0.7 A conversation about measuring emotion and its conclusion: mood  (Page 10/26)

Though I don't think there could be much for us to discuss about measuring that since it would be mostly about computers if it was possible at all. I think a better example for how the small changes can add up to the larger more primary emotion would be if someone had a hopeful thought a couple of times when they were sad. Perhaps that made them happier and lessened the sadness. The previous example I used was of someone mowing a lawn who kept hitting rocks. Each time they hit a rock, they might get more irritated - you might be able to see how irritated they were overall if you looked at what happened each time. It might have stifled happiness from doing the rest of the job well. I don't know how many other clear examples you could discover other than the hope example and the being irritated example. If you discuss these small changes enough with someone maybe they will be capable of labeling how strongly their primary (and possibly minor) feelings were.

Some things (small or large phenomena) that could help someone assess how much emotion they are experiencing would be to consider:

1. What were all the thoughts you had and how did these impact your feelings
2. What were all the things (small or large) that happened and how many of these do you know impacted your feelings
3. What was your emotional state (for instance if you were worried) and how did this impact your feelings and what happened during the event
4. Did you have a physical reaction to anything that occurred (for instance jumping in excitement, or blushing) that might indicate a feeling occurred

I guess this means what I that what I said earlier about how anytime anyone makes any comment about emotion at all, they are indicating or trying to measure emotion to some degree. I am sure most people could come up with a lot of examples of this, and frequently do it themselves. Saying things such as "this happened so many times it annoyed me a lot". The word "annoyed" in that statement indicates the feeling of annoyance. There are degrees to which someone can describe what the feeling was like or describe the circumstances around it. An entire book could just be trying to describe the feeling for what something is like. Even a book that doesn't go on and on trying to write about how something felt, just any ordinary book has a feeling associated with it or that was communicated by it. I think most times people try to communicate emotion or how they felt they aren't very descriptive (at least from my observations). There could be someone who is very good at describing their emotions and gives a good idea as to how much they were feeling. I don't know the best way or all the ways someone could make describing feeling more scientific and accurate. You could do studies and find out what things someone says are more clearly emotional or what the best way to describe emotions for certain things are. I already mentioned that noticing everything that happened during an event, all your thoughts, your emotional state, and your physical reactions could be observed. There are probably many more better examples than my being annoyed while mowing a lawn example (that would be the type for asking about everything that occurred) and the hopeful thoughts alleviating sadness example (which would be for what all your thoughts are).