Emotions
The heterogeneity of mental processes that provide various forms of orientation of the subject in the world of objects and in himself leads to the need to streamline possible classifications. The main groups of mental processes are: 1. Cognitive (sensation and perception, memory, imagination and thinking), 2. Emotional (feelings, emotions), 3. Volitional (motives, aspirations, desires, decision making). I would like to dwell on the second group - emotional processes. And analyze emotions in more detail.
Emotions are a special class of mental processes and states (of humans and animals) associated with instincts, needs, motives and reflecting in the form of direct experience (satisfaction, joy, fear, etc.) the significance of phenomena and situations affecting the individual for the implementation of his life activities .etc.
Emotions appeared in humans during the process of evolution. It can be assumed that the origins of some human emotions should be sought in the simplest physiological drives, such as hunger, and in primary adaptive mechanisms, such as the approach-withdrawal reaction. Each emotion performed one or another adaptive function in the process of human evolution. Darwin's thesis that ways of expressing basic emotions are innate and universal has been repeatedly supported by cross-cultural and developmental psychology research.
A comprehensive definition of the phenomenon of emotion should include physiological, expressive and empirical components. Emotion arises as a result of neurophysiological processes, which in turn can be caused by both internal and external factors. When an emotion arises in response to a mental image, symbol, or representation, we can talk about a formed connection between thought and feeling, or an affective-cognitive structure. Affective-cognitive structures can be a combination of drive and cognitive processes or a combination of drive, emotion and cognitive processes.
For convenience, we divide emotions into positive and negative based on their sensory or experiential characteristics. However, we must remember that any emotion (for example, joy, fear) can be both positive and negative, depending on how much it helps or hinders the individual’s adaptation in a particular situation.
The experience of emotion changes the level of electrical activity in the brain, dictates which muscles of the face and body should be tense or relaxed, and controls the endocrine, circulatory and respiratory systems of the body. Emotions can cloud the perception of the world around us or color it with bright colors, turn the train of thought towards creativity or melancholy, make movements light and smooth or, conversely, clumsy.
Human behavior is based on emotions; they activate and organize a person’s perception, thinking and aspirations. Emotions have a direct impact on perceptual processes, filter information that a person receives through the senses, and actively interfere with the process of its subsequent processing.
Emotion of interest
The emotion of interest is considered by us as one of the innate basic emotions and as the dominant motivational state in the daily activities of a full-fledged, healthy person. We believe that in a normal state of consciousness a person constantly experiences some kind of emotion and that most often his perceptual-cognitive activity and behavior are guided by the emotion of interest. The exception is those cases when an unsatisfied need or a negative emotion dominates the consciousness.
The emotion of interest is characterized by very specific behavioral manifestations. An interested person looks inspired, his attention, gaze and hearing are directed to the object of interest. He experiences a feeling of being captured, enchanted, absorbed. The phenomenology of interest is also characterized by a relatively high degree of feelings of pleasure and self-confidence and a moderate degree of impulsivity and tension.
Astonishment
Surprise is generated by a sudden change in stimulation. The external reason for surprise is a sudden, unexpected event. This event could be a clap of thunder, a flash of fireworks, or the unexpected appearance of a friend.
The feeling of surprise is familiar to everyone, but it is difficult to describe. This is partly due to the fact that surprise is short-lived, but an even more important role is played by the fact that in a moment of surprise our mind seems to go blank, all thought processes seem to be suspended. This is why the reaction of surprise does not receive sufficient understanding. The experience of surprise is a little like the feeling of a mild electric shock: your muscles instantly contract and you feel a slight tingling sensation as the shock passes through your nerves, causing you to flinch. When we experience surprise, we do not know how to respond to the stimulus; its suddenness gives us a feeling of uncertainty.
Sadness
The experience of sadness is usually described as despondency, sadness, feelings of loneliness and isolation. Although the emotion of sadness can have a very detrimental effect on a person, it is characterized by a lower level of tension than other negative emotions. Experimental studies have found that in a situation of sadness in healthy people, the second most important emotion is fear, which is consistent with the provisions of the theory of differential emotions, which consider the dynamics of sadness in depression and grief.
The emotion of sadness performs a number of psychological functions. Experiencing grief brings people together, strengthens friendships and family ties; sadness inhibits a person’s mental and physical activity, and thereby gives him the opportunity to think about a difficult situation; it informs a person and the people around him about trouble, and finally, sadness encourages a person to restore and strengthen connections with people.
There are three ways to regulate sadness: activating another emotion to eliminate or reduce the intensity of the sadness experienced, cognitive regulation (switching attention and thinking) and motor regulation (by tensing voluntarily controlled muscles and physical activity).
Anger
Anger, disgust and contempt are discrete emotions in their own right, but they often interact with each other. Situations that activate anger often activate emotions of disgust and contempt to varying degrees. In any combination, these three emotions can become the main affective component of hostility.
The facial reaction of anger involves furrowing the eyebrows and baring the teeth or pursing the lips. The experience of anger is characterized by high levels of tension and impulsivity. In anger, a person feels much more confident than with any other negative emotion.
The emotion of anger does not necessarily lead to aggression, although it is one of the components of aggressive motivation. Aggressive behavior is usually caused by a number of factors - cultural, family, individual. Manifestations of aggression can be observed even in young children. Research shows that aggressive children (that is, children who lack social skills) tend to exhibit aggressive or criminal behavior as adults. These data suggest that the level of aggressiveness is an innate characteristic of an individual and, as he grows up, acquires the character of a stable personality trait.
Disgust
The emotion of contempt is associated with a feeling of superiority. It is difficult to talk about the merits or positive meaning of this emotion. Perhaps contempt is an appropriate feeling when it is directed against such ugly social phenomena as depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution, oppression, discrimination, crime.
The negative aspects of the emotion of contempt are quite obvious. All prejudices and so-called<хладнокровные>murders are driven by contempt.
Situations that activate anger often simultaneously activate the emotions of disgust and contempt. The combination of these three emotions can be considered the triad of hostility. However, hostility must be distinguished from aggressive behavior. Hostile feelings increase the likelihood of aggression, but do not necessarily lead to it. A person experiencing hostile feelings may not show aggression. Conversely, you can behave aggressively without experiencing hostility.
Fear
Despite the fact that fear, especially in its extreme manifestations, is experienced quite rarely by us, most people are afraid of this emotion. The experience of fear is felt and perceived by people as a threat to personal safety. Fear encourages people to make efforts aimed at avoiding the threat and eliminating the danger. Fear can be caused by both physical and psychological threat.
There are a number of stimuli and situations to which we are biologically predisposed to respond with fear. To such<естественным сигналам>dangers include pain, loneliness, and sudden changes in stimulation. But as one gains experience, a person learns to fear a variety of situations, phenomena and objects. Most conditioned fear activators are somehow related to natural danger signals. If parents consistently respond to certain stimuli with fear, then there is a good chance that these stimuli will also cause fear in their child.
The experience of fear is accompanied by a feeling of uncertainty, insecurity, and inability to control the situation. The primary function of fear is to motivate specific cognitive and behavioral acts that promote security and a sense of confidence. Fear has an effect<туннельного восприятия>and significantly narrows the choice of behavioral strategies. However, fear also has an adaptive function, because it forces a person to look for ways to protect themselves from possible harm. Anticipation of fear can become an impulse to strengthen<Я>, can encourage an individual to improve himself in order to reduce his own vulnerability.
Embarrassment
In recent years, the emotion of embarrassment has attracted the attention of many researchers. Evidence from various studies suggests that the emotion of embarrassment begins early in a person's life. Some of its external manifestations can be observed already in 3-4 month old infants; But the most convincing empirical evidence suggests that obvious embarrassment is detected in children in the second year of life.
The experience of embarrassment is accompanied by a strong sense of inadequacy and, possibly, feelings of inadequacy. There is evidence that the emotion of embarrassment is often accompanied by the experience of a variety of both positive and negative emotions. Of the six negative emotions, only the situation of embarrassment is characterized by a pronounced indicator of the emotion of joy.
However, it is clear that extreme manifestations of embarrassment have maladaptive meaning. Shyness significantly limits the circle of friendly communication and thereby deprives a person of social support. Additionally, embarrassment limits curiosity and inhibits exploratory behavior, especially in social situations. If the positive components of embarrassment can perform adaptive functions, then its negative components show a close relationship with depression and anxiety.
Shame
The experience of shame is accompanied by an unexpected and heightened self-awareness. The power of this self-awareness is such that it takes away all resources, deprives a person of the ability to cognitively function, interferes with comprehension of the situation and increases the likelihood of inadequate reactions to it. As a rule, the manifestation of shame occurs when a person is surrounded by other people, and the presence of people usually provokes the experience of shame, but situations are possible when a person experiences shame in complete solitude. Heightened self-awareness, the shamed person's anxiety about what impression he will make on others, and his concern for social evaluation almost always accompany the experience of shame. Shame makes a person feel insignificant, helpless and incompetent, a complete loser. Sometimes, paradoxically, even sincere praise can make a person feel ashamed.
The emotion of shame performs a dual function, which determined its role in human evolution. The ability to shame means that an individual is inclined to take into account the opinions and feelings of people around him, thus shame promotes greater mutual understanding between a person and the people around him and greater responsibility to society. In addition, shame encourages an individual to acquire skills, including social interaction skills.
To resist shame, people use defense mechanisms of denial, suppression and self-affirmation. A person who is unable to resist the experience of shame is almost certainly doomed to sadness and even depression.
Fertile ground for shame is created by sexual relationships that are extremely intimate and emotional in nature. There is nothing more frank than sexual intercourse, and misunderstood frankness, as we know, is the prototypical prerequisite for shame.
Children become aware of the connection between shame and sexuality in situations where, for example, they are caught off guard while exploring their genitals. A favorable period for strengthening this connection is adolescence, the time of development of the genital organs and secondary sexual characteristics.
The baby very early becomes aware of the relationship between shame and intimacy, between direct eye contact and personal interest or intimacy. The roots of this understanding, apparently, lie in the experience of his relationship with his mother. One might speculate that it is this early understanding of the relationship between direct eye contact, intimacy, and sensual pleasure that underlies the widespread taboo against prolonged eye contact between strangers.
Guilt
Guilt, in accordance with the theory of differential emotions, plays a key role in the process of development of personal and social responsibility, in the process of formation of conscience. The existence of certain fundamental sources of guilt inherent in every person is undeniable, but conscience as a mental phenomenon is rather a complex of affective-cognitive structures formed under the influence of parental demands and regulations of various social institutions.
Most psychologists agree that shame presupposes the possibility of real or imaginary punishment coming from other people, while the experience of guilt is the result of self-punishment, which, however, does not exclude the participation of external influences.
The emotional expression that accompanies the experience of guilt is not as expressive as the expression inherent in other emotions. When feeling guilty, a person bows his head low or hides his eyes.
The experience of guilt is accompanied by a gnawing feeling of one’s own wrongness in relation to another person or to oneself. In the emotional profile for situations of guilt, relatively high rates of the emotions sadness and fear are found. The emotion of fear is very often experienced simultaneously with the emotion of guilt, which probably explains the fact that many theorists refuse to draw a clear line between the emotions of fear and guilt. The experience of guilt is characterized by a high degree of tension, moderate impulsivity and decreased self-confidence.
An excessive tendency to self-blame or, conversely, deficiencies in the development of conscience can lead to maladjustment or even psychopathology. A number of authors argue that an excessive tendency to self-blame can cause obsessive-compulsive disorders and even paranoid schizophrenia.
Love
Love is a fundamental emotion in human nature, but it cannot be classified as a discrete emotion such as joy or sadness. The emotional connection between children and parents, between brothers and sisters, between spouses is an integral part of our evolutionary heritage. Love embraces social relationships, strong attachment, and emotional connection. Love is characterized by interest and joy, and loving relationships can evoke a full range of emotions.
There are different types of love, and in each of them love manifests itself in its own way. There is motherly love, brotherly-sisterly love and friendship, romantic love. Often love is accompanied by jealousy. Thus, romantic love involves sexual attraction, but sibling love does not. But all types of love have some common characteristics, such as affection, fidelity, devotion, the desire to protect and care for the loved one.
Characteristics of emotional states that arise in the process of activity
Any person gets acquainted with and comprehends the surrounding reality through the means of cognition: attention, sensations, perception, thinking, imagination and memory. Each subject reacts in some way to current events, feels some emotions, experiences feelings towards certain objects, people, phenomena. Subjective attitude towards situations, facts, objects, persons is reflected in the consciousness of the individual in the form of experiences. Such relationships, experienced in the inner world, are called “emotional states.” This is a psychophysiological process that motivates a person to perform certain actions, regulates his behavior, and influences thinking.
In the scientific community, there is no single universal definition that precisely explains what constitutes an emotional phenomenon. Emotional state is a general concept for all relationships experienced by a person that arose in the course of his life. Satisfying a person’s demands and requests, as well as dissatisfying an individual’s needs, gives rise to a variety of emotional states.
What is cognitive therapy and how does it work?
Experiments in hypnosis: hypnotic phenomena in deep hypnosis (somnambulism). Hypnosis training
Types and characteristics of emotional states
In domestic science, emotional processes are classified into separate types, each of which is endowed with its own characteristics and features.
The emotional world of a person is represented by five components:
- emotions;
- affects;
- feelings;
- moods;
- stress.
All of the above components of a person’s emotional sphere are one of the most important regulators of the subject’s behavior, act as a source of knowledge of reality, express and determine the variety of options for interaction between people. It should be noted that the same emotional process can last from a few seconds to several hours. Moreover, each type of experience can be expressed with minimal force or be very intense.
Let us consider all the elements of the sphere of emotions and feelings in more detail.
Emotions
Emotion is the experience of a subject at a specific moment in his life, conveying a personal assessment of an ongoing event, informing about his attitude to the actual situation, to the phenomena of the inner world and events of the external environment. Human emotions arise instantly and can change very quickly. The most significant characteristic of emotions is their subjectivity.
Like all other mental processes, all types of emotional states are the result of the active work of the brain. The trigger for the emergence of emotions is the changes that are currently occurring in the surrounding reality. The more important and significant the ongoing changes are for the subject, the more acute and vivid the emotion he experiences will be.
When an emotion arises, a temporary focus of excitation is formed in the cerebral cortex and then in the subcortical centers - clusters of nerve cells located under the cerebral cortex. It is in these segments of the brain that the main departments for regulating the physiological activities of the body are located. That is why the emergence of such a focus of excitation leads to increased activity of internal organs and systems. Which, in turn, finds a noticeable external reflection.
Let's illustrate with examples. We blush from shame. We turn pale with fear and our hearts skip a beat. My heart aches from melancholy. From excitement we are out of breath, we inhale and exhale frequently and irregularly.
