Emotions: Function, Task & Diseases

Emotions are one of the most important driving forces of human beings. Much more than logical thinking, emotional impulses such as hatred, contempt, anger, envy, but also pity, joy, exuberance and empathy cause us to react indirectly or directly and thus define to a considerable extent our social behavior and our social coexistence. In many cases, we experience certain impulses through the development of emotions, which influence our actions, change our cognitive perceptions, and even have an effect on our state of health – in both a positive and negative sense.

What are emotions?

An emotion defines an internal sensation, which can be of an unpleasant or pleasant nature for the person feeling it. An emotion defines an internal sensation which can be of an unpleasant or pleasant nature for the person feeling it. This can be triggered by a conscious or also unconscious experience of a perception. This form of psychological arousal can be expressed in emotions such as fear, sadness, grief or joy, confidence and love, and can cause a wide variety of effects: An emotion sets in motion a complex set of different physiological reactions, which can consist of both internal and external responses. Thus, an emotion can have visible physical effects, which are directly recognizable in the human body. For example, states of arousal such as fear or even love can result in an increase in blood pressure, raise pulse rate, and affect body perspiration. In addition, an emotion stimulates cognitive processes such as a memory or the interpretation of a fact. The combination of an emotion and a cognition then induces the feeler to engage in specific reactive behaviors, which may be reflected in outwardly visible movements such as laughing, crying, or screaming.

Function and task

Emotions are important for humans in many ways: they not only influence our cognitive perceptions, but also help us make decisions and are therefore authoritative initiators of our actions and social behavior. A distinction can be made between action-guiding and informative emotions. Informative emotions inform the feeler about changes in his environment and therefore help him to weigh the chances, the potential as well as the risks of a planned event. The feeler can therefore already survey the possible consequences of his decision in advance and act accordingly. Action-guiding information, on the other hand, usually conveys an impulse that leads to an immediate reaction to an event or circumstance. Thus, an emotion such as fear, which arises in the context of a threat, can cause the feeler to act in an escape behavior. Thus the emotion gives him the decisive impulse to protect himself. The disgust that arises, for example, when looking at an inedible object, on the other hand, can trigger the impulse to spit it out or throw it away and thus has a preventive character. Thus, emotions can protect people from actions with serious consequences and also guide them in their behavior toward others. For example, an emotion such as pity may trigger an empathic response toward a fellow citizen, whereas contempt or even hatred may tend to do the opposite.

Illness and discomfort

Modern medicine has already proven in multiple studies that emotions can influence the human state of health to a great extent. Positive emotions usually take a benign influence on our body – they make it more resistant and support healing processes. Negative emotions, on the other hand, which the person experiences as unpleasant, can promote the onset of disease or even be a causative factor for disease itself. The human body’s immune system is mainly affected by the effects of negative emotions such as fear, grief or anger – infectious diseases of all kinds are usually the result. This circumstance is due to the close connection between the nervous, hormonal and immune systems. The control center for our nervous system is the brain. This is where emotions such as sadness, despair, love and joy are produced; millions of ion channels transmit the various messenger substances.Therefore, a large part of the hormones is released in the brain – strongly dependent on the emotions created here. The emotional structure produced in the nervous and hormonal systems now in turn affects the immune system. Here, white blood cells, antibodies and T-lymphocytes dedicate themselves to the daily task of protecting the human body from pathogenic invaders and pests of all kinds such as viruses, bacteria and cancer cells. If negative and depressing emotions prevail in the hormonal and nervous system, the immune system also adjusts its production accordingly – the T-lymphocyte level in the blood is lowered and the activity of the antibodies is reduced. This explains why widowed or depressed people in particular suffer more frequently from infectious diseases than others. However, students or professionals who are under great pressure to perform or are about to take an exam are particularly often affected. The fear of failure usually not only leads to restless sleep, but also attacks the immune system – those affected often complain of infections such as herpes or the common cold. A similar effect can be observed in groups of people who are in a state of emotional emergency and feel a strong sense of helplessness or emotional overload. In many cases, these are people who, for example, care for a sick family member over a longer period of time or accompany a loved one on their last journey. These people usually have poorer immune values and thus an increased tendency to infectious diseases. The same applies to people who suffer from other psychological stresses such as financial worries or are in states of grief or mourning. Patients diagnosed with depression often suffer from a disturbed regulation of the stress hormone cortisol – this circumstance inhibits immune cells and is therefore not infrequently the cause of diseases that indicate a deficient functioning of the immune system.