Why emotions are important
Although emotions can be a way to express yourself, they can also be more than just that. Emotions can be a way to help you survive in certain settings or situations. A example of this can be feeling disgust: feeling disgust may lead people to spit out bitter or sour foods which are more likely to contain toxins. Doing this can save you from being poisoned and possibly dying.
How emotions help with survival
According to Psychology Today, in one of Charles Darwin’s many books it states that emotions may have evolved as responses to basic survival. For example, feeling fear makes it more likely that you survive as your first instinct may be to run away, seek for help, or even fight when in danger. Acting in any of these ways can make it more likely for you to survive from predators or from any threat in general.
How emotions help with communication
As mentioned earlier, emotions can also be a way for you to express how you feel. The Ohio State University states that although emotions can help us to act quickly in important situations and threatening situations, emotions can also be a way to help us communicate our feelings with those around us without having to worry about explaining how we feel or why we feel the way we do, like when we feel sad or mad, and need some help.
Emotional awareness
Being an emotionally aware person can be beneficial for you. The University of West Alabama explains that emotionally intelligent people are able to benefit from their understanding of emotions. In doing so, their experiences toward personal and social growth will be impacted in a positive way.
However, those who aren’t able to understand others or their own emotions have a difficult time connecting with others on a deeper level. These people are those who have low emotional intelligence.
Conclusion
Overall, emotions like happiness, excitement, and even other unpleasant emotions like sadness, frustration, or grief can all be adaptive and beneficial. Basic emotions are likely to have played an important role in survival throughout human evolution, these emotions also help signal those around us to react accordingly. Emotions can also provide important information which can sometimes be experienced as a “gut feeling” or an intuitive sense which helps make decisions without any sensible reasoning.
