There are four facets to emotions, the physiological response, the intensity, the label, and the time course. Emotions are accompanied by changes in our internal state, often an arousal response. These have an intensity being somewhere between mild to overwhelmingly strong. But neither the physiological response nor the intensity defines the emotion that we experience. Rather, we label the experience as a particular emotion depending upon the circumstance in which it occurs. So, if we come home late at night and upon entering our home we are surprised by unexpected people in the house. This may be labelled fear if these are strangers, anger if these are people whom you’ve earlier asked to leave, or happiness if it’s friends throwing you a surprise party.
One aspect of emotions that the scientific study of emotions has rarely addressed is the time course of the emotion; how quickly does it peak, how long does it last, and how quickly does it dissipate and return to normal. This aspect can be very important. If we get over fear quickly the consequences may be quite different that if it persists for a long period of time. Persistent emotions can become problematic leading to physical or mental problems. They can also be self-perpetuating, where fear of the fear results in an increasing spiral of more and more intense fear. So an important personal characteristic is the ability to recover from emotion quickly.
Mindfulness has been demonstrate to improve emotion regulation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/09/10/take-command-and-control-of-your-emotions/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/20/regulate-emotions-with-mindfulness/) and emotional intelligence (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/be-smart-about-emotions/). In today’s Research News article “Why It Pays to be Mindful: Trait Mindfulness Predicts Physiological Recovery from Emotional Stress and Greater Differentiation among Negative Emotions”
Fogarty and colleagues identified participants with high levels of mindfulness and those with low levels. They then measured heart rate, hear rate variability, and the subjective emotional experiences of these participants while writing about an emotionally charged experience that they had or an emotionally neutral experience. They found that males with high mindfulness had lower heart rate variability to emotions than low mindful participants, suggesting that mindful men experience emotions at lower intensity. They also found that more mindful men had greater physiological reactivity to an emotional task followed by superior recovery. In addition, high mindfulness participants were better able to distinguish between emotions.
Of course these results are correlational and need to be repeated manipulating levels of mindfulness with training. But, like the literature, they suggest that mindful individuals have better emotion regulation including clearer experiences of different emotions and lower physiological intensity of emotions.
So, be mindful and improve emotional experiences.
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
“Mindful meditation has been discovered to foster the ability to inhibit those very quick emotional impulses.” – Daniel Goleman