Emotions-To Feel or Not To Feel, That Is The Question

‘How are you feeling today?’ Did you know that your emotions can affect how you deal with situations? For example, if you are curious, you are more likely to want to find out about something but if you are fearful, you are more likely to run away.

In this post, we shall talk about emotions at three different levels of complexity.

Level 1 (4-9 years old)- What are emotions and how many are there? (Parents Corner is included at the bottom)

How do you feel when your teacher gives you a sticker for your good work? How about when your friend takes your favourite toy? Hmm… How about if your mummy or daddy is sick? These inner feelings that you have are emotions. How many emotions do we have?

A researcher had tried to count the number of basic (simple) emotions. Basic emotions are feelings that even newborn babies show! He found six emotions: happy, angry, fear, disgust, sadness and surprise. You can see an example of these emotions below:

BUT this researcher had only looked at people from one part of the world but not other parts. Does this mean that the six emotions may be different all over the world?

Researchers wanted to know if the basic emotions are the same across the world. People from another side of the world, who have not seen American faces, were shown three emotions and were told a simple story that fits one of the emotions. The people were then asked which of the emotions best matches the story. The results showed that all emotions were correctly matched except for fear and surprised faces. This means that these emotions may not be seen in the same way in different countries.

As the world becomes more connected, we start to make friends from other parts of the world whom we see more often. Do you think that means we will be better at looking at emotions in people living far away from us?

Level 2 (10-14 years old)- How does internal emotional regulation develop?

Now that you are slightly older, you are better able to control some of your emotions either by directing attention away from the feelings (not thinking about it), or even to mask it (like putting on a happy face even though you may be upset). This can be seen as an internal emotional regulation (you are able to regulate your own emotions without help from others). However, younger children are unable to regulate their own emotions as well and so would need help from others around them (external emotional regulation). So the question we would like to understand is how do we develop internal emotional regulation?

In one study, the researchers wanted to understand what toys parents would use to soothe their crying baby. The researchers had presented parents with many toys that they can use to stop their child from crying.

Independent variable (Variable that the researchers changed): Different toys used to soothe the child.

Dependent variable (Variable that the researcher was measuring): Emotional reaction of the child.

The results showed that the brass bell and rattle were the most effective in soothing their child, but not items like bubbles. However, when the brass bell or rattle was no longer used, the baby would start to cry again. Thus, it means that these distractors (brass bell and rattle) were only able to help the child for a short period of time.

Why do you think that only the brass bell and rattle were the most effective?

I think that it’s because when you cry, your eyes are closed and so any distractors, that need the baby to look, would not help but if it’s a distractor that you hear, the baby would still be able to hear it even with his/her eyes closed (but that’s just my theory!).

Now what happens when the child grows up? As we get older, we develop higher-functioning processes, known as executive control. Executive control helps us to make plans, solve problems and even control our emotions. The part of executive control that helps us to control our emotions is affective control.

Affective control is the ability to focus on affective information (information about your feelings) that is related to your goals and to reduce focus on information that is not related to your goals. The researchers showed that affective control develops throughout adolescence to adulthood but not in a direct way. However, with that said, affective control is a stepping stone before we develop emotion regulation.

What do you think are some ways that you can better control your emotions?

Level 3 (15 years old and above)- How are researchers understanding emotions to better understand how you learn?

In a few Singapore classrooms, teachers are actively linking the role of emotions to learning to better support their students. Some teachers would ask their students how they are feeling before the start of the lesson while other teachers would create activities to incite curiosity to encourage their students to find out more about the topic. However, is it only positive emotions (i.e. happy, interest, curiosity) that would lead to more productive learning?

In one study, the researchers wanted to investigate if negative emotions, like frustration and confusion, can lead to better learning. Half of the students were given instructions with an erroneous (wrong) example where they were shown a word problem with a wrong solution.They were told that the answer given was incorrect and were asked to correct the solution, explain the problem and also what the underlying principles are. The other half of the students were presented a similar version of the instructions but without the erroneous example and were just asked to solve, explain and identify the underlying principles in the correct solution.

Independent variable (Variable that the researchers manipulated): Type of intervention used.

Dependent variable (Variable that the researchers were measuring): Performance on a test after the intervention.

The results showed that students in the erroneous condition performed better on the test after compared to students in the other condition. Thus, it suggests that confusion and frustration, by providing erroneous examples, may allow students to learn more.

In conclusion, negative emotions may not always be bad during the learning process and may, in fact encourage students to think harder about how to resolve such inconsistencies between their own knowledge and the information presented. However, with that said, there is also research that shows that some negative emotions may also hinder learning. Now, at what point does negative emotions stop benefitting learning and instead start to hinder learning?

Parents Corner (Level 1)

Is it that easy to match stories to different emotions? Why don’t you give it a go with your child!:)

Dean knew today was going to be a long day. Why? Because he had to go to the doctor! Just the thought of sitting in the doctor’s room made him shake.

Which emotion do you think best shows how he feels?

Kytheria walked around a wet market with her mummy to buy some fresh vegetables and meat. Kytheria wrinkled her nose and said ‘so smelly!’

Which emotion do you think best shows how she feels?

It was playtime and Benji was lucky enough to be the first one in the playground. He was about to come down the slide when his classmate pushed him aside and went down first.

Which emotion do you think best shows how he feels?

Colette was at the pet shop looking at all the different animals. She saw a little kitten coming towards her so she opened her arms to welcome it.

Which emotion do you think best shows how she feels?

It was Mattias’ birthday, he was very excited to have all his friends around him as he opened up his presents. His eyes opened very wide when he opened the present that his parents bought him, a brand new gaming console!

Which emotion do you think best shows how he feels?

Lara has fallen ill! Her mummy told her that she is not allowed to go see her friends for a while so that she can get better. Lara really misses playing with her friends and bursts into tears.

Which emotion do you think best shows how she feels?

Reference:

Ekman, P. (1992). Are there basic emotions?. Psychological Review, 99, 550-553

Ekman, P., & Keltner, D. (1997). Universal facial expressions of emotion. Segerstrale U, P. Molnar P, eds. Nonverbal communication: Where nature meets culture, 27-46.

Richey, J. E., Andres-Bray, J. M. L., Mogessie, M., Scruggs, R., Andres, J. M., Star, J. R., ... & McLaren, B. M. (2019). More confusion and frustration, better learning: The impact of erroneous examples. Computers & Education, 139, 173-190.

Schweizer, S., Gotlib, I. H., & Blakemore, S. J. (2020). The role of affective control in emotion regulation during adolescence. Emotion, 20(1), 80.

(We still need to find the references for one of the papers as it was cited in a lecture but we’re not able to find the paper:S We will update it ASAP)