Home experiment on naming emotions
Let's start this article with a short emotion experiment:
How are you feeling now? (take a few seconds to answer)
What emotions have you felt today or in recent days? (take a few seconds to answer)
Most were likely to answer the first question with “good”, “great”, “ok” or “not so good”. For the second question, you probably mentioned a very small number of emotions - about two to five.
I know this because more and more research shows that it is difficult for us to pinpoint and name all the emotions we experience in our daily lives (see. Gratz & Roemer, 2004). In comparison, it's like continuously shooting colour scenes of life in black and white.
It is important to note that some people have even more difficulty naming their emotions than others. No matter how complex their feelings, they use only a few words to describe them. This limited naming of emotions is in turn associated with difficulties in regulating these emotions (see. Vine & Aldao, 2014). In other words, the less aware we are of our emotions, the less likely we are to be able to manage them effectively.
For example, if a colleague has made a mistake and I am only aware of the anger that the mistake provokes in me, I might think I am justified in reacting aggressively. But if I notice that my feelings also include anxiety about having to correct the problem, I might be more motivated to defuse the anger so that I can enlist his help.
In the second scenario, our relations remain good and we cooperate more effectively to solve problems. So trying to understand our emotions without judgement can be very valuable - it helps us to regulate them better and navigate our environment more easily.
In a recent study conducted by Dr Michelle Kraske's lab at UCLA, participants with spider phobia were invited to take part in a behavioural approach task (BAT). In this BAT, participants had to take eight steps, gradually approaching the scary spider. They could stop at any point. One of the main measures in the BAT was the number of steps (in addition to physiological arousal and subjective anxiety ratings).
BAT is a laboratory version of the CBT exposure method that allows researchers to experimentally test the effectiveness of different aspects of exposure. In this case, participants were divided into four groups with different instructions on how to deal with anxiety:
- name the anxiety felt about the spider,
- changing the way we think about the spider to make it seem less dangerous (redefinition),
- distract from the spider's alarm,
- no specific instructions (control group).
Participants then returned for a second BAT session to assess the long-term effects of emotion manipulation.
The researchers found that those who named their emotions reacted more physiologically calmly - they had a smaller physiological reaction to the spider. In addition, those in this group who used more words describing fear and anxiety reacted even more calmly! This suggests that a clearer understanding of one's own fears can help to reduce the physiological manifestations of these emotions.
I find these results very exciting and look forward to further research in this direction. In the meantime, I encourage you to take a few minutes each day to do the exercise from the beginning of this article. How many words can you use to describe your emotions? How nuanced are your descriptions? Does your ability to name them vary depending on the situation?
Here is a list of emotions: amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, worry, satisfaction, frustration, disgust, elation, embarrassment, excitement, fear, guilt, happiness, annoyance, joy, pride, disgust, shame, surprise, sadness. It is not exhaustive, but it is a good starting point. See also Plutchik's circle of emotions, to see how they are interconnected.
To learn how to recognise, name and manage emotions, join the IDARTO Centre for “Skills for Change” or psychological techniques for the video library “Psychologist in your pocket”.
Source: Aldao A. (2014, Aug 4) “Why Labeling Emotions Matters”. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sweet-emotion/201408/why-labeling-emotions-matters