This seems to point to a strong suspicion of mine (to humbly avoid making bold claims too early) that emotions are fundamentally rooted in physiological sensations and impulses.
Hunger is an instinct and impulse to act towards satisfying an important daily basic need. Food.
A very similar observation might be in the experience or the observation of many people between lust and anger. There's few better ways to get someone to hate you than to get in the way of them and their object of sexual arousal. Which might be because like hunger, it's also an instinct and impulse to act towards satisfying another important biological imperative (from an evolutionary standpoint). Procreation.
In psychology the thing we're talking about I believe is called emotional misattribution. It's when you misinterpret the cause of your emotions.
A similar but still distinct mechanisms known to psychology is emotional displacement, where you vent an emotion at a safer target than the one which caused the emotion. That's what we mean when we say "you're taking it out on me". Not a single convenient word but still very much established in everyday speak.
The difference is with displacement the cause is external and the displacement target is also external.
With hangriness or emotional misattribution, the cause is internal and the convenient target is external.
People seem to be well aware of displacement in operation, but maybe not as aware of the case where you're taking things out on someone because of something happening in your internal physiology. But still aware to the degree that we have the term hangry, and the knowledge of how someones period can lead to vented anger, or how not getting any can lead to the ubiquitous phrase "sexual frustration".
It may be that some misattributions are more common, like hunger turning to anger, sexual desire turning to general frustration, or normal hormonal cycles turning to angry mood. And therefore it may be that a convenient word or phrase for each one is fitting.
If we were to encapsulate the entire psychological concept of emotional misattribution, you would have to include not just misattributions between physiological states/impulses and emotions, but also emotions and emotions.
So in that case I would propose separating the two.
A term for when you experience any emotion which has physiological causes, leading to he misattribution. And another term for when you mistake one emotion for another. Like anger for embarrassment.
In general I find the loose application of the phrase you're making it about something else" quite useful. Followed by an explanation like "you think you're angry but you're actually just embarrassed". Or "I tempted to get angry but I know I'm really just scared".
The whole topic seems to beg for a more clear and useful model of how emotions actually work in relation to both the body and the mind. Which I've been working on for years. But in a way that's intuitive and doesn't rely on reading book on psychology.
More crucially, what's missing, to my mind, both in academia and popular knowledge, is a useful understanding of what emotions are, and what they're for. Which I've also been working on.
This seems to point to a strong suspicion of mine (to humbly avoid making bold claims too early) that emotions are fundamentally rooted in physiological sensations and impulses.
Hunger is an instinct and impulse to act towards satisfying an important daily basic need. Food.
A very similar observation might be in the experience or the observation of many people between lust and anger. There's few better ways to get someone to hate you than to get in the way of them and their object of sexual arousal. Which might be because like hunger, it's also an instinct and impulse to act towards satisfying another important biological imperative (from an evolutionary standpoint). Procreation.
In psychology the thing we're talking about I believe is called emotional misattribution. It's when you misinterpret the cause of your emotions.
A similar but still distinct mechanisms known to psychology is emotional displacement, where you vent an emotion at a safer target than the one which caused the emotion. That's what we mean when we say "you're taking it out on me". Not a single convenient word but still very much established in everyday speak.
The difference is with displacement the cause is external and the displacement target is also external.
With hangriness or emotional misattribution, the cause is internal and the convenient target is external.
People seem to be well aware of displacement in operation, but maybe not as aware of the case where you're taking things out on someone because of something happening in your internal physiology. But still aware to the degree that we have the term hangry, and the knowledge of how someones period can lead to vented anger, or how not getting any can lead to the ubiquitous phrase "sexual frustration".
It may be that some misattributions are more common, like hunger turning to anger, sexual desire turning to general frustration, or normal hormonal cycles turning to angry mood. And therefore it may be that a convenient word or phrase for each one is fitting.
If we were to encapsulate the entire psychological concept of emotional misattribution, you would have to include not just misattributions between physiological states/impulses and emotions, but also emotions and emotions.
So in that case I would propose separating the two.
A term for when you experience any emotion which has physiological causes, leading to he misattribution. And another term for when you mistake one emotion for another. Like anger for embarrassment.
In general I find the loose application of the phrase you're making it about something else" quite useful. Followed by an explanation like "you think you're angry but you're actually just embarrassed". Or "I tempted to get angry but I know I'm really just scared".
The whole topic seems to beg for a more clear and useful model of how emotions actually work in relation to both the body and the mind. Which I've been working on for years. But in a way that's intuitive and doesn't rely on reading book on psychology.
More crucially, what's missing, to my mind, both in academia and popular knowledge, is a useful understanding of what emotions are, and what they're for. Which I've also been working on.