GLOSSARY

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Ei viitsi

Pronounced “ey – vitsi,” an Estonian term describing the slight laziness or unmotivated feeling to be bothered to do anything.

Elation

A psychological state of exhilaration upon receiving a positive unexpected experience on the self.

Electroencephalography (EEG)

An electrophysiological technique for the recording of electrical activity arising from the human brain.

An experimental technique concerned with the development, recording and analysis of myoelectric signals or the electrical activity of muscle tissue. Myoelectric signals are formed by physiological variations in the state of muscle fiber membranes.

Elevation

A positive emotion one experiences when witnessing a virtuous act that improves the welfare of others. Moral elevation consists of a feeling of warmth and expansion that is accompanied by admiration and affection for the person(s) who performed the exemplary behavior.

Embarrassment

(An emotion experienced when) individuals fail to behave in accordance with socially defined scripts and roles and is defined as "the flustering caused by the perception that a flubbed (botched, fumbled) performance, a working (...)

Embodied Theory of Emotion

A theoretical perspective proposing that emotional experience emerges through interactions between cognitive processes and bodily states. Emotions involve partial simulations or reactivations of sensory, motor, and interoceptive systems, meaning that perceiving or experiencing emotions includes the re-enactment of physiological and bodily states (...)

Emotion

Emotion consists of neural circuits (that are at least partially dedicated), response systems, and a feeling state/process that motivates and organizes cognition and action. Emotion also provides information to the person experiencing it, and (...)

Emotion Appropriateness

“Appropriate” emotion is nothing more or less than emotion that is correct for the situation and in correct proportion to the evoking circumstances. At the extremes of emotional expression, there tends to be a good degree of (...)

Emotion Co-Regulation

The process by which relationship partners form a dyadic emotional system involving an oscillating pattern of affective arousal and dampening that dynamically maintains an optimal emotional state.

Emotion Co-Rumination

Extensively discussing and revisiting problems, speculating about problems, and focusing on negative feelings.

Emotion Dysregulation

The absence of any one of the abilities related to emotion regulation, which include (i) awareness of one’s emotions, (ii) understanding of how one is feeling (clarity), (iii) flexible modulation of emotions in order to engage in goal-directed behaviours, (iv) control over impulsive behaviours in the face of negative emotion, (v) acceptance of emotional responses, and (vi) access to emotion regulation strategies.

Emotion Granularity

Also known as emotion differentiation. The specificity of one’s emotional experiences and representations. An individual’s ability to make fine-grained, nuanced distinctions between similar emotional states.

Emotion-Focused Coping

Coping through emotional approaches [that] might carry adaptive potential. An approach to coping that motivates movement toward, rather than away from a stressful encounter. Comprises attempts to understand and (...)

Emotion Regulation

The processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions. Emotion regulatory processes may be automatic or controlled, conscious or (...)

Emotion Regulation Flexibility

The ability to use varying emotion regulation strategies so that they are synchronized with situational demands.

Emotional Ambivalence

The simultaneous experience of both positive and negative emotions.

Emotional Blackmail

A powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten, either directly or indirectly, to punish us if we don’t do what they want.

Emotional Contagion

The tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with that of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally.

Emotional Inertia

The degree to which emotional states are resistant to change.

Emotional Intelligence

The subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

Emotional Labour

Labour (that) requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others. Emotional labor may involve enhancing, faking, or suppressing emotions to modify (...)

Emotional Literacy

The ability to understand your emotions, the ability to listen to others and empathize with their emotions, and the ability to express emotions productively. To be emotionally literature is to be able to handle emotions in a way that (...)

Emotional Reactivity

The extent to which an individual experiences emotions, the range of stimuli to which they respond, the intensity of their responses, and the duration of the person’s arousal before returning to baseline.

Emotional Reasoning

A cognitive heuristic that occurs when feelings, rather than objective evidence, are used as a source of information when making evaluative judgments about the external world.

Emotional Response Coherence

The coordination, or association, of a person's experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses as the emotion unfolds over time.

Emotional Validation

The accurate and nonjudgmental acceptance of one’s emotions. Encompasses a nonjudgmental expression (verbal and nonverbal) of what is said, thought, heard, and felt.

Emotions as Social Information (EASI) Model

The premise of this perspective is that, just as mood provides information to the self, emotional expressions provide information to observers, which may influence their behavior. The EASI model extends this notion by (...)

Empathetic Embarrassment

The flustered discomfort of embarrassment that observers experience when they empathetically share in another’s experience. This embarrassment is felt even though the target’s actions do not reflect on the observer, and the observer’s social identity is not threatened.

Empathy

An emotional response (affective), dependent upon the interaction between trait capacities and state influences. Empathic processes are automatically elicited but are also shaped by...

Endorphins

Neurotransmitters found in the brain that bind to opiate receptors and produce a feeling of pain relief also known as analgesia.

Engagement

A positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Engagement refers to a persistent and pervasive affective–cognitive state that is not focused on any particular object, event, individual, or behavior.

Ennui

Pronounced “awn-wee.” Originally a French word, but used in contemporary English. A sense of purposelessness that emerges in response to having nothing to do and little that seems exciting in one’s life. A deeper, more “existential” form of boredom.

Entrepreneurial Passion

A consciously accessible, intense positive feeling experienced by engagement in entrepreneurial activities associated with roles that are meaningful and salient to the self-identity of the entrepreneur.

Envy

An emotion experienced when one appraises another person as possessing something that one desires but lacks, or when one compares poorly with others on characteristics important to oneself. Envy involves two (...)

Epistemic emotions

Emotions that relate to knowledge and the generation of knowledge. These emotions result from cognitive qualities of knowledge-related tasks and information processing. Examples include curiosity and confusion.

Eudaimonia

An ancient Greek philosophical word that often translated as ‘happiness’ or ‘’flourishing’. It is the feeling when one is at their “best self” and living well.

Eustress

A form of stress associated with positive feelings and healthy bodily states. Eustress is a stress response towards stimuli/targets appraised as harmful, threatening, and challenging but within one’s confidence and/or capability

Evolutionary Perspective on Emotions

An evolutionary approach defines what emotions are in terms of how they came to exist. Emotions are modes of functioning, shaped by natural selection, that coordinate physiological, cognitive, motivational, behavioural and (...)

Experiential Acceptance

Acceptance of a stimulus that does not entail condoning or deeming it in any way acceptable; to acknowledge the experience’s presence and not apply any evaluations of it. The primary object of acceptance is the experience itself.

Experiential Avoidance

The unwillingness to remain in contact with private experiences, such as painful thoughts and emotions. Often proposed to be critical to the development and maintenance of psychopathology.

Exposure Therapy

A form of cognitive-behavioural treatment for posttraumatic stress disorders in which clients relive memories of a traumatic event (i.e. imaginal exposure), and confront situations that are avoided because they trigger distressing memories and thoughts (i.e. in vivo exposure).

Expressive Suppression

An emotion regulation strategy that involves inhibiting ongoing emotion-expressive behaviour.

Expressive Writing

The act of constructing stories and personal narratives through writing that helps individuals understand their experiences and themselves. Expressive writing allows the individual to organize and remember events in a coherent fashion while (...)