Differences between emotions and feelings

The difference between emotion and feeling is something that often causes confusion when it comes to understanding how the human mind works.

The concepts of emotion and feeling can be easily confused and, in fact, even within the world of psychology they are often used as if they were synonymous.

However, some authors defend the idea that there are differences between emotions and feelings and that, therefore, they are words used to label different mental phenomena.

Distinguishing between emotion and feeling

When we talk about this topic it is important to keep in mind that there are different theories about emotion, which provide different explanations about how our emotional and psychic facet works and, from the perspective of neuroscience, about how the part of the brain responsible for producing emotions works: the limbic system.

However, within the authors and researchers who separate the concepts of feelings and emotions (such as Antonio Damasio), there is some consensus when it comes to indicating how they differ.

First, let's see how these two words are defined.

What is an emotion?

An emotion is a set of neurochemical and hormonal responses that predispose us to react in a certain way. way to an external stimulus (such as the sight of a spider) or internal (such as a memory about the years of childhood).

That means that an emotion is what is generated by the limbic system of the brain when groups of neurons related to certain experiences, so that we are predisposed to act in a certain way.

This happens because, throughout our lives, our brain is not limited to "memorizing data", but also learns certain ways in which to react to these experiences. Somehow, information about what we experience goes hand in hand with information about how we react before that; they are not two separate kinds of information.

That is why, if we learn to associate insects with bites, when we see one we will tend to experiment the feeling of fear: our body will have learned that, with this visual information, this is the reaction adequate.

• Related article: The 8 types of emotions (classification and description)

What is a feeling?

A feeling is similar to an emotion and is closely related to the limbic system, but in addition to this spontaneous, uncontrollable and automatic predisposition, it includes the conscious evaluation what we make of this experience. That is to say, in a feeling there is a conscious appraisal of the emotion and of the subjective experience in general.

For example, if we see a spider, we will be able to self-examine what we feel and what we think in such a situation and reflect on what other experiences we remember that situation, what are the different ways in which you can react to that stimulus, to what extent the disgust or fear we feel is rational, etc.

What is the difference between the two?

As we have seen, both emotions and feelings have to do with something irrational that has to do with the subjective way in which we experience a situation. Neither of the two phenomena can be translated into words in a faithful way and without leaving many nuances in the inkwell, and it is the another person who, making an effort of empathy, must build in her mind and from her own experiences how we should feel.

However, the fundamental difference between emotion and feelings is that the first is totally basic, primitive and unidirectional (in the sense that it is something that appears automatically when a stimulus is presented) while the feeling includes the ability to think and consciously reflect on what it feels like and, therefore, has to do with the ability to think in abstract terms and symbolic.

Works of art, for example, are the classic characterization of feelings, because they are abstract sublimations of emotions. In a poem there are not only emotions, but there must necessarily also be feeling, something that allows to express in a symbolic way what one feels.

So that, feelings are bi-directional, since there is something that goes from the most basic and primitive mental processes towards consciousness, but there is also something that goes from consciousness to the way in which that situation is valued and experienced holistically and global.

Both are inseparable

And here comes an apparent paradox: although the concepts of feeling and emotion refer to different things, to practice where there is an emotion there is always a feeling (or several). The two are presented at the same time, and the words we use for conceptually separated only exist in theory. to allow us to understand more precisely about what part of conscious experience we are describing.

In the same way that where there are genes there is an environment that influences the way in which they are expressed, Emotion and feelings cannot be presented separately (in the conscious and healthy human being) and therefore overlap. The distinction between the two is more virtual and theoretical than material.

That is why the difference between feeling and emotion is only used because it is useful in certain cases and because each of them could explain different neurological processes that function in parallel, not because we can effectively isolate a feeling and separate it from the emotion with which it is presented. In psychology and neuroscience, for better and for worse, things are not so simple.