Ch 4 - Chapter summary - Looking Out, Looking In PDF

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CHAPTER 4 Emotions: Feeling, Thinking, and Communicating LO1 Describe how the four components of emotions affect the way you feel, and hence how you communicate. What Are Emotions? Communication shapes our feelings and feelings shape our communication. Daniel Goleman coined the term Emotional Intelligence (EI): The ability to understand and manage one’s own emotions and be sensitive to others’ feelings. Important to personal and interpersonal relationships. - Nature of Emotions: o Physiological Factors: E.g. Fear increases heart rate, blood pressure, adrenaline secretions, and blood sugar level but slows digesting and pupil dilation. o Nonverbal Reactions: E.g. blushing, shaking, sweating.  Alcohol serves as an emotional enhancer – sometimes better or worse.  Can induce emotional states, E.g. walking with an upbeat strut can stave off depression. o Cognitive Interpretations: E.g. racing heart, sweating, tense muscles and elevated blood pressure can accompany excitement, joy OR fear.  Reappraisal: Rethinking the meaning of emotionally charged events in ways that alter their emotional impact.  Also has relational benefits.  Recognizing and acknowledging positive (happiness, relief, love) and negative (hurt, anger, grief) emotions is vital to psychological and relational health. o Verbal Expression: Sometimes words are necessary to express feelings. E.g. saying “I’m angry” instead of stomping out. o Primary and Mixed Emotions:  Primary Emotions: aka “basic.” Such as anger, joy, fear, and sadness.  Mixed Emotions: Feeling two or more emotions at the same time. o Intense and Mild Emotions: we experience emotions with different degrees of intensity. Some understate their emotions. o Intensity of Emotions: When we can’t talk about our emotions constructively, it can result in social isolation, unsatisfying relationships, anxiety and depression, and misdirected aggression.  Two parenting styles:

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Emotion coaching: gives children the skills to communicate their emotions. Emotion dismissing: the opposite.

LO1 Describe how the four components of emotions affect the way you feel and, hence, how you communicate. Emotions and communication have several components. Physiological factors (e.g., increased heart rate, increased adrenaline secretions, and pupil dilation) alert us that we’re having an emotional moment. Nonverbal factors (e.g., changes in gestures, vocal tone, and trembling) can be either a reaction to an emotion or a cause of an emotional state. But it’s the cognitive interpretations and how symptoms are labelled that affect our emotions. Trembling hands could be viewed as fear or excitement. In some cases, however, the only way to express deep, complex feelings is through verbal expression.

LO2 : Describe how the influences on emotional expression have affected your communication in an important relationship. Influences on Emotional Expression: Reasons why people rarely disclose how they feel: -

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Personality: Extroverted and Introverted people examples. Culture: o Warmer climates people are more emotionally expressive than cooler climates. o Same goes for North and South o Individualistic and Collectivistic cultures. Gender: Biological sex is the best predictor of the ability to detect and interpret emotional expressions – better than academic background, amount of foreign travel, cultural similarity, or ethnicity. o Women are more attuned to emotions than men o On the internet, women are more likely to use emoticons o Transgender people encounter shame often. Social Convections: refers to the notion of acting in ways that are acceptable within our society. E.g. not communicating messages than embarrass or threaten the “face” of others. o They also suppress unpleasant emotions in contexts like child rearing, workplace, relationships. o Social roles also shapes expression of emotions o Emotion Labor: The notion that managing and even suppressing emotions is both appropriate and necessary. o E.g. suppressing the urge to laugh during an important ceremony. Social Media: generally, express more online than face-to-face. BUT online disinhibition can encourage emotional outbursts and tirades. Such venting is hazardous to interpersonal relations and it may not make you feel better. o Social media also feels emotional responses. E.g. checking your partners social media and having feelings of jealousy.

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Emotional Contagion: The process by which emotions are transferred from one person to another. o We catch feelings from one another like it is a virus. o Also takes place online.

LO2 Describe how the influences on emotional expression listed have affected your communication in an important relationship. Several influences affect emotional expression. In terms of personality, extroverts report more positive emotions than do people with neurotic personalities. Expressing negative emotions is discouraged in collectivistic cultures. Even gender has an impact, supporting the unexpressive male and more expressive female stereotypes. Men express emotions with women, married individuals recognize the emotions of their partners, and women are better than men at interpreting emotions. Social conventions discourage emotional expression, and finally, emotions are transferred from one person to another. This is known as emotional contagion.

