Summary - Emotions

"Emotion" is used to designate "a state of consciousness having to do with the arousal of feelings (Webster‟s New World Dictionary)." It is "distinguished from other mental states, from cognition, volition, and awareness of physical sensation." Feeling refers to "any of the subjective reactions, pleasant or unpleasant" that one may experience in a situation.

There are many theories of emotion. James-Lange Theory proposes that subjective emotional responses are the result of physiological changes within human bodies. Cannon-Bard theory proposes that emotion-provoking events induce the subjective emotional experiences and physiological arousal simultaneously. Schachter-Singer theory proposes that both feedback from peripheral responses and a cognitive appraisal of what caused those responses produce emotions. How one interprets the peripheral response will determine the emotion he / she feels. According to Lazarus' appraisal theory, an individual makes an initial and sometimes unconscious cognitive appraisal of the situation to decide, if there is a threat; coping action is taken if necessary; and the individual takes a closer look and identifies the emotions he or she is feeling. Weiner, in his theory, proposes that certain attributions produce specific emotions.

Once the initial evaluation has been made, the individual looks at what caused the event. These attributions of causality can modify the emotion felt. It is the interaction of the perceived internal and external causes, controllability and outcome that will determine the emotional responses. Felt emotions are an individual‟s actual emotions. Displayed emotions are those that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job. They are learned. Felt and displayed emotions may be different. This is particularly true in organizations, where role demands and situations often require people to exhibit emotional behaviors that mask their true feelings.

There are two Views of Culture and Emotion. In “Universality” view, it is believed that emotions are part of human nature and in all cultures universally the same set of basic emotions. Based on his cross-cultural research, Ekman (1999) has found six emotions which are universally recognized and applicable. They are: Anger, Fear, Sadness, Happiness, Disgust, and Surprise. Women are assumed to experience more frequent and intense emotions, whereas men are assumed to be emotionally inexpressive and to have less intense emotional experiences. However, researchers have argued that the stereotype of men as unemotional is more accurate for adult targets than for child targets because males learn to control their emotions as they get older.

Emotional intelligence is an aggregate of individuals‟ cognition of own and others' emotions, feeling, interpretation and action as per environmental demand to manipulate the consequence, which in turn, results in superior performance and better human relationship. The most popular and accepted mixed model of emotional intelligence is the one proposed by Goleman. He viewed emotional intelligence as a total of personal and social competences. Personal competence determines how we manage ourselves, whereas social competence determines how we handle our interpersonal relationships. Assuming that emotional intelligence is important, the question of assessment and measurement becomes particularly pressing.