The Tibetan Buddhist leader told The New York Times that when individuals become self-aware about the emotions that they’re experiencing, he believes it can have a ripple effect on society.
“We have, by nature or biologically, this destructive emotion, also constructive emotion,” the Dalai Lama said. “This innerness, people should pay more attention to, from kindergarten level up to university level. This is not just for knowledge, but in order to create a happy human being. Happy family, happy community and, finally, happy humanity.”
The project is the result of years of friendship between the Dalai Lama and Ekman. The pair first met in Dharamsala, India, in 2000, and have kept in touch ever since to talk about emotional awareness.
“The Dalai Lama paid Dr. Ekman at least $750,000 to develop the project, which began with a request several years ago,” the Times reports.
For the Atlas, Ekman worked with his daughter, psychologist Dr. Eve Ekman, and the San Francisco-based data visualization firm Stamen Design. Based on a survey of leading scientists and psychologists in the field, Ekman synthesized the full range of human emotions into five broad “continents“: anger, fear, disgust, sadness and enjoyment.
If the categories sound familiar, it’s because they are the same five emotions that are anthropomorphized in the Disney-Pixar film “Inside Out.” Ekman was one of the scientists the movie’s creators consulted while putting the film together.
The online Atlas explains each of these core emotions and then goes a few steps further by linking them to different emotional states, triggers, actions and moods.
For example, users can explore how external triggers like losing a loved one, or being rejected by someone important can result in the emotion of sadness. Sadness then causes a range of emotional states, from disappointment, which is the least intense form, to anguish, which is the most intense. Sadness can also lead to certain associated actions — like feeling ashamed, protesting, and seeking comfort. A longer-lasting result of an emotion is a mood, which can cause the related emotion to be felt more frequently and intensely.
Publiziert Mai 20, 2016
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