WHAT ARE EMOTIONS FOR? - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

Emotions are used to start the body when a change is detected, preparing us to react to unexpected events that occur around us.

If we did not have emotions, it would be very difficult for us to react to situations. For example, if we were in danger and fear did not appear, we would probably not survive. The answers that our emotions offer us are useful for our survival and that they have helped us over time.

We could say that emotions are a product of natural selection itself, functioning as systems that process information rapidly and help us cope with unexpected events or situations around us.

Emotion is a multidimensional experience that has three response systems: the cognitive, the behavioral and the physiological systems.

We must also take into account that each of these dimensions may be more important for each person, in a specific situation or if we refer to a specific emotion.

Their main and most important characteristic may be the fact that they are fast and allow us to act without thinking, which makes them highly adaptive.

Without emotions, today we would not be where we are. They have helped us survive, telling us when we should fight or run away or when we should not eat food because it is in bad condition, for example.

For Darwin, for example, emotions already played a very important role in adaptation. In this sense, the emotion for him helped us to execute an appropriate behavior.

What are emotions for? The biological meaning of emotions

An emotion is a process that starts when our body detects a change, preparing us to react to unexpected events that occur around us.

It is important to bear in mind that all emotions are valid because they fulfill an important function and have a biological meaning that helps us survive and function in the world around us.

Let's see what is the biological meaning of basic emotions: joy, sadness, anger or rage, surprise, fear and disgust.

Joy

Joy is, within the basic emotions, the one we experience in a hedonic way. Joy supposes an increase in nervous activity, which results in the inhibition of negative feelings, reducing disturbing thoughts. When we are happy we have more energy and more desire to do things.

Joy is related to affective states of a positive character and provides the sensation of closeness in those who experience it. In this way, they facilitate social interaction because they are helping to promote prosocial behaviors.

People who experience joy are more likely to be social, cooperative, and willing to help other people.

In addition, joy has a great adaptive function, attenuating the stress response, reducing anxiety and reducing aggressiveness.

Joy shows other people the disposition to initiate an interpersonal or communication relationship and regulate the interaction,

The sadness

Sadness always means adjusting to a significant loss, whatever it may be. The body decreases its energy and enthusiasm, something that contributes to its readjustment. This introspection allows the person to mourn the loss, weigh the consequences it has in their life, and plan a new beginning.

The circumstances that can lead a person to sadness are different, but all of them, as we said, involve loss: the absence of reinforcers or pleasant activities, pain, helplessness, disappointment…

Sadness is generally experienced as an unpleasant emotion. When we see a person cry, we try by all means to eliminate or distract the person so that they stop suffering.

In sadness there is a high neurological activation that is maintained over time, in addition to slightly increasing blood pressure or heart rate. The biological function of this emotion allows people to face loss, valuing and adjusting their lives to this damage that cannot be repaired.

When they are sad, people focus their attention on the consequences. This sadness is what sometimes leads to depression through the cognitive triad that Beck proposed.

The person who is sad feels less energetic, discouraged, breathless, melancholy. But sadness has the function of reducing activity and valuing other aspects of life.

It has the function of communicating with other people and bonding with them, of saying that you are not feeling well and that you need help. And this generates empathy and altruism in others.

The surprise

Surprise also has biological significance. The facial expression when we are surprised includes wide open eyes; a gesture that allows us to increase the visual field and receive more information. This gesture allows us to better understand the situation and plan to act according to what we have observed.

We are surprised by novel situations that are weak or intense enough. Obviously, stimuli or situations that we do not expect. However, we are also surprised by the fact of interrupting an activity that we are doing.

Physiologically, surprise produces a momentary increase in neuronal activity and also the characteristic pattern of the orientation reflex. People experience it in a neutral way, it fades quickly and gives way to a different emotion.

In general, there is an increase in cognitive activity in us to be able to process information, as well as our memory and our attention are dedicated to analyzing the whole situation.

It is a feeling of uncertainty, because we do not know what is going to happen. But it has the function of facilitating all the processes of attention, interest and exploration and of directing all our cognitive processes to the new situation.

In addition, it also has the function of guiding and producing the emotional response and also the behavior that is most necessary for each situation.

