A person, as a subject of practical and theoretical activity, who cognizes and changes the world, is neither a dispassionate contemplator of what is happening around him, nor the same impassive automaton that performs certain actions, like a well-coordinated machine <...> He experiences that what happens to him and is done to him; he relates in a certain way to what surrounds him. The experience of this relationship of a person to the environment is the sphere of feelings or emotions. A person’s feeling is his attitude to the world, to what he experiences and does, in the form of direct experience.
Emotions can be tentatively characterized on a purely descriptive phenomenological level by a few particularly revealing features. First, unlike, for example, perceptions that reflect the content of an object, emotions express the state of the subject and his relationship to the object. Emotions, secondly, usually differ in polarity, i.e. have a positive or negative sign: pleasure — displeasure, fun — sadness, joy — sadness, etc. Both poles are not necessarily out-of-position. In complex human feelings, they often form a complex contradictory unity: in jealousy, passionate love coexists with burning hatred.
The essential qualities of the affective-emotional sphere, which characterize the positive and negative poles in emotion, are pleasant and unpleasant. In addition to the polarity of pleasant and unpleasant, in emotional states there are also (as Wundt noted) the opposites of tension and discharge, excitement and depression. <...> Along with excited joy (joy-delight, exultation), there is joy at peace (touched joy, joy-tenderness) and intense joy, full of striving (joy of passionate hope and tremulous expectation); in the same way, there is intense sadness, full of anxiety, excited sadness, close to despair, and quiet sadness — melancholy, in which one feels relaxation and calmness. <...>
For a true understanding of emotions in their distinctive features, it is necessary to go beyond the purely descriptive characteristics outlined above.
The main starting point that determines the nature and function of emotions is that in emotional processes a connection is established, a relationship between the course of events occurring in accordance with or contrary to the needs of the individual, the course of his activity aimed at satisfying these needs, on the one hand, and the course of internal organic processes that capture the main vital functions on which the life of the organism as a whole depends, on the other; as a result, the individual is attuned to the appropriate action or reaction.
The relationship between these two series of phenomena in emotions is mediated by mental processes — simple reception, perception, comprehension, conscious anticipation of the results of the course of events or actions.
Emotional processes acquire a positive or negative character depending on whether the action that the individual performs and the impact to which he is exposed is in a positive or negative relation to his needs, interests, attitudes; the attitude of the individual to them and to the course of activity, proceeding due to the totality of objective circumstances in accordance with or contrary to them, determines the fate of his emotions.
The relationship of emotions with needs can manifest itself in two ways — in accordance with the duality of the need itself, which, being an individual’s need for something that opposes him, means both his dependence on something and his desire for it. On the one hand, the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of a need, which itself did not manifest itself in the form of a feeling, but is experienced, for example, in the elementary form of organic sensations, can give rise to an emotional state of pleasure — displeasure, joy — sadness, etc.; on the other hand, the need itself as an active tendency can be experienced as a feeling, so that the feeling also acts as a manifestation of the need. This or that feeling is ours for a certain object or person — love or hatred, etc. — is formed on the basis of need as we realize the dependence of their satisfaction on this object or person, experiencing those emotional states of pleasure, satisfaction, joy or displeasure, dissatisfaction, sadness that they bring to us. Acting as a manifestation of need — as a specific mental form of its existence, emotion expresses the active side of the need.
Since this is the case, emotion inevitably includes a desire, an attraction to that which is attractive to the feeling, just as an attraction, a desire, is always more or less emotional. The origins of the will and emotions (affect, passion) are common — in needs: since we are aware of the object on which the satisfaction of our need depends, we have a desire directed to it; since we experience this dependence itself in the pleasure or displeasure that the object causes us, we form one or another feeling towards it. One is clearly inseparable from the other. Completely separate existence of independent functions or abilities, these two forms of manifestation of a single lead only in some psychology textbooks and nowhere else.
In accordance with this duality of emotions, which reflects the dual active-passive attitude of a person to the world, contained in the need, dual, or, more precisely, bilateral, as we will see, the role of emotions in human activity turns out to be: emotions are formed in the course of human activity aimed at satisfying him. needs; thus arising in the activity of the individual, emotions or needs experienced in the form of emotions are, at the same time, incentives for activity.
However, the relationship between emotions and needs is far from unambiguous. Already in an animal that has only organic needs, one and the same phenomenon can have different and even opposite—positive and negative—meanings due to the diversity of organic needs: the satisfaction of one may go to the detriment of the other. Therefore, the same course of life activity can cause both positive and negative emotional reactions. Even less clear is this attitude in humans.
Human needs are no longer reduced to mere organic needs; he has a whole hierarchy of different needs, interests, attitudes. Due to the variety of needs, interests, attitudes of the individual, the same action or phenomenon in relation to different needs can acquire a different and even opposite — both positive and negative — emotional meaning. One and the same event can thus be provided with an opposite — positive and negative — emotional sign. Hence often the inconsistency, the bifurcation of human feelings, their ambivalence. Hence also sometimes shifts in the emotional sphere, when, in connection with shifts in the direction of the personality, the feeling that this or that phenomenon causes, more or less suddenly passes into its opposite. Therefore, a person’s feelings are not determined by the relationship with isolated needs, but are conditioned by the attitude towards the individual as a whole. Determined by the ratio of the course of actions in which the individual is involved and his needs, a person’s feelings reflect the structure of his personality, revealing its orientation, its attitudes; what leaves a person indifferent and what touches his feelings, what pleases him and what saddens him, usually most clearly reveals — and sometimes betrays — his true being. <...>
Emotions and activities
If everything that happens, insofar as it has this or that relation to a person and therefore causes this or that attitude on his part, can evoke certain emotions in him, then the effective connection between the emotions of a person and his own activity is especially close. Emotion with internal necessity arises from the ratio — positive or negative — of the results of an action to the need, which is its motive, the initial impulse.
