By Paul Silvia, University North Carolina, Greensboro. When people think of emotions they usually think of the obvious ones, such as happiness, fear, anger, and sadness. This module looks at the knowledge emotions, a family of emotional states that foster learning, exploring, and reflecting. Surprise, interest, confusion, and awe come from events that are unexpected, complicated, and mentally challenging, and they motivate learning in its broadest sense, be it learning over the course of seconds (finding the source of a loud crash, as in surprise) or over a lifetime (engaging with hobbies, pastimes, and intellectual pursuits, as in interest). The module reviews research on each emotion, with an emphasis on causes, consequences, and individual differences. As a group, the knowledge emotions motivate people to engage with new and puzzling things rather than avoid them. Over time, engaging with new things, ideas, and people broadens someone’s experiences and cultivates expertise. The knowledge emotions thus don’t gear up the body like fear, anger, and happiness do, but they do gear up the mind—a critical task for humans, who must learn essentially everything that they know.

This 3-minute video lesson looks at how annual Interest varyies with debt maturity. [Core Finance playlist: Lesson 135 of 184]

This 8-minute video lesson provides more discussion of simple and compound interest. [Core Finance playlist: Lesson 2 of 184]

This 10-minute video lesson looks at what interest is. It compares simple versus compound interest. It is the first video in Kahn Core Finance playlist. [Core Finance playlist: Lesson 1 of 184]

This 4-minute video lesson explains the yield curve. [Core Finance playlist: Lesson 136 of 184]

This 3-minute video lesson compares quantitative easing in Japan to "credit easing" in the United States. [Core Finance playlist: Lesson 152 of 184]