Feeling

The word feeling may refer to any of a number of psychological characteristics of experience, or even to reflect the entire inner life of the individual (see Mood.)

As self-contained phenomenal experiences, evoked by sensations and perceptions, feelings can strongly influence the character of a person's subjective reality.

Feelings can sometimes harbor bias or otherwise distort veridical perception, in particular through projection, wishful thinking, among many other such effects.

A number of experiments have been conducted in the study of social and psychological affective preferences (i.e., what people like or dislike).

Some argue affect and cognition are under the control of separate and partially independent systems that can influence each other in a variety of ways (Zajonc, 1980).

Sensation occurs when sense organs collect various stimuli (such as a sound or smell) for transduction, meaning transformation into a form that can be understood by the nervous system.

Gut feelings are generally regarded as not modulated by conscious thought, but sometimes as a feature of intuition rather than rationality.

The idea that emotions are experienced in the gut has a long historical legacy, and many nineteenth-century doctors considered the origins of mental illness to derive from the intestines.

Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-directed behavior.

[12] Timothy D. Wilson, a psychology professor, tested this theory of the feeling of uncertainty along with his colleague Yoav Bar-Anan, a social psychologist.

Since an individual does not know the background or the ending of a story they are constantly replaying an event in their mind which is causing them to have mixed feelings of happiness, sadness, excitement, and et cetera.

The neurologist Robert Burton, writes in his book On Being Certain, that feelings of certainty may stem from involuntary mental sensations, much like emotions or perceptual recognition (another example might be the tip of the tongue phenomenon).

Indulging in what one might have thought would've made them happy or excited might only cause a temporary thrill, or it might result in the opposite of what was expected and wanted.

Gilbert and Wilson conducted a study to show how pleased a person would feel if they purchased flowers for themselves for no specific reason (birthday, anniversary, or promotion etc.)

Erving Goffman, a sociologist and writer, compared how actors withheld their emotions to the everyday individual.

When an individual is dealing with an overwhelming amount of stress and problems in their lives, there is the possibility that they might consider self-harm.

Inflicting harm or pain to oneself is sometimes the answer for many individuals because they want something to keep their mind off the real problem.