TOK - a new way to look at emotions

What are emotions? Emotions are feelings that are taken from the persons’ condition or mood. Depending on what happened emotions could change. What makes you happy? Getting sevens in all your subjects in DP? Are you sure that makes you happy or are you misinterpreting the feeling of happiness, but in reality you are not happy but exited for the reward you will get from your parents by achieving such outstanding grades.

  In the text “A new way to look at emotions” states that people very often misunderstand how they feel. In the text’s example of Lisa Feldman, a mere infection made her think she was in love with the man. How did feeling sick, make you think that you are interested in someone? Is it because of past experiences, where she had interests in someone while feeling sick, which made her think that when she’s not feeling well and her stomach is churning means that she likes the person. This is only a possibility. The way you interpret the infection is depending on what is in front of you. For example, you were away from home and felt your stomach aching. You might think that it is just because you feel homesick but in reality you have a stomach infection. Another good example in the text of misunderstand feelings is when she served food and drinks in her own daughter’s party in a very horrible way. Serving food in diaper, making food look old. Although every person knew that the food was clean, they still were horrified and disgusted by the food. This shows that emotions come from past experiences. Almost every person has seen a diaper filled with baby wastes. Having food from the same place as baby poo is what they were disgusted about.

  Through these psychological experiments, we learn that how we feel is from our past experiences, and that two people from two completely different pasts will have very different emotions and reactions to different situation. Even I can refer to that. For example when people eat with their hands, people who are not from the same culture as me are disgusted that they are eating straight from using their hands. But I think that it is normal, as I came from a past where it is very normal to use your hand to eat things that are usually eaten using forks and knifes. Another clear example is the heat in the UAE. Most foreign people who came from the northern parts of the world feel the heat really badly while I still think it is but not as much as they do. It is the same when I leave the country to a cold country; I really feel the coldness, while it might be normal for them. Something that I also noticed that I literally CANNOT sleep without an air conditioner or I only need the sound that it makes, even though it is not hot. I lived in a hot country for all my life so I sleep under an AC. I am so used to the sound it makes that I feel a headache without one while sleeping. It happens to me lots of time in other countries, as there is no need for an air conditioner.