Explain the components of perceiving emotions and understanding emotions with examples.

Perceiving emotions: This is the basic ability to register and recognise emotions in ourselves and other people. People who are high in emotional intelligence are able to identify when they are experiencing a particular emotion and able to use their vocabulary to label the feeling. For example, experiencing the sensation of “butterflies in the stomach” and knowing that they are feeling nervousness or anxiety. They are also sensitive to other people’s emotions and are able to see when someone is feeling angry, sad, happy or a range of other feelings by reading their facial expressions and body language. This is a fundamental skill because without recognising the experience of an emotion, it is very difficult to understand it or change it in any way.

 Understanding emotions: This component refers to using the specific information that various emotions provide and knowing how that might affect their behavior. As discussed earlier, each emotion conveys distinct data to individuals about their environment and energizes one for action in a particular direction. Emotionally intelligent people are able to ‘read’ this information and use it to guide their behaviour. For example, understanding that one’s anger at their friend may be a result of feeling unfairly treated by them. Understanding emotions in others is similar- observing that a sibling is hanging their head low and has reduced their interactions with others might indicate they are upset or sad about something.

The following descriptive statements about persons ‘X’ and ‘Y’ may help to illustrate the above two components of perceiving and recognising emotions:

Example 1: “During challenging and difficult social situations, X is very conscious of the pitch of his voice and hand gestures. He recognises when the intensity of his anger is rising and makes the effort to behave in an assertive way rather than give in to aggression”.

Example 2: “Y is usually unaware of being triggered by an unorganised desk or a delayed project. He almost instantly responds with undue aggression without realising what language or tone of voice he is using with someone. He sounds very offensive at times”.

In the first example, being aware about one’s pitch and the bodily gestures draws one’s attention to the intensity of the emotion one is experiencing. This awareness then leads to appropriate action in the individual. The second example points out the consequences when we are not aware about how our emotions are linked to various factors. This awareness of generation of emotions will give us a control over how we respond to different situations.

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