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Do you ever look at someone and wonder... What is going on inside their head?
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We‘ve looked into this question in science and so has Hollywood.
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Back in 1943, Disney released a short film called Reason and Emotion, which shows
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emotions driving our behaviour beyond the control offered by reason or logic.
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Skip forward 70 odd years and Disney Pixar's Inside Out gets up close and personal with some of our emotions: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger.
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The film mainly takes place inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl, Riley, as she struggles
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with her family moving from the Midwest to San Francisco.
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So we spend a lot of time with what we often call negative emotions – think sadness,
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fear and anger.
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But, are they really negative? Is there such a thing as negative emotions?
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In the 1960s, American psychologist Paul Ekman suggested that people have six basic emotions
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– happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise. Ekman's research took him
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from Japan to Brazil to a remote part of Papua New Guinea where he found that emotional expression
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stays the same across cultures. It's universal.
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He was inspired by Charles Darwin's 1872 book, The Expression of Emotions in Man and
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Animals, where Darwin suggests that our emotional expressions are determined by our evolution.
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For example, a fear reaction leads to a response of, say, running away from a predator that in turn, ensures your survival. Hopefully.
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Although some psychologists have argued the way that we experience emotions is more individual.
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And others have suggested that the basic emotions of fear/surprise and anger/disgust should be combined, because
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they're biologically similar.
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Still, Ekman's theories have been really influential over the past 50 years, so much so that Inside Out adopted five of his six basic emotions as pretty adorable characters.
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Which was probably helped by the fact he acted as a scientific consultant on the film.
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Though Inside Out shows us the power of what we normally describe as negative emotions.
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Namely, sadness.
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It's often culturally and socially reinforced that there's something wrong or shameful about
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feeling sad. We tend to have this cultural bias towards valuing positive thinking.
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But studies have shown that those who try and suppress negative thoughts actually experience
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more of them, which can lead to overeating and stronger stress responses.
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Another study found that people who experience happy and sad emotions at the same time, like
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"I'm sad or disgusted that there's broccoli on my pizza but happy because it means I can
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experience new things" show improvements in mental well-being over the next few weeks,
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even if the mixed feelings were unpleasant at the time.
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Inside Out shows us that our negative emotions can guide our rational thinking. Sadness is a
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trigger for seeking comfort and bonding. We're often tough on sadness, but it's important
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to our understanding of who we are.
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In his 1621 work "Anatomy of Melancholy", Robert Burton wrote in experiencing melancholy,
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"increaseth sorrow… increaseth wisdom." Even those emotions that we consider as negative
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can help guide us to good, rational decisions.
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So even if you're riding down or inside out the emotional roller coaster, remember that
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your positive and negative emotions can and do team up. There's always an upside.
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And if you don't already, make sure you subscribe to BrainCraft! I have a new brainy episode out every Thursday.