What is an Emotion?
Emotion plays a very vital role in our lives. Because it organizes and energizes our behavior. But in acute conditions, it also disrupts behavior. Emotions add excitement, joy, sorrow, and grief to life. Emotion is responsible for self-actualization. It is an integral part of the personality. Emotions are generally defined as the strong, unpleasant emotional state of the organism, involving the organism as a whole. These are the conscious processes involving bodily changes. It arises out of a variety of causes. Neurophysiological emotions are controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which is relatively independent of voluntary control. In this article, you will get to know “What is an Emotion?”, “What is Emotional Development?”
Emotions play a vital role in the life of children. In everyday life, it adds the pleasure. It serves as a motive for action. Finally, it is characterized by adjustment in life. Every child possesses the potential for both pleasant and unpleasant emotions.
Parents and teachers should be aware of these properties. They should provide happy living at least during the early years of life.
What is Emotional Development?
The first sign of emotional behavior in the newborn infant is general excitement due to intense stimulation. Every child possesses the ability to respond emotionally. The child’s emotions are not very clear-cut. For a few months, the specific emotional behaviors are not recognized and identified.
By three months, the child’s general excitement becomes differentiated into delight and distress. The negative emotions become more specific. Those are fear, anger, disgust, etc. It happens around the age of 6 months. Around one year, the child’s delightedness rises to affection and happiness. Joy appears a little after 1.5 years of development. Affection becomes further differentiated between children and adults at the age of 1.5 years. Jealousy is seen around 15 months. Even before the child becomes one year old, his emotional expressions are similar to that of adults. However, the age at which “differentiation of the various emotions” appears varies somewhat from child to child.
When age increases, emotional responses become less diffuse and random. For example, at first, the child expresses displeasure by crying and screaming but later reacts by resisting, throwing objects, stiffening the body, avoiding, refusing, riding himself using verbal expressions, etc. When the child becomes older and older, linguistic responses increase. They show more fear and anger. Besides, the development of different types of emotion is also different.
Differences in health and environment for the child produce individual variations in the intensity, frequency, and duration of emotions. For example, a baby in a calm atmosphere, whose needs are solved more consistently, is less likely to suffer from tension. He grows older than the child who lives in a noisy and exciting environment. The child from the noisy environment will cry before his needs are fulfilled.