The vital differences between emotions and feelings

Emotions and feelings are two different things. Emotions turn out to be programs in our brain that we inherited through evolution that are devoted to the management of our life. Emotions are action programs. When you have fear, your face becomes startled, your body posture changes, your heart races, your gut contracts, your pulse races as well, your respiration changes and on and on. All of that is an action program that exists not just in our brain, but in the brains of many other species.

These programs achieve something very important. For example, fear allows you to take action, even without thinking, so that you can remove yourself from harm’s way. There are emotion programs that are negative on the surface, such as fear or anger, but that nonetheless are very positive in the outcome that they produced for us. Probably fear has saved more lives than any other emotion.

The very important thing to remember is that feelings are not those action programs. Feelings are what you perceive in your mind as a result of being in a state of emotion. Although in everyday language, we confuse one with the other, it’s important — and you have no idea how important this is for research strategy — it’s important to distinguish between an action program that does not even need to be conscious, that animals as have, from feelings. Feelings are conscious and feed this enormously beautiful edifice that we call culture.

Some of the most interesting emotions have to do with social, or so-called moral, emotions. If we are really going to be active in education in a globalized world and promote a state of peaceful coexistence, a state where creativity really can be liberated in a world that is filled with conflict and with difficulties of all sorts — from social difficulties to the difficulties that come with a highly broken financial and industrial world — we’re going to have to do something that goes beyond increasing knowledge, efficiency and skills.

We need to be able to educate citizens that are a tribute to humanity and make humanity better. Can you do that just by knowing a lot? No. Can you do that by just being efficient, or by being a mathematical prodigy? No. Can you do that by being a fantastic and capable engineer who will develop new technological capabilities? No.

In a study that is ongoing in our lab, our group has been able to contrast brain states when you’re having admiration for virtue, when you’re having compassion for social pain, when you’re having compassion for physical pain, and when you have admiration for skill. These things are fundamental in our understanding of what human beings are. They are fundamental in the organization of a culture and the means to improve it. They are the means to have a better life, and are related to different brain states.

https://brainworldmagazine.com/neuroscience-helps-us-understand-human-nature/