Is Money An Emotion?

Emotions and feelings are often used interchangeably.

A question like ‘how are you feeling?’ can tell much about the person’s emotion at that time. Emotions describe a person’s psychological state or state of mind at a particular time. That you are happy now doesn’t mean you will be happy in 20 minutes.

Although emotion has numerous components, feelings are often regarded as the most significant. Generally, researchers who study emotions ask people to describe their emotions by stating how they feel. Even if a person is telling the truth, we don’t know for sure if they’re telling the truth. Sometimes facial expressions alone can not describe how a person is feeling.

As a side note, different people may interpret words like “mad” or “amused” in various ways. While self-reported experience may have certain limits, it is still the most straightforward way to gauge how someone feels about their emotional state.

Types of emotion

There are six basic emotions that are felt by everyone, regardless of their cultural background or ethnicity. As long as you’re human, at some point in your life, you will have the following feelings:

• Sadness – sadness is often expressed with a frown on the face. And it can signify grief, loss, homelessness, and disappointment.
• Happiness – happiness is expressed with a smile or laughter. Happiness can be a result of satisfaction, accomplishment, and joy.
• Disgust – the expression of disgust is a little dramatic. It can be expressed with unlooking and a wrinkled nose. Disgust is an awful feeling.
• Astonishment – astonishment or surprise is an emotional state that comes with an unexpected event. It is often expressed with raised eyebrows and an open mouth.
• Fear – fear is essential to man’s survival. It can be expressed with every part of the body, wide eyes, body trembling, or shaking. Fear triggers the fight or flight action of human beings.
• Anger – anger can result from frustration. It is expressed facially with the eyebrows coming close and wrinkles on the face.

If we try to go further and make these feelings bigger, we will find other feelings like shame, pride, excitement, and embarrassment.

Emotion and money

Flipping through pages and reading about money, you will see that money has a lot to do with regard to human psychology and emotion. Although there is no human emotion called money, money plays a vital role in your present state of mind. This is far from a stretch of the imagination.

We can tend to feel comfortable when we have a certain level of money within our respective accounts. If we have several bills due, and we do not have the right level of funds in our bank accounts, we can feel frustrated, angry, and sad.

The reason why we are feeling that way is because we feel as if we are restricted and unable to keep up with our necessities. If we dig even deeper, we may realize that we are upset because if we are stuck continuously worrying about the present, how can we plan for the future? If we are falling behind on bills and barely make it each month with the help of credit cards, then it may seem like we are doomed to continue in the same loop.

Whether we think about this or not, that may be present deep in our minds. At times, it may appear and then we may swat it away by thinking about something else.

But these fears and frustrations can always be there and will stay there and may amplify until we address them.

Some people tend to go on a shopping spree when they are sad, while some have a spending habit that makes them sad. As human beings, when things happen to us, we have a way we react to them. This reaction is seen in our facial appearance, attitude to people or something, and even posture. 

A person can be sad when he loses money, depressed when the value of bitcoin dips, or anxious when you take a trade and expect it to be in profit. At the same time, a person can feel envious of what somebody else has. Money (the lack of it) sometimes determines the emotion of a person. 

Same way, emotion has a role in a person’s financial decisions. For instance, forex traders will have to learn how to master their emotions so that it doesn’t get in the way of their trading.

Common human emotions related to money.

According to Forbes, the most common emotions of man in relation to money are envy, shame, fear, and guilt.

The feeling of envy comes when a person sees what someone else has and wants to be in the same position as the person. Normally when you talk about envy in relation to money, you don’t envy someone that has less. Envy comes when you look up to someone that has more.

There are a lot of fears that come to mind when it comes to money. As human beings, we tend to fear things we cannot predict. Hence we ask questions like, what if I don’t have enough?

What if I’m humiliated? What if the stock market crashes? All these questions are a result of fear. 

Sometimes we also fear what we become if we have or don’t have. 

The feeling of shame comes when somebody does not have or is not able to afford some of the basic necessities. Shame has caused people to be depressed and even engage in crime to earn a living.

How do my feelings about money impact my financial goals, money management, and behavior?

Your feelings about money can positively or negatively impact a person’s financial goals. Most of the negative emotions like shame, guilt, and fear, have a way they limit people from making financial decisions because of fear of failure. 

If at any time you feel your emotions are getting in the way of your finances, the best thing to do is to talk to a financial advisor and keep positive-minded people in your circle.

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