GE01-Module-10. Emotional Self PDF

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Summary

Cities of Mandaluyong and PasigTHE EMOTIONAL SELFPAGE*MERGE1. Definition of Emotion 2. Emotional development and the emergence of the emotional self 3. Functions of emotion 4. Emotions of adolescence 5. Emotional Intelligence 6. How can we better manage our emotions?This lesson will engage us in an ...

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SESSION NO. 10 / WEEK NO. 11

MODULE NO.10: THE EMOTIONAL SELF

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Definition of Emotion Emotional development and the emergence of the emotional self Functions of emotion Emotions of adolescence Emotional Intelligence How can we better manage our emotions?

Overview

This lesson will engage us in an exploration of the ways in which the emotions play a central role in contributing to our sense of self. It provides for an examination of the emotional components of adolescence life, how it functions. Central to this module also are concepts and theories related to the ways on how we can effectively manage or regulate our emotions.

Study Guide

● You can complete this module at your own pace. It means you can take every part to study depending on your capability to do so. ● This module starts with a brief overview about what the topic is all about. It will also tell you the learning outcomes we would want you to accomplish after completing this module. The presentation of topic has complete resources you can check for further readings and clarifications. ● Requirements involve learning activities and assessment which will be provided by your professor after the discussion. Take time to study each lesson carefully to apply these new learnings appropriately. Learning Outcomes THE EMOTIONAL SELF

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1. 2. 3. 4.

Be able to properly name and label emotions. Understand the emergence of emotional self Understand the causes and expressions of emotions among adolescents Learn ways on how to regulate and manage emotions

Topic Presentation

THE EMOTIONAL SELF

Before you begin, kindly answer the question below and think of an honest reason why you are feeling that way. How are you feeling today?

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Emotions defined Emotions are feelings that generally have both physiological and cognitive elements and that influence behavior. Think for example, about how it feels to be happy. The identifiable physiological changes in our body may include heart rate increases and other physical manifestations like tightening of muscles around the eyes, cheeks raised, and raising lips. The cognitive elements are our understanding and evaluation of what is happening that prompts our feelings of happiness. However, there are also circumstances that it is possible to experience an emotion without the presence of cognitive elements, for example, we experience disgust or dislike towards a person whom we just meet without understanding what it is about that person that is disgusting. Let us now first see how our emotions develop before we can fully understand how to name our emotions.

Emotional Development How does one transform from a being who experiences sensations into a social being who experiences emotions? Emotional development refers to the way human beings become aware of and express feelings over time, the role of emotion in everyday life and the change in a person’s capacity to cognitively identify, process, manage, and express feelings. A developmental model offered by Cathryn Johnson (1992), specifies seven stages of emotional development. It illustrates the vertical structure of emotions – the hierarchy of emotional experiences from simple to complex. This stages specify how individuals learn to direct emotions towards others, share emotions with others, identify another’s and one’s own emotions, directs emotions toward oneself, and

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manage emotions. Each aspect of emotional experience represents a new stage for the child and her developing self. Stage 1: The Feeling of Sensations and Response to Tactile, Visual, and Auditory Contact This stage is considered as a preliminary to the development of the emotional self since, in this stage, the infant has not yet acquired self-reflexiveness . Infant’s reaction is based on both internal and external sensations. Thus, acts of smiling, babbling, and crying by infants at this point are merely responses to arousal (painful or pleasurable), and, as such are not properly called as emotions but rather expressions of sensations. Unlike emotions, previously felt sensations cannot be easily re-experienced in our bodies, nor can they be easily shared with others For example, sensations like physical pain due to burns or itchiness cannot be shared or re-experienced, however, emotions such as joy or sadness can be re-experienced by recalling an event which produced those feelings, though the original event is removed from us by time and/or space. Stage 2: Mutual Affective Reciprocity This stage is characterized by the processes of anticipation and intentionality which is operating in the child - caregiver interaction. Couch (1984), explained that infants participation to repetitive acts enabled them to acquire ordered pasts that allow them to anticipate an event. For example, in the game of peek-a-boo, the infant experience repetitive sequences of simultaneous visual and voice contact from caregiver. The infant laughs in anticipation of the caregiver’s return to the infants’ visual field. Intentionality on the other hand is illustrated in this game when the child actively pulls off the mask/hand, joyfully anticipating the caregiver’s response. At this point, the infant achieve the ability to interact intentionally with the caregiver as well as with the object (the hand/mask) in the event, hence, the child is influenced by past experience and an anticipated future. The process of affective reciprocity, pleasant or unpleasant, is a social relationship which involves mutual reciprocity, a kind of fundamental interaction between caregiver and the child out of which more complex interactions are built. Observed also in this stage is the interdependence between cognition and affect. The child has now the cognitive ability to distinguish herself from other people and objects, and is also aware that they can elicit a response from others – the beginning of the emergence of self. Stage 3: Mutual Sharing of Affect The development of shared feelings occurs when both the child and the caregiver is having the same emotional reaction. According to Couch (1984) Infants who have minimal contact with their caregivers are less likely to be capable of sharing emotions THE EMOTIONAL SELF

