caused it. Emotional reaction normally always arises about the events produced in a particular situation by something or someone. It can be fright from a sudden noise or scream, joy from hearing words or perceived facial expressions, anger due to an obstacle or someone's action, etc. It should be remembered that these events are only a triggering stimulus for the emergence of emotion, but the reason is either the biological significance or the subjective significance of this event for the subject. The intensity of emotional reactions can be different - from barely noticeable, even for the subject himself, to excessive - affect.

Emotional reactions are often reactions of frustration of some expressed needs. Frustration (from Latin frustatio - deception, destruction of plans) in psychology is a mental state that arises in response to the appearance of an objectively or subjectively insurmountable obstacle to the satisfaction of a need, achievement of a goal or solution of a problem. The type of frustrating reaction depends on many circumstances, but is very often a characteristic of the person. this person... It can be anger, frustration, despair, guilt.

Emotional states are characterized by: longer duration, which can be measured in hours and days, normally - less intensity, since emotions are associated with significant energy expenditures due to the accompanying physiological reactions, in some cases non-objectiveness, which is expressed in the fact that the subject can be the reason and the cause that caused them are hidden, as well as some uncertainty of the modality of the emotional state. By their modality, emotional states can appear in the form of irritability, anxiety, complacency, various shades of mood - from depressive states to a state of euphoria. However, most often they are mixed conditions. Since emotional states are also emotions, they also reflect the relationship between the needs of the subject and the objective or subjective possibilities of their satisfaction, rooted in the situation.

In the absence of organic disorders of the central nervous system, the state of irritation is, in fact, a high readiness for reactions of anger in a long-term current situation of frustration. A person has outbursts of anger for the slightest and various reasons, but they are based on the dissatisfaction of some personally significant need, which the subject himself may not know about.

Anxiety means the presence of some uncertainty about the outcome of future events associated with the satisfaction of some need. Often, anxiety is associated with a sense of self-esteem (self-esteem), which can be affected by an unfavorable outcome of events in the expected future. Frequent occurrence anxiety in everyday affairs may indicate the presence of self-doubt as a quality of a person, i.e. about the unstable or low self-esteem inherent in this person in general.

A person's mood often reflects the experience of already achieved success or failure, or a high or low likelihood of success or failure in the near future. A good or bad mood reflects the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of some need in the past, success or failure in achieving a goal or solving a problem. It is no coincidence that a person in a bad mood is asked if something has happened. A long-term low or high mood (over two weeks), not typical for a given person, is a pathological sign in which an unmet need is either really absent or deeply hidden from the subject's consciousness, and its detection requires a special psychological analysis. The person most often experiences mixed conditions, such as low mood with a touch of anxiety or joy with a touch of anxiety or anger.

A person can experience more complex states, an example of which is the so-called dysphoria - lasting two to three days pathological condition, in which there is simultaneously irritation, anxiety and a bad mood. A lesser degree of dysphoria may occur in some people and is normal.

Emotional relationships are also called feelings. Feelings are stable emotional experiences associated with a certain object or category of objects that have a special meaning for a person. Feelings in a broad sense can be associated with various objects or actions, for example, you may not like a given cat or cats in general, you may or may not like doing morning exercises, etc. Some authors suggest that only stable emotional relationships with people be called feelings. Feelings differ from emotional reactions and emotional states in duration - they can last for years, and sometimes for a lifetime, for example, feelings of love or hate. Unlike states, feelings are objective - they are always associated with an object or an action with it.

Emotionality. Emotionality is understood as the stable individual characteristics of the emotional sphere of a given person. V.D. Nebylitsyn suggested taking into account three components when describing emotionality: emotional impressionability, emotional lability, and impulsivity.

Emotional impressionability is a person's sensitivity to emotional situations, i.e. situations that can evoke emotions. Since different people are dominated by different needs, each person has their own situations that can evoke emotions. At the same time, there are certain characteristics of the situation that make them emotional for all people. These are: unusualness, novelty and suddenness (P. Fress). Unusualness differs from novelty in that there are such types of stimuli that will always be new for the subject, because there are no "good answers" for them, this is loud noise, loss of support, darkness, loneliness, images of the imagination, as well as connections of the familiar and unfamiliar. There are individual differences in the degree of sensitivity to emotiogenic situations common to all, as well as in the number of individual emotiogenic situations.

