Emotional properties of a person

Personality emotionality

Each person's emotional system is individual. The individual psychological manifestation of emotions in each person is denoted by the concept of “personal emotionality” - this is the ability to reflect the content of experiences, mood and character. Otherwise, emotionality can be considered as a response to the world around us through the manifestation of feelings and their influence on human behavior. Emotions help to better understand each other, people can tune in to joint activities and communication, and also observe the state of the interlocutor. People belonging to different cultures are able to accurately perceive and evaluate each other’s emotional states such as delight, irritation, sadness, disappointment, pride, admiration, etc.

How to control yourself?

Developing emotional stability is of interest to many people. What needs to be done to form it? Learn not to avoid emotions, but, on the contrary, to face them face to face.

Even their usual verbal designation significantly reduces the intensity of the experience. This simple technique helps to “localize” the emotion. After all, it is always much easier to deal with a phenomenon or object if it has a name.

Unfortunately, not every person is able to understand exactly what he is feeling right now. Oddly enough, but often the reason is condemnation or a ban on showing emotions. This is a colossal mistake of society, families, educational institutions, etc. Many people really believe that it is wrong to be angry, to be sad is bad, and to be wildly happy is completely indecent. Of course, they get used to suppressing emotions, masking them, passing one thing off as another. With age, this pattern of behavior becomes stronger, and a person’s true ideas about his feelings are erased. He himself may not understand that behind his anger there is deep sadness, and behind strong fear there is excitement and anxiety.

Therefore, it is important to ask yourself every time: how do I feel? You can't suppress emotions. Because they are energy

And if she doesn’t find a way out because a person suppresses her, then she simply begins to destroy him from the inside.

By what signs can one determine the spiritual impulse of a person?

In psychology, there are several levels of expression of emotions:

• subjective plan for the manifestation of emotions (emotions are reflected in internal experiences that are closely related to the individual’s personal experience and based on it);
• manifestation of emotions in behavior (emotions are most often observed in facial expressions, gestures, movements of people, etc.);
• manifestation of emotions in speech (traced through the strength of the voice, its pitch and timbre);
• vegetative level of manifestation of emotions (changes in pulse, increased heart rate, breathing, changes in pupil diameter, electrical resistance of the skin are observed).

If you are interested in your own level of emotionality and in what areas it predominates, then we suggest you take the “Level of Emotionality” test.

Topic 3. Emotional personality traits.

Emotional properties of a person: emotional excitability, emotional responsiveness, depth of experience of emotions, emotional lability-rigidity, emotional stability, expressiveness, empathy.

Emotional excitability

From a physiological point of view, emotional excitability is nothing more than emotional readiness, that is, the readiness to react emotionally to stimuli that are significant to a person.

Adrenaline plays a significant role in the formation of this readiness.
Its administration to subjects led to the fact that they began to show emotional outbursts to those stimuli that had previously left them completely calm (Cantril and Hunt, 1932). R.I. Allagulov (1971) did not reveal a reliable connection between emotional excitability and the strength of the nervous system.
Hot temper. Emotional excitability can manifest itself in behavioral characteristics such as short temper, irritability

. It is in relation to hot temper that K. Izard considers it appropriate to introduce the concept of “emotional threshold.” A person with a low threshold for the emotion of anger is more hot-tempered and more often in this state.

A.F. Lazursky noted that, strictly speaking, significant emotional excitability can be spoken of only in those cases when all the feelings available to a given person arise with equal ease.

However, this often includes cases
of mild responsiveness to one emotion
, especially in various pathologies. These cases, according to Lazursky, although close to emotional excitability, are not completely identical to it.

It is obvious that emotional excitability reflects the general excitability of the nervous system, determined by the level of activation of rest

. A. Fouillee (1895) wrote about this possibility in physiological terms corresponding to the end of the 19th century: the basis for the different excitability of sensations is the tendency to a rapid increase in the nervous substance in the corresponding centers (obviously, the author had in mind a rapid increase in excitation). Confirmation of this can be found in many works. Thus, A. A. Korotaev (1970), who studied the influence of emotions on the work operations of vocational school students, showed that persons with a weak nervous system (i.e., more highly activated and excitable) are more sensitive to negative emotiogenic stimuli than persons with strong nervous system. However, in R.I. Allagulov (1971), the connection between emotional excitability and weakness of the nervous system did not reach the level of reliability.

