Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Emotion preferences

Emotion preferences:
What do people want to feel and why?

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Overview

Figure 1. Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. Scenario Imagine Maeve and Zoe are having a confrontational conversation regarding Maeve's salary at Zoe's pet shop. Maeve prefers to feel anger when confronting someone as she feels that it advances her competitive nature and promotes better negotiation outcomes, particularly when it comes to a tricky topic like this. In contrast, Zoe prefers to feel more emotionally calm and composed, because this makes her feels more confident in her argument and has improved mental clarity to articulate her point. Further, before participating in her exams, Maeve prefers to feel anxiety to increase her motivation to study in order to acheive her goal grade of 85%. However, her friend Tahlia likes to be in a state of low tension in order to perform at her best in exams.

Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions (see Figure 1) depicts some of the branches of human emotions we both consciously and subconsciously select from.

Emotion preferences refer to the emotional states that people strive to experience in certain situations. As a generalisation, people prefer to experience pleasant over unpleasant emotions, and emotions that are familiar over unfamiliar (Ford & Tamir, 2013). However, much empirical evidence now shows that people vary in their emotion preferences. People attempt to experience the emotions that align with their preferences. This may look like people striving to feel a certain emotion as opposed to another. These emotion preferences vary between people due to both state and trait factors/ What people want to feel and why is important to psychological science as it reveals much about an individual's state and trait factors. Further, the differences in emotion preferences between individuals with psychiatric disorders and those with no history of psychopathology have become more clear in recent times. There is much we can learn from deeper analysis of emotion preferences in terms of personality, psychiatric disorders, anxiety and more. Understanding why people want to feel certain emotions and what these are is a relatively understudied yet imperative area of psychology.

Suggestions for this section: Engage the reader with a scenario, example, or case study, and an accompanying image Explain the problem and why it is important Outline how psychological science can help Present focus questions

Focus questions: Why do we have emotional preferences? What is the connection between emotional preferences and emotional intelligence? What do our emotional preferences say about ourselves? What individual differences play a role in our emotional preferences?

Headings

• Aim for three to six main headings inbetween the Overview and Conclusion
• Sub-headings can also be used, but
  • avoid having sections with only one sub-heading
  • provide an introductory paragraph before breaking into sub-sections

Emotion preferences

Emotional preferences are a complex yet highly interesting area of psychology. They have an interconnected role within the branches of psychopathology relating to individual differences, emotional intelligence and emotional regulation.

This concept is closely linked to emotional self-regulation, which is the ability to respond to the changing demands of life that involves modulating one's state or behaviour in a given situation.

What are emotional preferences?

• 'People vary in their emotional preferences, or desired emotional states' (Vanderlind et al., 2021).
• Emotional preferences are the emotional states that people want to experience

Differences in emotion preferences between individuals

• Emotions differ in their perceived pleasure; some emotions are generally thought to be good, others are generally thought to be bad. However, people attempt to experience emotions that are congruent with their emotional preferences.
• It is assumed that people prefer to experience pleasant over unpleasant emotions (Larsen, 2000).
• Prior study highlights that there are individual differences in emotion preferences that may be linked to psychopathology. For example, individuals with major depression disorder possess greater allowance for negative emotions and less preference for positive emotion (Millgram et al., 2015).

Emotion preferences and emotional intelligence

• Emotional intelligence can be viewed as 'the ability to recognise and use an individual's own emotional states and those of others in order to regulate behaviour and get things done' (Book Chapter, 2011)
• In terms of emotional preferences, some of the most emotionally intelligent individuals are those who prefer to use 'useful' emotions. This is because they understand their emotions and regulate them in a strategic manner.
• Therefore, some people are more emotionally intelligent than others who feel emotions that are not beneficial to the present situation (Vanderlind et al., 2020).

Desired emotional states

• People desire different emotions that they consider useful and valuable, providing benefits to the situation at hand.
• People also desire emotions they consider to be pleasant (Tamir & Gutentag, 2017).
• These differ between people based on individual perception.

Emotion preferences and emotion regulation

• Emotion regulation refers the processes that modify the frequency, intensity and duration of emotional states (Vanderlind et al., 2020).
• Emotion preferences have a role in emotion regulation because of the way we manage our emotions at any one time.
• When we are regulating our emotions, this can be either conscious or subconscious, and does not always happen in order to suit our emotion preferences.

Emotion preferences and emotion regulation within depression

• Prior research has shown that individual differences in emotion regulation plays a notable role in psychological understanding of the negative affects of the disorder (Vanderlind et al., 2020).
• Emotion regulation difficulties are central to the perception of negative affect symptoms in those with depression.
• Individuals with depression attempt to under-regulate positive emotions in subconscious habit. This is called a habitual use of emotion regulation strategies.

