Question
Discuss different dimensions of emotional development. Design two classroom activities to promote the emotional development of children.
Course: Human Development & Learning
Course code 8610
Level: B.Ed Solved Assignment
Answer
Five Dimensions of Emotion
Explanations > Emotions > Five Dimensions of
Emotion
Pleasure | Focus |
Direction | Intensity | Arousal | So what
How do you measure or classify
emotions? Here are four variables scales along which emotions can be placed.
When you classify emotions (or anything), you start to make more sense of them,
aiding communication, discussion, and general understanding. From this can also
stem interventions, where you use your knowledge to deliberately change
emotions.
Pleasure (positive, negative)
Emotions can be positive,
pleasant, and giving good feelings. Emotions may also be negative, and unpleasant
and cause discomfort. Any emotion can be placed on a scale between extreme
pleasure and extreme discomfort, with a zero point between where neither positive nor negative
feelings are experienced (such as the way surprise is often experienced).
While we may wonder about the
value of negative emotions, they are designed by evolution to keep us alive.
For example, fear helps us avoid danger while anger helps us defend ourselves.
Positive emotions also have evolutionary benefits, such as love that bonds people
together and pride that drives learning.
Aristotle first talked about
pleasure and pain as fundamental drivers and these have been taken up many
times since. The basic effect is that we move towards pleasure and away from
pain. Many basic persuasive methods are based on negative emotions but can be ineffective
or have problematic side effects, such as when people coerced into action take subtle
revenge on those who seek to control them.
Positive emotions
|
Negative emotions
|
Happiness, liking, respect, hope, contentment
|
Sadness, anger, fear, shame, disgust
|
Focus (internal, external)
More introverted people may have more internally focused emotions, while extroverts spend more of their
time and emotions in the outer world, particularly with other people. When we
interact with others, we have external emotions about them. Their actions and
other external events can lead to thoughts and feelings that can become increasingly internal, such as when we think about what we might do and how we may feel
about this.
Internal emotions
|
External emotions
|
Shame, contentment, surprise, pride
|
Anger, fear, liking, disgust
|
Direction (attraction, repulsion)
Emotions often have direction,
bringing us together with things or pushing us away from them. For example, love
is an attractive emotion, while fear is repulsive. We can reduce the distance by
moving ourselves towards the object of interest or bringing it close. Likewise, we can
act on repulsion by pushing it away or removing ourselves from its proximity.
Direction is often about other
people, such as when we like or dislike them. It can also be about things and
situations of danger or attraction. Greed, for example, may pull us towards
money, while fear may push us away from a dangerous place. We can even be
attracted or repulsed by an idea, such as within our own internal musings or in
response to the rhetoric of politicians.
Inward emotions
|
Outward emotions
|
Pride, shame,
contentment, admiration,
embarrassment
|
Anger, fear, disgust, contempt
|
Intensity
Intensity is about how strongly
we feel emotions. This is a unit-polar
dimension, as it can range from close to zero, for example when we feel flat or
just a bit irritated, to very intense,
such as feelings of grief or extreme anger. Pleasure and Locus are bi-polar
scales as they have two poles with a 'zero' in between. Many emotions have
words for high and low intensity, such as the more intense 'anger' and the less
intense 'irritation'.
Intensity can be highly
energizing, and it can also be paralyzing. In the extreme, the strength of emotion
can overcome us, blotting out our external senses as we focus on the inner experience.
Negative intensity can be dangerous and lead us into actions we later regret, such
as when hate leads to murder. Strongly positive emotions can be wonderful, such
as the joy of new love.
Low-intensity emotions
|
High-intensity emotions
|
Irritation, contentment, mild surprise, dislike
|
Hate, grief, joy, disgust
|
Arousal
Arousal is about activation, the
energy and motivation that the emotions give us towards taking action. It is
unit-polar and similar to intensity, but it is not the same. You can experience
an intense emotion, such as joy, but not be motivated to act. Likewise,
arousing emotions such as curiosity may not be particularly intense.
Lower arousal emotions lead to
inaction, perhaps because we are feeling flat, with low intensity, or because
the emotion has an inward direction. Higher arousal emotions lead either to
external action or intense thinking, such as when we pay close attention to a
threat or item of personal interest. We may not seem to be doing much, but our
minds are working overtime.
The states of high and low
arousal are also known as hot and cold. This temperature metaphor reflects how
we often feel. An aroused person may be red-faced, reflecting the activation of
their body.
Low arousal emotions
|
High arousal emotions
|
Depression, contentment
|
Anger, curiosity, fear
|
Strategies that might help.
Strategy 1: Create a consistent, but play-based, classroom structure
Strategy 2: Teach—and reinforce—empathy
Helping a child understand
people’s behaviors, feelings and thoughts is the first step toward teaching
them how to respect and relate to others. Teachers can model empathy by
comforting a child who is upset or by verbally acknowledging students’
feelings, but they can also incorporate these lessons into existing curricula. For
example, when reading a book, ask children to identify characters’ emotions and
discuss how other characters or
events have contributed to their feelings. You may also choose to role-play
with puppets or with the children themselves. By giving children a broader
emotional vocabulary, and by emphasizing that everyone has feelings, teachers can
hone or reinforce students’ empathy.
Strategy 3: Actively teach conflict resolution
When children begin to fight or
argue—as they often do—it is easy for teachers to step in as mediators and
resolve the conflict themselves. It might be more beneficial in the long run,
however, if they use these opportunities to teach children how to resolve conflict
themselves. For instance, if two children are fighting over a toy, rather than telling
them to take turns and setting a timer, ask them how they could go about sharing
the item. Talk through solutions. Educators can also model problem-solving skills
throughout the day. For example, allow children to vote for the book they want
to read or encourage them to take turns leading their peers during transition
periods.
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