7.1: Introduction to Emotions

Emotions and Interpersonal Communication

Emotions are a part of who we are as humans. Take for instance, that you are being interviewed for your dream career position. As you are waiting to be interviewed, you are experiencing many emotions: excitement for the opportunity, nervousness that your strengths will not show, discomfort at the concern that the interviewer may not understand you, and more. Each of these emotions come from our self-concept, our life experiences, and our desire to be successful and impact our relationships with others from how they perceive us to how our communication unfolds. Therefore, it is important that we explore the facets of emotions.

Emotions are heavily influenced by our social interactions and communication with others. Emotions are a key component of self-concept and how we interact with others. Often we find ourselves focused on the feeling we are experiencing in the moment, rather than the ability to accurately address the emotional stimulus related to the resulting emotional effects. There are many experiences that shape what emotions we experience, how we interact with these emotions, and how we come to recognize and address our emotions. This chapter will focus on what emotions are; how they are shaped by our culture and environment, and shape our perspectives; how to overcome emotional challenges; and how to utilize our skills to ensure our emotions help us to achieve our communication goals within our interpersonal relationships. From our internal communication to external communication with others, emotions are used to create, interpret and inform our understanding of relationships more deeply. We will start by examining what emotions are, and move into understanding how we utilize emotions in our everyday communication experiences. We will end the chapter by discussing ways in which we can positively impact our emotional perspectives in order to manage them effectively.