0.5 How do emotion, attention, thought, and arousal work together  (Page 4/17)

But is that the full mystery behind unconscious operations? It couldn't be - there must be a lot more going on unconsciously that needs explanation. For instance, in each different social situation there are probably different emotional responses. Your anxiety, arousal, attention, perception and emotions could vary - I already stated that those were the main factors involved with psychological functioning.

The following passage (also by Lindgren) shows the importance of empathy, it also explains a little how it impacts your perception and anxiety:

• Empathy, as used in this sense, is the ability to be aware of the feelings and attitudes of otherswithout necessarily sharing them. W e gain this awareness by observing the speech, facial expression, posture, and body movementsof others. As one four-year-old said, " I k n o w m y M o m m y 's mad, 'cause she walks mad." Empathy is the result of sensitive andacute perception. Like other forms of perception, it m a y be sharpened or dulled, depending on the state of our emotions. Sometimesanxiety can serve to sharpen empathic awareness, but usually it operates to distort it.

Empathy, and its influence on anxiety and perception, is just one aspect of psychological functioning. It has to do with how connected people are to other people, but there are many aspects about how people are connected and a complex emotional and intellectual exchange that occurs moment to moment when people interact. Your perception, connectivity, anxiety, arousal, feelings and thoughts are constantly changing.

This next passage by Lindgren mentions how interactions are sort of like unconscious interchanges of feeling:

• Most of us are capable of empathizing most of the time, and as w e empathizewith one another, w e find our actions and atdtudes conditioned or affected by one another's feelings. This amounts to a sort of communicadonor exchange of " feeling-tone " that takes place below the level of consciousness. In many, if not most, situations involvingtwo or more persons, the interchange of feeling-tone at theunconscious level is of greater importance than the verbal exchange at the conscious level.

Lindgren shows an example of feeling-tone by a salesman who is hiding contempt for some of his customers. Even though his contempt isn't obvious in his tone and gestures, nevertheless those customers end up feeling tense and stressed. Here is another example he uses the shows how teachers do a similar thing:

• Teachers, too, are in a position to use or misuse the communication of feeling-tone. Some teachers are technically competent, butso unsure of their relations with others that they attempt to " cover up " by being grim or pedantic or hypercritical. Teachersof this sort usually succeed in communicating the very feelings they are tr}'ing to hide, with the result that the class becomestense, hostile, or just bored. Other teachers are able to empathize with their students to the point that they can determine whetherstudents understand or are confused, whether they are recepti\-e, or whether they are in a m.ood calling for a change of pace andsubject matter.