Conclusion
While emotions are universal, the experience of emotion is highly idiosyncratic. We are not made angry by the same experiences, we do not feel anger to the same intensity, and we do not express anger in the same way. We are shaped by our culture, our peer groups, and our individual experience.
While the author began his research with a quest to find universals, he has not been successful in doing so - it is simply not in the nature of emotion. And the more you seek for universals, the less you will understand emotion.
It is also difficult to define emotions that are "normal" or "socially acceptable" - which itself is a redundancy as what is "normal" is determined in a social context. What is acceptable in one culture or group is not acceptable in another. To be accepted as normal, or to avoid being shunned as abnormal, requires patient observation to learn the norms of a group and tailor one's behavior accordingly.
And it is largely because of this group normalization and the tailoring of individual behavior that emotion is a social phenomenon rather than an individual one. We seldom express what we truly feel without considering whether it is acceptable in a group setting - and those that express their genuine emotion at all times may find it difficult to integrate into any society.
This works both ways: a social group who finds the emotional expression of an individual to be unacceptable may shun that person, but a person who finds the demands of a group in regard to emotional expression to be uncomfortable may decide not to become a member of that group.
Our natural tendencies, though they may suppressed or expressed in any context, become a sort of emotional profile. It is the emotional facet of their own personality.
There is a quick summary so some of the major points from previous chapters, which may be superficial and redundant, but here it is:
- The term "emotion" is a set of feelings of which we are vaguely aware, in ourselves and in others
- The desire to experience some emotions and avoid others shapes much of human behavior.
- Emotion arises from sensations received from the environment and from within.
- An emotion episode tends to be brief, lasting seconds to minutes. If it lasts longer than that, it is a mood.
- A person experiences emotions about things that matter to him. The more it matters, the stronger the emotions.
- Emotions are often perceived as something that happens to us, but is not chosen by us - but they are byproducts of things we choose to believe
- There is a constant and unconscious process of evaluation in which we scan the external environment for things that we feel are important to us. We become cautious only after this unconscious process has flagged something for attention.
- We are generally not aware of our emotions until we have begun experiencing them, and the lag may between feeling an emotion and being aware of it may be significant.
- Most emotions have an evolutionary basis - they evolve from personal interests first, and from societal interests second. We learn to be emotional from our peers, first in the family and then in greater society.
- Feeling an emotion is individual. Expressing an emotion is social: it signals others how we are feeling to influence their behavior.
- Because emotions have the capacity to affect the behavior of others, we have learned to falsify emotions in order to influence others to act in our interest.
- People are generally good at detecting the emotions of others, but not as adept at detecting when another person is sending false emotional signals.
And finally, the author notes that the study of emotions is still in its early stages. There will be much more information in the future, which may agree with, refine, or contradict the ideas he has published in this book.