Emotional lability is characterized by the speed of transition from one emotional state to another. People differ from each other in how often and how quickly their state changes - in some people, for example, the mood is usually stable and depends little on small current events, in others, with high emotional lability, it changes for the slightest reason several times in a day.

Impulsiveness is determined by the speed with which emotion becomes the motivating force of actions and actions without first thinking about them. This personality quality is also called self-control. There are two different self-control mechanisms - external control and internal. With external control, not the emotions themselves are controlled, but only their external expression, emotions are present, but they are restrained, a person "pretends" that he does not feel emotions. Internal control is associated with such a hierarchical distribution of needs in which the lower needs are subordinated to the higher ones, therefore, being in such a subordinate position, in appropriate situations they simply cannot cause uncontrollable emotions. An example of internal control can be a person's passion for a business, when he long time does not notice hunger ("forgets" to eat) and therefore remains indifferent to the type of food.

In the psychological literature, it is also common to divide the emotional states that a person experiences into actual emotions, feelings and affects.

Emotions and feelings are personal formations that characterize a person socially and psychologically; associated with short-term and operational memory.

Affect is a short-term, rapidly flowing state of strong emotional excitement, resulting from frustration or any other reason that strongly affects the psyche, usually associated with the dissatisfaction of very important needs for a person. Affect does not precede behavior, but forms at one of its final stages. Unlike emotions and feelings, affects proceed violently, quickly, accompanied by pronounced organic changes and motor reactions. Affects are capable of leaving strong and lasting traces in long-term memory. Emotional tension accumulated as a result of the occurrence of afetogenic situations can be summed up and sooner or later, if it is not given a way out in time, lead to a strong and violent emotional discharge, which, by relieving tension, often entails a feeling of fatigue, depression, depression.

One of the most common types of affect today is stress - a state of mental (emotional) and behavioral disorder associated with a person's inability to act expediently and reasonably in a given situation. Stress is a state of excessively strong and prolonged psychological stress that occurs in a person when his nervous system gets emotional overload. Stresses are the main "risk factors" for the manifestation and exacerbation of cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases.

Thus, each of the described types of emotions within itself has subspecies, which, in turn, can be assessed according to different parameters - intensity, duration, depth, awareness, origin, conditions of occurrence and disappearance, impact on the body, dynamics of development, orientation (towards oneself , on others, on the world, on the past, present or future), according to the way they are expressed in external behavior (expression) and on the neurophysiological basis.

The role of emotions in human life

For a person, the main meaning of emotions is that, thanks to emotions, we better understand those around us, we can, without using speech, judge each other's state and better tune in to joint activities and communication.

Life without emotions is as impossible as without sensations. Emotions, according to Charles Darwin, arose in the process of evolution as a means by which living beings establish the significance of certain conditions for satisfying their actual needs. Emotional and expressive human movements - facial expressions, gestures, pantomime - perform the function of communication, i.e. informing a person of information about the state of the speaker and his attitude to what is happening at the moment, as well as the function of influence - to exert a certain influence on the one who is the subject of the perception of emotional and expressive movements.

Remarkable, for example, is the fact that people belonging to different cultures, are able to accurately perceive and evaluate the expression of a human face, to determine by it such emotional states, such as, for example, joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise. This fact not only convincingly proves congenital character basic emotions, but also "the presence of a genetically determined ability to understand them in living beings." This refers to the communication of living beings not only of the same species with each other, but also different types between themselves. It is well known that higher animals and humans are capable of perceiving and evaluating each other's emotional states by facial expressions.

Not all emotionally expressive expressions are innate. Some of them have been found to be acquired in life as a result of training and education.

