The Role of Cognitive Factors in Recognizing Emotional States

The topic of our exploration is The Role of Cognitive Factors in Recognizing Emotional States.

The Relevance of the topic. This problem is in the focus of attention of many scientists, who work in the field of Philosophy and Psychology. In recent years a considerable amount of valuable works has been done in this field. Today we can mention three tendencies in investigating this subject. The first one is focused on the functions of expression, the second - is based on the idea that people are able to understand the emotional states quite differently and the third tendency underlines the necessity of raising ecological validity of experiments. In our research the material for assessing emotional states are natural states which provide higher ecological validity of the procedure and just this determines the motivation for our study.

The object of our research is recognizing emotional states of another person.

The subject of our research is cognitive characteristics related to the recognition of emotional states of another person.

The aim of our investigation is to find out and to examine a connection between the peculiarities of recognizing emotional state by an observer and his/her cognitive characteristics.

To achieve the aim of our exploration we have formulated the following research questions:

• Firstly to give a review of the problem

• Secondly to analyze all investigations on the topic

• Thirdly to choose or develop the right method for measuring recognition of emotional states

• Finally to develop the model of recognizing emotional states.

Two factors are taken into account – the result and the process while recognizing emotional states of another person. These two factors form the connections with cognitive characteristics of an observer. This is the hypothesis of our study.

The methods of our investigation. According to the structure of organization our exploration is correlative and includes the methods of statistic data processing (correlation analysis). The specific experimental method for a valid assessment of natural emotional states was used for carrying out experiments.

The original contribution of our study is the development of a specific experimental method allowing to get a valid assessment by an observer of natural emotional states of another person.

The practical significance of our investigation. The results of our study can be used by specialists (social workers, actors, teachers, psychologists) in working out recommendations raising the efficiency of assessment of emotional states of people.

Implementations. The results of our exploration were presented at scientific conferences.

On the basis of the work made we have come to the following conclusion:

• In recognizing emotional states two factors are distinguished: the result and the process

• There are individual and psychological differences in the result and process of recognizing emotional states

• Two groups of factors in recognizing emotional states are determined:

• The first group focuses on individual peculiarities of cognitive conditions of an observer

• The second group outlines peculiarities of information, available to recognizing of emotional states.