Understanding of Human Feelings and Ideologies

Understanding of Human Feelings and Ideologies
Name
Institution
Date of Submission
Understanding of Human Feelings and Ideologies
Human feelings are usually described as being abstract since it’s difficult to tell the magnitude of what an individual is feeling. The human emotions of anger, happiness, fear, sadness, disgust, and surprise are what define how someone feels at a particular time. The understanding of why people affiliate with a specific ideology or opinion is never really understood by those that do not share similar interests. Human relations are foster with the ability to express empathy to others and understanding of what an individual is going through at any particular time. However, in an attempt to make another individual feel better or discerning their thoughts, humans usually assume that their actions impact the individual’s lives for better. Studies have revealed that this is often not the case since emotions and feelings are subject to an individual’s response. Discussed below are two recent studies that try to examine how human beings can be more sensitive to the feelings and ideology of others.
The research paper titled “Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation” by Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley investigates the impact of gratitude expression for both the recipient and expresser of gratitude. The researchers hypothesized that on account of an egocentric biases by expressers of gratitude the positive effect of the appreciation to the recipient is systematically undervalued and this keeps individuals from expressing their gratitude to others more often in the day to day life. Kumar and Epley conducted an experiment where three participants were instructed to write letters of appreciation to other people and give a prediction based on the content of their message how the recipients would express their emotions. The gratitude expressers gave their anticipatory response that predicted whether the recipient would be happy, surprised or feel awkward on receiving the letters. The recipients were handed the letters and asked to express their feelings based on the letter of gratitude they received. The results on the comparison of the reaction the expressers anticipated from the recipients and the recipient’s reaction to the message of appreciation were as follows. Firstly, the expressers overestimated how awkward the recipients would feel on receiving the letter. Secondly, the expressers underestimated how positively the recipient would feel on receiving the latter. Lastly, the expressers significantly underestimated how surprised the recipients would be on what they expressed for in the letter. The researchers concluded that the underestimation of the value of prosocial actions, in this case expressing gratitude, keeps people from in...