Emotions
As humans, emotions can drive us to do things we never thought we could or would do. Organizations have spent billions of dollars trying to understand human emotions and how to manipulate them. By controlling someone’s emotions, you are taking advantage of their decision making abilities.
It is emotions that give us that spark of life. It is emotion that provides us with a sense of morality, helps us to make judgements, and creates bias. It has been proven that the more creative a brand is, the more likely they are to resonate with their target audience. Why? Because it can induce an emotional state on the observer.
Emotions control our lives, drive our behavior, and effect our thoughts. It is important to understand emotions and how they control us so that we can take control of our lives and make the right choices. Our thoughts are controlled by our emotions and determine how we see and interact with the world. Emotions are a form of communication and are a powerful way of connecting with others and ourselves. Through these connections we learn and develop empathy for others. We begin to sympathize with and understand those around us and maybe even realize why they make the decisions they do.
What Are Emotions?
An emotion is a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from a relationship with a circumstance, mood, or environment. It is a feedback system in the brain which acts instinctively, causing us to react to situations very quickly and without thought: much the same way as a knee-jerk test works on the physical body. For example, if you are overcome with fear, your heart rate increases, your eyes dilate, and your body is prepared to flee at full speed. Even if we logically know we are in a situation we can not flee, the emotion of fear overrides our other systems to try and take action.
Let’s say a person is afraid of flying because at a young age someone tossed them up in the air and failed to catch them. The individual may or may not remember the actual experience, however their brain remembers . Every time the mind associates the experience of falling, being high, or being held, it triggers an emotional response of fear, regardless of whether or not the situation is safe.
Although emotions can be a great tool, they can also be a burden. Emotions can make us feel overwhelmed. They can make us feel completely out of control. But, you are not completely out of control.
There are many things you can do to help you better control your emotions. For example: take some deep breaths, focus on your breathing, focus on your posture and on your surroundings.
By focusing on your breathing, your posture and your surroundings, you are taking back some control over your emotions.
Deep Breaths
Take a slow deep breath, inhaling slowly to the count of 4. Hold your breath for 2 seconds. then slowly exhale to the count of 4. Repeat this process 10 times.
Focus on Breathing
This is similar to taking deep breaths but it is more about focusing your mind on your body to observe it's current state. Be present with your breaths: Are they deep or shallow? Short or Long? How is your heart rate? Focus on relaxing and taking deep breaths.
Focus On Posture
By focusing on your posture you become more aware of your body and it's current state. By turning your focus toward your body you begin to conscientiously change your emotional state and calm yourself down.
Emotions Are Cultural
Many people don’t realize that emotions are cultural. We learn emotions through the way in which our particular culture understands them. The only emotions we are born with are (1) the understanding of pleasant (love or peace) and (2) the understanding of unpleasant (fear or anxiety). As we grow and interact with more people and have more experiences, our dictionary of emotions expands. An emotional framework is built and fully formed and informed by our particular culture – how have our teachers taught us to identify and cope with certain emotions? Culture also teaches us when it is both appropriate and, alternately, inappropriate to show emotion. These boundaries and rules move and change depending on culture.
Visit a different part of the world and you will soon see that emotional responses vary from one culture to another. The longer you stay in one place, your emotions will begin to adjust and fit into the culture in which you participate. These cultural changes may cause you to feel more or less ashamed of certain actions, more upset or more content over certain types of events. This is a natural progression you adjust to the new language of emotion.
It is important that, when we think about emotions and people from other places, we consider that emotional responses from one culture to another are, many times, different from what our culture has taught us to expect. Some acts we may consider rude or cold hearted may just be part of someone’s emotional culture. It is best if we have empathy for our audience, their culture, and their emotions.
How Can Understanding Emotions Help Us?
Understanding our own emotions and the emotions of others can help us empathize with those around us. The ability to understand how someone feels can give you great insight into how they might behave in a given situation. For example, if someone is sad you can understand why they don’t smile when you ask how their day is doing. When you are able to empathize with someone your response to that person becomes more compassionate.
Many times website owners expect their customers to just figure out how to use a website, but we build a better experience for our customers. By empathizing with and understanding the emotions of our consumer, we are able to build an enjoyable experience that is both safe and easy for the user.
6 Behavioral Science & Psychology Principles That Can Help Create Emotional Experiences
There are many behavioral science and psychology principles we can use to drive customer emotions. Below, I’ve included six of those I feel are critical to creating an emotional experience for customers:
-
The Halo Effect
The Halo Effect, also known as the Halo Bias, was named after psychologist Edward Thorndike and refers to people’s propensity to base their whole judgment of a person, thing, or event on one favorable attribute.
-
The Mere Exposure Effect
The Mere Exposure effect, a theory first proposed by social psychologist Robert Zajonc in the 1960s, holds that when people are familiar with something, they tend to prefer it.
-
The Self-Reference Effect
The Reference to Oneself According to Effect, when knowledge is pertinent to them, individuals remember it more readily.
-
The Endowment Effect
The Endowment Effect is a psychological bias that leads people to place a higher, frequently unreasonable, value on things they own than they would otherwise.
-
The Peak-End Rule
Infinite Peak Rule states that people evaluate an experience depending on how they felt at its height and its trough, rather than the average of all of its moments.