Emotions represent bodily feelings experienced as arousal of the nervous system. Stress involves an emotional reaction, especially a reaction involving negative emotions. No one else can experience your feelings in the same way that you do. An implication of this fact is you have to be responsible for your feelings. They are not happening to anyone else. No one can make you angry except yourself.

Emotions are generated to signal a need. But how are emotion states generated? Research has provided arguments for and against what comes first - a feeling or a thought. Some writers argue that feelings are more important than cognition in determining attitudes. It has been quoted: "That since feeling is first, (he) who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you." It seems for some that human beings are ruled more by emotions than anything else. Perhaps this is true.

On the other hand, other researchers recognise the minimum for cognitive-activated emotion as appraisal. And that perception, or appraisal, is one aspect of cognition - mental activities that enable you to know and make decisions about the world.

The debate on whether people are responsible for their emotions or emotion behaviour or whether emotions produce involuntary behaviour will continue. To Mike and Karen Gosling emotion is integral to the construct of emotional intelligence. Emotion informs and influences intelligence. It seems possible that you could command through your emotions; thought comes before feeling. Goslings concept of EAR-Identity carries this idea further, that a person can influence their behaviour cognitively through developing their emotional intelligence in a framework of emotional leadership practice - ELP, originated by Mike Gosling in 2004..

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