Emotions affect people in many different ways. The same emotion affects differently different people moreover, it has a different effect on the same person who finds himself in different situations. Emotions can affect all systems of the individual, the subject as a whole.

Emotions and body.

In the muscles of the face during emotions, electrophysiological changes occur. Changes occur in the electrical activity of the brain, in the circulatory and respiratory systems Oh. With strong anger or fear, the heart rate can increase by 40-60 beats per minute. Such drastic changes somatic functions during a strong emotion indicate that during emotional states in a greater or lesser lesser degree all neurophysiological systems and subsystems of the body are included. Such changes inevitably affect the perception, thoughts and actions of the subject. These bodily changes can also be used to address a range of issues, both purely medical and mental health problems. Emotion activates autonomous nervous system, which changes the course of work of the endocrine and neurohumoral systems. Mind and body are in harmony for action. If the knowledge and actions corresponding to emotions are blocked, then psychosomatic symptoms may appear as a result.

Emotions and perception

It has long been known that emotions, like other motivational states, affect perception. A delighted subject tends to perceive the world through rose-colored glasses. A distressed or saddened person tends to interpret the comments of others as critical. A frightened subject tends to see only a frightening object (the effect of "narrowed vision").

Emotions and cognitive processes

Emotions affect both somatic processes and the sphere of perception, as well as memory, thinking and imagination of a person. The effect of "narrow vision" in perception has its counterpart in cognitive sphere. A frightened person is hardly able to test various alternatives. An angry person has only "angry thoughts." In a state of heightened interest or arousal, the subject is so overwhelmed with curiosity that he is unable to learn and explore.

Emotions and actions

Emotions and complexes of emotions that a person experiences at a given time affect virtually everything that he does in the field of work, study, and play. When he is really interested in a subject, he is full of a passionate desire to study it deeply. Feeling disgust for any object, he seeks to avoid it.

Emotions and personality development

Two kinds of factors are important when considering the relationship between emotion and personality development. The first is the subject's genetic inclinations in the sphere of emotions. The genetic make-up of the individual plays, apparently, important role in acquiring emotional traits (or thresholds) for various emotions. The second factor is personal experience individual and learning related to emotional sphere and, in particular, socialized ways of expressing emotions and behavior driven by emotions. Observations of children aged 6 months to 2 years who grew up in the same social environment (raised in preschool), showed significant individual differences in emotional thresholds and emotionally charged activities.

However, when a child has a low threshold for any particular emotion, when he experiences and expresses it often, it inevitably causes a special kind of reaction from other children and adults around him. Such forced interaction inevitably leads to the formation of special personal characteristics. Individual emotional traits are also significantly influenced by the inclusion of social experience, especially in childhood and infancy. A child who is characterized by a short temper, a child who is shy, naturally encounters various reactions from his peers and adults. The social consequence, and therefore the process of socialization, will vary greatly depending on the emotions most commonly experienced and expressed by the child. Emotional responses affect not only personal characteristics and social child development but also on intellectual development. A child with difficult experiences is significantly less likely to explore the environment than a child with a low threshold for interest and joy. Tomkins believes that the emotion of interest is as important for the intellectual development of any person as exercise is for physical development.

Emotions are an important part human life. People are subject to both positive and negative emotions. Which of them predominate in more, depends on the lifestyle of a person, his environment and attitude to life.

Many of us have heard that negative emotions can undermine health, positive emotions can “cure” ailments. If speak about mental state of a person, then emotions leave a certain imprint. But how they affect health, not many people know.

People say: "All diseases are from nerves." Yes, and doctors often use this phrase, trying to explain the cause of another illness. Numerous studies show that individual emotions affect human health in different ways. But before you figure out how this happens, you need to figure out what emotions are positive character, and which ones are negative.

Positive and negative emotions

By definition, emotions cannot be positive or negative. Just depending on what we feel in this moment time, our well-being and health may improve or deteriorate. However, the stereotyped classification of feelings is firmly entrenched in society: positive and negative.

positive emotions considered to be:
• laughter and joy;
• sympathy and interest;
• curiosity and inspiration;
• delight and admiration.

To negative emotions refer to completely opposite feelings:
• sadness and sadness;
• insecurity and shame;
• irritation and envy;
• anxiety and hatred;
• feelings of guilt and indifference;
• anger and excitement.

This is the main list human emotions, which, if desired, can be supplemented and diversified. But one thing is clear: when we experience positive emotions, our mood rises, well-being improves, there is an interest in life and a desire to act. When negative emotions take over us, we fall into despondency, apathy, become embittered at the world, we cease to be interested in life itself and the people around us.

How do negative emotions affect human health?

