Difference between emotion, mood and feeling

We all know what it means to feel. But we don’t always know what we’re feeling emotionally or how to describe an emotion. In psychology, since its inception with William James, we find conceptions about what defines an emotion, a feeling, a mood. The purpose of this text is to clarify these concepts and their differences.

Between body and mind

The first definition we can give of an emotion like anger, for example, is that we feel it in the body and mind. We feel bodily sensations in certain places, perhaps the forehead and wrist clenched, arm muscles tense. We can also realize that we are angry by the thoughts that appear, remembering what happened and triggered this reaction or what we would like to do as the impulse to fight back.

Some people feel emotions more in the body. Others are not as connected with these subtle impressions and know how they are emotionally by linking to what they are thinking. If they think of a loved one, they feel love and they know that they feel love, although they cannot pinpoint exactly which part of their body.

The cause of emotions

Roughly speaking, the cause of the emotions we feel – and which change over time – is based on the assessments and judgments we make about events. This assessment can be incredibly quick and consciously imperceptible or extremely elaborate and conscious.

If we see a friend out of nowhere on the street and we weren’t expecting to meet them, in a matter of seconds we feel joy. We don’t realize that we feel joy because we assess that meeting the friend is assessed as pleasant and pleasurable. Joy just appears and it doesn’t matter that we don’t recognize that there is an evaluation there. It is as if it were implied by our history.

If we see a friend with whom we just had a falling out, we might feel irritated. And in this situation it is possible that we know that we feel irritation because we think that in the last meeting we suffered an injustice or unjustified criticism.

Thus, “we do not suffer because of things, but because of the way we see things”.

Difference between emotions, mood and feelings

The difference between these three concepts lies in time. Emotion is faster. We feel joy with the news we were waiting for and sadness if, right after, we remember an experience of loss. Emotions can last from a few seconds to a few minutes.

The mood is longer lasting. A person in an excited or depressed mood feels it for more than a few seconds or minutes. A mood may last for days or weeks.

And, in turn, a feeling is like an even more constant and consistent emotion. I can feel love for many years for one person. And this direction is also a characteristic of feeling in this definition. The feeling is directed and clearly directed towards something or someone.

Emotions as signs

Just as emotions are caused by evaluations and judgments, we also evaluate emotions as negative or positive, pleasant, neutral or unpleasant, destructive or constructive. This type of classification is evident and we often tend not to want to feel negative emotions such as sadness or anger.

However, we know that numbing emotions doesn’t work in the long run. If we anesthetize negative emotions, we also anesthetize positive emotions such as joy, contentment, happiness and, in the end, we feel very little, which is not beneficial for our mental health.

Emotions signal our values, what we evaluate and judge as interesting – or uninteresting. I evaluate the friend I meet who brings me joy as a very important person in my life, I get angry because a service has not been delivered or is taking too long and I feel happiness with the birth of a child.

Small or big signs, emotions are part of our experience as human beings. And although many of them are “unpleasant”, they are fundamental to our life and to our self-knowledge.

Therefore, the ideal is that we learn to deal with emotions, whatever they may be, without diving so deep to the point of drowning…

Evolution, individuality and culture

From an evolutionary psychology point of view, emotions have contributed to the survival of our species. Fear and anger, for example, are very clearly emotions aimed at protection and at the pair of attack and defense. And that long story of survival has been passed down from generation to generation and is alive in us now.

On the other hand, emotions are also culturally determined. Anger against a minority was accepted not so long ago and today it is not tolerated. Likewise, emotions are also cultivated individually, that is, each one of us builds a relationship with his own emotions throughout his history, maintaining one mood more than another, and may have a long experience of a feeling for someone. A feeling so present and strong, like loving, that it seems like it will last forever.

Conclusion

The main difference between emotion, mood and feeling is time. Emotion is more elusive and unstable and lasts little. A mood can last for days or weeks, while a feeling lasts for years or decades.

We feel emotions in the body and mind, depending on whether we are more kinesthetic or mental, rational. In any case, emotions and feelings are fundamental to our self-knowledge. We must learn to deal with all this affective content, not excluding anything and, at the same time, trying not to get lost in what we feel.

Bibliographic reference

Oatley, Keith. Emotions, a brief history. Blackwell Publishing, 2004

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