Psychological Theory: Emmotion is an instinctive judgement like a hunch
By well-wisher
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Traditionally instincts are viewed as something different to emmotions. When we think about a hunch we don't put that in the same class as love, hate, sadness,anger, fear and joy.
We wouldn't, for example, think of the emmotions expressed in a great painting or poem as being an artists hunches.
But a hunch is a judgement; an automatic judgement about something; a feeling in our gut that we know something to be true.
And to a great extent, Emmotions are judgements and feelings that we know something.
When people fall in love with some one; it is a judgement about the person they are in love with and a feeling that they know that loving that person is a right decision; something that will be good for them.
Furthermore when people feel a hate for something or someone, it is a judgement of that something or someone; a feeling that we know they are a bad thing. Thats why hate is often an irrational prejudice and prejudice is prejudging something just as an instinct is a form of prejudgement.
Sadness, Anger and Fear, too, are judgements about events or about things. Often when we give the things we feel sad, angry or fearful about more thought, we don't feel as sad, angry or fearful about them; we become more philosophical in the case of sadness or anger or more brave in the case of fear. That suggests that Sadness, anger and fear are quick judgements.
Sometimes they are correct judgements. Sometimes we are correct to be sad, angry or fearful about something but, similarly, we can have hunches that are correct.
Again, like its opposite, sadness, Joy is a judgement about something or someone. We don't think of it as a judgement usually because its a judgement that we are very rarely wrong about; we know what makes us happy and so we don't usually question whether something should make us happy but, nevertheless, happiness is a judgement because it can be expressed as the judgemental statement, "This is a good thing".
But do emmotions serve the same function as hunches?
Yes, for example, if your a detective then a hunch makes you feel certain that you're following the right path and if you're in a relationship with someone, feeling love for them is the hunch that they're something good; that you should be with that person and should love them.
Emmotions, in other words, like hunches are a mental tool that we use to figure out things in our lives.
The only problem with emmotions is that, just like hunches, we can't rely upon them entirely to find the truth; we also need hard evidence and that comes when we sit down and calmly remember and reflect upon things rather than just having a gut reaction to them. Its then that we come to a conclusion about whether our emmotional hunch was right or not or whether our heart was just barking up the wrong tree.
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