This relationship is mutual: on the one hand, the course and outcome of human activity usually evoke certain feelings in a person, on the other hand, a person’s feelings, his emotional states affect his activity. Emotions not only determine activity, but are themselves conditioned by it. The nature of emotions, their basic properties and the structure of emotional processes depend on it.
<...> The result of the action may be either in accordance with or inconsistent with the most relevant need for the individual in this situation at the moment. Depending on this, the course of one’s own activity will generate in the subject a positive or negative emotion, a feeling associated with pleasure or displeasure. The appearance of one of these two polar qualities of any emotional process will thus depend on the changing relationship between the course of action and its initial impulses that develops in the course of activity and in the course of activity. Objectively neutral areas in action are also possible, when certain operations are performed that have no independent significance; they leave the person emotionally neutral. Since a person, as a conscious being, sets certain goals for himself in accordance with his needs, his orientation, it can also be said that the positive or negative quality of an emotion is determined by the relationship between the goal and the result of the action.
Depending on the relationships that develop in the course of activity, other properties of emotional processes are determined. In the course of activity, there are usually critical points at which a favorable or unfavorable result for the subject, turnover or outcome of his activity is determined. Man, as a conscious being, more or less adequately foresees the approach of these critical points. When approaching them, a person’s feeling — positive or negative — increases tension. After the critical point has been passed, a person’s feeling — positive or negative — is discharged.
Finally, any event, any result of a person’s own activity in relation to his various motives or goals can acquire an «ambivalent» — both positive and negative — meaning. The more internally contradictory, conflicting nature the course of action and the course of events caused by it takes, the more chaotic character the emotional state of the subject assumes. The same effect as an unresolvable conflict can produce a sharp transition from a positive — especially tense — emotional state to a negative one and vice versa. On the other hand, the more harmoniously, conflict-free the process proceeds, the more calm the feeling is, the less sharpness and excitement in it. <...>
The variety <...> of feelings depends on the variety of real life relations of a person that are expressed in them, and the types of activities through which they <...> are carried out. <...>
In turn, emotions significantly affect the course of activity. As a form of manifestation of the needs of the individual, emotions act as internal motivations for activity. These inner impulses, expressed in feelings, are determined by the individual’s real relationship to the world around him.
In order to clarify the role of emotions in activity, it is necessary to distinguish between emotions, or feelings, and emotionality, or efficiency as such.
Not a single real, real emotion can be reduced to an isolated, pure, i.e. abstract, emotional or affective. Any real emotion is usually a unity of affective and intellectual, experience and cognition, since it includes, to one degree or another, volitional moments, drives, aspirations, since in general the whole person is expressed in it to one degree or another. Taken in a concrete integrity, emotions serve as motivations, motives for activity. They determine the course of the individual’s activity, being themselves conditioned by it. In psychology, one often talks about the unity of emotions, affect, and intellect, believing that by this they overcome the abstract point of view that divides psychology into separate elements, or functions. Meanwhile, with such formulations, the researcher only emphasizes his dependence on the ideas that he seeks to overcome. In fact, one must speak not simply of the unity of emotions and intellect in the life of a person, but of the unity of the emotional, or affective, and intellectual within the emotions themselves, as well as within the intellect itself.
If we now distinguish emotionality, or efficiency as such, in emotions, then it will be possible to say that it does not determine at all, but only regulates human activity determined by other moments; it makes the individual more or less sensitive to certain impulses, creates, as it were, a system of gateways, which, in emotional states, are set to one or another height; adjusting, adapting both receptor, cognitive in general, and motor, generally effective, volitional functions, it determines the tone, pace of activity, its attunement to one level or another. In other words, emotionality as such, i. emotionality as a moment or side of emotions, determines primarily the dynamic side or aspect of activity.
It would be wrong (as does, for example, K. Levin) to transfer this position to emotions, to feelings in general. The role of feelings and emotions is not reducible to dynamics, because they themselves are not reducible to a single emotional moment taken in isolation. The dynamic moment and the direction moment are closely interconnected. An increase in susceptibility and intensity of action is usually more or less selective: in a certain emotional state, embraced by a certain feeling, a person becomes more susceptible to one urge and less to others. Thus, dynamic changes in emotional processes are usually directional. <...>
The dynamic significance of an emotional process can be generally twofold: an emotional process can increase the tone and energy of mental activity, or it can decrease or slow it down. Some, especially Cannon, who specifically studied emotional arousal during rage and fear, emphasize mainly their mobilizing function (emergency function according to Cannon), for others (E. Claparede, Kantor, etc.), on the contrary, emotions are inextricably linked with disorganization. behavior; they arise from disorganization and generate disruption.
Each of the two opposing points of view is based on real facts, but both of them proceed from the false metaphysical alternative «either — or» and therefore, starting from one category of facts, they are forced to turn a blind eye to the other. In fact, there is no doubt that here, too, reality is contradictory: emotional processes can both increase the efficiency of activity and disorganize it. Sometimes this may depend on the intensity of the process: the positive effect that an emotional process gives at a certain optimal intensity can turn into its opposite and give a negative, disorganizing effect with an excessive increase in emotional arousal. Sometimes one of the two opposite effects is directly due to the other: by increasing activity in one direction, the emotion thereby disrupts or disorganizes it in the other; a sharply rising feeling of anger in a person, capable of mobilizing his forces to fight the enemy and having a beneficial effect in this direction, can at the same time disorganize mental activity aimed at solving any theoretical problems.