Emotions are also characterized by valence (direction). They can be positive or negative in color. It should be noted that in almost all people in a normal state, the number of emotions of a negative tone significantly exceeds the number of experiences of a positive tone. Research has found that the left hemisphere is more the source of positive emotions, while the right hemisphere is more supportive of negative experiences.
In all types of emotional states, their polarity can be traced, that is, the presence of emotions with a “plus” sign and with a “minus” sign. For example: pride - annoyance; joy - sadness. There are also neutral emotions, for example: astonishment. This does not mean that the two polar emotions are mutually exclusive. Complex human feelings often reveal a combination of conflicting emotions.
Emotions also vary in intensity - their strength. For example: anger, anger and rage are essentially identical experiences, but they manifest themselves with different strengths.
Emotions are also classified into two types: sthenic (active) and asthenic (passive). Active emotions motivate and encourage a person to perform actions, while passive emotions relax and deplete energy. For example: out of joy we are ready to move mountains, but out of fear our legs give way.
Another feature of emotions is the fact that although they are recognized by a person as experiences, it is impossible to influence their occurrence in a waking state. All emotional states originate in the deep repositories of the psyche - the subconscious. Access to the resources of the subconscious sphere is possible with a temporary change in consciousness achieved through hypnosis.
Affects
The second type of emotional states is affects. This is a short-term state, which is characterized by a special intensity and expressiveness of experiences. Affect is a psychophysiological process that rapidly takes possession of the subject and proceeds very expressively. It is characterized by significant changes in consciousness and a violation of the individual’s control over his behavior, loss of self-control.
Affect is accompanied by pronounced external manifestations and active functional restructuring of the work of internal systems. A special feature of this type of emotional state is its connection to the situation of the present. Affect always arises in response to an already existing state of affairs, that is, it cannot be oriented towards the future and reflect the experiences of the past.
Affect can develop for various reasons. A violent emotional process can be caused by a single psychotraumatic factor, a long-term stressful situation, or a serious human illness. Examples of affective states are the following states. The delight of a passionate fan when a favorite team wins. The anger that arises upon discovering that a loved one has been unfaithful. Panic that gripped a person during a fire. The euphoria that a scientist experienced during a discovery after many years of hard work.
In its development, affect passes through several stages in succession, each characterized by its own characteristics and experiences. In the initial phase, a person thinks exclusively about the subject of his experiences, and is involuntarily distracted from other more important phenomena. The usual picture of the start of an affective state is represented by energetic and expressive movements. Tears, heart-rending sobs, loud laughter, and absurd cries are characteristic features of the experience of affect.
Severe nervous tension changes the pulse and breathing function, and disrupts motor skills. The intense action of stimuli that excite cortical structures above their inherent limit of performance leads to the development of transcendental (protective) inhibition. This phenomenon causes disorganization of a person’s thinking: the subject experiences a persistent need to succumb to the experienced emotion.
At this moment of affective state, any individual can take measures not to lose control over himself and slow down the development of a cascade of destructive reactions. It is this phenomenon that hypnosis influences: in a state of hypnotic trance, attitudes are implanted into a person’s subconscious that make it possible, on an instinctive level, to prevent the increase in affect at a moment of crisis. That is, as a result of suggestion during hypnosis, a person, without knowing it on a conscious level, acquires the required skills to inhibit the development of a negative emotional state.
If the subsequent stage of affect nevertheless occurs, then the subject completely loses self-control and the ability to manage behavior. He does reckless things, performs useless actions, says ridiculous phrases. It should be noted that such manifestations of an affective outburst are difficult for a person to recall in the future. This situation arises due to the fact that after excessive excitation of cortical structures, inhibition occurs, which interrupts the existing systems of temporary connections.
However, information about behavior during an affective outburst is firmly deposited in the subconscious sphere, reminding itself of itself through fuzzy and vague feelings of shame for the actions committed. Such completely unrecognizable sensations over time become the culprits of depressive states, because a person intuitively feels his guilt, without realizing what he has done wrong. To recognize factors transferred to the subconscious during an affective outburst, a targeted temporary shutdown of consciousness is necessary through.
To summarize the information, it is necessary to point out: affect in itself is neither bad nor good. Its tone and consequences depend on what experiences a person experiences - positive or negative, and how much he controls himself in this emotional state.
The difference between hypnosis and other “states”
Feelings
The third type of emotional states is feelings. These are more stable psycho-emotional states in comparison with emotions and affect. Feelings are manifestations of a person’s subjective attitude to real facts or abstract objects, certain things or general concepts. Moreover, such an assessment is almost always unconscious. The origin and affirmation of feelings is the process of forming a stable attitude of a person towards some object or phenomenon, which is based on the individual’s experience of interaction with such an object.
The peculiarity of feelings - unlike emotions, they are more or less permanent in nature; they are an ingrained personality trait. Emotion, at the same time, is a fleeting experience of a given situation. Let's give an example. The feeling is a person's love for music. Being at a good concert with excellent performance of music, he experiences active positive emotions - interest and joy. However, when the same person is faced with a disgusting performance of a piece, he feels passive negative emotions - disappointment and disgust.
Feelings are directly related to personality traits; they reflect a person’s attitude to life, his worldview, beliefs, and views. A feeling is a type of emotional state that is complex in its structure. Let's give an example. The feeling of envy, at its core, is a person’s feelings about the success of another person. Envy is a combination of several emotions combined together: anger, resentment, contempt.
In addition to valence (color), there is another feature of this species - the intensity of feelings. The stronger and deeper a person’s feeling, the more pronounced its external (physiological) manifestations, the more significant its influence on the subject’s behavior.
All negative feelings perform extremely destructive functions, forming painful thinking and leading to dysfunctional behavior. Such negative emotional states, rooted in a person’s subconscious, not only interfere with the person’s normal interaction in society, but also become the cause of psychopathological disorders.
Let's look at the example of envy. Envy turns someone else's luck into an inferiority complex, another person's happiness into a feeling of one's own worthlessness and uselessness. Envy is an energy vampire that forces a person to waste his time, strength, and energy on endlessly tracking the successes and achievements of another person. This feeling forces a person to begin to carry out active actions, forcing him to gossip, slander, plot intrigues, weave intrigues, and often use physical force. As a result, the subject finds himself at a loss, when he has no strength to act and no friends who can support him. The onset of depression in such a situation is a natural step taken by the “wise” subconscious, indicating that the subject needs to stop, reconsider his worldview and choose a different style of behavior.
In addition to sthenic feelings that motivate the subject to action, there are also asthenic experiences. This is an emotional state that paralyzes a person’s will and deprives him of strength. An example of a passive feeling is despair, which underlies depressive states.
Feelings can be called an intermediate link between an intense emotion experienced in relation to some object or situation and a neurotic or psychotic disorder. And in order to solve a person’s problem, it is necessary to break this vicious chain. This requires gaining access to the repositories of the subconscious, which requires the temporary removal of conscious censorship through hypnosis. Only by establishing the initial factor that contributed to the formation of the negative feeling can the person’s obvious problem be eliminated.
Moods
Mood is a fairly long-term emotional state that colors all a person’s experiences and influences his behavior. Peculiarities of mood – lack of accountability, insignificant severity, relative stability. If the mood acquires significant intensity, then it has a significant impact on a person’s mental activity and the productivity of his work. For example, if a person is in a melancholy mood, then it is very difficult for her to concentrate on the task at hand and have difficulty bringing the work she has begun to the end.
Frequent changes in emotional states, called mood lability, give reason to assume that the subject has affective disorders. Rapidly alternating episodes of blues and mania may be a sign of bipolar depression.
Another feature of this emotional state is the lack of attachment to any specific object. Mood expresses the general attitude of an individual towards the current state of affairs as a whole.
How is a person's mood formed? This type of emotional state can have very different sources: both recent events and very distant situations. The main factor influencing a person’s mood is his satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life in general, or with some individual phenomena. Despite the fact that a person’s mood always depends on certain reasons, the sources of the present emotional state are not always clear and understandable to the person. For example, a person indicates that she is in a bad mood, something oppresses and worries her. However, she cannot independently establish the relationship between her bad mood and her broken promise made a month ago.
To prevent mental abnormalities, everyone should understand the reasons for changes in their mood. To avoid depression and other problems, it is necessary to find out and eliminate objectively existing factors that influence a person’s emotional state. This step is convenient and expedient to perform through the use of hypnosis techniques. The peculiarity of hypnosis is its painlessness and comfort: the establishment and correction of any psychological defects occurs in a “harmless” mode, when the subject’s psyche does not receive unnecessary injuries characteristic of psychotherapeutic effects.
Stress
The term “stress” is usually used to denote special experiences of feelings that are similar in their characteristics to affect and similar in their duration to moods. The causes of stress are varied. A single intense extreme exposure to external factors can cause a stressful state. Long-term monotonous situations in which the individual feels threatened or offended can also lead to stress. For example, a woman, due to circumstances, is forced to share housing with her alcoholic spouse, with whom she has common children and jointly “earned” debts. It is impossible to radically change the situation in one moment, and the lady does not have the internal strength necessary for this. So she drags her miserable burden, experiencing a lot of negative emotions every day. The lack of prospects for improving the situation and the impossibility of restoring previous family relationships are grounds for stress.
Elabuga State Pedagogical University
Department of Psychology
Course work.
Study of emotional states in students during educational activities.
Work completed by: student
281 group Sungatova R.R.
Scientific supervisor: head. department
Psychology Associate Professor Ldokova G.M.
Elabuga – 2005
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..3
Chapter 1. Theoretical aspects of the study of emotional states in educational activities………………………………………………………………………………….5
1.1 Analysis of the problem of mental states in the scientific literature….5
1.2 Characteristics of typical mental states in a situation of educational activity…………………………………………………………….10
1.3 Peculiarities of manifestation of mental states in students……..23
Chapter 2. Experimental study of the severity of emotional states in students in situations of educational activity…………………27
2.1 Setting up the experiment……………………………………………27
2.2 Discussion of performance results……………………………..31
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………36
List of references………………………………………………………………..38
Applications
Introduction
The relevance of research. Emotions (affects, emotional disturbances) are states such as fear, anger, melancholy, joy, love, hope, sadness, disgust, pride, etc. Emotions manifest themselves in certain mental experiences, known to everyone from their own experience, and in bodily phenomena. Like sensation, emotions have a positive or negative feeling tone associated with feelings of pleasure or displeasure. When the feeling of pleasure intensifies, it turns into an affect of joy. Pleasure and displeasure are manifested in certain facial expressions and changes in pulse. With emotions, bodily phenomena are expressed much less frequently. Thus, joy and fun are manifested in motor excitement: laughter, loud speech, animated gestures (children jump for joy), singing, sparkling eyes, blush on the face (dilation of small blood vessels), acceleration of mental processes, influx of thoughts, tendency to jokes, feeling cheerfulness. With sadness and melancholy, on the contrary, there is a psychomotor delay. Movements are slow and scanty, man
"depressed" Posture expresses muscle weakness. Thoughts are inextricably chained to one thing. Pale skin, haggard facial features, decreased secretion of glands, bitter taste in the mouth. With severe sadness, there are no tears, but they may appear when the severity of the experience weakens. Based on bodily experiences, Kant divided emotions into sthenic (joy, inspiration, anger) - exciting, increasing muscle tone, strength, and asthenic (fear, melancholy, sadness) - weakening. Some affects are difficult to classify into one or another category, and even the same affect at different intensities can reveal either sthenic or asthenic features. Depending on the duration of their course, emotions can be short-term (anger, fear) or long-term. Lasting emotions are called moods. There are people who are always cheerful and in high spirits, while others are prone to depression, melancholy, or are always irritated. Mood is a complex complex that is partly associated with external experiences, partly based on the general disposition of the body to certain emotional states, and partly depends on sensations emanating from the organs of the body.
In recent years, much attention has been paid in psychology to the study of some pronounced mental states: stress, worry or anxiety, rigidity and, finally, frustration. True, foreign researchers often avoid the terms “states” in relation to these phenomena, but in fact we are talking about states that, under certain conditions, leave an imprint on the entire mental life for some time or, speaking in the language of biology, are integral reactions of the body in its active adaptation to the environment.
Object of study: fourth year students of the Faculty of Psychology of Yerevan State Pedagogical University.
Subject of study: emotional states of students.
Research hypothesis: emotional states change due to changes in learning activity situations.
Purpose of the study: identifying the level of expression of emotional states among fourth-year psychology students.
Research objectives:
1. analyze psychological and pedagogical literature on the problem of mental states
2. consider the peculiarities of the manifestation of emotional states in students
3. determine the severity of emotional states in fourth-year psychology students.
CHAPTER 1. Theoretical aspects of the study of emotional states in educational activities.
1.1 Analysis of the problem of mental states in the scientific literature.
The first systematic study of mental states begins in India in the 2nd-3rd millennium BC, the subject of which was the state of nirvana. The philosophers of Ancient Greece also addressed the problem of mental states. The development of the philosophical category “state” occurred in the works of Kant and Hegel. The systematic study of mental states in psychology, perhaps, began with W. James, who interpreted psychology as a science that deals with the description and interpretation of states of consciousness. By states of consciousness we mean such phenomena as sensations, desires, emotions, cognitive processes, judgments, decisions, desires, etc. Further development of the category of mental states is associated mainly with the development of domestic psychology. The first domestic work related to mental states is the article by O.A. Chernikova (1937), carried out within the framework of sports psychology and dedicated to the pre-start state of an athlete. In addition to her, within the framework of sports psychology, mental states were further studied by Puni A.Ts., Egorov A.S., Vasiliev V.V., Lekhtman Ya.B., Smirnov K.M., Spiridonov V.F., Krestovnikov A. N. and others. According to V.A. Hansen, only after the publication of N.D.’s book in 1964. Levitov “On the mental states of man”, the term “mental state” has become widespread. N.D. Levitov also owns the first monograph on mental states. After his work, psychology began to be defined as the science of mental processes, properties and conditions of a person. N.D. Levitov defined mental states as “a holistic characteristic of a person’s mental activity and behavior over a certain period of time, showing the uniqueness of mental processes depending on the reflected objects and phenomena of reality, previous states and personality traits.”
