Emotion of the day

[Ashley0616]

enthusiasm-

: strong excitement of feeling : ARDOR

: something inspiring zeal or fervor

: belief in special revelations of the Holy Spirit

: religious fanaticism

[Heather Shay]

CONFUSION

The feeling when you get information that does not make sense to you, leaving you uncertain what to do with it.

You feel confused when you receive information that you cannot match with what you already know or believe to be true¹. For example, when someone you don’t know approaches you at a party and starts talking to you as if they have known you for years, or when you accidentally turned two pages of a novel at once and don’t understand the apparent jump in the story.

Information comes to us in a constant stream. Any new piece of information that is worthy of notice is compared to what we already know. For example, we know that cities are arranged into streets and blocks, and that city maps contain a scaled representation of this arrangement, so when you visit a new city and find a map, even though the contents of this map is new information, you can easily connect its existence and logic to what you already know. However, when you would come across a map of your own town and find that the streets are arranged in a way completely different from how you know it to be, you will likely feel confused. This can feel like the mental equivalent of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The confusion will sustain until you are able to find a solution to this mismatch, for example, when you find out that the map is a depiction of your town a hundred years ago, or that it is part of an art project intended to set you off on the wrong foot.

Apart from this type of explicit mismatch, in which new information actively opposes something you held to be true, you can also get confused when you simply cannot match the new information to anything you already know. For example, if everyone is raving about an art piece and you don’t see what is so special about it, you can feel confused and wonder what you might have missed.

When people are confused, there are likely to be three outcomes: they hold on to their current beliefs and dismiss the new piece of information; they assimilate the new piece of information and overwrite the old one; or they find a way to hold both beliefs without conflict. Paradoxes are examples of the latter: at first, they seem to contain two opposing pieces of information, but upon scrutiny, the opposition was only apparent.

People who are confused tend to momentarily stop their actions and frown, look slightly downwards or touch their forehead, which all express that they need a moment to make the mental match or reject one of the pieces of information².

In the comic, Murphy is confused when he was expecting all his colleagues to be in their office prior to his presentation, but finds the room deserted.

[Ashley0616]

lovely:

: delightful for beauty, harmony, or grace : ATTRACTIVE

: GRAND, SWELL

: eliciting love by moral or ideal worth

obsolete : LOVABLE

[Davie]

Legislative Risk Assessment Map, March 2024 update: 

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2912,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb26df31c-20cf-4b50-90da-2e529865fb4e_1561x1013.png

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb26df31c-20cf-4b50-90da-2e529865fb4e_1561x1013.png

 

NOTE: You will need to copy link and paste in your browser.

[Heather Shay]

Aesthetic appreciation or good taste is the ability to appreciate objective beauty. Aesthetic taste is influenced by many factors, such as personal or cultural background, familiarity, context, and expertise. Access to aesthetically interesting and valuable objects and environments can improve our well-being.

[Ashley0616]

Swell:

: to expand (as in size, volume, or numbers) gradually beyond a normal or original limit

: to become distended or puffed up

: to form a bulge or rounded elevation

: to become filled with pride and arrogance

: to behave or speak in a pompous, blustering, or self-important manner

: to play the swell

: to become distended with emotion

[Heather Shay]

Nostalgia is an emotion. It is the feeling of enjoying events from the past. People with nostalgia will often look at or use old things that they were familiar with years ago. This is because people feel more connected to those past times that they enjoyed, usually because it reminds them of how long it has been since they last connected to such past times. Examples where people may have the feeling of nostalgia includes watching old TV shows, using old technology that was very enjoyable, and playing with toys that you played with as a child. These memories are usually misleading, and can make someone wish that they could be young again, even if their childhood was mediocre. Human brains often leave out boring or bad memories, which can cause incorrect feelings about their childhood

[Ashley0616]

Scurrilous can be to describe someone who uses or tends to use scurrilous language, or it can describe a person or thing as evil or vulgar.

[Heather Shay]

Boredom is an emotional state that comes when a person has nothing to do, and is not interested in anything. To stop boredom, most people do something to occupy or amuse themselves.

The first known use of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, but the saying to be a bore had been used to mean "to be tiresome or dull" since 1768.

When referring to the mind, boredom is a bad state in which the person feels a deep lack of interest in what is going on around them, and where it is hard to focus.

[Ashley0616]

thrilled: 

:extremely pleased and excited

[Heather Shay]

AMUSEMENT

The feeling when you encounter something silly, ironic, witty, or absurd, which makes you laugh. You have the urge to be playful and share the joke with others.

Similar words: Mirth

Amusement is the emotional reaction to humor. This can be something that is intended to be humorous, like when someone tells a good joke or when a friend dresses up in a ridiculous costume. But it can also be something that you find funny that was not intended to be humorous, like when you read a sign with a spelling error that turns it into an ironic pun.

For millennia, philosophers and scholars have been attempting to explain what exactly it is that makes something funny. This has led to several different theories. Nowadays, the most widely accepted one is the Incongruity Theory, which states that something is amusing if it violates our standards of how things are supposed to be. For example, Charlie Chaplin-style slapstick is funny because it violates our norms of competence and proper conduct, while Monty Python-style absurdity is funny because it violates reason and logic.

However, not every standard or norm violation is necessarily funny. Violations can also evoke confusion, indignation, or shock. An important condition for amusement is that there is a certain psychological distance to the violation. One of the ways to achieve this is captured by the statement ‘comedy is tragedy plus time’. A dreadful mistake today may become a funny story a year from now. But it can also be distant in other ways, for instance, because it happened to someone you do not know, or because it happens in fiction instead of in real life. Amusement also needs a safe and relaxed environment: people who are relaxed and among friends are much more likely to feel amused by something.