LO 3: Apply the guidelines for effective communicating emotions in an important situation. Guidelines for Expressing Emotions: learn how to express emotions constructively. Suggestions to help you decide when and how to express your emotions: - Recognize Your Feelings: o Affectively oriented people are acutely aware of their emotional states and use that knowledge to make important decisions. Low affective orientation are usually unaware of their emotional states and tend to regard feelings as useless or unimportant information. o Being aware is one thing but identifying them is another. - Recognize the Difference between Feeling, Talking, and Acting: People who act out angry feelings actually feel worse than those who experience anger without lashing out. - Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary: o Most people think they’re expressing feelings when in fact their statements are counterfeits of emotion. For example, it sounds emotionally revealing to say, “I feel like going to a movie” or “I feel we’ve been seeing too much of each other.” But neither statement has any emotional content.  In the first sentence, the word feel really stands for an intention: “I want to go to a show.”  In the second sentence, the “feeling” is really a thought: “I think we’ve been seeing too much of each other.” You can recognize the absence of emotion in each case by adding a genuine word of feeling to it. For instance, “I’m bored and I want to go to a show,” or “I think we’ve been seeing too much of each other and I feel confined.”

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o There are several ways to express a feeling verbally:  By using single words: “I’m angry” (or “excited,” “depressed,” “curious,” and so on)  By describing what’s happening to you: “My stomach is tied in knots,” “I’m on top of the world”  By describing what you’d like to do: “I want to run away,” “I’d like to give you a hug,” “I feel like giving up” o In other cases, communicators express feelings in a coded manner. Instead of saying, “I’m lonely,” they may say something like, “I guess there isn’t much happening this weekend, so if you’re not busy, why don’t you drop by?” This message is so indirect that any feeling may not be recognized. This is why people who send coded messages stand less chance of having their feelings understood and their needs met. Express Multiple Feelings: As humans, there is a tendency to express only one emotion, or feeling, when we might be experiencing multiple or mixed emotions. o E.g. you might express anger but overlook confusion, disappointment, frustration, or embarrassment that preceded it. o We usually only communicate only one feeling – the most negative one. Consider When and Where to Express Your Feelings: The first flush of a strong feeling isn’t usually the best time to speak out. o “Imagining Interactions” in advance of actual conversations enhances relationships by allowing communicators to rehearse the message and consider how others might respond. Accept Responsibility for Your Feelings: E.g. Instead of saying, “You make me angry,” say, “I’m getting angry.” Be Mindful of the Communication Channel: Deciding when to use email, instant messaging, cellphones, social media sites, blogging.

LO3 Apply the guidelines for effectively communicating emotions in an important situation. Constructive emotional expression can be learned. Being able to identify and label your emotions and recognizing the differences between feeling, talking, and acting are helpful. But you don’t have to act on every feeling. Expand your emotional vocabulary and recognize that if you have multiple and/or conflicting emotions at the same time, you’ll need to express each one. You’ll also have to select the proper time to express feelings, take responsibility for your feelings, and be mindful of the communication channel you select.

LO 4: Identify and dispute the fallacies that are creating debilitative emotions in an important situation. Explain how more rational thinking can lead to more constructive communication. Managing Difficult Emotions: Not all feelings are beneficial.

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Facilitative and Debilitative Emotions: There are two types of emotions: o Facilitative emotions: Emotions that contribute to effective functioning. o Debilitative emotions: Emotions that prevent a person from functioning effectively. o Difference: between the above two  is their intensity. Anger vs rage. Little nervousness vs total terror.  Is duration. Feeling depressed after a relationship or being angry for a long time. Rumination: Dwelling persistently in negative thoughts that, in turn, intensify negative feelings. Ruminators are more likely to lash out with displaced aggression at innocent bystanders. Sources of Debilitative Emotions: o Physiology: Some debilitative feelings come from communication traits like shyness, aggressiveness, and assertiveness which are rooted in biology. But, as we noted in Chapter 2, biology isn’t destiny. Other debilitative feelings like flight or fight are controlled by the amygdala (uh-MIG-duh-lah). It acts as a kind of sentinel and, in a split second, it can scan our every experience looking for threats. It can trigger a flood of physiological responses from a speeding heart to an elevated blood pressure to preparing the muscles to act.89 While this is very useful when there are real physical dangers, it can be annoying in social situations where no threat exists. This is where clear thinking can prevent overacting. o Emotional Memory: Seemingly harmless events can trigger debilitative feelings if they bear the slightest resemblance to troublesome experiences from the past. o Self-Talk: how we label events and situations.  Albert Ellis, who developed an approach to reappraisal called rational emotive therapy, provides an example. If you were walking by a friend’s house and that person stuck his head out the window and called you a string of vile names, you would probably feel hurt and upset. But if your friend was living in a mental health facility and did the same thing, your reactions or feelings would be different. Perhaps you would be sad for your friend. The difference in your feelings has to do with your thinking.  The bottom line is that emotions are more a result of our thoughts than of the events we encounter. As a result, it’s possible to use self-talk to manage emotional responses. For instance, research suggests that telling yourself “I’m excited” instead of saying “Calm down” will generally lead to better performances in public speaking.91 The words we

