Re: REALIZATION IS AN EMOTION?
Although I am sure that you are well aware of the definition and scope of subjective well being and social cognition and can also easily identify at what juncture they can be considered connected if at all, let’s try to understand both the branches of psychology again so that we are clear as to what we are discussing.
Subjective well being is a branch of psychology that ventures to understand how people evaluate their lives, focus of the research has been to understand the difference in the positive level of long term well being, it does ‘t merely strive to gather data for acknowledged clinical cases. A person’s evaluation of life may be cognitive, or it may be in the form of effect. When a person evaluate level of satisfaction of his/her life as a whole as oppose to events driven , his/her evaluation is supposed to be cognitive.
Two factors are considered as hallmark of subjective well being (SWB), one that it takes a holistic picture of self evaluation of the satisfaction, from agony to ecstasy, it doesn’t focus on undesirable state of mind like depression and hopelessness. Second, it is respondent’s internal experience, external frame of reference should not be imposed while assessing SWB. So it should be clear that SWB is a measure of individual’s own perspective. If I am doing well, I am doing well within my own frame work. One thing that we must understand is that SWB is not a measure of mental health, psychologically a very sick , delusional, person may perceive himself to be very well satisfied, regardless of what evaluation criteria he may imply, his level of satisfaction is not a reflection of his psychological health.
Cognition refers to the process of encoding, storing, processing, and retrieving information. It is generally associated with the question of "what" (e.g., what happened, what is going on now, what is the meaning of that information.), when we add the word social, the dynamics of cognition changes from person to a group of persons and thus to a society.
Now come back to the actual question (I am not sure if I understood it well) that you have raised here, since each individual is considered as a brick in the wall of society, it is rather unthinkable that a an individual can turn a blind eye to another individual who is so very closely linked to him/her. The affinity and the strong need to be caring about other is not a question of realization, its is rather a cardinal factor in the creation of a society. Why we are not thoughtful about fellow human beings is not because the process of social cognition doe’s not impart in us a feeling of affinity, we are rather driven by strong vested interests that does not impede us in attaining high level of SWB without giving any head to the well being of other.
If somehow the measure of self satisfaction (SWB) is reflective of well being of other, we might reach at that juncture. We may discuss it further, if you so desire.
social coginition has a cognate - subjective well being. at what juncture do you think that the social cognitive should enable a feeling, and realizing human being to find affinity between care for other's feelings and (if fully aware of own feeling confidently), then with subjective well being? otherwise the person will always remain either selfish or miserably confused and miserably confusing. best, Dushwari