When you are learning about psychology, you might come across the term emotional maturity. Upon hearing or reading about it for the first time, you might be curious about it. For those who want to know about emotional maturity, you are on the right page as you will be able to find out about it here. All the information included here is from an article by Alif Aryyo Anggoro Putro posted on Kampus Psikologi.
About Emotion
The word emotion or emotional is often associated with various human traits. Individuals who express anger and sadness are often labeled as emotional people. Then, people tend to relate the emotional maturity of someone to the way they make decisions in their lives. They consider people as adults or kids by the way they make decisions. The question is, is the understanding of emotions and maturity correct? What are the characteristics of people with emotional maturity and what are the factors that influence it?
Emotion in psychology is defined by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a complex reaction pattern that involves a few elements, including experience, behavior, and psychological elements of someone to deal with an issue or event in their life.
There are a number of examples of emotional forms. Some of them include happiness, fear, and shame. These emotions occur as a response to how people interpret an event. For instance, one is in a situation that makes them threatened. In this kind of situation, there is a high chance of the emotion of fear to arise. If, in the same situation, they feel unwelcome in their environment, they are more likely to feel embarrassed.
The Role of Emotions in Behavior
Emotions form a large part of how people behave. However, they act not as the main cause but as a form of feedback, anticipation, and reflection on an event that occurs. This kind of feedback is the one that stimulates people to gain weight and creates guidelines for their behavior.
Apparently, it is possible for behaviors to be created with the aim of generating or avoiding specific emotional feelings. For instance, one runs away from danger so that they don’t feel fear and, ultimately, the act saves them from danger. Another example is one that improves their relationships with their surroundings so that they don’t feel the shame of being ostracized.
In addition to being a guide to shaping the behavior that they will take, emotions also produce rapid responses that affect the cognition of people to produce behavior in a short time. Besides, this response also triggers memory of the emotional result of past behavior, so that it is useful as a guide for current behavior. To pursue or to avoid a certain emotion, there are a number of examples of actions to choose from. Emotional maturity is the one that influences people to choose an action.
Emotional Maturity
According to Menninger (1999), emotional maturity is the ability to be able to deal with reality constructively. This kind of ability also involves the development process of a person to continue to pursue emotional health both intra-psychically and intra-personal. Aside from that, emotional maturity is also known as the ability of someone who has the capacity to delay satisfaction and has the ability to withstand the frustration they feel by planning things in the long term and can hold or revise their expectations according to the situation that has occurred.
Those who have good emotional maturity have the capacity to make adjustments with themselves, family members, friends, and society. They are good at controlling emotions. However, it should be noted that emotional maturity does not mean having every single capacity mentioned above, but also having the ability to enjoy every single process.
Keep in mind that emotional maturity and social maturity are two different things. For those who have no idea about social maturity, it refers to the social ability and social awareness that people have reached an age where there are norms that apply in a specific age group. The characteristics of emotional maturity and social maturity are different.
Characteristics of Emotional Maturity
According to Lamonthe (2020), there are several characteristics of emotional maturity, including:
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- Take responsibility for actions
- Can show empathy, can apologize assertively
- Able to face vulnerability, willing to accept help from others
- Have the capacity to set limits for themselves
The exact factors that shape emotional maturity and how to increase emotional intelligence are unknown because there are some different opinions about them. It seems like the debate about the relationship between emotional maturity and age and how to measure it will not settle in the near future because it is still a hot topic to this day. The main reason why people always debate about it is because emotional maturity is subjective. Apart from that, it also has a relationship between the environment in which an individual lives and other social factors, such as religion, politics, culture, and law.
Opinion
The author thinks that emotional maturity is not affected by age. Instead, it can be sharpened by experiences in life, especially failure. These experiences are the ones that will be triggered to be remembered by the emotional response as a consideration for future actions. Remember that the decision whether to repeat the pleasant emotion or to stay away from it is in one’s hand.
A bookworm and researcher especially related to law and citizenship education. I spend time every day in front of the internet and the campus library.
