"Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.".
-Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC).
What is an emotion? One definition, by dictionary.com, is "A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling." To most people, that definition doesn't seem quite complete. Emotions and feelings are very personal - no two people experience any one emotion the same way, nor do they experience any one situation the same. While one person may be happy to receive a B on a test, another may be disappointed s/he didn't receive an A. .
Eric Jensen, Ph. D. lists the core emotions as anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, joy, and fear. These core feelings are only a small portion of the range of emotions that are present nearly every day. Naming emotions in their full range is very challenging, because emotions, by their very nature, are not rational. When we try to put a label on how we are feeling, we move from that feeling to being rational and thinking, rather than just experiencing the emotion.
In addition to the many shades of emotion, we also experience mixtures and combinations of them. For example, a combination of 'joy' and 'acceptance' could be felt as 'love'. A combination of 'sadness' and 'surprise' could be felt as 'disappointment'. The combinations are nearly endless. .
Emotions help us in many different ways. The four major ways emotions help us are awareness, motivation, communication, and decision-making. These are basic things we need to survive in the world.
We experience emotions to help us understand other people and our surroundings. They help us to become aware of others by giving us visual and verbal clues to respond and react to situations. When someone is sad, we can tell by the way his/her face droops and his/her posture.