You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Emotions and Feelings: Emotional Intensity
As discussed in Chapter 1, emotions and feelings evolved as adaptations. They tend to manifest automatically, usually in response to some kind of surprise. Sometimes they spark quick action, not only in humans but in many species—for example, the universal fight-or-flight response to something in the environment that engenders rage or fear, respectively.
2. Emotional Intensity
Intensity refers to the force with which you feel the emotion or feeling. For instance, depending on the circumstances, you might experience only slight amusement about something, such as a TV sitcom, or you might experience extreme amusement.
You might feel only mildly guilty about something you’ve done—or you might feel extremely guilty. (So ... what did you do?)
The next three sections discuss research findings on the emotional effects of three properties of tones: pitch, loudness, and tone color (timbre). Chapter 7 discusses tone duration because beat and rhythm measure it.