Module 1 | Introduction to Emotion Regulation
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Module video:
The components of emotion
Scroll down for a transcript of this video.
The Components of Emotion
Our experience of emotion is actually made up of a number of key components, which include:
The situation we are currently in.
The focus of our attention while in the given situation.
Our appraisals, which provide an interpretation of the given situation.
And our physiological and behavioural responses to the given situation.
In order to get a better understanding of how these components of emotion work, let’s have a look at this example:
Lauren is giving an important uni presentation. Moments into starting her speech she looks out towards all the people in the room, and notices how everyone is looking at her. She suddenly thinks to herself, “I don’t know if what I’m talking about is right… my presentation is a mess.” She then notices her hands starting to shake, which she feels is made very obvious by the notes she is holding. She thinks to herself, “oh no, I must look really nervous right now.” Her heart races and her face starts to feel flushed. She tries to clasp her hands together to stop them from shaking.
Sounds daunting yeah? Breaking this down, we can think of Lauren’s experience as being made up of the following:
We can generalize this example to think of the experience of emotion as including a situation, which we attend to and appraise in some way, and which evokes certain physiological and behavioural responses. If we want to get a bit more technical, this cycle of situation-attention-appraisal-response is actually something which repeats again and again over time. If we have a closer look at Lauren’s example, we can see how this happens.
At the first instance, we can think of Lauren’s first emotional “cycle” as being the following:
At this point, Lauren has taken notice of her physiological symptoms of anxiety. In effect, these symptoms can now be considered as “the situation” which starts the second emotional cycle, which Lauren subsequently attends to, appraises and responds to, as shown here:
These are just two cycles illustrated, but we can assume that this will continue. For instance, Lauren may then realise that she has been paying so much attention to hiding her shaky hands that she has now forgotten where she is up to in relation to her presentation, which could be the situation which kicks off cycle 3.