Later, the question of mental states was addressed by B.G. Ananyev, V.N. Myasishchev, A.G. Kovalev, K.K. Platonov, V.S. Merlin, Yu.E. Sosnovikova and others. In other words, as noted by A.O. Prokhorov, B.G. Ananyev F.E. Vasilyuk et al., various forms of human behavior and activity occur against the background of a certain set of mental states that can have both positive and negative effects on the adequacy and success of behavior and activity in general. As the key links in the emergence of any mental state, A.O. Prokhorov singled out three. Firstly, this is a situation that expresses the degree of balance (balance) of an individual’s mental properties and the external environmental conditions of their manifestation in the individual’s life. A change in the environment, a change in the situation, leads to a change in the mental state, its disappearance, and transformation into a new state. An example is a problematic situation in mental activity, which causes an increase in mental tension and can lead to the appearance of such a state as cognitive frustration. Secondly, it is the subject himself, who expresses the personal characteristics of the individual as a set of internal conditions (past experience, skills, knowledge, etc.) that mediate the perception of the impact of external environmental conditions. Any change in “internal conditions” entails a change in mental state. According to I.I. Chesnokov, the psychological state acts as a manifestation of the properties of the individual, his psychological being, unfolded in time.
In parallel with psychology, mental states were also touched upon by related disciplines. On this occasion I.P. Pavlov wrote: “these states are the primary reality for us,
they guide our daily life, they determine the progress of human society." Further development of mental states within the framework of physiology is associated with the name of P.S. Kupalov, who showed that temporary states are formed by external influences through the mechanism of a conditioned reflex. Myasishchev considered mental states as one of the elements personality structures, on a par with processes, properties and relationships. B.F. Lomov wrote: “Mental processes, states and properties do not exist outside the living human body, not as extracerebral functions. They are a function of the brain, formed and developed in the process of biological evolution and historical development of man. Therefore, identifying the laws of the psyche requires research into the functioning of the brain and nervous system, moreover, the entire human body as a whole." In accordance with the principle of the unity of the mental and biological, as well as the requirements for an objective assessment of mental states, further research into mental states was carried out in two directions: the study of functional state and emotional state, i.e. the study of those states in which the intensity indicator is clearly expressed and amenable to objective diagnosis (primarily the diagnosis of physiological parameters). theoretical foundations, and in applied, practical terms.
The classification of types of mental states according to various bases of their characteristics includes mental (intellectual), emotional, volitional activity and passivity, labor and educational states, states of stress, elation, confusion, mobilization readiness, satiety, expectation, public loneliness, etc.
A.O. Prokhorov, by analogy with the time axis, grades mental states on the energy scale. Prokhorov based this gradation on the activation continuum of D. Lindsley and the scale of levels of mental activity by V.A. Ganzena, V.N. Yurchenko. This approach made it possible to identify three levels of mental activity, with their corresponding states of mental activity:
1) a state of increased mental activity (happiness, delight, ecstasy, anxiety, fear, etc.);
2) states of average (optimal) mental activity (calmness, sympathy, readiness, interest, etc.);
3) states of decreased mental activity (dreams, sadness, fatigue, absent-mindedness, crisis, etc.). Prokhorov proposes to understand the first and third levels as nonequilibrium, and the middle one as conditionally equilibrium, while an important feature of nonequilibrium states is that they are a link that precedes the emergence of new formations in the personality structure, causing the emergence of the latter. Subsequently, the new formations are fixed in the form of properties, traits, etc.
States have characteristics varying degrees of generalization: general, specific, individual. The characteristics of a state also include the degree of awareness by the subject of a particular state. Subjective and objective characteristics of a person’s mental states are characteristics of the same object, a sufficiently complete study of which, based on the unity of internal and external, is impossible without the involvement of both. The central, system-forming characteristic of the entire component composition of the mental state (in the terminology of P.K. Anokhin) is the person’s attitude. In the structure of the state, it represents the level of consciousness and self-awareness of a person. Attitude as a characteristic of consciousness is an attitude towards the surrounding reality; as a characteristic of self-awareness is self-regulation, self-control, self-esteem, i.e. establishing a balance between external influences, the internal state and forms of human behavior. Regarding the characteristics of a state, Brushlinsky notes that states have characteristics that are characteristic of the entire psyche. This emphasizes the quality of continuity of states, which, in turn, is associated with such aspects of states as intensity and stability. States, in addition to characteristics, have temporary, emotional, activation, tonic, tension (willpower) parameters.
Along with characteristics And parameters isolate and functions states. The main ones include:
a) regulation function (in adaptation processes);
b) the function of integrating individual mental states and the formation of functional units (process-state-property). Thanks to these functions, individual acts of mental activity are ensured in the current time, the organization of the psychological structure of the individual, necessary for its effective functioning in various spheres of life.
An interesting concept is proposed by V.I. Chirkov. For diagnostic purposes, he identifies five factors in psychological states: mood, assessment of the likelihood of success, motivation (its level), level of wakefulness (tonic component) and attitude to work (activity). He combines these five factors into three groups: motivational-incentive (mood and motivation), emotional-evaluative (assessment of the likelihood of success and attitude towards work) and activation-energetic (level of wakefulness). Of particular note are the classifications of states based on a systematic approach, dividing mental states according to one or another criterion. Some psychologists divide mental states into volitional (resolution-tension), which in turn are divided into practical and motivational, into affective (pleasure-displeasure), which are divided into humanitarian and emotional, into states of consciousness (dream-activation). In addition, it is proposed to divide states into states of the individual, states of the subject of activity, states of the individual and states of individuality. In our opinion, classifications make it possible to well understand a specific mental state and describe mental states, but in relation to the prognostic function of the classification they carry a weak load. However, one cannot but agree with the requirements of a systems approach, to consider psychological states at different levels, different aspects.
By their dynamic nature, mental states occupy an intermediate position between processes and properties. It is known that mental processes (for example, attention, emotions, etc.) under certain conditions can be considered as states, and frequently repeated states contribute to the development of corresponding personality properties. The relationship between mental states and properties, not least because properties are much more amenable to direct recognition than processes, but mainly because, in our opinion, non-innate human properties are a statistical measure of manifestation certain parameters of mental states, or their combinations (constructs).
The need to involve the category of mental states to understand properties is pointed out by A.O. Prokhorov, Levitov N.D. : “To understand a character trait, you must first accurately describe it, analyze it and explain it as a temporary state. Only after such a study can the question be raised about the conditions for consolidating this state, its stability in the character structure,” as well as Puni A.Ts. : “state: can be represented as a balanced, relatively stable system of personal characteristics of athletes, against the background of which the dynamics of mental processes unfold.” A.G. also indicates that mental properties are only a statistical measure of the manifestation of mental states. Kovaleva: “Mental states often become typical for a given individual, characteristic of a given person. In states typical for a given person, the mental properties of the individual find their expression.” The influence of typical states on personality traits can be found in A.O. Prokhorova. Perov A.K. believes that if a mental process and state are significant for a person, then they ultimately turn into stable signs of it. Raspopov P.P. wrote that phase states can mask and unmask the type of nervous system. . V.N. reported on the influence of negative emotional states on the formation of negative character traits using the example of neuroses. Myasishchev. There are also experimental data on the connection between mental states and properties.
1.2 Characteristics of typical mental states in a situation of educational activity
Mental states most often manifest themselves as a reaction to a situation or activity and are adaptive in nature to the constantly changing surrounding reality, coordinating a person’s capabilities with specific objective conditions and organizing his interactions with the environment. The physiological basis of mental states is made up of functional dynamic systems (neural complexes), united according to the principle of dominance. In contrast to physiological reactions, which reflect the energetic side of the body’s adaptive processes, mental states are determined primarily by the information factor and are responsible for ensuring adaptive behavior at the mental level. Mental states are exclusively individualized phenomena, since they depend on the characteristics of a particular person, his value orientations, etc. The correspondence of mental states to the conditions that caused them may be disrupted. In these cases, their adaptive role is weakened, the effectiveness of behavior and activity decreases, up to complete disorganization.
On this basis, so-called difficult conditions may arise. But before we begin to analyze difficult conditions, it is necessary to characterize the conditions that accompany the normal realization of life's needs. Such states in the conditions of everyday, professional activity are defined as states of functional comfort, that is, this means that the means and working conditions of a particular person fully correspond to his functional capabilities, and the activity itself is accompanied by a positive emotional attitude towards it.
This state is characterized by fairly high activity, accompanied by optimal strength of the human nervous and mental functions. However, there are almost never ideal conditions for any activity. Most often there are larger or smaller, external or internal interferences that can significantly change the normal active state, turning it into a difficult one. In this case, both the type of interference and the phase of activity in which this interference operates matters.
The term “difficult condition” was first introduced into scientific practice by F.D. Gorbov, more than a quarter of a century ago, who studied the behavior and well-being of pilots in tense situations. He discovered that the performance of some professional tasks is accompanied by short-term nervous breakdowns, transient disorders of RAM, spatial orientation, and the vegetative sphere.
One of the conditions for mastering a culture of self-regulation is knowledge about difficult conditions and the circumstances under which they arise. Difficult conditions in relation to situations of everyday life can be divided into the following four groups:
1) Mental states caused by excessive psychophysiological mobilization of the body in natural phases of activity. This includes unfavorable forms of pre-working and working states, dominant states (obsessiveness of thoughts and actions, etc.)
2) Mental states formed under the influence of unfavorable or unusual environmental factors of a biological, psychological and social nature (reactive states). This group includes such very diverse conditions as fatigue, drowsy states (monotonia), anxiety, depression, affect, frustration, as well as conditions caused by the effects of loneliness (isolation), the night period (“night psyche”).
3) Pre-neurotic fixations of unfavorable reactions that appear as a result of consolidation of a negative reaction in memory (“stagnant focus of excitation”) and its subsequent reproduction in conditions similar to the primary case. They manifest themselves in the form of obsessive fears (phobias). Phobias can lead to obsessive thoughts and obsessive actions.
4) Violations in the sphere of personal motivation, which include, for example, a “crisis of motivation” and its varieties.
Stress is a mental reaction, a special state of a person during the period of “transition”, adaptation to new conditions of existence. Increasing urbanization, industrialization, acceleration of the pace of life and other factors have brought to life a lot of phenomena, so-called stressors, the impact of which on a person is manifested in specific reactions of the body. A common property of the latter is excessive activation of the physiological apparatus responsible for emotional arousal when unpleasant or threatening phenomena appear. According to the types of effects on humans, stress can be divided as follows.
Systemic stress, reflecting the tension of predominantly biological systems. They are caused by poisoning, tissue inflammation, bruises, etc.
Mental stress, arising from any type of influence that involves the emotional sphere in the reaction.
The state of stress is one of the normal human states. Stress (from the English stress - pressure, pressure) is any more or less pronounced tension in the body associated with its vital activity. And in this capacity, stress is an integral manifestation of life. Stress can be defined as a nonspecific reaction of the body to a situation that requires a greater or lesser functional restructuring of the body, corresponding adaptation to a given situation. It is important to keep in mind that any new life situation causes stress, but not every one of them is critical. Critical situations are caused by distress, which is experienced as grief, unhappiness, exhaustion of strength and is accompanied by a violation of adaptation, control, and interferes with the self-actualization of the individual. “Any normal activity,” wrote G. Selye, “a game of chess and even a passionate hug, can cause significant stress without causing any harm.” Consequently, the point is not in the presence of the phenomenon itself, but in its quantity (in its expression), which develops into quality. It is essential, therefore, to distinguish the main characteristics of stress. Stress is not strictly tied to a specific group of difficult conditions, but as an indispensable attribute of life, it can give rise to any of them. Harmful or at least unpleasant stress should be called distress. More often, in colloquial speech and in literature, the term “stress” refers to harmful tension in the body.
It has been established that the stress reaction precedes the development of both adaptation and functional disorders. It arose and became established in evolution as biologically useful. Increased functional activity of vital systems prepares the body for action - either to fight a threat or to flee from it. With a sufficiently strong and prolonged effect of the stress factor, the stress reaction can become the pathogenic basis for various functional disorders. Depending on the causes, stress is distinguished between physiological and psychological. Physiological stress is caused by mechanical, physical, etc. influences - strong sound, increased air temperature, vibration. Psychological stress can arise in conditions of a lack of time or information with a high personal importance of achieving success in an activity, in situations of threat or danger. At the same time, the body’s defenses are mobilized to find a way out of an extreme situation. If the emotional tension that occurs during stress does not exceed the adaptive capabilities of the human body, stress can have a positive, mobilizing effect on its activity. Otherwise, stress leads to distress - depletion of the body's energy resources, the development of a number of physical and even mental illnesses.
Dominant states – a type of stressful conditions in which tension is consciously or unconsciously shifted into the sphere of attention. These states can be very diverse in their content, nature and duration.
A number of similar conditions are mentioned in the scientific literature. One of the most important is cognitive dominant states, characteristic of many types of human activity. It manifests itself in three main variants, which include the study of the objective world, educational and scientific dominants.
The specificity of dominant mental states is determined to the greatest extent by the dominant motivation, realized in activity and reflected in a person’s emotions.
Frustration. The term frustration means the experience of frustration of plans, destruction of plans, collapse of hopes, vain expectations, experience of failure, failure. This indicates some kind of, in a certain sense of the word, traumatic situation in which failure is suffered. But, as N.D. Levitov believes, “frustration should be considered in the context of a broader problem - endurance in relation to life’s difficulties and reaction to these difficulties. At the same time, those difficulties that are truly insurmountable obstacles or obstacles, barriers that appear on the way to achieving a goal, solving a problem, satisfying a need should be studied." Secondly, there are also ambiguities in what the term frustration refers to: external the cause (situation) or the reaction it causes (mental states or individual reactions). In the literature you can find both uses of this term. Modern researchers make a distinction between a frustrator and frustration - an external cause and its impact on the individual. In a frustrating situation, it is customary to distinguish between a frustrator, a frustration situation and a frustration reaction. Let us consider the main approaches to understanding the mental state of frustration as a mental state that occurs when there is an obstacle to achieving a goal. It is customary to classify all foreign studies into two large groups: the first consists of works of a Freudian orientation, the second - studies of a behaviorist orientation. It is believed that the origins of works on frustration go back to 3. Freud, who introduced this term to characterize a special state or internal mental conflict when a person faces some (usually subjectively insurmountable) obstacle on the way to achieving their conscious or unconscious goals. The positions of Freudianism and neo-Freudianism are based on the struggle between the “id” (unconscious, power-driven drives) and the “superego” (principles of behavior, social norms and values). This struggle is full of frustrations, understood as suppression by “censorship”, which is a function of the “superego”, the drives that a person has been possessed since childhood, and which are largely (according to neo-Freudian) or fully (according to S. Freud) sexual in nature. Frustration is always a “forced refusal” of something.” Freudians include the usual consequences of frustration: the transition of the individual to a lower level of functioning (frustration regression), escape into the world of fantasy and rationalization (for example, a logical justification for the insurmountability of a particular obstacle). Also, neo-Freudians consider aggression to be an obligatory consequence of frustration.
