Do you also check your emails first thing in the morning when you arrive at the office—after your obligatory coffee, of course? Have you ever noticed the following: As you look through the list of new emails, each message is "commented on" in a fraction of a second by an emotion or physical sensation based solely on the sender's name and/or the subject line.
This is where your emotional memory of experiences becomes apparent through what are known as somatic markers. The concept of somatic markers was developed by neuroscientist António Damásio. He theorized that all experiences a person has in the course of their life are stored in their emotional memory. Each experience is evaluated and stored with a simple rating of "positive, do again" or "negative, avoid in the future." This memory of experiences is communicated through emotional and physiological signals: the so-called somatic markers.
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Somatic markers are perceived very differently by different people. Some perceive them as physical sensations ("warm feeling in the stomach"), some as emotions ("a feeling of power"). Other people perceive something happening in their head ("something opens up, a bright glow"). Still others do not perceive them at all. Depending on whether these are markers for experiences that have promoted or disrupted a person's well-being, the following positive or negative signals may appear, for example:
| Positive | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
| BODY SENSATIONS | Smile / raised corners of the mouth | lump in the throat |
| Warm feeling in the stomach | Weak knees / shaky legs | |
| butterflies in the stomach | Increased sweat production | |
| serenity | Tense shoulders | |
| Relaxed body muscles | Upset stomach / Nausea | |
| FEELINGS | joy | anger |
| hope | fear | |
| curiosity | aggression | |
| relief | contempt | |
| calm | disgust | |
| power | resignation | |
| EVENTS IN THE HEAD | Bright glow | darkness |
| sense of freedom | Something is closing itself off | |
| aha moment | fog |
The ability to link bodily sensations with perceptions begins to develop in the womb. It continues throughout a person's socialization. The resulting somatic markers influence thinking by making preliminary decisions and pushing people in a certain direction without them being aware of it. They warn them about things they have had bad experiences with in the past or draw their attention to something important. People often perceive and refer to this as "intuition."
Somatic markers are considered (in humans and animals) to be a kind of experience-based survival system that enables an organism to adapt to changing environmental conditions and to derive hypotheses about the best possible behaviors from stored knowledge. When a person finds themselves in a new situation, their emotional memory is automatically searched for similar situations they have already experienced. Within 200 milliseconds, corresponding somatic markers are sent out. This gives a person access to their entire life experience.
Somatic markers can therefore be used as tools to help us make wise decisions. To trigger a somatic marker, all we need to do is imagine a situation. This allows everyone to rehearse difficult decisions by anticipating them in their mind.
However, somatic markers do not only appear when decisions need to be made. They occur in everything that people do. Sometimes, all it takes is a word or a certain gesture to trigger a negative somatic marker in the other person and thus lose them in communication. On the other hand, positive somatic markers can also be triggered deliberately, thereby creating emotional receptivity in other people.