Autor(es):
Correia, Ana Almeida
; Veiga-Branco, Augusta
Data: 2011
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/6918
Origem: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
Assunto(s): Self-awareness; Basic emotions
Descrição
We start from basic emotions using Paul Ekman’s model (1999): joy, sadness,
anger, surprise, disgust, fear and contempt, to study the concepts of Self-
Awareness - Knowing our own emotions - (Goleman, 1995), and Emotional
Awareness - Ability to become aware of one's own emotions - (Bisquerra,
2001).
Objectives: To understand the levels of Emotional Self-awareness/ Emotional
awareness of a group of preschool, primary and lower secondary school
teachers through the identification and reference to the body areas where the
emotion is felt.
Method: A transversal, descriptive and qualitative study, using "grounded
theory" methodology, with semi-structured interviews conducted from
January to March 2011 to a purposive sample of 60 subjects: 7 preschool
teachers and 53 primary and lower secondary school teachers aged 22 to 59,
within 4 to 30 years of working experience. Each group of interviewees has
developed a reflective work indicating the areas of the body where the basic
emotions advocated by Paul Ekman were felt.
Conclusions: The discursive references of the sample evidenced Selfawareness/
Emotional Awareness skills: every teacher identified the bodily
states of these emotions in the study, as shown by the following statements:
joy is felt "face: smile, smaller eyes, (...) gesturing, waving"; sadness is
experienced with "tightness in the chest, drooping mouth, eyes downcast";
anger is referred to "changes in: heart rate, vision and voice"; surprise is felt
"in pulse (heart rate), in voice (running out of words), having no reaction";
disgust is felt "in the stomach (digestive tract), all over the body (sight, smell,
taste and touch)"; fear is felt in the "Heart, Skin and Face (eyes/eyebrows)
and hands"; and contempt is evidenced through "Facial expression/eyes,
Shiver in the chest, Neck, Jaw". These results corroborate the facial
expressions argued by Paul Ekman (1999).
Keywords: self-awareness, basic emotions