In Russian psychology, frustration is considered as one of the types of mental states, expressed in the characteristic features of experiencing life difficulties (K.D. Shafranskaya) and a state of dissatisfaction (N.D. Levitov). Frustration sets in, as N.D. notes. Levitov, when difficulties arise on the way to meeting needs or achieving a goal. Difficulties can be presented in the form of insurmountable (or subjectively assessed as insurmountable) obstacles, as well as in the form of external or internal conflicts, including threats, accusations, conflict demands. B.G. Ananyev emphasized that in most cases, frustrators that disorganize a person’s individual consciousness and behavior are of a social nature and are associated with the disintegration and disruption of social connections of the individual, with changes in social status and social roles, with various moral and social losses. Vasilyuk F .E. classifies frustration as an extreme life situation, along with stress, conflict and crisis. He believes that “... if a being of this world, who has a single need (a separate life attitude, motive, activity), experiences frustration - i.e. If it is impossible to satisfy this need, then his whole life is under threat, and, therefore, such a situation is tantamount to a crisis.” When analyzing the state of frustration F.E. Vasilyuk identifies 3 types of experience of frustration: realistic, value-based and creative. A number of researchers (A.A. Rean, A.A. Baranov, L.G. Dikaya, A.V. Makhnach) consider frustration as a form of psychological stress. According to N.V. Tarabrina, frustration is “a negative concept that reflects the human condition, accompanied by various forms of negative emotions.” According to R.S. Nemov, frustration is “a person’s difficult experience of his failure, accompanied by a feeling of hopelessness, the collapse of hopes in achieving a certain goal.” According to V.S. According to Merlin, the main forms of manifestation of emotional reactions to frustration are aggression, annoyance, anxiety, depression, devaluation of a goal or task.
Frustration is a mental state of acute experience of an unsatisfied need. The situations in which this condition occurs and the reasons that give rise to them are called “frustration situations”, “frustration influences”. Frustration situations are caused by a conflict between an urgently significant need and the impossibility of its implementation, a breakdown in motivated behavior.
In everyday life, frustrating situations can be associated with a wide range of needs, which can be divided into two groups:
1. Biological needs - these include physiological (hunger, thirst, sleep), sexual or sexual, orienting (the need to navigate in place, time, surrounding reality), etc.
2. Social needs – labor, cognitive, interpersonal, aesthetic, moral.
Frustration is characterized by the following signs of negative experiences: disappointment, irritation, anxiety, despair, “feeling of deprivation.”
It is especially difficult for a person to endure experiences when he is rejected by society, deprived of his usual social connections. Very often, frustration develops as a result of dissatisfaction with one’s own work, its content and results. The summative effect that manifests itself in the state of a person who finds himself in a set of frustrating situations is called frustration tension. This term denotes the intensity of manifestation of the psychophysiological mechanisms of adaptation of the body to frustrating conditions. Exorbitantly high frussation tension during adaptation disorders leads to excessive strengthening of the functions of the nervous and hormonal systems of the body and thereby contributes to the depletion of its reserve capabilities.
Thus, frustration is understood as a specific emotional state that arises in cases where a person, on the way to achieving a goal, encounters obstacles and resistance that are either really insurmountable or are perceived as such. As a rule, the state of frustration is sufficiently unpleasant and stressful that one does not strive to get rid of it. A person, planning his behavior on the way to achieving his goals, simultaneously mobilizes the block of achieving the goal with certain actions. In this case, we talk about energy support for goal-directed behavior. But let’s imagine that an obstacle suddenly arises in front of the mechanism being put into motion, i.e. a mental event is interrupted and inhibited. At the place where the psychic event is interrupted or delayed (i.e. in us), a sharp increase in psychic energy occurs. The dam leads to a sharp concentration of energy, to an increase in the level of activation of subcortical formations, in particular, the reticular formation. This excess of unrealized energy causes a feeling of discomfort and tension that needs to be relieved, since this condition is quite unpleasant.
Anxiety is the individual's tendency to experience
anxiety, characterized by a low threshold for the occurrence of an anxiety reaction: one of the main parameters of individual differences. A certain level of anxiety is a natural and obligatory feature of an individual’s active activity. Each person has their own optimal or desired level of anxiety.
- This is the so-called useful anxiety. A person’s assessment of his condition in this regard is for him an essential component of self-control and self-education. However, an increased level of anxiety is a subjective manifestation of personal distress. The manifestations of anxiety in different situations are not the same. In some cases, people tend to behave anxiously always and everywhere, in others they reveal their anxiety only from time to time, depending on the circumstances. Situationally stable manifestations of anxiety are usually called personal and are associated with the presence of a corresponding personality trait in a person (the so-called “personal anxiety”). This is a stable individual characteristic that reflects the subject’s predisposition to anxiety and presupposes his tendency to perceive a fairly wide “fan” of situations as threatening, responding to each of them with a certain reaction. As a predisposition, personal anxiety is activated by the perception of certain stimuli that are regarded by a person as dangerous, threats to his prestige, self-esteem, and self-esteem associated with specific situations. Situationally variable manifestations of anxiety are called situational, and the personality trait exhibiting this kind of anxiety is called “situational anxiety.” This state is characterized by subjectively experienced emotions: tension, anxiety, concern, nervousness. This condition occurs as an emotional reaction to a stressful situation and can vary in intensity and dynamic over time. Individuals classified as highly anxious tend to perceive a threat to their self-esteem and functioning in a wide range of situations and react very intensely, with a pronounced state of anxiety. The behavior of highly anxious people in activities aimed at achieving success has the following features: high-anxious people work worse than low-anxious people in stressful situations or when there is a shortage of time allotted to solve a problem. Fear of failure is a characteristic feature of highly anxious people. This fear dominates their desire to achieve success. The motivation to achieve success prevails among low-anxiety people. It usually outweighs the fear of possible failure. Low-anxious people are more stimulated by messages about failure. Personal anxiety predisposes an individual to perceive and evaluate many objectively safe situations as those that pose a threat. A person’s activity in a specific situation depends not only on the situation itself, on the presence or absence of personal anxiety in the individual, but also on the situational anxiety that arises in a given person in a given situation under the influence of developing circumstances. The impact of the current situation, a person’s own needs, thoughts and feelings, the characteristics of his anxiety as personal anxiety determine his cognitive assessment of the situation that has arisen. This assessment, in turn, causes certain emotions (activation of the autonomic nervous system and increased state of situational anxiety along with expectations of possible failure). Information about all this is transmitted through neural feedback mechanisms to the human cerebral cortex, influencing his thoughts, needs and feelings. The same cognitive assessment of the situation simultaneously and automatically causes the body to react to threatening stimuli, which leads to the emergence of countermeasures and corresponding responses aimed at reducing the resulting situational anxiety. The result of all this directly affects the activities performed. This activity is directly dependent on the state of anxiety, which could not be overcome with the help of the responses and countermeasures taken, as well as an adequate cognitive assessment of the situation. Thus, a person’s activity in an anxiety-generating situation directly depends on the strength of situational anxiety, the effectiveness of countermeasures taken to reduce it, and the accuracy of the cognitive assessment of the situation.
Aggression -(from Latin aggredi - to attack) individual or collective behavior, an action aimed at causing physical or psychological harm, damage, or destruction of another person or group of people. In a significant proportion of cases, aggression arises as a reaction of the subject to frustration and is accompanied by emotional states of anger, hostility, hatred, etc.
Aggression is a motivational behavior, an act that can often cause harm to the targets of the attack or physical damage to other individuals, causing them depression, psycho-discomfort, discomfort, tension, fear, apprehension, a state of depression, abnormal psycho-experiences. Physical aggression (attack, attack) - when physical force is used against another object or subject. Verbal aggression - when negative feelings and emotions are expressed through a communicative form (conflict, quarrel, shouting, verbal altercation), as well as through predicates - the content of verbal-emotive reactions (threat, invective, ostracism, verbal abuse, swearing, forms of cursing). Indirect aggression - actions that are not directly intended towards another individual (innuendo, ridicule, jokes, irony). Instrumental aggression is explicated as a means (methods, techniques) designed to achieve some significant goal, the result of some utilitarian task. Hostile aggression manifests itself in actions whose purpose is to directly cause harm to the object of the aggression itself, escalation. Auto-aggression - is expressed in self-accusation, self-destruction, self-deprecation (of one’s merits, personality traits), can even determine suicide, self-inflicted bodily injury, damage. Aggressive behavioral acts are one of the matrices of response to differential unfavorable, negative mental and physical situations, life circumstances that cause depression, stress, frustration, and aberrational psychostates in the psyche of a socioindividual. Aggressive behavioral acts are often one of the functional ways to solve implicit problems while maintaining individuality, a sense of self-worth, significance; this is a mechanism and psychoimmunity in certain social situations that strengthens the subject’s control over the circumstances surrounding him and the individuals. Thus, aggressive acts act as an appendage of a method of self-realization, self-affirmation, self-realization, a method that helps to exert a psychological influence on another individual in order to suppress his volitional stimuli, to destroy - to metabolize behavioral reactions inherent in another individual that are stable in his psyche. In the formation of self-control over aggressiveness and the containment of aggressive acts, an important role is played by the development of psychological processes, empathy, identification, decentration, which underlie the subject’s ability to understand and empathize with another person, contributing to the formation of the idea of another person as a unique value. The founder of this theory is Sigmund Freud. He believed that aggressive behavior is instinctive and inevitable in nature. There are two most powerful instincts in a person: sexual (libido) and the instinct of death (thanatos). Energy of the first type is aimed at strengthening, preserving and reproducing life. The energy of the second type is aimed at destruction and cessation of life. He argued that all human behavior is the result of a complex interaction of these instincts, and there is a constant tension between them. Because there is an acute conflict between the preservation of life (eros) and its destruction (thanatos), other mechanisms (displacement) serve the purpose of directing the energy of thanatos outward, away from the Self. And if the energy of thanatos is not turned outward, then this will soon lead to the destruction of the individual himself. Thus, thanatos indirectly contributes to the fact that aggression is brought out and directed towards others. The external manifestation of emotions accompanying aggression can reduce the likelihood of dangerous actions. This theory, proposed by D. Dollard, is contrasted with the two described above. Here, aggressive behavior is viewed as a situational rather than an evolutionary process. The main provisions of this theory are as follows: aggression is always the result of frustration, the degree of satisfaction the subject expects from the future
achieving the goal, i.e. The more the subject anticipates pleasure, the stronger the obstacle and the more reactions are blocked, the stronger the impetus for aggressive behavior. And if frustrations follow one after another, then their strength can be cumulative and this can cause an aggressive reaction of greater strength. When it was discovered that individuals do not always respond with aggression to frustration, Dollard et al concluded that such behavior does not occur at the same moment of frustration, primarily due to the threat of punishment. In this case, a “bias” occurs, as a result of which aggressive actions are directed towards another person, whose attack is associated with the least punishment. Thus, a person who is restrained from aggressiveness against a frustrator by a strong fear of punishment resorts to shifting his settings, directing them to other targets - to those individuals. What factors weaken aggressive motivation? The answer to this question should be sought in the process of catharsis, i.e. such acts of aggression that do not cause harm reduce the level of motivation for aggression (insults, aggressive fantasies, hitting the table with a fist - acts of aggression that reduce the level of motivation for subsequent stronger aggression).
Depression - a condition, in professional terminology, characterized by gloomy mood, depression or sadness, which can be (but not always) an expression of poor health. In a medical context, the term refers to a painful mental state in which depressed mood predominates and which is often accompanied by a number of associative symptoms, in particular anxiety, agitation, feelings of inferiority, suicidal ideation, hypobulia, psychomotor retardation, various somatic symptoms, physiological dysfunction (for example, insomnia) and complaints. Depression as a symptom or syndrome is a core or significant feature in a number of disease categories. The term is widely and sometimes imprecisely used to refer to a symptom, syndrome, and disease state.
According to the observations of Wright and MacDonald, behaviorists, when addressing the problem of depression, paid more attention to therapeutic procedures than to building a theoretical model of depression. However, the impetus for the development of a behaviorist approach to the study of depression was the experimental work of Seligman and his colleagues, which laid the foundation for understanding depression as learned helplessness. Seligman and his colleagues have shown that when a dog is repeatedly exposed to electric shocks and cannot prevent them, he eventually accepts them as inevitable and becomes passive about them. According to Seligman, the dog learns that there is no adaptive response to the electric shock, that it can do nothing to avoid it, and thus learns passivity and helplessness. Using a control group of dogs that received a blow of the same force but could control or prevent it, the experimenters showed that it was not the force of the blow or physical trauma that determined the passive behavior of dogs in the experimental group.
Mayer later showed that dogs trained to remain still to avoid being hit did not show passivity in another situation in which they could avoid being hit by jumping over a barrier. Apparently, a state of helplessness arises in an animal when it learns that its reaction cannot change the influence of the environment. In such cases, the animal’s motivation to interact with the environment and to establish control over the situation decreases. The behavioral apathy resulting from this reaction becomes pathological when it is generalized and interferes with any learning process aimed at changing the environment and controlling it.
Seligman and his colleagues consider the phenomenon of “learned helplessness,” observed in animals as a result of repeated repetitions of inescapable electric shocks, as an analogue of reactive depression in humans. They believe that all situations that cause depression have one thing in common - they are perceived by the individual as situations over which he cannot establish his control, especially over those aspects of them that are most significant to him. Seligman, in extending the results of his experiments to humans, was undoubtedly influenced by the views of Beck and Kelly. Kelly's theory views personality as a function of personal constructs, emphasizing that individuals have a need to predict and control their environment.
According to Seligman, his theory of depression is comparable to the theory of opposing emotional processes. A harmful event (for Seligman it is a discharge of electric current) generates fear in the individual, which is expressed in panicky, maladaptive reactions. When the situation is repeated many times, the body learns that fear-motivated reactions are maladaptive. As negative experiences accumulate, the individual develops a feeling of helplessness and depressive feelings. Ultimately, depression limits fear by keeping it within the individual's tolerance (i.e., fear and depression act as opposing processes). After the cessation of the harmful influence, the individual may again be overwhelmed by fear, but depression remains. As already noted, the theory of differential emotions and some psychoanalytic theories argue that an integral characteristic of the emotional profile of depression is the interactions between different emotions, in particular the sadness-fear interaction. In Seligman's theory of depression, fear appears as a side effect rather than a causal phenomenon; However, Seligman's experimental paradigm begins with shock-induced fear, and the question of what other affective states reduce an individual's tolerance and contribute to the development of a state of learned helplessness and the development of depression remains unclear.