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with other early in life and will have difficulty experiencing the sharing of feelings as they grow older. The roots of empathy also begin at this stage since the ability to empathize depends on the sharing of emotional experiences. Also, in this stage, the child differentiates themselves from the caregiver and object, and identifies themselves as an actor. Although the emergence of self is still, at the primitive stage at this point, the child does not require a clear organized self to experience sharing of emotion. Stage 4: Identification of Other’s and One’s Own Emotions Acquisition of significant symbols which facilitates identification and interpretation of one’s own and other’s emotion is the significant characteristics of this stage. At this point children learn to connect displays of affect with symbol representing what is felt by another. For example, when a child sees her caregiver crying, and the caregiver says, “I’m feeling sad,” she begins to learn that sadness and crying can go together. Though separation of what is displayed and what is felt will be acquired at a later age. Awareness of one’s own emotion is occurring simultaneously with the identification of other’s emotion. It is in this stage that the child becomes more clearly aware that her emerging self is experiencing emotions, since she is now able to name, understand, and communicate, although vaguely, her feelings with others. Therefore, the experiences of joy, happiness, sadness, and anger can be properly called emotions. Children who were not able to experience sharing emotions in the last stage, may find it difficult to identify their own emotional being. Similarly, if children’s emotional displays and feelings are inconsistently interpreted and ignored, they may become confused about how to interpret their own emotional experiences. The children’s feelings and the meanings given to them by themselves and others affect how they will see their emerging self. Stage 5: Emotional Role-Taking Only in stage 5, the child adopts the standpoint of the other and assesses herself from that standpoint, hence, he/she acquires self-consciousness. Mead (1934) called this process as reflexive role-taking. The person is now able to direct emotions xtoward oneself. They may begin to identify themselves in emotional terms such as “easily excitable”, a “cry baby”, “likeable”, “loveable”, “easily frustrated”, “nasty”, “picky”, “sensitive”, or “sweet”. They come to know themselves through the reactions (including the emotional reactions) of others toward her (Cooley, 1956, cited in Johnson, 1992). The ability to think about oneself over time (the extended self) allows emotions to arise from thoughts about oneself in the past and the future, the ability to reflect on one’s own subjective reactions (private self) allows emotion to arise from self-evaluation and inferences about others’ judgments, and the ability to

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conceptualize oneself in abstract and symbolic ways (conceptual self) allows emotions to arise from abstract and arbitrary self-judgments (Leary & Buttermore, 2003) Stage 6: Emergence of Consciousness of Relationships and the Generalized Other In this stage, the child begins to experience more complex forms of reflexive roletaking emotions. With awareness of consciousness of social structure, the child is capable of taking the standpoint of the “generalized other” and assessing herself through this standpoint. Feelings of guilt, for example, can occur even without the presence of the other. A child may feel guilty for breaking mom’s favorite flower vase even without the mother knowing that the event happened. The child can imagine how her mother would feel if she will realized it, by taking the emotional standpoint of her mother and assessing how her mother would feel about her. The individual sees and feels her/his emotions in the expressions directed toward her/him by others. Other researchers called this as self-conscious emotions as emotions that emerge from self-reflection and self-evaluation. This includes emotions such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, social anxiety, and pride that arise from people’s inferences about others’ evaluations of the individual, playing a role in guiding behavior, motivating people to adhere to norms and morals, affectively punishing misbehaviors, and promoting corrective actions following misdeeds (Leary, 2007). According to Denzin (1984) and Stryker (1987) once the self has emerged, emotions toward oneself due to reflexive role-taking can help shape the self throughout life. By experiencing herself feel, she comes to know herself more deeply. She learns about herself through experiencing her emotional self and through reflecting back on her emotional behavior. For example, hearing news about terrorism in Mindanao can evoke extreme rage towards the terrorist, she may realize how committed she is to her own opinion. Her emotional reactions signals to her the strength of her convictions. Stage 7: Management of Emotions Hoschild (1979), used the term “emotion management” to describe how children learn ways of changing their inappropriate feelings. Children learn to actively try not to experience or express inappropriate feelings in particular situations. They learn to shape, induce, or reduce feelings to fit what they believe they ought to experience or express. Our emotional selves are complex because we learn different ways of experiencing emotional interactions. We learn to identify and interpret emotions, direct emotions toward others and ourselves, and even try to change our emotions to fit the situational feeling rules.

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Childhood and adolescence is the training ground for acquisition of the tools needed to accomplish this. About themselves, adolescents need to learn to identify their own emotions, accept emotion, recognize common patterns in emotion, thoughts, and behaviors, separate their emotions from others and manage their emotions and, about others, adolescents need to learn to identify emotion, accept emotion, separate their emotions from others, practice compassion and understand how to assist without need to save. WHAT EMOTIONS DO FOR YOU 1. Emotions motivate our behavior. It prepares us for action. Emotions save time in getting us to act in important situations. It can be specifically important when we don’t have time to think things through. Strong emotions help us overcome obstacles – in our minds and in the environment. 2. Emotions communicate to (and influence) others. Facial expressions are hard-wired aspects of emotions. Facial expressions communicate faster than words. Our body language and voice tone can also be hard-wired. Emotions may “leak” or communicate in ways we don’t intend. People read and interpret emotional behavior. 3. Emotions communicate to ourselves Emotional reactions can give us important information about a situation. It can be a signal or alarm that something is happening. Gut feelings can be like intuition - a response to something important about the situation. This can be helpful if our emotions get us to check out the facts. If we assume that our emotions represent facts about the world, we may use them to justify our thoughts or our actions. This can be trouble if our emotions get us to ignore the facts.

