Love DOES make us warm inside while disgust turns our stomach: Graphic reveals how emotions cause real physical symptoms

If you’ve ever felt a warm glow inside when in love or hot headed with anger, there may have been more to it than you thought.

Scientists have suspected for a long time that emotions are connected to a range of physiological change and now a study has shown that emotional states are associated with specific sensations regardless of a person’s culture.

The research visually shows that heartbroken people really do feel an ache in their chest, weak with sadness or feel happiness spreading over their entire body.

Being in love makes a person feel a warm glow everywhere apart from their knees, perhaps hinting that there may be something in the popular saying that the object of a person’s affection makes them ‘weak at the knees’.

Sadness leaves our limbs feeling weak and we are extra-aware of activity in our chest – and heart.

Depression also leaves us feeling weak, while disgust is felt in the throat and digestive system.  

Basic emotions including anger and fear cause an increase in sensation in the upper chest area, which could be because we are subconsciously preparing for a fight.

Dailymail.co.uk

The findings come from Finnish researchers who showed 700 volunteers films and read them stories designed to evoke particular emotions.

The men and women were then given outlines of bodies and asked to colour in the parts they felt became more active or less active.

The results were the same across cultures, with love ‘felt’ right down to people’s toes and happiness suffusing the whole body with feeling.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said that such physical feelings may underpin the way we experience emotions.

The University of Turku researchers said: ‘Unravelling the subjective bodily sensations associated with human emotions may help us better understand mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.’