![]() What sinks in could be a bereavement, a lottery win, a breakup, the birth of a child, a sporting victory or defeat, the loss of a job, a medical diagnosis. By reflecting on this process, we can gain important insights into the nature of human emotional experience, which serve to challenge certain established ways of thinking about emotion.įirst of all, what exactly is it that takes time to sink in? Talk of things sinking in always concerns important events and their effects. Rather, it is a dynamic, temporally extended process, which is often experienced as a process – it can feel as though something is still sinking in, or hasn’t yet sunk in. It does not consist of a brief episode, a sequence of discrete episodes, or an enduring mood. ![]() However, neither of these categories accommodates the experience of something ‘sinking in’. Episodic emotions tend to be distinguished from moods, which last longer and are also less specifically focused – while we might be momentarily angry about something in particular, a lingering bad mood envelops a wider situation. For example, in an influential article in 2005, the psychologist Klaus Scherer describes an emotion as ‘ an episode of interrelated, synchronised changes’ elicited by a significant stimulus. ![]() There is a tendency in the philosophical literature on emotion to focus on brief emotional episodes, such as ‘John is afraid of the dog,’ ‘Jane is happy that it is her birthday,’ and ‘Sarah is angry about Tim’s behaviour.’ We find a similar tendency in the scientific literature, much of which emphasises emotional episodes and the components they incorporate. As such, it falls outside of the two main categories that are used for thinking about emotional experience: episodic emotions and moods. Perhaps the main reason for its neglect is that ‘sinking in’ is a process that often unfolds over long periods of time. It in fact concerns an important aspect of our emotional life, one that has been neglected. In reflecting on important events and their implications, we often find ourselves saying things like ‘It hasn’t sunk in yet,’ ‘It’s still sinking in,’ and ‘It’ll take time to sink in.’ This sort of talk is more than a common turn of phrase. 0:01 Brought to you by Curio, a Psyche partner The impact of important events is more than an emotion or mood – it must ‘sink in’, which is a process that unfolds in time
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