Emotions: Thinking, Feeling,
and Communicating
Chapter Summary
•What Are Emotions?
•Types of Emotions
•Influence of Emotional Expression
•Guidelines for Expressing Emotions
•Managing Difficult Emotions
Looking Out, Looking In
12th Edition
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What are Emotions?
Emotions
•Physiological Factors
•Strong emotions are coupled with strong physical changes.
•A rise in blood pressure and an increased heart rate can occur.
•Nonverbal Reactions
•Blushing, sweating and fidgeting are nonverbal signs of emotion.
•Sometimes nonverbal reactions can cause negative emotions.
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12th Edition
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What are Emotions?
Emotions
•Cognitive Interpretations
•Emotions react on a cognitive level, but activity is ambiguous.
•If you were to measure someone experiencing a strong emotion, it
would be difficult to ascertain if it were fear or joy.
•Verbal Expression
•Though not as effective as nonverbal communication, sometimes
words are required to communicate emotions.
•Make sure the message communicated is understood accurately.
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Influences on Emotional
Expression
Primary and Mixed Emotions
•Personality
•There is a clear relationship between personality and emotions.
•Extroverted individuals seem upbeat and optimistic.
•Neurotic individuals report more negative emotions.
•Personality doesn’t have to govern communication satisfaction.
•Culture
•Individualistic Culture vs. Collectivistic Culture
•What does, “I love you,” really mean?
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Influences on Emotional
Expression
Primary and Mixed Emotions
•Gender
•Biological sex is the best predictor of the ability to detect and
interpret emotional expression.
•Research suggests that there is some truth to the unexpressive
male.
•Women are 10 –15% more accurate in remembering emotions.
•People in close relationships are more likely to recognize the
emotional cues of their mates than those in less-close
relationships.
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Influences on Emotional
Expression
Primary and Mixed Emotions
•Social Convention
•Unwritten rules of communication discourage the direct
expression of most emotions.
•How many genuine emotions do you really experience in public?
•Social rules even discourage too much positive emotion.
•Boys can kiss their mother but should shake their father’s hand.
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Influences on Emotional
Expression
Primary and Mixed Emotions
•Fear of Self-disclosure
•Feelings are rarely shared publicly for fear of ridicule.
•One whose presenting self says one thing has a difficult if not
impossible time expressing the opposite.
•Emotion Cognition
•Emotions are transferred from one person to another.
•Emotions can be infectious.
•Crying, laughing, etc.
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Guidelines for Expressing
Emotions
Expressing Emotions
•Recognize your feelings.
•Identifying your emotions is the first step to managing them.
•Distinguishing emotions is vital to your emotional intelligence.
•Expand your emotional vocabulary.
•Good or Bad vs. Terrible or Great
•Emotionally counterfeit statements:
•“I feel like going to a show,” or “I feel we’ve been seeing too much of
each other.” Is any feeling taking place?
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Guidelines for Expressing
Emotions
Expressing Emotions
•Share multiple feelings.
•Rarely are you experiencing just one emotion.
•We usually communicate one emotion, and often it tends to be
the most negative.
•Consider when and where to express your feelings.
•Choose an appropriate time to express your feelings.
•That time is not always the moment you experience them.
•Waiting is not always a bad idea.
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Guidelines for Expressing
Emotions
Expressing Emotions
•Accept responsibility for your feelings.
•Your language should reflect the accurate emotion.
•“I’m feeling angry” vs." You're making me angry.”
•Be mindful of the communication channel.
•Choose the right channel.
•Face-to-face, email, Internet, etc.
•Understand the limitations of the channel.
•Remember, communication is irreversible.
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Debilitative Emotions
•Facilitative and Debilitative Emotions
•Facilitative Emotions
•Contribute to effective functioning
•Debilitative Emotions
•Detract from effective functioning
•Intensity
•Some intensity in emotion may be constructive.
•Too much emotion will make the situation worse.
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Debilitative Emotions
•Debilitative emotions can be broken down in two categories:
•Anxiousness
•Duration
•Most debilitative emotions involve communication.
•Most, but not all, debilitative emotions lead to conflict.
• Some debilitative emotions take longer from which to
recover.
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Source of Debilitative Emotions
•Physiology
•Your genetic makeup plays a significant role.
•The amygdala
•Hijacking the brain and sometimes the senses
•Emotional Memory
•Some emotional events lock themselves in your memory.
•These events can trigger adverse reactions.
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Debilitative Emotions
•Self-Talk
•The similarities between the physical and emotional
•Look at emotions in the following example
Event
Feeling
Bee sting
Meeting Strangers
Taking tests
Physical Pain
Nervous Feelings
Heavy anxiety
•Can you come up with some others?
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Irrationality and Emotions
•The Fallacy of Perfection
•Communicators should be able to handle every situation.
•The Fallacy of Approval
•You need the approval of every person.
•The Fallacy of Shoulds
•The inability to distinguish between what is and what should be
•The Fallacy of Catastrophic Expectations
•If something bad can happen, it will.
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Irrationality and Emotions
•The Fallacy of Overgeneralization
•Making decisions with little information
•The Causation
•Irrational belief that emotions are caused by others
•The Fallacy of Helplessness
•Satisfaction in life is determined by forces beyond your control.
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Minimize Debilitative Emotions
•Monitor your emotional reactions.
•Recognize when you’re feeling these emotions.
•Change your behavior to counteract.
•Note the activating event.
•Try to identify exactly what triggered the emotion.
•Keep in mind it can be more than one event.
•Record your self-talk.
•Monitor your inner monologue.
•Keep a journal or recording of you thoughts.
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12th Edition
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Managing Difficult Emotions
Minimize Debilitative Emotions
•Dispute your irrational beliefs.
•Use the list of irrational
fallacies on page 144-149 to
discover which internal
thinking could be classified
as irrational.
•Are your beliefs rational?
•Why or why not?
•What can you do differently?
Looking Out, Looking In
12th Edition
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Emotions: Thinking, Feeling,
and Communicating
Chapter Summary
•What Are Emotions?
•Types of Emotions
•Influence of Emotional Expression
•Guidelines for Expressing Emotions
•Managing Difficult Emotions
Looking Out, Looking In
12th Edition
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