The results of experimental studies by Seligman and his colleagues and the theoretical model of depression developed on their basis aroused considerable interest among those specialists who study and treat depression. Perhaps the most serious drawback of this theory is the limited scope of its application. Seligman himself admits that the theoretical model he developed is applicable only when considering reactive depression, and even then does not explain all of its varieties. But, if we assume that an adverse effect causes only fear and maladaptive reactions in an individual, then Seligman’s model may indeed be useful for conceptualizing the type of affective-cognitive-behavioral chain of phenomena that leads to the formation of such indisputable, according to a number of theorists, symptoms of depression such as feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
Klerman's insightful work raised a number of questions about behaviorist models of depression. He considers it inappropriate to consider depression only as a set of conditioned maladaptive reactions. In animals and infants, depression, in his opinion, performs a number of adaptive functions, such as:
1) social communication;
2) psychological arousal;
3) subjective answers;
4) psychodynamic defense mechanisms. He believes that with the help of depression, the baby signals the adults around him about his troubles and suffering, thus appealing for their help. Klerman does not specify what the adaptive significance of depression in adults is, but concludes that depression is always an adaptive process, regardless of a person’s age. As evidence, he points out that reactive depression has a natural, quite limited duration (a factor that, according to Klerman, indicates that depression is “benign”).
Forster, looking at depression at a behavioral level, believes that depression is characterized by the loss of some adaptive behavior skills and their replacement by avoidance reactions, such as complaining, begging, crying and irritability. A depressed person tries to eliminate an unfavorable situation through complaints and requests. But Forster considers an even more important characteristic of depression to be a decrease in the frequency of those behavioral reactions that initially received positive reinforcement. This reduction of adaptive behavior is based on three factors. First, there is a limited repertoire of available reactions in a particular situation. For example, in depression, one of these limiters is the emotion of anger. Since anger is usually directed at another person, the likelihood that the object of anger will provide positive reinforcement to the subject expressing anger is extremely low. In addition, the manifestation of anger is punishable, and in order to avoid punishments, a person can suppress his anger. At the same time together With Angry reactions may also suppress potentially adaptive reactions, leading to a limited repertoire of actions that could elicit positive reinforcement. The second reason for the reduction of adaptive behavior is the inconsistency of reward and punishment. The individual loses the ability to understand patterns of reinforcement. If parents or caregivers use reward and punishment methods inconsistently, the child may experience confusion, confusion, and resulting feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, which many theories suggest are a component of depressive syndrome. The third factor considered by Forster is related to changes in the environment. If the environment, especially a person's social environment, changes in such a way that responses that were previously positively reinforced are no longer reinforced, those responses gradually disappear from the individual's behavioral repertoire. Following the clinical tradition, Foster, as the main example illustrating this case, names the loss of a loved one or close person who was perceived by the individual as a source of positive reinforcement.
1.3 Peculiarities of manifestation of mental states in students
One of the factors influencing the success of educational activities is the presence of some features in the structure and manifestation of mental and personal qualities of students. To identify this subjective factor of activity success, two groups of students with different academic performance were compared on a number of indicators, reflecting some features of their mental processes, properties and personality traits. For this purpose, materials were used from a complex psychological experiment carried out by the laboratory of psychophysiological problems of higher education at Kazan University, and information about the performance of first-year students of the historical, philological and physical faculties based on the results of examination sessions.
To identify the relationships and relationships of the studied indicators, correlation analysis was used, associated with the construction of correlation matrices. It should be concluded that the previous activity caused a large decline in activity in the more passive students. Judging by the content of the questions, these students are less energetic. They are less likely than others to take initiative in their work, are not as purposeful in its implementation, and very rarely take on additional work.
Higher emotional reactivity corresponds to a relatively low level of mood before and after the experiment, as well as relatively poor health after it. The meaning is quite obvious if we look at the content of the questions, the nature of the answers to which determines the degree of emotional reactivity. It turns out that the students who were in the worst mood during the experiment were those who are more often upset due to difficulties or failures at work, who get angry easily, who are more touchy, and who often have unexpected mood swings. These same students' condition deteriorated to a greater extent after the experiment, as evidenced by the negative correlation of the indicator of emotional reactivity with the indicator of well-being after the examination and with its shift.
The structure of interfunctional connections obtained for the strong group of the Faculty of Physics contains a significantly larger number of elements. All elements of this structure form a single galaxy. The system-forming elements are two elements: performance, reflecting endurance to long-term stress, and emotional reactivity, which has four connections, and performance is positively related to well-being and activity at the beginning of the experiment and with well-being and mood after it. Consequently, those students who had the best indicators of their functional state, judging by their answers, are characterized by systematic work. They finish work more often, tend to get better at it, and stay tired longer. In addition, they have a large amount of short-term memory for words.
Another system-forming factor - emotional reactivity - also correlates with some indicators of the functional state, but negatively. Its correlation with well-being and mood suggests that relatively high emotional reactivity is characteristic of those whose performance and endurance to long-term stress have a lower level, as in the weak group.
Indicators of functional activity before and after the experiment correlate with indicators reflecting the level of activity as a personality trait. This connection is natural, since a high level of energy can manifest itself in correspondingly high functional activity. The latter, determined before the experiment, is associated positively with the speed of information processing under conditions of switching attention and negatively with the average memory capacity for numbers.
The meaning of the first connection is obvious, and the second, again, is explained by the nonlinear relationship between the average amount of memory for numbers and activity. The same applies to the negative relationship between indicators of the functional state at the beginning of the examination and the maximum amount of short-term memory for numbers.
Changes in functional activity associated with intense mental activity are positively correlated with average memory capacity for numbers and maximum memory capacity for numbers. The higher they are, the less the functional activity of students in this group has changed (and according to primary data has increased).
By the end of the examination, those students who had completed the “Intensity of Attention” test more successfully (in terms of activity productivity) were in a better mood at the end of the examination, as evidenced by the positive correlation of these indicators. Apparently, there is a positive inverse effect of performance results on the functional state.
Let us move on to consider the structure of connections obtained for the strong and weak groups of the Faculty of History and Philology. Here, as with physicists, in the weak group the central system-forming factor is the indicator of emotional reactivity, negatively associated with five indicators of the functional state: mood at the beginning of the examination, well-being at the end of the examination, mood at the end of the examination, activity at the beginning and end of the examination. The meaning of these connections is that lower emotional reactivity is characteristic of those who have worse functional status indicators. These students had relatively higher mental performance, as evidenced by the inverse relationship between the indicator of mental performance and mood before and after the experiment. The picture of relationships between personal indicators and indicators of functional state is similar to that observed in both groups of the Faculty of Physics.
The most complex structure of interfunctional connections was obtained for the “strong” group of the Faculty of History and Philology. Two central components combine all indicators included in this structure. The indicator reflecting endurance to long-term stress has six correlations, and the indicator of personality activity has five connections.
Analysis of relationships in this group showed that here, more clearly than in the weak group, the direct relationship between the functional state and indicators reflecting emotional and volitional qualities is expressed. Thus, endurance to long-term loads, which characterizes the degree of students’ working capacity, is positively related here to all indicators of the functional state before and after the examination. Based on this, we can say that history students who were in better condition rated their performance higher and vice versa. The same tendency is manifested in the self-assessment of the degree of activity of the individual, which turned out to be positively related to functional activity before and after the experiment and well-being after it. The presence of this tendency in self-esteem, as in the weak group, is to some extent confirmed by the fact that among more energetic students, completing experimental tasks caused a smaller shift in well-being and mood. Finally, greater emotional reactivity turned out to be characteristic of those students who, as in the weak group, had the worst mood at the beginning of the experiment. The positive correlation of all indicators, except for the maximum memory capacity for numbers, with a shift in mood, as well as the speed of learning with mood after the experiment, suggests that in this group the mood factor plays a significant role.
The data we have examined suggests that the groups under study differ in the structure of interfunctional connections, its volume, complexity, as well as the nature of the relationships. The most complex structure, having several central components, turned out to be the one obtained in a strong group of both faculties. Indicators reflecting the nature of mental performance and personality activity stood out as system-forming in this group. In the group of low achievers, such a factor is the indicator of emotional reactivity, which mediates the volitional activity of the individual.
1. According to the results of the study, well- and poorly performing students practically do not differ in the degree of expression of the studied properties. The exception is the speed of learning, which is higher in the strong group, and the productivity of activity in conditions of switching attention.
2. This study revealed that the factor determining the success of activity is not individual mental processes and personality traits, but their structure. Moreover, activity is more successful when the leading role in the structure is played by volitional qualities, and not by emotional reactivity, which is a characteristic of sensitivity as a personality trait.
3. The nature of the differences obtained may be a consequence of the characteristics of students’ self-esteem, which in itself is of undoubted interest.
CHAPTER 2. Experimental study of the severity of emotional states in students in situations of educational activity.
2.1 Setting up the experiment.
An experimental study was conducted to determine the level of expression of emotional states among fourth-year psychology students at Yerevan State Pedagogical University. Thirty-five girls between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two were tested during a training activity.
The experimental study took place in three stages.
The first stage took place in June-October 2005. An analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature on the research problem was carried out, the selection of a contingent of subjects, the selection of methods, and the design of the first chapter.
The second stage of the study took place in November 2005. The collection of factual material and the processing of factual material took place.
At the third stage (December 2005), the coursework materials were prepared.
Three methods were used in the experimental study:
2) The “Self-Assessment of Emotional States” technique, developed by American psychologists A. Wessman and D. Ricks.
3) Methodology “Differential scales of emotions”, developed by K. Izard.
4) Methodology “Self-assessment of anxiety, frustration, aggressiveness and rigidity”, developed by O. Eliseev.
The “Mood Diary” is intended to determine the dominant states of the subjects and their causes. In the “Mood Diary,” subjects were presented with a table with a number of moods and a color corresponding to each mood.
Red color – enthusiastic
Orange – joyful, warm
Yellow – light, pleasant
Green – calm, balanced
Blue – dissatisfied, sad
Purple – anxious, tense
Black - complete decline, despondency
Mood and color are interconnected phenomena. There are no fewer shades in the mood than in the palette of colors that surround us. Therefore, each color stripe in color painting is a symbol of mood.
The subjects are given the following instructions: “At the intersection of the date and today’s mood, it is necessary to indicate the serial number of the reason for this mood:
1-state of health, well-being
2-upcoming test (exam)
3-group mood
4-upcoming seminar, test
5-relationship with teachers
6-relationship with classmates
7-events in the group
8-my relationships with close friends
9-dissatisfaction with oneself
10-trouble at home
11-very personal
13-successes/failures in learning
14-just tired
For the 15th day there was nothing interesting or new"
The “Self-assessment of emotional states” technique is intended for self-assessment of emotional states. This methodology offers the following four scales:
1) “calmness - anxiety”
2) “energy – fatigue”
3) “elation - depression”
4) “self-confidence - helplessness”
Each scale contains ten statements ranging from a negative emotional state to a positive emotional state. The subject is asked to choose from sets of judgments the one that best describes his emotional state now.
I1 – equals the number of the judgment selected by the subject from the first (“calmness – anxiety”) scale. The higher the score, the more calm the subject assesses his emotional state. Accordingly, the lower the score, the more the subject assesses his emotional state as anxious and unsure of himself.
I2 – equals the number of the judgment selected by the subject from the second (“energy – fatigue”) scale. If the subject chooses a high score, then he assesses his state as energetic and cheerful. If the subject chooses a low score, then he assesses his condition as tired, tired.
I3 – equals the number of the judgment chosen by the subject from the third (“elation – depression”) scale. The closer the subject’s chosen judgment is to ten, the higher he evaluates his emotional state as cheerful and excited. The closer the selected judgment is to one, the lower the subject evaluates his condition as depression, despondency.
I4 – equals the number of the judgment chosen by the subject from the fourth (“feeling of self-confidence – feeling of helplessness”) scale. If the subject chooses a high score, then he evaluates himself as a confident person. If the subject chooses a low score, then he evaluates himself as an unhappy, insecure person.
The interpretation is made by the sum of all four scales according to the formula:
I5=I1+I2+I3+I4, where
I5 – summary assessment of condition
I1, I2, I3, I4 – individual values on the corresponding scales.
If the sum of points is from 26 to 40, then the subject evaluates his emotional state highly; if from 15 to 25 points, then the average evaluation of the emotional state is low; if from 4 to 14 points.
Suggestibility and empathic abilities are associated not only with the nature of a person’s activity, but also with his well-being, which is expressed in terms of feelings and emotions. The “Differential Emotion Scales” technique is intended for this purpose. Its content presupposes an active position of the subjects, which is an indispensable condition for self-esteem and self-knowledge. The methodology uses the following scales:
C1 - interest
C2 - joy
C3 - surprise
C6 - disgust
C7 - contempt
C8 - fear
C10 – wines
Each emotion scale has three concepts. The subject is asked to rate on a four-point scale the extent to which each concept describes his state of health at the moment. Suggested numbers:
1 - not suitable at all
2- probably true
4- absolutely true
The sum of points for each emotion is calculated and thus the dominant emotions are detected, which make it possible to qualitatively describe the well-being of the subjects in relation to the type of character being determined. To further compare the results of adding the sums of individual emotions, you need to calculate K using the formula:
K= sum of positive emotions С1+С2+С3+С9+С10
Sum of negative emotions С4+С5+С6+С7+С8
where K is well-being
C – lines
If K is greater than one, then overall health is more positive. If K is less than one, then overall health is more negative. In other words, well-being corresponds more likely to either hyperthymic (with high mood) or dysthymic (low mood) type of accentuation of a person’s character. In cases of unsatisfactory health (K is less than one), a person’s self-esteem generally decreases, especially when a state close to depression occurs.
The “Self-assessment of anxiety, frustration, aggressiveness and rigidity” technique is intended for self-assessment of anxiety, frustration, aggressiveness and rigidity. Since anxiety is one of the leading parameters of individual differences, it is necessary to compare it with other parameters associated with it. In particular, manifestations of frustration, aggressiveness and rigidity are established.
The subject is offered four scales:
1) self-assessment of anxiety
2) self-assessment of frustration
3) self-assessment of aggressiveness
4) self-assessment of rigidity
Each scale has ten statements. The test taker must put a number from one to four next to each statement, where:
1- no, that's not true at all
2- perhaps so
4- absolutely true
For each property, the sum of points is multiplied by two. The maximum number of points for each property is 80.
Low score from 20 to 30
Average score from 31 to 45
High score of 46 and above
2.2 Discussion of research results
After this testing, the following results were obtained: the calm state (18.6%) of students during the period of educational activity dominates over all other states. Slightly less than the percentage of balanced (17.1%) and joyful (16.3%) states. Tense state 13.9%, despondency 11.4% and enthusiastic state 11.3%. The lowest percentage is for anxiety - it is 11.2%.
Thus, we can conclude that in the process of learning activities, students are in a calm, balanced, joyful state; less often in an anxious state.
Over the course of twenty-four days, 35 subjects responded 109 times (that is, 22.1%) that the reason for their mood was very personal.
