When people or situation gets us down, do we feel just generally "bad"? Or do we have more precise emotional experiences, such as grief or despair or frustration?
In psychology, people with finely tuned feelings are said to exhibit "emotional granularity". Emotional granularity isn't just about having a rich vocabulary; it's about experiencing the world, and ourselves, more precisely. This can make a difference in our life. In fact, there is growing scientific evidence that precisely tailored emotional experiences are good for us, even if those experiences are negative.
According to a collection of studies, finely grained, unpleasant feelings allow people to be more agile at regulating their emotions, less likely to drink excessively when stressed and less likely to retaliate aggressively against someone who has hurt them. Perhaps surprisingly, the benefits of high emotional granularity are not only psychological. People who achieve it are also likely to have longer, healthier lives. They go to the doctor and use medication less frequently, and spend fewer days hospitalised for illness. Cancer patients, for example, have lower levels of harmful inflammation when they more frequently categorise, label and understand their emotions.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University in US, and author of the book 'How Emotions Are Made' discovered emotional granularity in the 1990s. Her lab asked hundreds of volunteers to keep track of their emotional experiences for weeks or months. Everyone they tested used the same stock of emotion words, such as "sad" and "angry" and "afraid", to describe their experiences.
Our brain, they showed, in a very real sense constructs our emotional states - in the blink of an eye, outside of our awareness - and people who learn diverse concepts of emotion are better equipped to create more finely tailored emotions. This is why emotional granularity can have such influence on our well-being and health: it gives our brain more precise tools for handling the myriad challenges life throws at us.
Suppose we're facing the city's troubles with water contamination. Suppose that each morning, as we turn on the tap, we experience an unpleasant feeling of general badness. It's important to note that we've created that vague feeling of badness. Neuroscience has shown that human brains are not "reactive" organs that merely respond to the world in some predetermined way, such as spiking our blood pressure when we see the words "non-potable water". Rather, our brain regulates our body's energy needs proactively, spiking our blood pressure in anticipation of what might come next, based on experience. This process is like keeping a budget for our body. And just like a financial budget, a body budget needs to be kept balanced in order to be healthy.
So in the above example of water contamination, our brain anticipates a threat and our cortisol level spikes, readying our body for action, but a feeling of general badness calls for no specific action. We merely feel awful because our brain has made a needless withdrawal from our body budget. And the next time we're in a similar situation, our brain goes through the same process. Again we feel lousy and trapped by our circumstances. Over time, a poorly calibrated body budget can pave the road to illness.
With higher emotional granularity, however, our brain may construct a more specific emotion, such as righteous indignation, which entails the possibility of specific actions. We might telephone a friend and rant about the water crisis, or we might Google "lead poisoning" to learn how to better protect our children. We are no longer an overwhelmed spectator but an active participant. We have choices. This flexibility ultimately reduces wear and tear on our body (for example, unnecessary surges of cortisol).
The good news is that emotional granularity is a skill, and many people can increase theirs by learning new emotion concepts. Instead of grouping all negative emotions as 'bad', we need to feel them: is it awful, frustration, gloom, anxiety, helplessness or disgust! Schoolchildren who learn more emotion concepts have improved social behaviour and academic performance, as research by the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence shows.
If we incorporate such concepts into our daily life, our brain will learn to apply them automatically. Emotion concepts are tools for living. The bigger our tool kit, the more flexibly our brain can anticipate and prescribe actions, and the better we can cope with life.
In psychology, people with finely tuned feelings are said to exhibit "emotional granularity". Emotional granularity isn't just about having a rich vocabulary; it's about experiencing the world, and ourselves, more precisely. This can make a difference in our life. In fact, there is growing scientific evidence that precisely tailored emotional experiences are good for us, even if those experiences are negative.
According to a collection of studies, finely grained, unpleasant feelings allow people to be more agile at regulating their emotions, less likely to drink excessively when stressed and less likely to retaliate aggressively against someone who has hurt them. Perhaps surprisingly, the benefits of high emotional granularity are not only psychological. People who achieve it are also likely to have longer, healthier lives. They go to the doctor and use medication less frequently, and spend fewer days hospitalised for illness. Cancer patients, for example, have lower levels of harmful inflammation when they more frequently categorise, label and understand their emotions.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University in US, and author of the book 'How Emotions Are Made' discovered emotional granularity in the 1990s. Her lab asked hundreds of volunteers to keep track of their emotional experiences for weeks or months. Everyone they tested used the same stock of emotion words, such as "sad" and "angry" and "afraid", to describe their experiences.
Our brain, they showed, in a very real sense constructs our emotional states - in the blink of an eye, outside of our awareness - and people who learn diverse concepts of emotion are better equipped to create more finely tailored emotions. This is why emotional granularity can have such influence on our well-being and health: it gives our brain more precise tools for handling the myriad challenges life throws at us.
Suppose we're facing the city's troubles with water contamination. Suppose that each morning, as we turn on the tap, we experience an unpleasant feeling of general badness. It's important to note that we've created that vague feeling of badness. Neuroscience has shown that human brains are not "reactive" organs that merely respond to the world in some predetermined way, such as spiking our blood pressure when we see the words "non-potable water". Rather, our brain regulates our body's energy needs proactively, spiking our blood pressure in anticipation of what might come next, based on experience. This process is like keeping a budget for our body. And just like a financial budget, a body budget needs to be kept balanced in order to be healthy.
So in the above example of water contamination, our brain anticipates a threat and our cortisol level spikes, readying our body for action, but a feeling of general badness calls for no specific action. We merely feel awful because our brain has made a needless withdrawal from our body budget. And the next time we're in a similar situation, our brain goes through the same process. Again we feel lousy and trapped by our circumstances. Over time, a poorly calibrated body budget can pave the road to illness.
With higher emotional granularity, however, our brain may construct a more specific emotion, such as righteous indignation, which entails the possibility of specific actions. We might telephone a friend and rant about the water crisis, or we might Google "lead poisoning" to learn how to better protect our children. We are no longer an overwhelmed spectator but an active participant. We have choices. This flexibility ultimately reduces wear and tear on our body (for example, unnecessary surges of cortisol).
The good news is that emotional granularity is a skill, and many people can increase theirs by learning new emotion concepts. Instead of grouping all negative emotions as 'bad', we need to feel them: is it awful, frustration, gloom, anxiety, helplessness or disgust! Schoolchildren who learn more emotion concepts have improved social behaviour and academic performance, as research by the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence shows.
If we incorporate such concepts into our daily life, our brain will learn to apply them automatically. Emotion concepts are tools for living. The bigger our tool kit, the more flexibly our brain can anticipate and prescribe actions, and the better we can cope with life.
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