Can you tell which is the difference between emotion and feeling It is not so easy to perceive, and for many people this difference does not even exist!

However, we have already told you that feelings and emotions are not the same thing, even though they seem to be analogous terms. If you want to understand where they differ, check out the content below, where we explain everything!

After all, what is the difference between emotion and feeling?

Broadly speaking, the difference between emotion and feeling lies in the fact that emotion is an immediate reaction to a stimulus while feelings are decisions that require cognitive effort .

In this context, it is worth remembering what cognitive effort is. use of psychological (mental) resources, such as memory, attention, reasoning, and creativity .

Thus, when we nurture a feeling, we make a choice, whereas we feel emotions involuntarily.

If you want to better understand this definition, check out the examples that we bring along in this article!

Understand what human emotions are

As we have already mentioned above, emotions are immediate reactions to a stimulus .

For example, consider a situation in which you are in a dark room watching a suspenseful or scary movie, and if you hear some unexpected noise from outside, you are bound to be startled.

This fright is a reaction to some stimuli : the film made his perception a little sharper and the noise came along with it.

The same goes for when we watch a dramatic movie. This kind of film is already designed so that some scenes stimulate us to the point that we cry with emotion.

Other examples

Think also of the moments when you pick up your headphones, put them on, and turn on your favorite playlist of music.

Some of them immediately put you in a good mood while others have a slightly sadder melody. In the case of these, It is natural to feel sad and even to enjoy the emotion that each song brings.

A different tone of voice can also arouse emotions in us. When we get used to our bosses or spouses speaking to us in a certain way, if the person's tone of voice changes something in us arouses that famous "flea behind the ear".

With this distrust can come fear, anxiety, curiosity, and various other emotions.

Psychological theorists who have studied emotions

Psychologist Lev Vygotsky is one of the theorists with famous works that contribute to understanding the difference between emotion and feeling.

Although his best-known works are in the area of child development, Vygostky's theory of emotions is well worth delving into.

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In it, the author associates emotions with two types of inheritance: the biological and the historical-social. For him, you develop your emotional responses both from biological stimuli and those that belong to the environment surrounding an individual.

Types of emotions

Emotions and feelings are very similar. The difference between them is the context of occurrence.

So, knowing that emotions arise as responses to stimuli, check below a list of the main ones! Moreover, do the exercise of imagining in which contexts they would appear.

• anxiety
• envy
• boredom
• sexual desire
• satisfaction
• fear
• horror
• interest.

Understand what human feelings are

Now talking about the feelings part (in order to explain the difference between emotion and feeling), understand that it is a decision built with time .

In other words, feeling is also a process of constructing the way we evaluate and perceive something or someone.

As we have commented before, A feeling has a high degree of cognitive involvement, that is, it involves a process of making a decision about something consciously or unconsciously in a way that indicates preferences and judgments.

Examples

It is for these reasons and others that we find the idea that love is a decision. However, it is very confusing to make the distinction between love as a feeling and passion as an emotion.

Yes, love is a feeling that brings together a series of emotions. However, passion is also feeling.

So, loving someone or falling in love is a choice we make over time.

Theorists of psychology who studied feelings

Among the psychologists who have addressed feelings in their work, we highlight Burrhus Frederic Skinner, whose work in the behaviorist branch of psychology is quite prominent.

For Skinner, in this context of behaviorism, feeling is a sensory action. In other words, it is a human sense as much as sight, hearing and smell.

However, learning how to define and deal with them is a social construct; that is, saying how we feel is a behavior that is learned from our verbal community of origin.

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Types of feelings

We close our discussion of the difference between emotion and feeling by now describing some types of feeling:

• joy,
• anger,
• frustration,
• hostility,
• affection,
• jealousy,
• passion.

Most of them you have already seen in the list of emotions, and we have already explained why. The difference is in the context, that is, in the way they arise in us.

Final considerations

We hope this content will help you better understand the difference between emotion and feeling! These are very interesting study topics, but Few people really know the difference between these two forms of human feeling.

In this respect, it should be noted that psychoanalysis and psychology help people to process and cope better with both. However, each aspect will work with emotions and feelings in a different way. For example, psychoanalysis has a very specific working method.

For this reason, it is important to investigate different types of approaches to understand which one you are most comfortable with. It is very important for treatment that you want to talk about your "feeling" and how it may be getting in the way of your daily life.

The way we feel is often beyond our control for many reasons. Therefore, it is necessary to learn what is healthy for us and for our relationships.

So, if you are interested in topics such as difference between emotion and feeling and would like to learn how to help people in this process of relearning how to better deal with feeling, we invite you to enroll today in our complete training in clinical psychoanalysis.