Keeping the Mood Diary

Keeping the mood diary faced us with one problem referring to fixing the exact emotional condition that was experienced at the moment. There are many naturally occurring moods a person can experience: anger, fear, disgust, surprise and so on. But the most interesting part is that they are different from what they were before. For instance, if a person is experiencing joy now, it will not be the same joy that he experienced yesterday. Two of these emotional conditions called ?joy? will have different power, different cognitions and different manifestations. It was very hard to put the experienced emotions into the limit of one word when they are so different. Often while filling in the mood dairy we were forced to put the experienced emotions in that kind of limits, though felt that were not experiencing exactly what was filled in the diary. The description of the emotion has to have more than one word. The emotional theories help in explaining the nature of naturally occurring moods therefore make it easier to measure and understand them.

For example if we talk about cognitive theories of emotion, the theory of Festinger is one of the most popular .It is called the theory of cognitive discord. According to this theory a man experiences positive emotions, when his expectations are confirmed, and cognitive beliefs come true. So it happens when real results of his activity correspond to the ones intended to achieve, and are in a consonance. The negative emotions appear and increase in events, when there is a divergence between the expected and real results of man's own activity, discrepancy or discord. The theory of cognitive discord is quite often used in modern psychology to explain the deeds of a person and his actions in different social situations. Another cognitive theory, which makes it easier to see the nature of emotions, is the cognitive-physiological theory of Shehter. Its main idea is that emotions appear on the base of physiological excitation and cognitive estimation. Certain event or situation causes physiological excitation and a man needs to evaluate the contents of the situation, which has caused this excitation. The type or quality of the emotion, experienced by an individual, depends not on the sensation that appears due to the physiological excitation but on the individual's evaluation of the situation, in which this occurs. According to Shehter's theory the same physiological excitation can be felt by a person as joy or as anger (or any other emotion), depending on his own interpretation of the situation. One of the most outstanding biological theories of emotions is the one offered by Lange and James. According to the James-Lange's theory organic changes is the prime cause of the emotions.

First under the influence of external stimulus typical for emotions changes occur in the organism of a person and only then - as their effect - appears the emotion itself. These theories give different views on the nature of emotions but they definitely show that emotions are unique processes touch a lot of sphere's and only the knowledge of this can help to measure emotions and understand their nature.

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