Microemotions and conversation

[Magical Realist]

I propose that underneath the average conversation between two humans there runs a current of fluctuating microemotive shifts that determine the tone of the conversation. There are moments of competition, inciting frustration and projective disparagement. There are moments of mutual affirmation, inciting pleasure and generosity. Psychology to my knowledge has never studied the concept of microemotive shifts. But I perceive in my experience their ongoing affect on the nature of conversations.I have never even heard of microemotions. It's something I just made up. But it makes sense. Why wouldn't emotions have an atomistic etymology?

[Syne]

Microexpressions are the result of the subconscious emotional reactions you're describing.

In 1966 two researchers by the name of Haggard and Isaacs discovered, while looking at films of couples in therapy, what they described as "micromomentary expressions." They noted behaviors that would flash by so quickly they were difficult to see except by slowing the film down. A few years later, building on this earlier work and observing these same behaviors, Paul Ekman coined the term "micro expressions" while he was studying deception.
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...xpressions

I haven't seen any studies claiming to demonstrate that we naturally read and respond to them, but people can certainly learn to recognize them.

[C C]

wouldn't emotions have an atomistic etymology?

The question arises of what replaces language in the thought-forms of animal cognition. The usual option seems to consist of pictures or other sensations which would be very brain-resource gobbling (Temple Grandin, who is autistic, takes that view).

However, I feel that's where / why emotions or related feelings arose -- they were the first crude understandings or "aboutness" applied to the objects and events of perceptual manifestations. (Food for instance, provokes an inner sensation or interpretation of hunger; a lion would receive the emotional meaning of 'fear").

Accordingly, animals would surely have many "micro-emotional" nuances in use which have become vestigial in humans because of our preference for language. The broad, fuzzy versions of emotional / feeling states are still prominently displayed within us, but any refined "sub-hues" lingering from our distant ancestors are often buried / obscured from direct notice. (Or put another way: We haven't invested effort into creating verbal-based conceptions which would make them distinct or bring them into conscious focus -- again, for the apparent lack of universal stimulating need to do so, at least in the past).

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