Saturday, March 11, 2017

Emotional Preferences

Do you like to cry?  Do you like to laugh?  Would you prefer a “tear jerker” movie, or would you like to see a film that will make you laugh?  No one can force you to watch a particular kind of movie.  You just seem to gravitate toward some more than others.  Why?

Noam Markovitch, Liat Netzer, and Maya Tamir (2017) sought to determine what motivates us toward emotions of one valence (positive or negative) and away from others.  To do so, they conducted three experiments in which disgusting, joyful, and emotionally neutral images were presented to subjects who were allowed to decide whether to continue watching them or to discontinue.  They also completed questionnaires regarding their attitudes toward the emotions of disgust and joy.

One feature of the studies’ results, perhaps predictably, suggested that people differ in their attitudes toward a given emotion.  Some accept, for instance, that disgust and joy are both natural features of life, and they are unlikely to expend much energy to structure their lives to either experience or avoid those emotions.   On the other hand, another feature of the studies’ results was not so obvious.  Namely, some people restrict their lifestyles to avoid the possibility of experiencing a particular emotion while others seek out experiences likely to elicit the emotion.  That is, one might refuse to attend a movie due to expecting that it could include some disgusting scene, however brief.
 
Taken to the extreme, those who avoid situations that might elicit an avoided emotion run the risk of sensitizing themselves even more to that emotion.  In a sense, they become more “afraid” of the emotion and more afraid of finding themselves in situations that could leave them exposed to it.   This can result in a virtual phobia that need not have developed in the first place.  The converse also is true.  One might excessively seek situations that evoke desired emotions.  In that case, the individual could become “addicted” to certain situations, as might be true for some persons who love to be loved and become sexually promiscuous to elicit loving behavior.

One other implication from the research is worth considering.  Some people might have a negative attitude toward a positive emotion.  Think about the individual who does not love to be loved.  That cynical person, for whatever misguided reason, could regard love as a phony emotion in which he refuses to partake.  Believing that love is built on manipulation and deception, he would avoid situations that could make him susceptible to “falling” in love.  The more he avoids situations conducive to loving interaction, the more convinced he becomes that love is an illusion.

Since our health is highly dependent on our emotional well-being and on ways that emotion either facilitates or impedes healthful behaviors, there is implicit useful advice in the experiments of Noam Markovitch and his colleagues.  We should consider our attitudes toward our emotions—all of them, the positive and the negative.  Emotions are signals that alert us to situations that are helpful and harmful.  We all experience virtually all the emotions to some degree whether we are conscious of them or not.  Try to be aware of the emotions that you seek and those that you avoid.  Use that awareness to be sure that you are not cutting yourself off from situations that might involve some small amount of negative emotion that you must endure to reap a greater amount of positive emotion.  For instance, although all human relationships involve painful experiences, most have the potential for considerably greater joy.


And, by the way, both a good cry and a good laugh can be salutary.


Reference:

Markovitch, N.,  Netzer, L., & Tamir, M. (2017).  What You Like Is What You Try to Get: Attitudes Toward Emotions and Situation Selection.  Emotion, January.  No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000272

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