Life without emotions is as impossible as without sensations. Emotions, according to Charles Darwin, arose in the process of evolution as a means by which living beings establish the significance of certain conditions for satisfying their actual needs.

In higher animals, and especially in humans, expressive movements have become a finely differentiated language, with the help of which living beings exchange information about their states and about what is happening around. These are the expressive and communicative functions of emotions. They are also the most important factor in the regulation of cognition processes.

Emotions act as an internal language, as a system of signals through which the subject learns about the need value of what is happening. “The peculiarity of emotions is that they directly deny the relationship between motivation and implementation, which responds to these motives of activity. Emotions in human activity perform the function of assessing its progress and results. They organize the activity, stimulating and directing it ”.

In critical conditions, with the inability of the subject to find a quick and reasonable way out of a dangerous situation, a special type of emotional processes arises - affect. One of the essential manifestations of affect is that, as V.K. Vilyunas, "imposing stereotypical actions on the subject, represents a certain way of" emergency "resolution of situations fixed in evolution: flight, torpor, aggression, etc." ...

The prominent Russian psychologist P.K. Anokhin. He wrote: “By making an almost instantaneous integration (unification into a single whole) of all the functions of the body, emotions in themselves and in the first place can be an absolute signal of a beneficial or harmful effect on the body, often even earlier than the localization of impacts and a specific mechanism of response are determined. organism ".

Due to the timely emergence of emotion, the body has the ability to extremely advantageously adapt to the surrounding conditions. He is able to quickly, with high speed to react to an external influence without defining its type, form, and other particular specific parameters.

Emotional sensations biologically, in the process of evolution, have become entrenched as a peculiar way of maintaining the life process in its optimal boundaries and warn of the destructive nature of the lack or excess of any factors.

The more complexly organized Living being, the higher the step on the evolutionary ladder it occupies, the richer the range of emotional states that the individual is able to experience. The quantity and quality of a person's needs corresponds to the number and variety of emotional experiences and feelings characteristic of him, moreover, “the higher the need in terms of its social and moral significance, the more sublime the feeling associated with it”.

The most ancient in origin, the simplest and most common form of emotional experiences among living beings is the pleasure obtained from satisfying organic needs, and the displeasure associated with the inability to do this when the corresponding need is aggravated.

Almost all elementary organic sensations have their own emotional tone. The close connection that exists between emotions and the activity of the body is evidenced by the fact that any emotional state is accompanied by many physiological changes in the body. (In this paper, we partially try to trace this dependence.)

The closer to the central nervous system the source of organic changes associated with emotions is located, and the fewer sensitive nerve endings in it, the weaker the subjective emotional experience arising in this case. In addition, an artificial decrease in organic sensitivity leads to a weakening of the strength of emotional experiences.

The main emotional states that a person experiences are divided into actual emotions, feelings and affects. Emotions and feelings anticipate the process aimed at satisfying the need, are, as it were, at the beginning of it. Emotions and feelings express the meaning of the situation for a person from the point of view of the current need at the moment, the meaning for its satisfaction of the forthcoming action or activity. “Emotions,” A.O. Prokhorov, - can be caused by both real and imaginary situations. They, like feelings, are perceived by a person as his own inner experiences, transmitted to other people, empathized ”.

Emotions are relatively weakly manifested in external behavior, sometimes from the outside they are generally invisible to an outsider, if a person knows how to hide his feelings well. They, accompanying this or that behavioral act, are not even always realized, although all behavior is associated with emotions, since it is aimed at satisfying a need. A person's emotional experience is usually much broader than the experience of his individual experiences. Human feelings, on the other hand, are outwardly very noticeable.

Feelings are objective in nature, are associated with a representation or idea of ​​some object. Another feature of feelings is that they improve and, developing, form a number of levels, ranging from direct feelings and ending with your feelings related to spiritual values ​​and ideals. Feelings perform a motivating role in the life and activities of a person, in his communication with people around him. In relation to the world around him, a person seeks to act in such a way as to strengthen and strengthen his positive feelings. They are always associated with the work of consciousness, they can be arbitrarily regulated.