Ancient healers claimed that every illness is associated with a certain experience. Aggression can disrupt the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract, provoke headaches, hypertension and dental problems. Jealousy causes digestive disorders, insomnia and headaches. Fear is associated with heart disease, respiratory disorders, hearing impairment, visual acuity and kidney disease. Anxiety causes circulatory problems and diseases of the central nervous system. Hatred contributes to the development of cancer, liver disease and stomach ulcers.

How do positive emotions affect human health?

Any positive emotion increases the efficiency of the nervous system, improves sleep, stabilizes emotional condition, promotes the production of hormones of joy (endorphins) and has positive influence on the hormonal background of the body. The more positive emotions a person feels, the less he is prone to stress and various diseases.

How to manage emotions?

The best way to get rid of negative emotions- this is their "ejection". Such emotions cannot be kept in oneself, but the surrounding people should not suffer from them. Helps to cope with neurosis physical activity. A favorite hobby or hobby helps to distract from resentment and worries. Art therapy (rewriting problems on paper) allows you to block negative emotions with positive ones. Medicinal therapy - sedative phytopreparations, which contain soothing herbs.

Illness is a deviation from normal life. But they get sick, even those people who lead healthy lifestyle life and take care of your body.

Where do diseases come from? A person associates his illnesses with influence external environment. This is partly true. But internal state also renders Negative influence for well-being. The internal state is the emotions of a person, his psyche.

Negative emotions can be expressed physically - this is a "chill" in the stomach, pain in the heart, tinnitus, muscle tension and much more. These sensations disturb, cause stress.

The main variants of the occurrence of negative emotions can be divided as follows:

Some emotions are inevitable and, unfortunately, inevitable (the death of loved ones and relatives). Some emotions are hard to prevent. it natural disasters and events associated with them. BUT largest share falls on sources that are not only preventable, but also depend on the person himself and his behavior. We can get such emotions absolutely everywhere. They were rude in the store, quarreled with relatives. Negative emotions are accumulated grievances, stupid quarrels. And avoiding these negative emotions is so simple, but at the same time, difficult. Do not let a rude word fly off your lips, keep silent. Smile and be polite in response to rudeness. And one less unnecessary negative emotion. This behavior needs to be learned.

"Bad" emotions

Scientists dealing with human diseases have found that 90 percent of diseases begin with emotional disorders.

"Bad" emotions negative impact on health.

Negative emotions may not immediately manifest themselves in the form of neuroses. They gradually accumulate in the cerebral cortex and only then appear as nervous breakdowns. Negative emotions accumulated a long period lead to changes in the functioning of all systems human body.

The first thing that gets sick is the cardiovascular system. A person cannot influence the functioning of his physiological system She works beyond his will. Therefore, failures in the normal functioning of the human body under the influence of negative emotional outbursts occur against our will. It is often quite enough just to mention the events that cause negative emotions, and the disease process starts.

Most people underestimate the role of emotions. But it is emotions that increase the heartbeat. Following the heartbeat, blood pressure changes, arrhythmia develops and other cardiovascular diseases.

emotional stress cause disease in other organs. Yes, to functional disorders, and then to irreversible changes, negative emotions lead to the urinary system, respiratory organs, the entire gastrointestinal tract and endocrine glands.

Depressive states, oncology, autoimmune diseases - all these diseases originate in "bad" emotions. The human body weakens resistance to disease.

Positive emotions

Repairing broken relationships, eliminating anxieties, finding the positive, taking care of other people are the sources of positivity and positive emotions.

Positivity and health stimulate the formation of endorphins in the brain, which have a beneficial effect on immune system. This hormone helps fight disease. has a positive effect on emotional mood a balanced diet, adequate fluid intake and regular exercise.

Getting rid of negative emotions

Negative emotions can be controlled. If you learn to do this, then you can cope with the negative life situation and find the best solution to the problem.
Negative emotions come from negative thoughts. If you feel that negative emotions are overwhelming you, then try to find out their cause. The reason is not always on the surface. But it's in your interest to find out.

Did you find out? We change to positive.

Difficult? But it's in your best interest. Change your attitude to the situation, to the person.

The human brain is not a switch, it is difficult to turn an emotion on and off. So let's turn our attention to something else. An object that causes appreciation, gratitude, a feeling of joy and happiness.

The most creative emotion is gratitude, it is the carrier of positive energy. And not only. It is believed that the feeling of gratitude that a person feels for the world, for the people around him, can attract positive emotions and corresponding energy.

So, having learned to “switch” emotions, we will learn to receive positive energy, which will favorably affect our physical condition.

