The map of human emotions

Researchers from Aalto University in Finland have developed an interesting study on human emotionswhich reveals an interesting formulation that, in a way, we all already sensed.

Who has never experienced that feeling of rage installed in our stomach like a painful knot? Or that fear that makes our heart beat until it leaves us breathless?

What is undoubtedly interesting is to know that every feeling, every emotion, seems to have a biological correlation, That is, a part located in our body: envy, sadness, anger, love, anxiety… Let’s see it.

The body and emotions

We’ve all said we feel it at some point: butterflies in the stomach, having a broken heart.stay cold… They are popular expressions that in some way establish an association between mental states and bodily sensation.

According to scientists Emotions are intended to help us cope with certain situations in our environment. For example, when faced with disappointment, disappointment or loss, our brain will release a series of neurotransmitters that will transmit the well-known feeling of sadness…

This feeling is something that will force us to stay a little apart to seek reflection in ourselves and assess why it happened and obtain strategies for overcoming and coping.

Sensations, in turn, have a correlation in our body, adjusting that union between the body and the mind preparing us to react. On the other hand, anxiety agitates our organs, accelerates our heart, essentially preparing us for movement and to seek an answer.

Attraction or even love offers us a feeling of physical well-being that the brain judges as pleasant, it is something beneficial and therefore the body feels well.

Scientists at Aalto University in Finland discovered that the most common human sensations: anger, sadness, happiness, fear… etc., tend to trigger the strongest bodily sensations.

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We all know it: that pain or pressure in the chest, muscle stiffness, emptiness in the stomach… In addition, they point out that These physical correlates are universal across cultureseven in Asian women, who are often thought to be colder or different when it comes to experiencing emotions.

Same emotions, different expressions

There is one thing that is clear: We all feel emotions in the same way, but we express them differently. That’s where each person’s personality patterns and cultural differences come into play. But we all feel disappointment in the same organs and happiness stirs our hearts in the same way.

The studies carried out by this team of scientists are based on the analysis of more than 700 people. who dedicated themselves to pointing out those parts of the body that they felt most intensely when experiencing an emotion.

The results showed that everyone had pointed out the same areasand they had even identified them with certain colors, we can see it in the illustration in this article: anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise, neutrality, anxiety, love, depression, contempt, pride, shame and envy.

It is striking that emotions such as happiness and love radiate the entire body, while envy, for example, affects a very specific part, much less general.

Either way, The map of emotions comes to illustrate something that we surely already knew.. Although we sometimes believe that human beings are infinitely complex and indecipherable, we all know what disappointment is and what joy feels like…

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Positive emotions enrich us and negative ones cause us harm and they can even be the source of diseases. Perhaps what these studies teach us is that sex or culture does not matter, we all share the same emotional map.

The next step is to take it into account to understand that our actions can make others happy or unhappy.thus developing understanding of other people’s emotions and implementing this knowledge in our emotional map.