0.7 A conversation about measuring emotion and its conclusion: mood  (Page 23/26)

If someone shows interest, it would nice to be rewarded with surprise. I don't see how interest or politeness is that "reactive". It would seem like interest and politeness would be more of an action that is initiated by the person (self-motivated) than an emotion that is driven as a response to something, which would be reactive. Surprise clearly is something that occurs as a response to something. Interest I can see as being reactive or responsive, for instance someone does something interesting and then they show interest as a response. The same could be said for being polite - someone is a good person or is nice and as a response they are polite to them.

What moods do

Moods can change someone's self-perception, their perception of others, or a lot of other stuff related to what they are thinking. This is obvious if I explain it - for instance, if you are in a bad mood, you aren't likely to respond positively to other people because you are pissed off or something. There are probably a large number of examples I could use, if you are in a positive mood you are probably more likely to be more active. Moods obviously are going to influence your thinking, and what happens to you is going to change your mood. Maybe a mood could put you in a state of feeling emotion for only certain types of people. People make decisions based off of what they are feeling all of the time. If you feel poorly, you are probably going to do certain things to change that mood. People make evaluations about what they are feeling and then make decisions based off of those evaluations.

I would think that a mood is a distinct, strong feeling. The many feelings someone experiences at any one time could be divided and complicated - however if they are in a certain mood the mood might be fairly obvious. This doesn't mean that moods are simple and pure however. Moods are still complicated - they are comprised of different, distinct emotions that would all fall under the category of that one mood. I would think that a certain mood might take some time to kick in considering that the right emotions would all have to be in play and interacting properly and they might not start at the same time. For instance, if you wanted to get in the mood of playing at a park, maybe only a while after you started would the mood set in because you need to get accustomed to the emotions and you need to do the right things there that would trigger it.

Moods do not have facial expressions, however many single emotions do. Short, single emotions are more specific and therefore are stronger than moods because they are specific (and not as long lasting). You feel an emotion for a brief period of time, it is intense, however a mood is always there in the background hanging over you or providing a direction for your feelings. A mood cannot have a facial expression because a mood is too complicated for that, there are only a few facial expressions and unless your mood is one of those expressions, you are not going to be able to express it on your face. The six facial expressions are joy, surprise, fear, anger, disgust and sadness. Emotions are generated from large specific issues, those issues cause large changes in emotion. That is why short, single emotions are stronger than moods - because something specific made you feel strongly. If someone is in a happy mood, then that is different from being happy because of a single thing that made you feel strongly in a focused way.