Human beings generally take two stances to life – a constructive stance and a defensive stance. A constructive stance involves an approach that tends to accept reality, seek possibility, and focus on the best way forward. A defensive stance sees threat in situations and uses various strategies to repel or avoid that threat. Starting at an early age, when we become aware of threats to our safety and based on our experiences, we develop a tendency for one or the other and this establishes patterns of predictions related to those tendencies. For most people, unfortunately this results in a generally defensive stance in life.
These patterns of prediction manifest simulations and matching internal motion. For example, if we tend to predict threat then we will more often be in a defensive stance and be on guard. Our body’s resources will adjust for that. As a result, we tend to have patterns of affect associated with these stances and it is these patterns that we refer to as ‘moods’.
As we are always in some state of affect, even if that state is neutral, the implication is we are always in a mood. Generally, our mood sits in the background and we do not really notice much about how we feel. It is only when we focus on how we feel that we can identify our mood.
However, this is not always the case and some moods such as depression and anxiety become quite consuming. To better understand this, let us return to affect and its constituents, valence, and arousal
Valence can be represented as a scale of pleasantness and unpleasantness and this points to whether we embrace or seek to reject our current experience. Remember, this is linked to interoception, which is indicating how replete or taxed are our body’s resources. The more taxed our body resources and the level of impact predicted on our body’s resources, the more unpleasant the experience. Our moods can exist on a wide range of pleasant or unpleasant experiences.
Arousal can also be represented on a scale and this points to how engaged we are with the world. As moods are in the background, in this work the level of arousal for a mood is defined as being in the low to medium range. The level and extent of arousal helps us distinguish between moods and emotions and is one aspect addressing the question of when does a mood become an emotion in terms of a human’s physiology.
Our moods are linked to our habitual patterns of predictions, which are linked to our core concerns. At any given time, those predictions speak to what we see is possible; what Rafael Echeverria called our ‘space of possibilities’. Our space of possibilities grows and shrinks in response to our predictions and represents an ongoing dynamic in our daily life. Our mood establishes the context for what we see as possible. The nature of our underlying stance will impact the sorts of possibilities we envisage. From a defensive stance, we will tend to focus on the possibility of loss. From a constructive stance, we will tend to focus on the what might enhance our life.
Our energy level also plays a significant role here. If we are low on energy, our predictions will occur in that context and tend us towards a more defensive stance. If our energy levels are high, it allows for a more engagement with the world and a constructive approach. This does not mean we cannot have defensive predictions when our energy levels are high, just that constructive ones become more likely.
So, to sum up:
- Moods are products of our habitual patterns of predicting and resultant simulations;
- Those predictions involve either a defensive or a constructive stance (attitude) to the world;
- These stances are related to our core concerns and predictions;
- Any simulations generate internal motion and the allocation of our body’s resources which, through our interoceptive network we perceive as affect – valance and arousal. Those sensations form the basis of what we term ‘moods’;
- Moods provide the context and a predisposition for how we make future predictions;
- Affect is ever-present and therefore so are moods;
- Moods are defined as our background emotional states;
- Moods generally exist in low to medium states of arousal;
- Our energy levels play a role in our predictions and therefore our stance to the world and our mood; and
- Our mood affects our space of possibilities.