19.8% are simply tired
14.4% identified the reason in interaction with close friends
13.1% determined their condition due to the weather
9.5% cited their health
7% had nothing interesting or new in a day
3% identified their cause as troubles at home
2.8% determined their condition due to relationships with classmates
2.4% identified the reason for their mood due to the mood of the group
1.8% are dissatisfied with themselves
1% identified the reason as success/failure in training
0.8% cited relationships with teachers
0.6% thought about the upcoming seminar/test
And only one day out of twenty-four, one subject remembered about the upcoming test/exam, which corresponds to 0.2%.
Having analyzed the results, we can conclude that during the period of educational activity, students are more busy with their personal affairs and are least interested in the educational process. Perhaps this is due to the fact that students are not bothered by upcoming tests and exams.
According to the “Self-assessment of emotional states” method, the following results were obtained (See Table No. 1):
Indicators of self-assessment of emotional state
On the “Calmness-Anxiety” scale, five people (14.2%) assess their condition as anxious, ten people (28.5%) assess their condition as calm and prosperous, an adequate assessment of the condition dominates in twenty people (57.1%).
On the Energy-Fatigue scale, two people (5.7%) feel tired, eight people (22.8%) feel a strong desire for activity, twenty-five people (71.4%) feel moderately cheerful.
On the I3 “Elation-Depression” scale, the majority of subjects (thirty people, which corresponds to 85.7%) assess their condition as good and cheerful. Five people (14.2%) feel excited and enthusiastic.
On the “Self-confidence-helplessness” scale, one person (2.8%) feels weak, pitiful and unhappy, sixteen people (45.7%) assess their condition adequately, eighteen people (51.4%) feel very confident.
Next, the individual total (on four scales) assessment of the condition is calculated - this will be I5. Having calculated, we obtained the following results: twelve subjects had high self-esteem, twenty-one subjects had adequate self-esteem, and two subjects had low self-esteem.
Thus, the majority of students (60%) have adequate self-esteem during educational activities, 34.2% have high self-esteem and only 5.7% have low self-esteem. In my opinion, by the fourth year, most students are adapted to academic activities, are not afraid of upcoming exams and are confident in their abilities.
In the “Differential Scales of Emotions” method, the results for all thirty-five subjects are greater than one, so we can judge that during educational activities, a positive state dominates among students (See Table No. 2).
Indicators of the expression of positive emotions
The highest percentage of a positive state is interest. Interest is the dominant state of health compared to other positive states (in 31.2% of subjects). In twelve people the dominant state is joy (25%), in nine (18.7%) subjects the dominant state is surprise, in seven (14.5%) subjects guilt and in five (10.4%) people the dominant state is shame.
These results were obtained because one subject could have several dominant states. These are two positive emotional states, therefore, none of the subjects have a dominant negative emotional state, since most students have high self-esteem, satisfactory well-being and a calm state.
After testing using the “Self-assessment of anxiety, frustration, aggressiveness and rigidity” method, we received the following results (See Table No. 3):
Indicators of the severity of mental states
54% have a high level of frustration, 34% have an average level, 12% have a low level of frustration
Twenty-three people, corresponding to 65.7%, had an average level of aggressiveness, 28.5% had a high level, and 5.7% had a low level of aggressiveness.
Twenty people (57.1%) had an average level of anxiety, 31.4% had a high level, and 12% had a low level of anxiety.
54% have a high level of rigidity, 34% have an average level, and 12% have a low level of rigidity.
Thus, we can conclude that the dominant state of students during educational activities is the state of aggressiveness with an average level of 65.7%. Most likely, this is due to instrumental aggression, which is explicated as a means - methods - techniques, projected to achieve any significant goal, aimed at achieving a utilitarian goal. For example, this could be achieving good grades during a learning activity.
The state of anxiety lags slightly behind with an average level of 57.1%, this may indicate that students are not yet worried about studying, since the study session is far away. A certain level of anxiety is a natural and obligatory feature of an individual’s active activity. Each person has their own optimal or desired level of anxiety - this is the so-called useful anxiety.
The state of frustration with a high level is 54%. Not every dissatisfaction of desire, motive, goal causes frustration. A person often experiences dissatisfaction. For example, I was late for a lecture, did not have time to have breakfast in the morning, and received a reprimand. However, these cases do not always disorganize our consciousness and activity. Frustration occurs only when the degree of dissatisfaction is greater than what a person can bear. Frustration occurs in conditions of negative social evaluation and self-esteem of the individual, when deep, personally significant relationships are affected.
The high level of rigidity state is 54%. Rigidity (from the Latin rigidis - hard, hard) difficulty (up to inability) in changing the intended program of activity in conditions that objectively require its restructuring (the opposite - plasticity, flexibility); getting stuck on a certain way of acting or reacting.
The state of anxiety with a high level is 31.4%. An increased level of anxiety is a subjective manifestation of personal distress. The manifestations of anxiety in different situations are not the same. In some cases, people tend to behave anxiously always and everywhere, in others they reveal their anxiety only from time to time, depending on the circumstances. In this case, it could be personal troubles at home, relationships with close friends, etc.
Conclusion
The first chapter, “Theoretical aspects of the study of emotional states in educational activities,” provides an analysis and generalization of the scientific views of domestic and foreign psychologists on the problem of mental states. Both domestic and foreign scientists have been studying the problems of mental states. So, Levitov N.D. defined mental states as “a holistic characteristic of a person’s mental activity and behavior over a certain period of time, showing the uniqueness of mental processes depending on the reflected objects and phenomena of reality, previous states and personality traits.” I.P. Pavlov wrote: “these states are the primary reality for us, they guide our daily life, they determine the progress of human society.”
Thus, mental states are
1) the psyche in its essential characteristics available at the moment of time,
2) aspect of the human condition - a real relationship
a) organization of structural and functional levels of life activity (organization of objects, mechanisms, results and energy of interaction in specific ways of interacting with the world - spheres of life activity: sensory-emotional, intellectual and spiritual),
b) the relationship between the content and properties of the stages of interaction (perception, reaction, awareness, motivation, influence) and,
c) the ratio of the level of force, the potential of the subject and the level of force of environmental factors.
In the second chapter, “Experimental study of the severity of emotional states in students in situations of educational activity,” results are provided using four methods:
1) According to the “Mood Diary”, authored by A.N. Lutoshkin, the following results emerged: during the period of educational activity, students are more busy with their personal affairs and are least interested in the educational process. Perhaps this is due to the fact that students are not bothered by upcoming tests and exams.
2) According to the “Self-assessment of emotional states” method, developed by American psychologists A. Wessman and D. Ricks, it turned out that the majority of students (60%) have adequate self-esteem during educational activities, 34.2% have high self-esteem and only 5.7% have low self-esteem . In my opinion, by the fourth year, most students are adapted to academic activities, are not afraid of upcoming exams and are confident in their abilities.
3) According to the method “Differential scales of emotions”, developed by K. Izard, the results were obtained: all subjects have a positive emotional state, therefore, none of the subjects have a dominant negative emotional state, because the majority of students have high self-esteem, satisfactory well-being and calm state.
4) According to the method “Self-assessment of anxiety, frustration, aggressiveness and rigidity”, developed by O. Eliseev, the dominant state in students during educational activities is a state of aggressiveness with an average level, which is 65.7%. Most likely, this is due to instrumental aggression, which is explicated as a means - methods - techniques, projected to achieve any significant goal, aimed at achieving a utilitarian goal. For example, this could be achieving good grades during a learning activity.
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Classifications of emotional states. Emotional states have very diverse manifestations. According to the degree of intensity and
their duration can be long but weak (sadness), or strong but short-lived (joy).
According to subjective experience, the entire variety of emotions can be divided into 2 categories: emotions of a positive order, associated with the satisfaction of a person’s life needs and therefore delivering pleasure, and emotions of a negative order, associated with the dissatisfaction of life’s needs and therefore delivering displeasure. According to the content, emotions can be classified into simple and complex, depending on what level of needs are satisfied in a person. The simpler ones include anger, fear, joy, grief, envy, jealousy; the more complex ones include moral feeling, aesthetic feeling, feeling of patriotism, etc.
Finally, according to the form of their occurrence, all emotional states are divided into feeling tone, mood, emotions, affect, stress, frustration, passion, and higher feelings.
Sensual tone. The simplest form of emotional experience is the so-called sensory or emotional tone. Sensory tone is understood as the emotional coloring of a mental process, prompting the subject to preserve or eliminate it. It is well known that some colors, sounds, smells can themselves, regardless of the memories associated with them, cause us a pleasant or unpleasant feeling. So, good music, the smell of a rose, the taste of an orange are pleasant and have a positive emotional tone. If a negative feeling tone turns into painful disgust, then we speak of idiosyncrasy.
The sensual tone, as it were, accumulates in itself a reflection of the beneficial and harmful factors of the surrounding reality. Due to its generality, the feeling tone helps to make a preliminary and quick decision about the meaning of a new stimulus, instead of comparing it with all the information stored in memory. The sensual tone is often subjective and depends on how the activity proceeds: the partner who constantly loses to us seems more attractive than the one who always wins against us. Despite its outward insignificance, knowledge and purposeful use of a sensory tone allows you to influence a person’s mood, improve labor productivity, study intensity, etc.
Mood. Mood is understood as a general emotional state that colors all human behavior over a long period of time. Mood is an emotional reaction not to immediate events, but to their meaning for a person in the context of his overall life plans. This is not a special experience timed to coincide with some particular event, but a diffuse, general state.
The mood is very diverse and can be joyful or sad, cheerful or depressed, cheerful or depressed, calm or
irritated, etc. The reasons for a particular mood are not always clear to the person experiencing them. It is not without reason that they talk about unaccountable sadness, causeless joy, and in this sense, mood is an individual’s unconscious assessment of how favorable circumstances are for him. But this reason always exists and can be determined. It can be the surrounding nature, events, or activities performed. Mood significantly depends on the general state of health, on the functioning of the endocrine glands and, especially, on the tone of the nervous system.
Moods can vary in duration. The stability of mood depends on many reasons: a person’s age, the individual characteristics of his character and temperament, willpower, and the level of development of the leading motives of behavior.
Long-term moods can color a person's behavior for days or even weeks. Mood can become a stable personality trait - on this basis, people are divided into optimists and pessimists.
At the same time, mood can be short-term in nature, which is especially pronounced in childhood. Without an established hierarchy of motives, children are easily susceptible to mood changes: any emotional impression gives rise to unstable, variable, capricious moods. With age, the mood becomes more stable - influences that are significant for the personal sphere cause a change in mood.
Emotions. Emotions are the direct, temporary experience of some feeling. So, for example, the feeling of love for football is not an emotion. Emotions will be represented at the stadium by the state of admiration that a fan experiences when watching a good game of athletes or by the emotion of indignation, indignation when a game is lazy or inexperienced refereeing.
Emotions can be caused by both real and imaginary situations, can anticipate events that have not yet actually occurred, and arise in connection with ideas about previously experienced or imaginary situations.
From the point of view of influence on human activity, emotions are divided into sthenic and asthenic. Sthenic (or “hypersthenic”) emotions include euphoria, mania, anger, anxiety; among the “asthenic” ones are sadness, melancholy, apathy, fear.
Stenic emotions stimulate human activity, encourage him to act and speak. And, conversely, asthenic emotions are characterized by stiffness and passivity. Therefore, depending on the individual characteristics of a person, emotions can influence behavior differently. Thus, a person experiencing feelings of fear may experience increased muscle strength and may rush towards danger. The same feeling of fear can cause a complete loss of strength; fear can make your knees buckle. Grief can
cause apathy and inactivity in a weak person, while a strong person doubles his energy, finding solace in work and creativity.
Emotional experiences can be ambiguous and contradictory. This phenomenon is called ambivalence (duality) of feelings. Usually, ambivalence is caused by the ambiguity of the object itself (for example, you can respect someone for their ability to work and at the same time condemn them for their temper). Ambivalence can also be generated by the contradiction between stable feelings towards an object and situational emotions (for example, love and hatred are combined in jealousy).
The basic, fundamental emotions include pleasure, joy, suffering, surprise, disgust, anger, contempt, shame, interest, fear.
The oldest in origin, the simplest and most widespread form of emotional experiences among living beings is the pleasure obtained from the satisfaction of organic needs (or the displeasure associated with the dissatisfaction of organic needs). Almost all organic sensations have their own emotional tone. The close connection that exists between emotions and the activity of the body is evidenced by the fact that any emotional state is accompanied by many physiological changes in the body.
Joy is a positive emotional state associated with the ability to sufficiently fully satisfy an actual need, the likelihood of which until this moment was small or uncertain.
Suffering is a negative emotional state associated with information received about the impossibility of satisfying the most important needs of life, which until this moment seemed more or less likely, most often occurs in the form of emotional stress.
Surprise is an emotional reaction to sudden circumstances that does not have a clearly defined positive or negative sign. Surprise inhibits all previous emotions, directing attention to the object that caused it, and can turn into interest.
Disgust is a negative emotional state caused by objects, contact with which conflicts with
ideological, moral or aesthetic principles of the subject. Disgust, when combined with anger, can motivate aggressive behavior in interpersonal relationships.
Anger is a negative emotional state that occurs in the form of affect and is caused by the sudden emergence of a serious obstacle to the satisfaction of a need that is extremely important for the subject.
Contempt is a negative emotional state that arises in interpersonal relationships and is generated by a mismatch in the life positions of the subject with the life positions of the object of feeling. The latter are presented to the subject as base, not corresponding to accepted moral standards and aesthetic criteria.
Shame is a negative emotional state, expressed in the awareness of the inconsistency of one’s own actions and appearance with the expectations of others or with one’s own ideas about appropriate behavior and appearance.
Interest (as an emotion) is a positive emotional state that promotes the development of skills and abilities, the acquisition of knowledge, and motivating learning.
Fear is a negative emotional state that appears under the influence of information about a possible real or imagined danger. Unlike the emotion of suffering, caused by direct blocking of the most important needs, the emotion of fear is caused only by a probabilistic forecast of possible trouble.
Each of these emotions can be manifested by a whole spectrum of states that differ in degree of expression (for example, joy can be manifested by satisfaction, delight, jubilation, ecstasy, etc.).
From the combination of fundamental emotions, complex emotional states arise, such as anxiety, which can combine fear, anger, guilt and interest.
Affect. In critical conditions, when the subject is unable to find a quick way out of a dangerous situation, a special type of emotional processes arises - affect. This is the most powerful emotional response considered. Affect
- a strong and short-term emotional state, accompanied by pronounced motor manifestations and changes in the functions of internal organs.
Any feeling can be experienced in an affective form. This includes cases of affective delight at the performance of a favorite ensemble, and the affective anger of fans at the stadium, and religious ecstasy, etc. Sometimes affect manifests itself in tense stiffness of movements, posture, and speech. This can be horror and despair. Or, if a person unexpectedly receives good news, he is lost and does not know what to say.
