Why do we need emotions?

Why does the mind react with strong emotions, such as anxiety or fear, to the rustling of bushes during a night walk, which ultimately turns out to be just the blowing of the wind? Although there are many potential threats in the environment, is the diversity of emotions still a beneficial feature from an evolutionary perspective?

According to Cosmides and Tooby (2005), emotions are a key adaptive mechanism, mainly because the human nervous system is constantly bombarded with numerous environmental stimuli, and emotions play an adaptive role due to the speed of their reaction. Often our more advanced "analytical" mind is not as fast as the primitive layers of the brain, such as the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional functioning.

Emotions play an important role in human adaptation to the environment, activating, deactivating and modifying mental functions, coordinating various aspects of functioning, solving adaptive problems and capturing signals in the environment.

Emotions result from the adaptation process, enabling the solution of adaptive problems in a changing environment. The brain, developing in the process of evolution, has learned to use information from the body and the environment to regulate behavior and body functions, while maintaining the emotional system.

The ability to manage our emotions, so-called emotion regulation, therefore affects our basic functions, such as perception, attention, learning, memory, decision-making, categorization and physiological reactions.

Benefits of effective emotion regulation:

• Increasing positive emotions in everyday life.
• Better understanding of one's own behavior.
• Avoiding emotional outbursts resulting from the accumulation of feelings.
• Greater access to the rational part of our mind, allowing us to take more conscious actions.
• Reduction of physiological symptoms, such as pain or severity of autoimmune diseases.
• Improvement of a general well-being.

Bibliography

Carmody, J. (2020). Evolutionary Psychology and Mindfulness and Meditation: Easing the Anxiety of Being Human. Shackelford T. K. (Eds), The SAGE Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Applications of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 94-106). SAGE Publications. Gross J.J. (1998b) The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review, Review of General Psychology, 2, s. 271–299. Szczygieł, D. (2014). Regulacja emocji a dobrostan. Konsekwencje wyprzedzającej i korygującej regulacji emocji [Emotion regulation and well-being. Consequences of antecedent-focused and response-focused emotion regulation strategies].