How to Plot Anticipation on a Graph
A poem
when I think of anticipation, I immediately see a graph: x-axis — valence (positive, negative emotions) y-axis — arousal (high or arousal).
in the top right quadrant, we have positive, exciting experiences, that embody daring adventures, like sky diving, bungee jumping. or that feeling of lifting off on an airplane.
in the bottom right quadrant, we have positive, soothing experiences, the ones that describe a calm, serene joy of quietly creating, writing, or of consuming and admiring art.
in the bottom left quadrant, we have negative, low arousal emotions, the fatigue and weight of depression that makes daily chores too difficult.
in the top left quadrant, is then those negative, high arousal emotions, MY PERSONAL FIRE ALARM the fight/ flight / freeze / fawn system ready to fling worry in every which direction.
anticipation is a curious feeling, because it’s one of high arousal, way up at the top of that graph, but it can sit smack dab on that y-axis like a fence unsure whether to fall over on the left side, down into a rumination rabbit hole of all the things that could go wrong; unsure whether to waltz over to the right side, of excitable curiosity of the future.
to plot anticipation on this graph, perhaps means I need more than just a dot, but a confidence interval denoting a range of possibilities encompassing the true range of anticipation.
References
Reisenzein, R. (1994). Pleasure-arousal theory and the intensity of emotions. Journal of personality and social psychology, 67(3), 525.
Lucy (The Eggcademic) [she/her] wants to thank 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊. for this week’s prompt! It’s the holidays so I did absolutely take a break and didn’t tackle all of the prompts, but I just had to for this one on anticipation. I visualize emotions so clearly on a grid sometimes that I really want to see how I might lay this out in just words, no graph.
Hope everyone else is having a good, relaxing break! Bookmark these to read when you’re back up and running! Includes pieces by me & Dr. Preeti Singh!
