The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us about Human Relationships by Clifford Nass; Corina Yen

Author:Clifford Nass; Corina Yen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Personal Growth - General, Human-Computer Interaction, International Relations (General), General, Interpersonal Relations, Popular Psychology, Social Aspects - Human-Computer Interaction, Data processing, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Research, Psychology, Business & Economics, Social interaction
ISBN: 9781617230011
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 2010-09-01T22:00:00+00:00

What Is Emotion?

The key to this approach is the finding that people in all cultures face every situation by asking themselves, both consciously and unconsciously, two questions:

1. How well am I meeting my goals?

2. Should I do something about my goals?

Emotions help us frame these questions in terms of feelings:

1. How happy am I?

2. How excited am I?

The first question, called the valence question, reveals whether you believe that you are meeting your goals—thereby feeling happy—or whether you are failing to meet your goals—thereby feeling sad. The second question, called the arousal question, is like a volume knob on your responses: are you vigorously trying to meet your goals—excitement—or are you letting the situation play itself out—calm?

Looked at another way, valence is the judging side of people: where am I in terms of where I want to be? Arousal, conversely, is the doing side: am I ready to act? Thus, emotion is an extremely concise and efficient way to link people’s goals, their current situation, and their attitudes and behaviors.

Emotions are not just about yourself; slightly modified versions of the valence and arousal questions can help you understand the feelings and goals of others as well. That is, to determine others’ emotions, simply ask: “How happy or sad are they?” and “How excited or calm are they?”

How can valence and arousal summarize all emotions? Let’s start with the extremes. If you can say that you are clearly meeting your goals (very happy) and are actively responding to that feeling (very excited), it is called “ecstasy.” “Serenity” or “nirvana” describes the feeling of extreme happiness, like ecstasy, but combined with feeling very subdued. Like serene people, “despairing” people are very subdued, simply wanting to stay in bed, but they feel strongly negative instead of positive. Finally, if you feel far from achieving your goals (very sad) and are striving to change (very excited), the emotion is “rage,” such an active state that you may find your body actually shaking.

If one thinks of valence and arousal on a graph, with valence as the horizontal axis—ranging from very negative to very positive as one goes left to right—and arousal as the vertical axis—ranging from very calm at the bottom to very excited at the top—ecstasy, serenity, despair, and rage would each fall on one of the four corners of the graph.

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