MAE - Expressed Emotion Lesson
Expressed Emotion
In 1977 Carroll Izard determined that there are ten basic human emotions, including seven that are present in the infant stage and three that develop a little later. Joy, anger, interest, disgust, surprise, sadness, and fear can be found on any face across the globe. Contempt, shame, and guilt cannot be felt or expressed until a person reaches an age of self-awareness in early childhood.
Emotions sometimes serve as motivation. One great example of the crossover between emotion and motivation is happiness. Multiple experiments in psychology show that feeling happy makes people more likely to help others. This feel-good, do-good phenomenon means that if you just earned a good grade or got a compliment, you're more likely to let someone go ahead of you in traffic or give a really big tip for a meal. Of course, doing good deeds also tends to make people happy, so this can lead to a great cycle in life!
So helping other people can lead to happiness. What are some other factors in the emotion of happiness? One includes faking happiness. Facial feedback theory suggests that our own facial expressions and body posture can lead to actually feeling the emotion we are embodying. In studies, a person who stands tall and acts confident typically ends up feeling more confident. A person who puts on a smile ends up feeling more cheerful. You can affect your own mood by acting as if you feel that way. Some research even shows that accidentally slouching or frowning can negatively affect mood and motivation. If you slouch over your phone a lot, you might be causing your own bad mood.
Research shows a significant difference in happiness between people who have to fight to survive (living at the physiological or safety needs levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) and those who are at higher levels of the hierarchy. What's particularly interesting, though, is that once a person makes it past the point of having to struggle to survive, there is no significant increase in happiness as they reach higher levels of wealth. People at a middle or high level of wealth all show approximately the same level of happiness. This means that to some degree, money can bring happiness, but only to the point of living comfortably.
Increases in wealth or status can lead to happiness, but only for a short time. People get used to their level of wealth or their social status or their job title after a little while, so they go back to their previous level of happiness as soon as the new level starts to seem normal. This is the adaptation level phenomenon, getting used to something and then needing something new to bring that level of happiness or excitement.
Luckily, this also seems to be true for dissatisfaction arising from unfortunate events. We get used to the loss of a significant other or a decrease in income and it starts to feel like the new normal for us.
One last thing to consider about happiness and life satisfaction is the human tendency to compare ourselves to others. Relative deprivation explains that when we look at our life and feel we are worse off than our peers, we feel bad about ourselves. If you'd been getting B's on tests, but get an A, you'd feel good. But if you find out your friends got higher A's, you'd compare yourself to them and feel worse. Your new phone seems great until your friends get a newer model, and then yours starts to feel not-so-great. This comparison can work to our advantage though, if we make a point of comparing ourselves to people who are worse off than us. I can think about what it would be like to be homeless, to live in a war-torn area, how people with long-term illnesses must feel, and it will help me realize the benefits to my life that everyone doesn't have. This type of comparison leads to increased happiness.
Complete the Expressed Emotion activity below:
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