MOODS

Moods can be understood as embodied manifestations of accumulated experiences and anticipatory states. They are intimately connected to both physical and mental homeostasis, with imbalances in either domain potentially leading to shifts in mood. For instance, hunger-induced irritability stems from a deviation from physical wellbeing, regulated by hormones like ghrelin and leptin. Similarly, mental states can be affected by a kind of “psychological homeostasis,” where imbalances can lead to mood alterations, such as mental exhaustion or general stress.

Repeating emotional experiences contribute significantly to the formation and maintenance of moods through a self-reinforcing cycle. As specific emotions occur frequently, they shape the underlying emotional tone, strengthen neural pathways, and prime cognitive processes for similar future responses. This repetition leads to sustained hormonal and physiological changes, establishes behavioral patterns, and influences environmental interactions. Additionally, it affects memory consolidation and sets expectations for future events. The cumulative effect of these processes is the development of a persistent mood state that becomes increasingly entrenched over time, creating a framework that influences perception, decision-making, and emotional responses to new stimuli.
The intensity of a mood can significantly impact emotional experiences. Stronger moods require more potent appraisals to activate contrasting emotions. For example, severe depression might completely inhibit humorous responses, while milder depression still allows for some amusement. When emotions induce strong, congruent moods, these moods become more resilient to contradictory emotional signals. This phenomenon creates a sort of emotional inertia, where an anxious mood, for instance, resists joyful interruptions. Interestingly, intense emotions can also temporarily override moods, suggesting a dynamic interplay between immediate emotional responses and underlying mood states.

Crucially, moods are intrinsically linked to evaluation and action tendencies. They serve as a predictive mechanism that primes emotions, influencing how individuals assess their environment and their readiness for certain actions. In essence, a mood indicates how favorable the current environment is for particular behaviors or strategies increasing the chances for an adjacent/similar emotional content to become more prominent.

It’s important to note that moods may operate below the threshold of consciousness, particularly if suppressed by defense mechanisms or when an individual is not actively monitoring their emotional state. However, their influence on perception, decision-making, and behavior persists, subtly shaping how individuals interact with their environment and allocate their resources.

ATTITUDES

Attitudes and moods are both persistent mental states that affect behavior, but they differ in their complexity and cognitive involvement. Moods are simpler, more general emotional states that primarily influence our immediate feelings. Attitudes, on the other hand, are more sophisticated states that contains knowledge about specific objects or situations without needing feelings to be involved. Attitudes develop from the understanding personal experiences and become what we experience as a particular conscious state. Like filters, they selectively emphasize certain aspects of our environment while downplaying others. This selective attention process influences how we perceive and respond to the world around us, similar to how moods can color our general outlook, but in a more targeted and often backed up by conceptual knowledge.

Attitudes are fundamentally originating from beliefs and will. They are being goal directed combining elements of evaluation and action tendencies which are often aligned with one’s self-image. This alignment stems from attitudes representing how individuals want or shouldn’t behave, effectively manifesting their desired or expected self. Attitudes guide feelings with the help of though which helps produce behavior in congruence with one’s self-concept, reflecting and reinforcing personal values and purpose. However, it’s important to note that there can be a discrepancy between how individuals perceive themselves and how others interpret their behavior. When individuals act in accordance with their attitudes, they affirm and strengthen their self-image, potentially perpetuating both positive and negative traits. Attitudes conflicting with one’s self-image may lead to cognitive dissonance, but the difficulty in changing deeply ingrained attitudes can result in persistent behaviors that contradict one’s desired self-presentation. This misalignment may occur because attitudes, once formed, can be remarkably resistant to change, even when one becomes aware of their own negative attributes.

In practice, attitudes and moods often work in tandem and are indistinguishable. They become distinguishable mainly when they conflict, such as when a person with a positive attitude towards exercise finds themselves in a lethargic mood. The cultivation of nuanced and flexible attitudes is often associated with greater emotional maturity. This ability to hold and navigate multiple, sometimes conflicting attitudes reflects a sophisticated level of cognitive and emotional processing. Such flexibility allows individuals to adapt their responses to varying contexts, resulting in more appropriate behaviors.

As such, attitudes can often be used to protect the self from bothersome moods. For example, when lonely men become aloof or even callous as a defence against the discomfort caused by loneliness stemming from feelings of rejection. While the background loneliness might not go away as easily, it surely prevents it passing into associated attitudes such as being shy or clingy, or at least there is an attempt.

CHARACTER

Character, unlike the relatively fixed temperament, is a malleable aspect of personality that evolves throughout life dependent on the breadth and depth of life experiences. It serves as a modulating force on temperament, influencing the intensity and expression of innate predispositions. Through character development, individuals can amplify or diminish the power of their temperamental tendencies at a fundamental level. This modulation occurs covertly, altering the underlying strength of temperamental predispositions themselves. Simultaneously, character shapes propensities – the overt manifestations of these predispositions – potentially transforming them into behaviors that may seem at odds with one’s innate temperament. These character induced propensities act as a filter between temperamental impulses and outward behavior, allowing for more nuanced and context-appropriate responses. With healthy character development, individuals refine their propensities, enabling them to navigate complex social and emotional landscapes with greater flexibility and effectiveness, even when their innate temperamental inclinations might suggest otherwise. However, in certain cases, character development may lead to a rigid personality focused on one aspect of emotional and social life. This rigidity can create complex defense mechanisms designed to keep certain emotional experiences at bay, potentially limiting the individual’s ability to fully engage with a diverse range of emotional states and social situations. In some instances, such a personality structure, which may be classified as a personality disorder, can prove highly effective in specific situations or environments. Nevertheless, it often fails to produce good outcomes in most other aspects of life, leading to a pattern of success in narrow domains but struggles in broader social and emotional contexts.

This dual influence of character allows for both subtle recalibration of temperamental intensities and more dramatic shifts in outward behavioral tendencies, providing a complex mechanism for personality adaptation and growth.

PERSONALITY

Parts of personality emerges through correlations between FFM dimensions and emotional dispositions: Conscientiousness relating to dispositions of adversity, vulnerability, jeopardy, antipathy, and autonomy; Extraversion with autonomy, superiority, prosperity, curiosity, and appealability; Openness with prosperity, curiosity, appealability, sympathy, and affinity; and Agreeableness with sympathy, affinity, inferiority, adversity, and vulnerability. Neuroticism, in contrast, correlates with negative manifestations of moods and emotional reactivity across these dispositional patterns.