1.2 The psychology of emotions, feelings and thoughts {adv}  (Page 2/74)

2. Things that are personal are emotional, personal things that people like and that they feel are “close” to them. Things like home or anything someone likes actually. That is a definition of emotion after all, something that causes feeling. So if you like it, it is probably going to cause more feeling. Other things aside from liking something could cause emotions from it, such as curiosity, but usually like is one of the stronger emotions. You could say that the two are directly proportional, the more you like something, the more it is going to cause feeling. [Or the more curious you are, or any other emotion, would probably generate more feeling. If you are emotional about something, that is saying that it is causing you to feel more. This is more clear when the difference between emotion and feeling is explained later in this section.]

But there are things that people like that cause thought. You could like something and it causes you to think, and we previously defined emotion as feeling, not thought. That thoughts are separate from emotions because thought is a period of thinking. What exactly is thinking then? You can think about emotions, “how did I feel then?” etc. So is thought just a period of increased attention? Or is it a sharp spike in attention focused on one particular thing that is clear? [Thought feels like you are paying clear attention to something, whereas you aren't always paying as clear attention to your feelings.] It is hard to focus that much if you are feeling a lot, however. This makes me conclude that there is an overlap of feeling and thought, like a Venn diagram. But there are still parts of thought that don’t have feeling or emotion in them, and parts of emotion that don’t have thought in them. [So thoughts are also going to influence feelings, since they overlap, not only would feelings influence thoughts.]That means that thought requires more concentration than feeling does, since we defined thought as a period of increased attention. You can be emotional and have more attention, but usually if you are emotional you are going to be less attentive than you would be if you were thinking more. [That ties into the idea that you can only do one thing at a time, if you are paying attention to your thoughts (or thinking more) it is going to be harder to pay attention to your feelings (or "feel" more) because you can only pay attention to a limited number of things at once.] Then again, if you are emotional you are being attentive to your emotions, whatever they may be, and if your emotions are on something like the sun, then when you see the sun you are going to be attentive to it, but not be thinking about it. So you can pay attention to something and not be thinking about it at the same time. [If you are paying attention to something but not thinking about it, what exactly is this increased attention doing? It could be helping you process and understand what feelings that thing causes in you, or just make you feel more about it, which would make you pay more or less attention to it. You could be feeling a lot about something and be paying attention to something else, but that is clearly going to be harder (usually, based on the circumstances) than if didn't have that emotion. That is a clear example of how emotion can be a distraction (from thought and even other emotions). But you aren’t going to be paying attention to anything else. [That further shows how emotion can take up your attention, especially if you are paying attention to the emotion, as in that example.] It seems that thought is more attention than emotion, however. If you try to “feel” your computer you still don’t give it as much attention as if you were thinking about your computer. Then again, it depends what you are thinking about your computer, if you are thinking that your computer sucks, you are going to give it less attention than thinking that it is great. It also depends what your feelings are about that computer. If you feel that the computer is good, then you are going to give it more attention than if you feel that it is bad (possibly). [Does this mean that when you think about your computer your attention is on what it is you are thinking about your computer? Thinking about your computer might generate emotions, which would then cause you to be feeling and thinking about your computer. The thought of the computer might just pull up the general feeling of the computer (the feeling from the computer you get when you usually interact with it or think about it, not some other feeling about it which wouldn't then be "general", not necessarily the feeling of the computer that corresponds with that particular thought. Those ideas raise the question, "when you have a feeling about something, what exactly is that feeling causing you to feel and think (consciously and unconsciously).]The thoughts and the feelings correspond, however. That is, if you are thinking it is bad, then you are going to feel that it is bad. Thus thought and feeling are really one and the same. [It might be that if you think it is bad, you feel that it is good, but that would only be if you are confused, like if you consciously think it is good but it really makes you feel bad.] But thoughts are really clearer than feelings. Thought and feeling may result in the same amount of attention to something, but thought is more precise. It is more precise for you to think that the computer is good, then to feel that the computer is good. Who knows why you feel the computer is good, but if you were thinking the computer is good then you would know why you thought that. Emotions and feelings are more obscure.