The habitual use of emotion regulation strategies

• The ways in which people typically respond to emotion is the habitual use of emotional regulation. This is one of the main ways in which emotion preferences differ between people.
• Dysfunction within habitual emotional regulation arises when individuals regularly allow response styles that increase emotional turmoil, avoiding possible strategies to improve symptoms.

Key points

• Provide at least three bullet-points per headingʔ and sub-heading, including for the Overview and Conclusion
• Include key citations

Figures

Figure 2. Example of an image with a descriptive caption.

• Use figures to illustrate concepts, add interest, and to serve as examples
• Figures can show photos, diagrams, graphs, video, audio, etcetera
• Embed figures throughout the chapter, including the Overview section
• Figures should be captioned (using Figure #. and a caption). Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the text/
• Wikimedia Commons provides a library of embeddable images
• Images can also be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons if they are openly licensed
• Refer to each figure at least once in the main text (e.g., see Figure 2)

Learning features

Interactive learning features help to bring online book chapters to life and can be embedded throughout the chapter.

Scenarios

• Scenarios or case studies describe applied/real-world examples of concepts in action
• Case studies can be real or fictional
• A case study could be split into multiple boxes throughout a chapter (e.g., to illustrate different theories or stages)
• It is often helpful to present case studies using feature boxes.

Feature boxes

• Important content can be highlighted in a feature box. But don't overuse feature boxes, otherwise they lose their effect.
• Consider using feature boxes for:
  • Scenarios, case studies, or examples
  • Focus questions
  • Tips
  • Quiz questions
  • Take-home messages

Links

• When key words are introduced, use interwiki links to:
  • Wikipedia (e.g., Sigmund Freud wrote about (e.g., dreams) or
  • Related book chapters (e.g., writer's block)

Tables

• Use to organise and summarise information
• As with figures, tables should be captioned
• Refer to each table at least once in the main text (e.g., see Table 1)
• Example 3 x 3 tables which could be adapted

Table 1. Descriptive Caption Which Explains The Table and its Relevant to the Text - Johari Window Model

	Known to self	Not known to self
Known to others	Open area	Blind spot
Not known to others	Hidden area	Unknown

Quizzes

• Using one or two review questions per major section is usually better than a long quiz at the end
• Quiz conceptual understanding, rather than trivia
• Don't make quizzes too hard
• Different types of quiz questions are possible; see Quiz

Example simple quiz questions. Choose your answers and click "Submit":

1 Quizzes are an interactive learning feature:

	True
	False

2 Long quizzes are a good idea:

	True
	False

Conclusion

• The Conclusion is arguably the most important section
• Suggested word count: 150 to 330 words
• It should be possible for someone to only read the Overview and the Conclusion and still get a pretty good idea of the problem and what is known based on psychological science

Suggestions for this section: What is the answer to the sub-title question based on psychological theory and research? What are the answers to the focus questions? What are the practical, take-home messages? (Even for the topic development, have a go at the likely take-home message)

See also

Provide internal (wiki) links to the most relevant Wikiversity pages (esp. related motivation and emotion book chapters) and Wikipedia articles. Use these formats:

• Emotion (Wikipedia)
• Emotional intelligence and job performance (Book chapter, 2016)
• Emotion perception (Book chapter, 2017)

References

Ford, B. Q., & Tamir, M. (2013). Preferring familiar emotions: As you want (and like) it? Cognition and Emotion, 28(2), 311–324. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.823381

Larsen, R. J. (2000). Toward a Science of Mood Regulation. Psychological Inquiry, 11(3), 129–141. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1103_01

Millgram, Y., Joormann, J., Huppert, J. D., & Tamir, M. (2015). Sad as a Matter of Choice? Emotion-Regulation Goals in Depression. Psychological Science,26(8),1216–1228. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615583295

Tamir, M., & Gutentag, T. (2017). Desired emotional states: their nature, causes, and implications for emotion regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17(84–88). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.06.014

Vanderlind, W. M., Everaert, J., Caballero, C., Cohodes, E. M., & Gee, D. G. (2021). Emotion and Emotion Preferences in Daily Life: The Role of Anxiety. Clinical Psychological Science, 10(1), 109–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026211009500

Vanderlind, W. M., Millgram, Y., Baskin-Sommers, A. R., Clark, M. S., & Joormann, J. (2020). Understanding positive emotion deficits in depression: From emotion preferences to emotion regulation. Clinical Psychology Review, 76(76), 101826. ScienceDirect. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101826

External links

• Why emotional self-regulation is important and how to do it (Medical News Today)
• Preferring familar emotions: As you want (and like) it? (National Library of Medicine)
• Understanding emotions and distress: When knowledge is power (Inlight Psychology)