One of the essential functions of affect is that it represents stereotypical actions fixed in evolution, a way of “emergency” resolution of situations: flight, numbness, aggression, etc.
Affect arises as a result of an action that has already been completed and expresses its subjective emotional assessment from the point of view of achieving the set goal. The development of affect is subject to the following law: the stronger the initial motivational stimulus of behavior and the more effort had to be spent on implementing it, the smaller the result obtained as a result of all this, the stronger the resulting affect.
The cause of affect can be a conflict, a contradiction between a person’s strong desire for something and the objective impossibility of satisfying the impulse that has arisen, and the person is not able to realize this impossibility or cannot reconcile with it (anger, rage). The conflict may also lie in increased demands placed on a person at the moment, and his experiences, lack of self-confidence, and underestimation of his capabilities.
A distinctive feature of affect is the weakening of conscious control, the narrowness of consciousness. Affects, as a rule, interfere with the normal organization of behavior and its rationality. At the same time, thinking changes, a person loses the ability to foresee the results of his actions. In passion, a person seems to lose his head, his actions are unreasonable, committed without taking into account the situation. Losing power over himself, a person seems to give himself entirely to the experience.
In addition, the basic characteristics of attention change; only those objects that correspond to experiences are retained in the field of perception. All other stimuli are not sufficiently realized, and this is one of the reasons for the practical uncontrollability of this state.
Affects can leave strong and lasting traces in long-term memory. Unlike affects, the work of emotions and feelings is associated primarily with short-term and operative memory. The affect arises sharply, suddenly in the form of a flash, is accompanied by strong and erratic motor activity, and a kind of discharge in action occurs. Emotional tension accumulated as a result of affectogenic situations can accumulate and lead to a strong and violent emotional release, which, while relieving tension, often entails a feeling of fatigue, depression, and depression.
Emotional stress. Emotional stress is
a state of excessively strong and prolonged psychological stress that occurs in a person when his nervous system receives emotional overload. Emotional stress appears in situations of threat, danger, resentment, etc. Stress disorganizes a person’s activities and disrupts the normal course of his behavior. Stress, especially if it is frequent and prolonged, has a negative impact not only on a person’s psychological state, but also on a person’s physical health. They represent the main “risk factors” for the emergence and exacerbation of diseases such as cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases.
G. Selye identified 3 stages in the development of stress. The first stage is the alarm reaction - the phase of mobilization of the body's defenses, increasing resistance to a specific traumatic impact. In this case, a redistribution of the body’s reserves occurs: the solution to the main task is ensured at the expense of secondary tasks. A person copes with the load with the help of
functional mobilization, without structural changes. At the second stage - the stabilization stage, all parameters brought out of balance in the first phase are fixed at a new level. External behavior differs little from the norm, everything seems to be getting better, but internally there is an overexpenditure of adaptation reserves. If the stressful situation continues to persist, the third stage begins - exhaustion, which can lead to a significant deterioration in well-being, various diseases and even death.
The data obtained by English researchers is indicative in this regard. They found a high mortality rate from coronary heart disease among senior administrative officials, test pilots, surgeons, jet pilots, and city bus drivers. It is constant exposure to stressful situations that shortens the lives of people in these professions.
A person’s behavior in a stressful situation depends on many conditions, primarily on the psychological characteristics of the person. People with different characteristics of the nervous system react differently to the same psychological stress. Some people experience increased activity, mobilization of strength, and increased efficiency. Danger seems to spur a person on, forcing him to act boldly and courageously. On the other hand, stress can cause disorganization of activity, a sharp drop in its effectiveness, passivity and general inhibition.
Frustration. Frustration is a psychological state of disorder, depression, caused by objectively insurmountable (or subjectively perceived) difficulties that arise on the way to achieving a goal. Frustration is accompanied by a whole range of negative emotions, anger, depression, external and internal aggression.
The level of frustration depends on the strength and intensity of the influencing factor, the person’s condition and his or her existing forms of response to life’s difficulties. Especially often, the source of frustration is a negative social assessment that affects significant relationships of the individual. A person’s resistance (tolerance) to frustrating factors depends on the degree of his emotional excitability, type of temperament, and experience of interaction with such factors.
Passion. Passion is another type of complex, qualitatively unique and unique emotional state found only in humans. In terms of the intensity of emotional arousal, passion approaches passion, and in terms of duration and stability it resembles mood. Passion is a strong, persistent feeling that determines the direction of a person’s thoughts and actions.
The reasons for the formation of passion are quite diverse - they can be determined by conscious beliefs (for example, the passion of a scientist in science), they can come from bodily desires or have a pathological origin (as happens with paranoid personality development). Passion is organically connected with needs, selective and always objective - aimed at a specific type of activity or subject. These are, for example, the passion for knowledge observed in people, the passion for music, the passion for collecting, etc.
The most important characteristic of passion is its connection with the volitional sphere. Passion is one of the essential motivations for activity. Assessing the meaning of passion is quite subjective. Passion can be accepted and sanctioned by the individual, or it can be condemned by it, experienced as something unwanted and intrusive. Public opinion plays a big role in evaluation. For example, within one culture, the passion for hoarding is condemned as greed, but can be positively assessed within another social group as thrift.
Higher feelings. Higher feelings represent a special form of experience. Feelings are personal formations. They characterize a person socially and psychologically. Emotions are relatively weakly manifested in external behavior, sometimes from the outside they are completely invisible to an outsider. They, accompanying one or another behavioral act, are not even always conscious, although all behavior is associated with emotions, since it is aimed at satisfying a need. A person’s feelings, on the contrary, are outwardly very noticeable.
Depending on the subject area to which they relate, feelings are divided into moral, aesthetic, and intellectual.
Moral (moral) are the feelings experienced by people when they perceive the phenomena of reality and compare these phenomena with the norms developed by society. Moral standards depend on traditions, customs, religion, and the dominant ideology accepted in society.
The actions and deeds of people that correspond to the views on morality in a given society are considered moral, ethical; actions that do not correspond to these views are considered immoral and immoral. Moral feelings include a sense of duty, humanity, benevolence, love, patriotism, sympathy, etc. Immoral ones include greed, selfishness, cruelty, gloating, etc.
Intellectual feelings are experiences that arise in the process of human cognitive activity. Intellectual feelings include surprise, curiosity, inquisitiveness, a feeling of doubt about the correctness of a decision, etc. Success or failure, ease or difficulty of mental activity causes a whole range of experiences in a person.
The most typical situation that gives rise to intellectual feelings is a problem situation. Intellectual feelings not only accompany human cognitive activity, but also stimulate, strengthen it, influence the speed and productivity of thinking, the content and accuracy of knowledge.
Intellectual feelings also include a generalized sense of something new. It
is expressed in the constant search for something new both in the field of knowledge and in practical activity. This feeling is associated not simply with the need to receive any new information, but with the need for “cognitive harmony,” i.e. is to find the familiar and familiar in the new, unknown.
Aesthetic feelings represent a person’s emotional attitude to beauty in nature, in life and in art. A person experiences aesthetic feelings when perceiving works of fiction, music, fine art, drama and other types of art. Aesthetic feelings are a fusion of moral and intellectual feelings. The complexity of the problem also lies in the fact that the aesthetic attitude is manifested through other feelings: delight, joy, contempt, disgust, suffering, etc.
It should be noted that the considered division of feelings is rather conditional. Usually the feelings experienced by a person are so complex that they are difficult to categorize. Thus, the work of a scientist is a kind of fusion of intellectual, moral and aesthetic feelings with a predominance of intellectual ones, and the work of an artist is, apparently, also a fusion of these feelings, but with a predominance of aesthetic ones. Differences in the sensory sphere leave a deep imprint on the entire structure of a person’s spiritual life.
Famous scientist A.V. Petrovsky wrote: “... One and the same manifestation of the psyche can be considered in different respects. For example, affect as a mental state is a generalized characteristic of the emotional, cognitive and behavioral aspects of the subject’s psyche in a certain relatively limited period of time; as a mental process, it is characterized by stages in the development of emotions; it can also be considered as a manifestation of an individual’s mental properties (hot temper, lack of restraint, anger). Mental states include manifestations of feelings (mood, affects, euphoria, anxiety, frustration, etc.), attention (concentration, absent-mindedness), will (decisiveness, absent-mindedness, composure), thinking (doubt), imagination (dreams), etc. . The subject of special study in psychology is the mental states of people under stress under extreme circumstances (in a combat situation, during exams, when emergency decision-making is necessary), in critical situations (pre-race mental states of athletes, etc.). In pathopsychology and medical psychology, pathological forms of mental states are studied - obsessive states, in social psychology - mass mental states."
“Mental state is one of three types of mental phenomena, particular psychological categories: in humans, it is an intermediate link between a short-term mental process and a personality trait. Mental states are quite long-lasting (can last for months), although they can change quickly when conditions change or due to adaptation.”
“Mental states are a broad psychological category that covers various types of integrated reflection of the situation (impacts on the subject of both internal and external stimuli), without a clear awareness of their substantive content. Examples of mental states include: vigor, fatigue, mental satiety, apathy, depression, alienation, loss of a sense of reality (derealization), experiencing “what has already been seen,” boredom, anxiety, etc.” .
In its turn emotional states- these are a person’s experiences of his relationship to the surrounding reality and to himself at a certain point in time, relatively typical for a given person; those states that are regulated primarily by the emotional sphere and cover emotional reactions and emotional relationships; relatively stable experiences.
The main emotional states that a person experiences are divided into emotions, feelings and affects. Emotions and feelings anticipate the process aimed at satisfying a need, have an ideational character and are, as it were, at the beginning of it. Emotions and feelings express the meaning of a situation for a person from the point of view of a currently relevant need, the significance of the upcoming action or activity for its satisfaction. Emotions can be caused by both real and imagined situations. They, like feelings, are perceived by a person as his own internal experiences, transmitted to other people, and empathized with.
Emotions are relatively weakly manifested in external behavior, sometimes from the outside they are completely invisible to an outsider, if a person knows how to hide his feelings well. They, accompanying one or another behavioral act, are not always conscious, although all behavior, as we have found out, is associated with emotions, since it is aimed at satisfying a need. A person's emotional experience is usually much broader than the experience of his individual experiences. A person’s feelings, on the contrary, are outwardly very noticeable.
Emotions and feelings are personal formations. They characterize a person socially and psychologically. Emotions usually follow the actualization of the motive and before the rational assessment of the adequacy of the subject’s activity to it. They are a direct reflection, an experience of existing relationships, and not their reflection. Emotions are capable of anticipating situations and events that have not yet actually occurred, and arise in connection with ideas about previously experienced or imagined situations.
Feelings are objective in nature and are associated with a representation or idea about a certain object. Another feature of feelings is that they are improved and, developing, form a number of levels, starting from immediate feelings and ending with higher feelings related to spiritual values and ideals.
The feelings are historical. They vary among different peoples and can be expressed differently in different historical periods among people belonging to the same nations and cultures. In the individual development of a person, feelings play an important socializing role. They act as a significant factor in the formation of personality, especially its motivational sphere. On the basis of positive emotional experiences such as feelings, the needs and interests of a person appear and are consolidated.
Feelings are a product of human cultural and historical development. They are associated with certain objects, activities and people surrounding a person. Feelings play a motivating role in a person’s life and activity, in his communication with people around him. In relation to the world around him, a person strives to act in such a way as to reinforce and strengthen his positive feelings. For him, they are always connected with the work of consciousness and can be voluntarily regulated.
The most general emotional state that colors all human behavior for a long time is called mood. It is very diverse and can be joyful or sad, cheerful or depressed, cheerful or depressed, calm or irritated, etc. Mood is an emotional reaction not to the direct consequences of certain events, but to their significance for a person’s life in the context of his general life plans, interests and expectations.
The most powerful emotional reaction is affect. Affect(from Latin affectuctus - “mental excitement”) - a strong and relatively short-term emotional state associated with a sharp change in life circumstances important to the subject and accompanied by pronounced motor manifestations and changes in the functions of internal organs. Affect completely takes over the human psyche. This entails a narrowing and sometimes even a shutdown of consciousness, changes in thinking and, as a consequence, inappropriate behavior. For example, with severe anger, many people lose the ability to constructively resolve conflicts. Their anger turns into aggression. The person screams, blushes, waves his arms, and may hit the enemy.
Affect occurs sharply, suddenly in the form of a flash, an impulse. Managing and coping with this condition is very difficult. Any feeling can be experienced in an affective form. At the same time, it would be wrong to think that affect is completely uncontrollable. Despite the apparent suddenness, affect has certain stages of development. And if at the final stages, when a person completely loses control over himself, it is almost impossible to stop, then at the beginning any normal person can do this. Of course, this requires enormous willpower. The most important thing here is to delay the onset of affect, to “extinguish” the affective outburst, to restrain yourself, and not to lose power over your behavior.
Affects are particularly pronounced emotional states, accompanied by visible changes in the behavior of the person who experiences them. Affect does not precede behavior, but is, as it were, shifted to its end. This is a reaction that arises as a result of an action or deed that has already been committed and expresses its subjective emotional coloring from the point of view of the extent to which, as a result of this action, it was possible to achieve the set goal, to satisfy the need that stimulated it. Affects contribute to the formation of so-called affective complexes in perception, expressing the integrity of the perception of certain situations. The development of affect is subject to the following law: the stronger the initial motivational stimulus of behavior and the more effort had to be spent on implementing it, the smaller the result obtained as a result of all this, the stronger the resulting affect. Unlike emotions and feelings, affects occur violently, quickly, and are accompanied by pronounced organic changes and motor reactions.
Affects have a negative impact on human activity, sharply reducing the level of its organization, and changing typical behavior. They are capable of leaving strong and lasting traces in long-term memory. Unlike affects, the work of emotions and feelings is associated primarily with short-term and operative memory. Emotional tension accumulated as a result of the occurrence of affectogenic situations can accumulate and sooner or later, if it is not released in time, lead to a strong and violent emotional release, which, while relieving tension, often entails a feeling of fatigue, depression, depression.
One of the most common types of affects these days is stress. Under stress(from the English stress - “pressure”, “tension”) understand the emotional state that arises in response to all kinds of extreme influences. It is a state of excessively strong and prolonged psychological stress that occurs in a person when his nervous system receives emotional overload. Stress disorganizes a person’s activities and disrupts the normal course of his behavior. Stress, especially if it is frequent and prolonged, has a negative impact not only on the psychological state, but also on a person’s physical health.
No person manages to live and work without experiencing stress. Everyone experiences severe life losses, failures, trials, conflicts, and stress when performing difficult or responsible work from time to time. Some people cope with stress more easily than others, e.g. are stress-resistant.