Emotional excitability contributes to the effectiveness of certain types of professional activities. According to N. E. Vysotskaya (1979), emotional excitability contributes to successful training as a ballet dancer, positively influencing expressiveness, artistry, dance ability, academic performance in classical and character dance, as well as acting skills.

Emotional responsiveness (receptivity, sensitivity). Close in meaning to emotional excitability is a property designated as emotional responsiveness.

According to V.V. Boyko, emotional responsiveness as a stable property of an individual is manifested in the fact that he easily, quickly and flexibly reacts emotionally to various influences - social events, the process of communication, characteristics of partners, etc. This is a person’s readiness to respond “to himself ”, “on others”, “on business”, “on objects”, “on nature”, “on works of art”, etc.

According to Yu. A. Tsagarelli (1981), the emotional responsiveness of musicians to music is negatively related to the strength of the nervous system (responsiveness is higher in persons with a weak nervous system) and positively with the lability of the nervous system.

Loss of emotional resonance is a complete or almost complete absence of an emotional response to various events.

Impressionability. K. K. Platonov defines impressionability as a personality trait, expressed in the dominance of impressions over the cognitive function of perceiving the world

. At the same time, he understands impression as a mental phenomenon, the structure of which includes a fuzzy perception, enhanced by its emotional coloring, due to which experience dominates cognition in it.

Emotional depth

A.F. Lazursky wrote: “By observing several individuals over a long period of time, we are convinced that in some of them feelings can, under certain conditions, reach such an intensity that others are completely incapable of. It is precisely this ability to experience, under some of the most favorable circumstances, such intense feelings that are available to relatively only a few, that we will call the power of feeling” (1995, p. 146). This property is equivalent to the intensity, the depth of the experienced emotion.

According to Lazursky, in order to identify this emotional property, it is necessary to observe the manifestation of those affects and feelings that are especially characteristic of a given person, since it is on them that the strength of his feelings can be revealed with the greatest brightness. In addition, the strength of the emotiogenic stimulus should be maximum.

Objective indicators of the intensity of emotions experienced by a person can be changes in physiological functions. However, Lazursky notes that they are not always sufficient, since autonomic excitability varies from person to person. Therefore, we have to resort to various indirect signs, of which the most important is the influence of emotions and feelings on a person’s actions and activities. The more energetically a person acts, the more strongly his feelings and emotions are expressed. In addition, the strength of emotions experienced by a person of artistic nature can be judged by the stories of the person himself.

Managing Emotions

In the process of interaction, it is not easy for many people to overcome barriers of mutual understanding. To avoid problems of misunderstanding with others, you need to know the basic psychological rules of communication, and first of all, learn to manage your own emotions, which most often become a source of interpersonal conflicts. The peculiarity of our feelings is that we can consciously control them. This makes them a powerful tool for successfully achieving any goal. To do this, first of all, you need to realize your emotions as early as possible, develop your innate ability to manage them, accumulate sensory experience and begin to consciously use it in your activities. In order to find out how consciously you use your emotions, we offer you V.V. Bondarenko’s test. “Do you know how to manage your emotions?”

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability of an individual to recognize emotions, understand the intentions and desires of other people, as well as the ability to manage one’s own emotions in the process of solving practical problems. The main function of this phenomenon is to recognize one’s own and others’ emotions. Have you ever had a situation when, in the process of interacting with another person, you realized that he did not understand your feelings and experiences? Or, on the contrary, the cause of the conflict was your lack of understanding of the feelings of another person? In both cases, the level of emotional intelligence may have played a role in the emergence of misunderstandings. To learn about the characteristics of your own emotional intelligence, the site presents the D. V. Lyusin test and the N. Hall test, with the help of which you will learn about the characteristics of your personality.

Emotions, their functions and types

Definition 1
The emotional sphere is a reflection of the subjective attitude towards objects and phenomena that are significant to a person.

