0.7 A conversation about measuring emotion and its conclusion: mood  (Page 20/26)

What seems relevant to the mood of "caring" I would think would be attachment and dependency. Caring isn't about just affection, empathy, friendliness and love. With all of those things comes attachment and dependency. If someone is in a "caring" mood, are they more afraid of strangers or more accepting? Would they become more frustrated when interacting with people if they were feeling "caring" and the people they were interacting with ignored them, not returning their affection (frustrated at interpersonal failures because they care too much)? Caring could also be a personality trait. Would someone caring (as a mood or as a personality trait) be more attention-seeking since they care more about other people and would value people more?

So I guess then the question is, "what kinds of feelings does caring invoke?". It is comparable to loving another person, if you care about someone, you might also likely love them as well. And that is basically asking the question, "what is all they mystery involved in interpersonal relationships?". Caring for someone could invoke huge numbers of feelings and a large emotional response - in which case you would probably love the person. But that is the intense form of caring, there is a lesser type of caring that occurs in your normal social interaction, that would be more like the question, "how much do you care for other people in general". Perhaps people that don't care about other people would be considered cruel types, and people that care a lot about other people passionate, empathetic types. Though both types of people could be in a caring mood, I suppose. Maybe some cruel people never feel the emotion of caring or get in the mood for it.

This mood of caring, with the emotions it involves of affection, empathy, friendliness and love; could also just be called the mood of "love" - both love and caring involve affection for someone, positive feelings toward someone else. Love just also would involve an attraction or a desire of a certain sort as well. Caring is an important part of love, it shows the tender side of it. But someone could be in the mood caring and love wouldn't have anything to do with it. People are empathetic and affectionate often, that doesn't mean they are attracted to the person. Caring is a form of love, and love is a form of caring.

Someone could be in just a "friendly" mood - or just an "affectionate" or "empathetic" mood for that matter. Each of those definitions, including love and caring, could be mixed in some way. They are all related to each other. I don't know if each time you are in a caring mood you would then try to measure how much of each of those emotions you were feeling right then. Maybe some people who are friendly are in a "friendly" mood all of the time, or at least when they are around people. How would you measure how much of the emotion of friendly they were feeling then if that person is friendly all of the time? Maybe it is just a permanent part of their emotional state (such as "happy-go-lucky").