A violation and sufficient psychological distance are the basic ingredients for amusement, but what any one person find funny will depend on their taste and sense of humor. There are dozens of ‘humor genres’, such as observational comedy, deadpan, toilet humor, and black comedy.

Amusement is contagious: in groups, people are more prone to be amused and express their amusement more overtly. People are more likely to share amusement when they are with friends or like-minded people. For these reasons, amusement is often considered a social emotion. It encourages people to engage in social interactions and it promotes social bonding.

Many people consider amusement to be good for the body and the soul. By the end of the 20th century, humor and laughter were considered important for mental and physical health, even by psychoneuroimmunology researchers who suggested that emotions influenced immunity. This precipitated the ‘humor and health movement’ among health care providers who believed that humor and laughter help speed recovery, including in patients suffering from cancer¹). However, the evidence for health benefits of humor and laughter is less conclusive than commonly believed².

Amusement is a frequent target of regulation: we down-regulate it by shifting our attention to avoid inappropriate laughter, or up-regulate it by focusing on a humorous aspect of a negative situation. Interestingly, amusement that is purposefully up-regulated has been found to have the same beneficial physical and psychological effects as the naturally experienced emotion.

Amusement has a few clear expressions that emerge depending on the intensity of the emotion. When people are mildly amused, they tend to smile or chuckle. When amusement intensifies, people laugh out loud and tilt or bob their head. The most extreme bouts of amusement may be accompanied by uncontrollable laughter, tears, and rolling on the floor.

Most cultures welcome and endorse amusement. Many people even consider a ‘good sense of humor’ as one of the most desirable characteristics in a partner. At the same time, most cultures have (implicit) rules about what is the right time and place for amusement. For example, displays of amusement may be deemed inappropriate in situations that demand seriousness or solemness, such as at work or during religious rituals.

[Ashley0616]

meh: 

: not impressive : SO-SO

: APATHETIC, INDIFFERENT

[Heather Shay]

Interest is a feeling or emotion that causes attention to focus on an object, event, or process. In contemporary psychology of interest, the term is used as a general concept that may encompass other more specific psychological terms, such as curiosity and to a much lesser degree surprise.

[Heather Shay]

Calm is an adjective meaning peaceful, quiet; particularly used of the weather, free from wind or storm, or of the sea, opposed to rough. The word appears in French calme, through which it came into English, in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian calma.

[Ashley0616]

frightened: feeling fear : made to feel afraid

[Heather Shay]

crav·ing

[ˈkrāviNG]

noun

1. a powerful desire for something:

[Heather Shay]

entrance

¹

[ en-truhns ]SHOW IPA

https://www.dictionary.com/0b29c1db2f0b1c9452c7.svg

See synonyms for: entranceentrancedentrancingentrancement on Thesaurus.com

[Ashley0616]

alarmed:

: feeling a sense of danger : urgently worried, concerned, or frightened

: equipped with an alarm

[Heather Shay]

satisfaction

[ sat-is-fak-shuhn ]SHOW IPA

https://www.dictionary.com/0b29c1db2f0b1c9452c7.svg

See synonyms for satisfaction on Thesaurus.com

---

noun

1. an act of satisfying; fulfillment; gratification.

2. the state of being satisfied; contentment.

[Ashley0616]

doubting:

 to call into question the truth of : to be uncertain or in doubt about

: to lack confidence in : DISTRUST

: to consider unlikely

[Heather Shay]

awkwardness

noun [ U ]

 

US 

 

 /ˈɑː.kwɚd.nəs/ UK 

 

 /ˈɔː.kwəd.nəs/

 

awkwardness noun [U] (EMBARRASSMENT)

Add to word list 

embarrassment, or a situation that is difficult and not relaxed:

[Ashley0616]

timid: 

: lacking in courage or self-confidence

: lacking in boldness or determination

[Heather Shay]

Embarrassment or awkwardness is an emotional state that is associated with mild to severe levels of discomfort, and which is usually experienced when someone commits (or thinks of) a socially unacceptable or frowned-upon act that is witnessed by or revealed to others. Frequently grouped with shame and guilt, embarrassment is considered a "self-conscious emotion", and it can have a profoundly negative impact on a person's thoughts or behavior.

[Ashley0616]

belittled:

: to speak slightingly of : DISPARAGE

: to cause (a person or thing) to seem little or less

[Heather Shay]

Anxiety is distress or uneasiness of mind caused by a fear of danger or misfortune.^[1] Very often, people with anxiety also feel worries. There can also be physical symptoms, like having a headache or an upset stomach.

Anxiety is a very common human emotion and is often associated with fear, panic, and the fight or flight response.^[2] The amount of stress needed to cause anxiety will vary from person to person however, basics include: losing one's job, the death of a loved one, or an accident, to name a few. In most people, anxiety will settle over time and one will return to normal state.^[2]

Some people suffer a lot of anxiety over a long period of time which controls them and makes their lives difficult. These conditions are called anxiety disorders and can be treated by therapy and medicine.

General anxiety symptoms are things such as; continual tiredness / exhaustion, inability to relax, lack of confidence, low self-esteem, fear of public places, fear of socialising, frequent feelings of irrational anxiety / fear, compulsive behavior, worrying about making mistakes, regular nightmares, disturbed sleep patterns, excessive crying, headaches, stomach problems, diarrhea, nausea, aching muscles, and so on.

Symptoms of anxiety attacks are things like; sweating, shaking and tremors, palpitations, shortness of breath, hyperventilating, racing heart beat, tingling in hands and feet, feeling of impending doom, feeling you are having a heart attack. There are more, but these are the usual ones.