An essential characteristic of emotions is their subjectivity. Any human activity is accompanied by emotional experience.

Translated from Latin, “emotion” means to excite, shock, excite. By satisfying his needs, a person receives positive emotions, and if it is impossible to satisfy them, he receives negative ones. For a long time, scientists considered emotions to be a phenomenon that man inherited from his distant animal ancestors.

Today it is well known that the structure of emotions includes subjective and cognitive components, therefore the conditioning of emotions is twofold - human needs, on the one hand, determining his attitude towards the object of emotions and the ability to reflect and understand the properties of this object, on the other hand.

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Human emotions are very diverse and each of them is unique in its sources, experiences, external manifestations, and methods of regulation.

Emotions can be divided into positive and negative.

According to the criterion of mobilizing the resources of the human body, sthenic and asthenic emotions are distinguished, which act in the opposite way. If sthenic emotions cause a surge of energy, lifting and activity, then asthenic ones cause the opposite feelings.

Emotions also differ according to needs - lower emotions that cause general sensations, for example, hunger, thirst, a feeling of cold or warmth, and higher emotions associated with social relations.

Scientists are divided on the role of emotions in human life processes.

Emotions have their own characteristics:

• a person reacts to a situation by the emergence of an emotion, and not by a stimulus;
• early reaction to the situation and its assessment;
• differentiated assessment of different situations;
• a mechanism for adequate and advance preparation for the situation;
• a mechanism for consolidating negative and positive experiences.

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In addition to signs, emotions have their own functions - motivational-regulatory, communicative, signaling, protective, which arises instantly and allows you to protect yourself from dangers.

The depth of a person’s inner life is expressed in emotional manifestations, and the same stimuli cause different and dissimilar reactions in different people.

Interaction between people cannot do without emotional manifestations, therefore the communicative function of emotions is one of the most important. Through emotions, a person shows his attitude to reality, to other people.

Emotional burnout

First, let's get acquainted with the definition of emotional burnout - this is a certain reaction of the individual’s body to prolonged exposure to stress, manifested in mental, physical and psycho-emotional exhaustion. To understand how to deal with this burnout and improve the quality of your life, it is worth understanding what factors provoke this condition.

What causes burnout?

In psychological science, there are a number of main factors of this concept:

Factors related to professional activity:

• lack of control over the work performed;
• low salary;
• increased responsibility;
• monotonous and uninteresting work;
• high pressure from management;
• etc.

Factors related to the individual's lifestyle:

• workaholics;
• people who do not have close people and friends nearby;
• sleep deprived;
• placing large responsibilities on their shoulders and not receiving outside help.

To identify personal burnout, the “Level of Emotional Burnout” test was developed by V.V. Boyko. This test will help determine the symptoms of professional burnout, because it is very important to identify its first signs for further effective communication with people. You can find this technique on our website and get results immediately.

Structure of the emotional sphere

1. Emotional excitability is the readiness of an emotional response to stimuli that are significant to a person. With increased emotional excitability, emotional reactions in response to weaker external and internal influences.
2. The power of emotions is the energization of activity depending on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of motives. Some people can experience feelings of such strength and intensity that others are unable to experience.
3. Emotional stability – resistance to the action of emotiogenic factors, control of impulses and drives, patience, leading to stability.
4. Emotional lability is the mobility of emotions, thanks to which a person quickly reacts to changing situations and circumstances, freely leaves some emotional states and enters others.
5. The general emotional orientation of a person is manifested in which emotions are closest to a person, the most desirable and stable, and determines the selectivity of the subject’s attitude towards natural and artistic phenomena, life situations and the people around him.

See also: Volitional sphere of personality

Affect as a psychological state

There are situations when an individual becomes overly aggressive, irritable, screams, and does not control himself. In this situation, a person expresses a high level of emotions; such behavior manifests itself in people in a state of passion. So, affect is strong emotional experiences that arise when it is impossible to find a way out of a difficult situation, accompanied by motor activity. Using the test by Kulikova V.N. “Are you prone to emotions?” You can learn about your own predisposition to affective states.

Header image - Alexey Sokolov