The impact of emotions on a person K. Izard

Emotions affect the body and mind of a person, they affect almost all aspects of his existence. In the following chapters, we will examine in detail how specific emotions affect various aspects of human biological, physiological, and social functioning. Here we are only in the most in general terms Let's outline the huge influence that emotions have on our lives.

Emotions and body

In a person experiencing an emotion, a change in the electrical activity of the muscles of the face can be recorded (Rusalova, Izard, Simonov, 1975; Schwartz, Fair, Greenberg, Freedman, Klerman, 1974). Some changes are also observed in the electrical activity of the brain, in the functioning of the circulatory and respiratory systems (Simonov, 1975). The pulse of an angry or frightened person can be 40-60 beats per minute higher than normal (Rusalova et al., 1975). Such drastic changes in somatic indicators when a person experiences a strong emotion indicate that almost all neurophysiological and somatic systems of the body are involved in this process. These changes inevitably affect the perception, thinking and behavior of the individual, and in extreme cases can lead to physical and mental disorders. Emotion activates the autonomic nervous system, which in turn affects the endocrine and neurohumoral systems. Mind and body require action. If, for one reason or another, behavior adequate to emotion is impossible for an individual, he is threatened with psychosomatic disorders (Dunbar, 1954). But it is not at all necessary to experience a psychosomatic crisis in order to feel how powerful the influence of emotions is on almost all somatic and physiological functions of the body. The influence of emotions on human physiology is discussed in detail in the recent work of Thompson (Thompson, 1988).

If you delve into your memory, you will surely remember the moments when you had to experience fear - and your heart was beating wildly, your breath was interrupted, your hands were trembling, and your legs became cottony. You may be able to remember how you were overcome by anger. At such moments, you felt every beat of a booming heart, blood rushed to your face, and all the muscles were tense and ready for action. You wanted to rush at the offender with your fists in order to release this tension. Remember the moments of grief or sadness - for sure then you felt an incomprehensible, inexplicable heaviness in all members, and your muscles were sluggish and lifeless. You felt a dull, aching pain in your chest, tears streamed down your face, or you tried to hold them back, trembling with soundless sobs.

Or imagine that you are as if charged with electricity, that your whole body is vibrating from the energy rushing out and that the blood is pulsing in your temples, in your fingertips, in every cell of your body. You want to dance, jump, scream - to throw out the joy that overwhelms you. Or remember how something shocked you or someone delighted you so much that you forgot about yourself and, spellbound, with all your thoughts and body, rushed to the object of lust and curiosity. An outside observer, if he is attentive, by one posture, by several characteristic movements of a person, can determine what emotion he is experiencing in this moment(Sogon and Matsutani, 1989).

Whatever the emotion experienced by a person - powerful or barely expressed - it always causes physiological changes in his body, and these changes are sometimes so serious that they cannot be ignored. Of course, with smoothed, indistinct emotions, somatic changes are not so pronounced - before reaching the threshold of awareness, they often go unnoticed. But one should not underestimate the importance of such unconscious, subthreshold processes for the body. Somatic responses to a mild emotion are not as intense as a violent response to a strong emotional experience, but the duration of exposure to a subliminal emotion can be very long. What we call "mood" is usually formed under the influence of just such emotions. Prolonged negative emotion, even of moderate intensity, can be extremely dangerous and in the end is fraught even with physical or mental disorders. results latest research in the field of neurophysiology suggest that emotions and mood even affect the immune system, reduce resistance to disease (Marx, 1985). If you experience anger, anxiety or depression for a long time - even if these emotions are mild - then you are more likely to get a cold, flu or an intestinal infection. Everyone knows that these are viral diseases, but the causative agents of these diseases are always present in the body in one quantity or another. And if chronic stress, prolonged experience of negative emotions weaken the immune system, the body provides them with fertile ground for reproduction and pathogenic influence.

Interaction of emotions, processes of personality development and social relations

Emotions experienced by a person direct influence on the quality of his activities - his work, study, games. For example, one student is passionate about a subject and is full of a passionate desire to study it thoroughly, to comprehend to the subtleties. The other is disgusted with the subject being studied and, naturally, looks for an excuse not to study it. It is easy to imagine what emotions the learning process will evoke in each of these two students: the first one will bring the joy and happiness of learning, the second - the eternal fear of failing the exam.

Emotions and personality development. When considering the interaction of emotions and personality development, two factors must be taken into account. The first of them is the influence of heredity on the emotional make-up of a person. One gets the impression that genetic prerequisites play an important role in the formation of emotionality or, to be more precise, in establishing the thresholds for experiencing a particular emotion. The second factor of interaction is individual experience and learning in the part that relates to the emotional sphere. This refers to the skills of expressing emotions and behavior patterns associated with emotions. Observations of Russian children aged 6 months to 2 years, who were in the same social conditions(children were brought up in a pre-school institution, where they were surrounded by an atmosphere of love, attention and care and basic life skills were instilled), found significant individual differences in emotional manifestations and in the level of emotional thresholds (Izard, 1977). Those who doubt the significance of the genetic prerequisites for emotionality, who are ready to challenge the role of the heredity factor in the process of formation of individual characteristics of emotional experiences, emotional expression and emotional behavior, I advise you to watch such identical, at first glance, babies for several hours.

