0.7 A conversation about measuring emotion and its conclusion: mood  (Page 11/26)

I already mentioned that you could try to measure an emotion by comparing and contrasting it to other relevant and or significant emotions or life events. You could try to compare an emotion to other emotions of the same type. I believe some people have already grouped emotions into various categories and ways of organizing them. It might help if someone reads a good description or explanation of what that emotion is and feels like.

But each persons own perception of their emotion or someone else's emotion is going to be very subjective. It isn't like you can measure emotion exactly, at best a large group of people could discuss how something is emotional or how significant something was in different ways. There are probably signs that indicate something is emotional, for instance if you like something a lot it is probably going to be more emotional for you. If something impacts you in various ways or causes you to do various things it is probably going to be more emotional.

Some of these things could be simple physical things, like playing with your hands or shuffling your feet. There are obviously the facial and eye expressions. That is why I already mentioned changes in the tone of a conversation, I would say that that is a significant part of life considering that conversation is the main way people interact. I don't know what would be the indications of the more primary emotions, maybe there is a certain tone or attitude someone adopts when they have one of those primary emotions, as well as certain actions (mental or physical) that follow along.

If people can notice tones in conversations, then maybe they can notice the tone of how someone has been feeling for the past hour or few hours (which would be their "primary" emotion". Though I don't usually notice if someone is happier than they usually are. If someone was sad or very happy I might notice it but most of the time I don't think I notice things like that. Someone could become happier than usually and other people probably wouldn't notice it at all. Does that mean that the only primary emotions are "happier than usual" "normal" and "sadder than usual" - since those are the only things other people might notice? If you think about it that way, then measuring emotion is simple. If you think about it the other way I suggested, which was to discuss with other people the many ways something impacted you emotionally, then emotion seems very complex.

I think the 'primary' emotions someone experiences would be simply changes in mood. I think if I find a good way of classifying moods then that would be the best way to measure the main emotions that people experience. If you think about it, there are so many single emotions you couldn't really say that the person mowing the lawn (who kept hitting rocks instead of just grass) was just 'happy' - that would be too simple of an assessment of his emotional state. A better assessment would be something like happy (from the action of mowing the lawn), with a little excitement, a little fear (from the loud noises hitting the rocks made), a little anxiety from hitting rocks a lot, and a little bleak and sad at being such a failure.