Hot and Cold Emotions
Start by asking students to write down on a piece of paper three things people have done that have made them happy recently and three that have made them mad.
- These can be either online or offline.
Tell them to think back to those moments and try to remember how they felt:
How long did they stay angry or happy?
What did feeling that way make them do?
What did it make them want to do?
- These questions are for students to reflect on, not for sharing with the class.
Tell students that happiness and anger are examples of “hot” emotions that can be hard to control and can make us do things we normally wouldn’t.
- Ask students to name some other “hot” emotions (examples might include fear, excitement, frustration and jealousy).
Ask students:
Do we always know when we’re feeling these hot emotions?
What might be some times when we’re feeling them without realizing it?
- For example, if we get scared, that fear doesn’t stop right away even when the thing we were scared of does – or even if it turns out that it wasn’t really scary.
Now have students access the student chapter What Do Hot Emotions Feel Like? or project it on a screen or digital whiteboard.
Ask students:
How do we feel when we’re happy or excited?
What are the ways our body shows that we’re feeling a hot emotion?
Have students guess what a hot emotion might feel like in each spot where there is an exclamation mark, then have them click or tap the hotspot to see if they were right.
Now ask:
How does being in a “hot” emotional state affect how we think and make decisions?
- It’s hard to think clearly when we’re feeling a hot emotion.
- Hot emotions make it harder to slow ourselves down: when something triggers a hot emotion, we usually want to do something about it right away.
- We also often take things a lot more personally when we’re feeling hot emotions, so we may react more strongly to things – which can make what we’re feeling even stronger.