If a child has a low threshold for experiencing some emotion, if he often experiences and often shows it, this inevitably causes a special kind of reaction and a special kind of attitude towards him from other children and adults. This kind of interaction between genetic and external factors inevitably leads to the formation of distinct personal characteristics.

It can be said that the emotional traits of an individual are largely determined by the characteristics of his personality. social experience, especially the experiences acquired in infancy and in early childhood. A child who is prone to irascibility, a child who is shy, or a smiling child naturally greets different reception in the world of peers and adults. The success of his interaction with the people around him, and hence the success of his social development and socialization, depends on the emotions that the child most often experiences and displays. Emotionality affects not only the formation personality traits and social development child, it affects even his intellectual development. If a child has got used to the state of despondency, if he is constantly upset or depressed, he will not be to the same extent as his cheerful peer, prone to active curiosity, to research environment. Tomkins (Tomkins, 1962) considers curiosity an emotion that plays the same role in the intellectual development of a person as exercise plays in his physical development.

Emotions and sex. Back in 1935 Beach (Beach, 1935) stated that fear and copulation are incompatible. He came to this conclusion by conducting experiments on rats, but the pattern he discovered can be applied to relationships between people, which is evidenced not only by common sense but also clinical observations. Sexual attraction is almost always accompanied by one emotion or another. Combined with anger and contempt, it degenerates into sadism or sexual abuse. The combination of sexual desire with guilt can lead to masochism or impotence. In love and in marriage, sexual attraction causes joyful excitement, a sharp experience in partners. sensual pleasure and leaves behind the most vivid impressions.

Emotions, marriage and parenthood. Features of a person's emotional make-up, his emotional responsiveness largely determine both the way of courtship and the choice of a partner for living together. Unfortunately, psychologists have not paid enough attention to the role that emotions play in courtship and in married life, but evidence from studies in related fields suggests the existence of two trends. On the one hand, a person, choosing a partner, strives to ensure that emotional experiences and the expression of a potential life partner did not run counter to his experiences and ways of expressing emotions. On the other hand, preference is often given to a person with a similar emotional profile - with the same thresholds of experience and with the same ways of emotional expression.

Emotions affect not only sexual attraction and on the relationship between spouses, they largely determine parental feelings and attitudes. The curiosity of the child, his joy, disgust or fear evoke an emotional response in the parents in accordance with their inherent individual thresholds these emotions.

Emotions and perceptual-cognitive processes

The most general and fundamental principle human behavior is that emotions energize and organize thought and action. Intense emotion causes a surge of energy in a person and. But it would be a profound delusion to stop there and think that emotions simply cause a general excitement or a feeling of energization and. specific emotion induces a person to a specific activity - and this is the first sign that emotion organizes thinking and activity. Emotions directly affect our perception, what and how we see and hear. So, for example, experiencing joy, a person perceives everything in a pink light. Fear narrows our perception, forcing us to see only the frightening object, or perhaps only the way to escape from it. It is the only thing a person can perceive, the only thing his mind is busy with when he is afraid. In anger, a person is angry at the whole world and sees it in black colors, and spurred on by interest in an object, phenomenon or person, he longs to explore and comprehend it.

Many years ago we conducted an experiment (Izard, Nagler, Randall, Fox, 1965) in which we investigated the influence of emotions on the perceptual-cognitive sphere. The subjects were divided into two groups. With one group, the experimenter treated kindly and courteously, with respect to the other he showed hostility. All subjects were given stereoscopes through which they were asked to view photographs of people in various emotionally expressive states. (A stereoscope is a device that allows the subject to simultaneously present two images, one of which he perceives with his left eye and the other with his right; at the same time, he perceives a single three-dimensional image that corresponds to either the left or right image, or is a combination of them.) Experimenter randomly inserted pairs of photographs with images of cheerful and angry people into the devices, and the subjects assessed the condition of the person depicted on them. At the same time, irritated subjects from the group treated impolitely by the experimenter more often saw angry and angry faces in the stereoscope, and subjects from control group, on the contrary, more often assessed the state of the people depicted in the photographs as joyful and satisfied. This experiment clearly demonstrated how emotions can affect the perceptual and cognitive spheres of a person. A number of other experiments are also devoted to the study of this influence.