Passion- another type of complex, qualitatively unique and occurring only in humans emotional states. Passion is a fusion of emotions, motives and feelings concentrated around a specific activity or subject. A person can become the object of passion. S.L. Rubinstein wrote that passion is always expressed in concentration, concentration of thoughts and forces, their focus on a single goal... Passion means impulse, passion, orientation of all aspirations and forces of the individual in a single direction, their concentration on a single goal.
Close in its manifestations to stress is the emotional state of frustration.
Frustration(from Latin frustration - “deception”, “frustration”, “destruction of plans”) - a human state caused by objectively insurmountable (or subjectively perceived) difficulties that arise on the way to achieving a goal.
Frustration is accompanied by a whole set of negative emotions that can destroy consciousness and activity. In a state of frustration, a person can show anger, depression, external and internal aggression. For example, when performing any activity a person fails, which causes him negative emotions - grief, dissatisfaction with himself. If in such a situation the people around you support you and help you correct your mistakes, the emotions you experience will remain just an episode in a person’s life. If failures are repeated, and significant others reproach, shame, call him incapable or lazy, this person usually develops an emotional state of frustration.
The level of frustration depends on the strength and intensity of the influencing factor, the person’s condition and his or her existing forms of response to life’s difficulties. Especially often, the source of frustration is a negative social assessment that affects significant relationships of the individual. A person’s resistance (tolerance) to frustrating factors depends on the degree of his emotional excitability, type of temperament, and experience of interaction with such factors.
An emotional state close to stress is the “ emotional burnout" This condition occurs in a person if, in a situation of mental or physical stress, he experiences negative emotions for a long time. At the same time, he can neither change the situation nor cope with negative emotions. Emotional burnout manifests itself in a decrease in the overall emotional background, indifference, avoidance of responsibility, negativism or cynicism towards other people, loss of interest in professional success, and limitation of one’s capabilities. As a rule, the causes of emotional burnout are monotony and monotony of work, lack of career growth, professional inconsistency, age-related changes and socio-psychological disadaptation. Internal conditions for the occurrence of emotional burnout may be accentuation of a certain type of character, high anxiety, aggressiveness, conformity, and an inadequate level of aspirations. Emotional burnout hinders professional and personal growth and, like stress, leads to psychosomatic disorders.
Many scientists have made attempts to give universal classifications of emotions, and each of them put forward their own basis for this. Thus, T. Brown based the classification on the temporal sign, dividing emotions into immediate, i.e., manifested “here and now,” retrospective and prospective. Reed built a classification based on the relationship to the source of action. He divided all emotions into three groups: 1) which are characterized by a mechanical origin (instincts, habits); 2) emotions with an animal origin (appetite, desire, affectation); 3) emotions with a rational beginning (pride, duty). D. Stewart's classification differs from the previous one in that the first two Reed groups are combined into one class of instinctive emotions. I. Kant reduced all emotions to two groups, which were based on the reason for the emergence of emotions: sensory and intellectual emotions. At the same time, he attributed affects and passions to the volitional sphere.
G. Spencer proposed dividing feelings based on their occurrence and reproduction into four classes. To the first, he included presentational feelings (sensations) that arise directly from the action of external stimuli. To the second class - presentational-representational, or simple, emotions, for example fear. He included in the third class representative emotions evoked by poetry as a stimulus that does not have a specific objective embodiment. Finally, Spencer included in the fourth class higher, abstract emotions that are formed without the help of an external stimulus in an abstract way (for example, a sense of justice).
For example, A. Ben identified 12 classes of emotions, and the founder of scientific psychology V. Wundt believed that the number of emotions (more precisely, shades of the emotional tone of sensations) is so large (considerably more than 50,000) that the language does not have a sufficient number of words to designate them. The American psychologist E. Titchener took the opposite position. He believed that there are only two types of emotional tone of sensations: pleasure and displeasure. In his opinion, Wundt confused two different phenomena: feelings and feeling. Feeling, according to Titchener, is a complex process consisting of sensation and feelings of pleasure or displeasure (in the modern sense - emotional tone). The appearance of the existence of a large number of emotions (feelings), according to Titchener, is created by the fact that an emotional tone can accompany innumerable combinations of sensations, forming a corresponding number of feelings. Titchener distinguished between emotions, mood and complex feelings (sentimentes), in which states of pleasure and displeasure play a significant role.
The difficulty of classifying emotions lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it is difficult to determine whether the identified emotion is really an independent type or whether it is a designation of the same emotion in different words (synonyms), and on the other hand, whether it is a new verbal designation emotions are only a reflection of the degree of its expression (for example, anxiety - fear - horror).
This was also noted by W. James, who wrote: “The difficulties that arise in psychology when analyzing emotions stem, it seems to me, from the fact that they are too accustomed to being viewed as completely separate phenomena from each other. So long as we regard each of them as some eternal, inviolable spiritual entity, like the species once considered immutable entities in biology, so long we can only respectfully catalog the various features of the emotions, their degrees, and the actions produced by them. If we begin to consider them as products of more general causes (for example, in biology, the difference between species is considered as a product of variability under the influence of environmental conditions and the transmission of acquired changes through heredity), then the establishment of differences and classification will acquire the meaning of simple auxiliary means.
As P.V. Simonov notes, none of the proposed classifications received wide recognition and did not become an effective tool for further searches and clarifications. This is explained by the fact that all these classifications were built on an incorrect theoretical basis, namely, on the understanding of emotions as a force that directly guides behavior. As a result, emotions appeared that encourage one to strive for an object or avoid it, sthenic and asthenic emotions, etc.
Division of emotions according to the type of contact of living beings. P.V. Simonov, based on the nature of the interaction of living beings with objects that can satisfy an existing need (contact or remote), proposed a classification of emotions presented in Table 1.
Table 1 - Classification of human emotions depending on character
actions
|
Amount of need |
Assessing the probability of satisfaction |
Contact interaction with an object |
Remote Actions |
||
|
mastery, possession of an object |
conservation |
overcoming, fighting for an object |
|||
|
Growing |
Exceeds available forecast |
Enjoyment, pleasure |
Fearlessness, courage, confidence |
Celebration, inspiration, cheerfulness |
|
|
Small |
Indifference |
Calm |
Relaxation |
Equanimity |
|
|
Growing |
Displeasure, disgust, suffering |
Anxiety, sadness, grief, despair |
Wariness, anxiety, fear, horror |
Impatience, indignation, anger, rage, rage |
|
The author of this classification believes that it is also valid for those human emotions that are caused by the needs of a higher social order, therefore he does not agree with S.X. Rappoport, who assessed it as a reflection of the biological theory of motivation.
According to E.P. Ilyin, the advantage of the classification described above is the attempt to find a criterion by which one can differentiate the emotional tone of sensations from the emotions themselves (contact forms of interaction for the former and distant forms for the latter). But in general, this classification does little to clarify the truth, since for some reason it contains not only emotions, but also volitional qualities (courage, fearlessness) or emotional and personal characteristics (equanimity, optimism).
Later P.V. Simonov, despite the statement about the hopelessness of constructing a complete classification of emotions, again reproduces his classification, albeit in a shortened form. It is based on a system of two coordinate axes: the attitude towards one’s condition and the nature of interaction with objects that can satisfy the existing need.
As a result, he received four pairs of “basic” emotions: pleasure-disgust, joy-sorrow, confidence-fear, triumph-rage. Each of these emotions has qualitative differences in experiences (shades), which are entirely determined by the need, in connection with the satisfaction of which this emotional state arises. The author believes that this classification inevitably follows from the “theory of emotions” he develops. Whether this is true or not is difficult to judge, but the question arises: why is confidence an emotion, and a basic one at that? Why can’t I experience pleasure when I’m happy, and disgust when I’m angry? And if I can, then which emotion will be basic and which will not?
Perhaps the answer to the last question may be that in addition to the basic positive and negative emotions that manifest themselves in their pure form, Simonov also identifies complex mixed emotions that arise when two or more needs are simultaneously actualized. In this case, as P.V. writes. Simonov, complex emotional chords can arise (Table 2).
Table 2 - Examples of emotional states arising on the basis of two
coexisting needs
|
Second need |
First need |
|||||
|
pleasure |
disgust | |||||
|
Pleasure |
Summation | |||||
|
Disgust |
Threshold states, satiation |
Summation | ||||
|
Often combined |
Defeated Scoundrel |
Summation | ||||
|
Religious "accept suffering" |
The need to do something in grief |
separation |
Summation | |||
|
Attractions, risk |
A desired meeting with an unknown outcome |
A new danger against the backdrop of an already suffered loss |
Summation | |||
|
Contempt |
Schadenfreude, triumph |
Disturbance |
A Kind of Hate |
Summation |
||
Based on the identification of basic and secondary needs, emotions are divided into primary (basic) - joy, fear and secondary (intellectual) - interest, excitement (Vladislavlev, 1881; Kondash, 1981; Olshannikova, 1983). In this division, it is incomprehensible to include excitement in intellectual emotions (if it is advisable to talk about such things at all), and to classify interest as an emotion - a motivational rather than an emotional formation. If we follow this principle, then all motivational formations (drives, desires, personality orientation, etc.) must be attributed to emotions (which, unfortunately, is observed by some authors).
B.I. Dodonov identified the following types of emotions: altruistic, communicative, gloric, praxic emotions, pugnistic emotions, romantic, gnostic, aesthetic, hedonistic and akizative emotions. He notes that it is generally impossible to create a universal classification of emotions, therefore a classification suitable for solving one range of problems turns out to be ineffective when solving another range of problems. He proposed his own classification of emotions, and not for all, but only for those of them in which a person most often feels the need and which attach direct value to the very process of his activity, which thanks to this acquires the quality of interesting work or study, “sweet” dreams, gratifying memories, etc. For this reason, sadness was included in his classification (since there are people who like to be slightly sad) and envy was not included (since even envious people cannot be said to like to envy). Thus, the classification proposed by Dodonov concerns only “valuable,” in his terminology, emotions. Essentially, the basis of this classification is needs and goals, i.e., the motives that certain emotions serve. It should be noted that the author often includes desires and aspirations in the category of “emotional tools,” i.e., signs of identifying a given group of emotions, which creates confusion.
A more adequate understanding of the classification carried out by B.I. Dodonov, from the point of view of E.P. Ilyin, is available from E.I. Semenenko, who considers the emotions identified by Dodonov as types of emotional orientation. Among the students of the pedagogical institute, these types, according to the brightness of their manifestation, were arranged as follows:
When assessing oneself: praxic, communicative, altruistic, aesthetic, gnostic, gloric, hedonistic, romantic, fearful, active;
When assessed by peers: praxic, acquisitive, communicative, hedonistic, romantic, gloric, aesthetic, gnostic, altruistic, fearful.
As can be seen from this list, the coincidence was observed in relation only to the praxic and pugnic types of emotional orientation.
The division of emotions into primary (basic) and secondary is characteristic of supporters of a discrete model of the human emotional sphere. However, different authors name different numbers of basic emotions - from two to ten. P. Ekman and his colleagues, based on the study of facial expression, identify six such emotions: anger, fear, disgust, surprise, sadness and joy. R. Plutchik identifies eight basic emotions, dividing them into four pairs, each of which is associated with a specific action: 1) destruction (anger) - defense (fear); 2) acceptance (approval) - rejection (disgust); 3) reproduction (joy) - deprivation (dejection); 4) exploration (expectation) - orientation (surprise).
K. Izard names 10 basic emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, distress (grief-suffering), fear, guilt, interest, joy, shame, surprise.
From his point of view, basic emotions must have the following mandatory characteristics: 1) have distinct and specific neural substrates; 2) manifest themselves through an expressive and specific configuration of muscle movements of the face (facial expressions); 3) entail a distinct and specific experience that is conscious to the person; 4) arose as a result of evolutionary biological processes; 5) have an organizing and motivating influence on a person, serve his adaptation.
However, Izard himself admits that some emotions classified as basic do not have all these characteristics. Thus, the emotion of guilt does not have a clear facial and pantomimic expression. On the other hand, some researchers attribute other characteristics to basic emotions.
Obviously, those emotions that have deep phylogenetic roots can be called basic, that is, they are present not only in humans, but also in animals. Other emotions that are unique to humans (shame, guilt) do not apply to them. Interest and shyness can hardly be called emotions either.
Close to this is the division of emotions by R. Plutchik into primary and secondary (the latter means combinations of two or more primary emotions). Thus, he classifies secondary emotions as pride (anger + joy), love (joy + acceptance), curiosity (surprise + acceptance), modesty (fear + acceptance), etc. It is not difficult to notice that his emotions included feelings, and moral qualities (modesty) and a very strange emotion - acceptance.
VC. Viliunas divides emotions into two fundamental groups: leading and situational (derived from the former). The first group consists of experiences generated by specific mechanisms of needs and coloring objects directly related to them. These experiences usually arise when a certain need intensifies and an object that responds to it is reflected. They precede the corresponding activity, encourage it and are responsible for its general direction. They largely determine the direction of other emotions, which is why they are called leading by the author.
The second group includes situational emotional phenomena generated by universal motivation mechanisms and aimed at circumstances that mediate the satisfaction of needs. They arise already in the presence of a leading emotion, i.e. in the process of activity (internal or external), and express the motivational significance of conditions that facilitate its implementation or make it difficult (fear, anger), specific achievements in it (joy, grief), existing or possible situations, etc. Derived emotions are united by their conditioning by the situation and the activity of the subject, dependence on leading emotional phenomena.
If leading experiences reveal to the subject the significance of the very object of the need, then by derived emotions the same function is performed in relation to the situation, the conditions for satisfying the need. In derivative emotions, the need is, as it were, objectified secondarily and more broadly - in relation to the conditions surrounding its object.
Analyzing situational emotions in a person, Viliunas identifies a class of success-failure emotions with three subgroups:
1) stated success or failure;
2) anticipating success-failure;
3) generalized success-failure.
Emotions that indicate success or failure are responsible for changing behavioral strategies; a generalized emotion of success or failure arises as a result of evaluating the activity as a whole; anticipatory emotions of success and failure are formed on the basis of ascertaining ones as a result of their association with the details of the situation. When a situation arises again, these emotions allow one to anticipate events and encourage a person to act in a certain direction.
L.V. Kulikov divides emotions (“feelings”) into activation ones, which include cheerfulness, joy, excitement, tension emotions (emotions of tension) - anger, fear, anxiety, and self-esteem - sadness, guilt, shame, confusion.
Thus, emotions differ in many ways: modality (quality), intensity, duration, awareness, depth, genetic source, complexity, conditions of occurrence, functions performed, impact on the body. According to the last of these parameters, emotions are divided into sthenic and asthenic. The former activate the body and lift the mood, while the latter relax and suppress. In addition, emotions are divided into lower and higher, as well as by the objects with which they are associated (objects, events, people, etc.).