Why Do We Have Emotions? The Social Functions of Emotions

Year 2019, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 11 - 20, 01.06.2019

Mehmet Kavaklı

Abstract

Every people have emotions, and these emotions
sometimes could be positive such as happiness, pride, love and occasionally
negative like anger, sadness or embarrassment. A question comes to people’s
mind at that point. Why do we have emotions? According to the evolutionary
perspective, emotions have functional features for humankind. Emotions which
evolved in the evolutionary history can provide many survival advantages people
against to predators attack, dangerous situation and threats. Besides this, emotions
are socially functional for humans. Humans are social creature and emotion we
express, and experience may regulate their behavior, thoughts, interactions and
relationship. There are some ideas about the social functions of emotions. Thus
the aim of the present review study discuss and examine social functions of
emotion according to the individual, interpersonal and group level with in
light of the literature. 

Keywords

Emotion, Social function, Emotion and social function

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