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use, even if they never leave our minds, can have a dramatic effect on how we manage our emotions. Irrational Thinking and Debilitative Emotions: Debilitative feelings that come from accepting irrational thoughts are called Fallacies. o The Fallacy of Perfection: The irrational belief that a worthwhile communicator should be able to handle every situation with complete confidence and skill.  Subscribing to the myth of perfection diminishes selfesteem.  Saying “I don’t know” and expressing feelings of uncertainty may seem lie social defects and therefore, you may be tempted to appear perfect. o The Fallacy of Approval: The irrational belief that it is vital to win the approval of virtually every person a communicator deals with. o The Fallacy of Shoulds: The inability to distinguish between what is and what should be.  They confuse is with should.  “My friend should be more understanding.”  “You should work harder.” o The Fallacy of Overgeneralization: Irrational beliefs in which conclusions (usually negative) are based on limited evidence or exaggerated shortcomings.  First is generalizing from a limited amount of evidence.  Second is we exaggerate shortcomings. E.g. “You never listen to me.” o The Fallacy of Causation: The irrational belief that emotions are caused by others and not by the person who experiences them.  This causes trouble in 2 ways:  When people become overly cautious about communicating because they don’t want to “cause” pain or inconvenience for others.  When we believe that others cause our emotions.  It’s your reaction, not their actions, that determines how you feel. o The Fallacy of Helplessness: The irrational belief that satisfaction in life is determined by forces beyond one’s control. Replace “can’t” statements with “won’t.”  Self-fulfilling prophecy works here too.  Don’t sell yourself short. o The Fallacy of Catastrophic Expectations: The irrational belief that the worst possible outcome will probably occur. Then the self-fulfilling prophecy begins to build. Minimizing Debilitative Emotions: strategies to cut down on selfdefecting thinking that leads to debilitative emotions:

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o Monitor your emotional reactions o Note the activating event: You may also find that they occur when you’re around specific people or certain types of individuals or in certain settings. o Record tour self-talk: link the activating event to the feeling. o Reappraise your irrational beliefs: stepping back and trying to see the errors in your thinking process. Maximizing Facilitative Emotions: if thoughts cause feelings, then positive thoughts cause positive feelings. o It is a matter of mindset.

Communication at Work: According to Daniel Goldman, emotional intelligence consists of 5 dimensions: - Self-awareness: where people recognize their strengths and weaknesses and the effect these have on others. - Self-regulation: they know when (and when not) to reveal their emotions. - Motivation: they are self-motivated - Empathy: they understand others and relate to their concerns. - People skills: they can build rapport quickly and avoid debilitating behaviors such as backstabbing. Masking emotions to promote best outcomes is used everywhere. LO4 Identify and dispute the fallacies that are creating debilitative emotions in an important situation. Explain how more rational thinking can lead to more constructive communication. Debilitative emotions emerge from irrational thoughts, referred to as fallacies. The fallacy of perfection holds that you communicate perfectly in every situation, a feat that is humanly impossible. The fallacy of approval is based on the idea of seeking the approval of everyone, but this too is not achievable. The fallacy of shoulds focuses on how things “should” be, yet it is unreasonable to expect that the world operate according to your whims. With overgeneralization, conclusions are based on limited information, or shortcomings are exaggerated. Either way, positive attributes are ignored or minimized. Causation occurs when you believe that others cause emotions, but emotions are based on individual interpretations. Helplessness is the irrational belief that satisfaction in life is determined by forces beyond your control. But looking more closely, many “can’t” statements are actually “won’t” statements. Those believing in the fallacy of catastrophic expectations assume that the worst possible outcome will occur. In many cases, self-fulfilling prophecy drives outcomes. Irrational thinking is minimized when you monitor your emotional reactions, note the activating event, record your self-talk, and reappraise your irrational beliefs....