Function of Specific Emotions in Our Lives a. Fear Fear organizes our responses to threats to our life, health, or well-being. It focuses us on escape from danger. b. Anger Anger organizes our responses to the blocking of important goals or activities or to an important attack on the self or to important others. It focuses us on self-defense, mastery, and control. c. Disgust

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Disgust organizes our responses to situations and things that are offensive and contaminating. It focuses us on rejecting and distancing ourselves from some object, event, or situation. d. Sadness Sadness organizes our responses to losses of someone or something important, and to goals lost or not attained. It focuses us on what is valued and the pursuit of goals, as well as on communicating to others that we need help. e. Shame Shame organizes responses related to personal characteristics or our own behaviors that are dishonoring or sanctioned by our community. It focuses us on hiding transgressions and, if these are already public, engaging in appeasement-related behaviors. f. Guilt Guilt organizes responses related to specific actions that have led to violation of values. It focuses us on actions and behaviors that are likely to repair the violation.

Adolescents’ Emotional Experiences Emotional experience is an individual interpretation and evaluation of their emotional state and behavior. Emotional experience requires a concept of self because experiencing an emotion mean being able to make reference to the self as having that state. In the context of this discussion several example of adolescent’s experiences will be discussed. (1)

Academic emotions

In the Filipino culture, everyone is expected to do well in school, and the value of education among Filipinos mean that education is taken seriously to the extent of sacrificing immediate happiness. Academic emotions are students’ experiences related to learning and achievement. Control-value theory of academic emotions by Pekrun (2006) also called this as achievement emotions which defines as emotions directly tied to achievement activities or achievement outcome. These theory states four categories of academic emotions: ● ● ● ●

positive activating emotions (e.g. enjoyment, hope, pride); positive deactivating emotions (e.g. relief, relaxation); negative activating emotions (e.g. anger, anxiety, shame) and negative deactivating emotions (e.g. boredom, hopelessness).

The domain of academic emotions would include students’ achievement emotions experienced in school or university settings, and also those that goes beyond THE EMOTIONAL SELF

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emotions relating to success and failure but also those relating to instruction or to the process of studying. Anxiety was mentioned most often not only in relation to taking exams, but also with reference to being in class or studying at home. Test anxiety can reduce working memory resources, leading to an impairment of performance at complex or difficult tasks that draw on these resources. Consequently, test anxiety tends to correlate negatively with academic achievement at school and university (Pekrun, 2002). Aside from anxiety, emotions reported most often were enjoyment of learning, hope, pride, and relief, as well as anger, boredom, and shame. In addition, there were accounts of several less frequently reported emotions (e.g., the social emotions of gratitude, admiration, contempt, and envy). Hopelessness was also reported less often, but some accounts of this emotion involved reports about personal tragedies including suicidal ideation relating to failing academic exams (Pekrun, 2002). The Filipino learners (11 – 21 years old) in the study conducted by Allan B.I. Bernardo, et. al (2009) mentioned all eight of the emotions (anger, anxiety, boredom, enjoyment, hope, hopelessness, pride, and shame), but two of the emotions were mentioned rather infrequently; hopelessness and shame. Out of 38 identified academic emotions of Filipino learners, 17 can be classified as purely affective in nature based on Clore et. al (1987, cited in Bernardo et.al, 2009) taxonomy of emotions. Three emotions (bore, eager, determined) are classified under combined affective-cognitive conditions. Seven words (confident, confused, curious, inspire, interest, lazy, patient) are classified as purely cognitive conditions. However, Filipino learners in the study used the words as commonly thought to describe their emotional experiences related to learning. On the other hand, words like “stress” and “pressure” seem to describe a predominantly affective condition similar to being anxious and nervous. Generally speaking, “in school, adolescents often see themselves as being evaluated in terms of their academic performance and the pressure to excel is an important measure of their success” (Ang & Huan, 2006b, p. 134, cited in Calaguas, 2013). Filipino learner’s conception of academic emotion is constructed within the context of the academic activities of school and this define a set of events, event types, and closely linked appraisals that have strong cognitive components, aside from the affective components. (2) Romantic Emotion Emotions related to romantic relationships constitute a substantial part of adolescents’ day-today emotional lives. In modern pop songs young people still sings about their crushes, facebook posts, tweets and “hugot lines” talk about unrequited loves and romantic break-ups; about feeling “love struck”, awkward, unsure, in despair , overwhelmed, joyous and inspired. Developmental theorist Erik Erikson

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