The fear

The fear response allows the body to prepare to flee the situation. There is an increase in blood flow in the large skeletal muscles, so that the body is guaranteed that it can fight in the event that it detects that it can defeat the threatening stimulus or flee to safety.

For this reason, the phenomenon of pale face occurs, for example. Surely you have ever heard the expression "you've gone white."

This saying refers to the fact that the face (and in general the superficial part of the skin) is left without blood supply, so that in the case of being injured, the probability of bleeding is lower.

The heart pumps harder to feed the muscles with oxygen and glucose. Since we need more oxygen, the body struggles to get it, so we try to breathe faster.

If this oxygen is not consumed, the phenomenon we call hyperventilation can occur. When this event occurs, the body tries to reduce the intake of oxygen and that is why sometimes people with anxiety problems can say that they notice a feeling of suffocation.

Another of the effects of fear is the paralysis of the digestive process. Digestion is not really useful if we are in a dangerous situation, so the process is paralyzed. Therefore, we may notice a dry mouth, since our salivary glands have stopped producing saliva.

We may also notice nausea or stomach pain, as our stomach acids have become stagnant in the stomach cavity and can cause pain.

Another possibility is diarrhea, which has a double function: on the one hand, when we get rid of our excrement we lose weight and can flee with more speed and on the other hand, our predator can perceive that we are in the process of decomposition increasing the probability that lose interest in us.

In this way, fear has different functions. One of them, to facilitate the response of flight or avoidance of a situation that is dangerous for us. It allows the person to react quickly to the situation and moves a lot of energy.

Anger or rage

We could indicate that rage or anger is an emotion that is part of the aggressive-hostility-anger continuum. In this sense, it could be said that aggressiveness is a component more of a “behavioral” type and hostility more “cognitive”. When we are angry and have a lot of rage, there is an increase in neuronal and muscular activity and an intense cardiovascular reactivity.

There are different causes that can lead us to anger or rage. Some of them may be the conditions that produce frustration or restriction or immobility (physical or psychological).

The physiological changes of anger prepare us to fight. There is an increase in blood flow, an increase in heart rate, as well as an increase in adrenaline.

Thus, the person focuses on those obstacles that prevent him from achieving his goal or that are responsible for his frustration, having the function of mobilizing energy to react, either in an attack or defending himself.

In this way, it is intended through anger to eliminate those obstacles that generate frustration because they do not allow us to access the objectives we want.

There are various theories that explain the relationship between frustration and aggression. Anger does not always lead to aggression.

The person experiences anger as an unpleasant and intense emotion, we feel very full of energy and drive, needing to act (either physically, verbally…) immediately and with great intensity to solve the frustration.

Disgust

The characteristic facial expression of disgust especially affects the nose. This characteristic gesture of the face of disgust is an attempt by the body to block the nostrils to avoid noxious odors.

In this way, the gesture of disgust protects us, for example, from eating food in poor condition and that could cause damage to our health.

When we have disgust, there is greater muscle tension and also an increase in gastrointestinal reactivity. People who experience disgust have a need to get away from that stimulus.

The function of disgust is to provide adaptive habits that are healthy and hygienic for us, as well as to generate responses that allow us to flee from situations that can cause us harm or that are unpleasant for us.

What are the basic and complex emotions?

The fact that there are basic and other complex emotions has been a controversial issue. The existence that basic emotions do exist is part of Darwin's approach.

Accepting it means that we have a series of emotions or reactions that are different from each other, innate and present in all human beings. If they are, these emotions have to be qualitatively different and characteristically expressed.

Perhaps one of the key aspects (if not the most) to consider a basic emotion is the specific and distinctive facial expression or configuration.

Authors like Izard, for example, include it among the necessary requirements, in addition to including others such as the specific neural substrate or the fact that they must have feelings that distinguish it and that are specific.

Generally, and despite the controversy, the authors who do assume that there are a series of basic emotions, consider that they are related to adaptation and to our own evolution and that therefore a universal and innate substrate is present.

The more or less general agreement is to consider that the basic emotions are six: joy, sadness, anger or rage, fear, disgust and surprise. Secondary emotions, among which we can find guilt, shame or altruism, would be more linked to the social contexts in which people develop.

References

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