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While we probably encounter confusion every day, we might not realize just how much it encompasses and what happens in our brains when we experience it. So, to explore it a little bit more, we’ll start from the beginning.

Confusion, as an emotion, belongs to the knowledge emotion family. It’s a profoundly important family of emotions that is associated with learning, exploring, and reflecting. Along with confusion, other emotions belong to this family, like surprise, interest, and awe.

They’re called knowledge emotions because they are caused by knowledge and they foster knowledge. These emotions happen when people learn something unexpected that violates the information they believed to be true. The moment we learn something new, over time, it builds our knowledge about the world around us. Therefore, knowledge emotions are caused by knowledge, and as a result, they foster knowledge.

As a whole group, confusion, along with the rest of the knowledge emotions, motivates people to engage with new and puzzling things instead of avoiding them. Unlike emotions such as fear, anger, or happiness, knowledge emotions don’t gear up the physical body but rather engage the mind, which is very important for humans who are constantly learning.

Confusion on its own happens when we’re faced with something that is both unfamiliar and hard to understand at the same time. Its purpose is to promote thinking and learning. This might not come as obvious to us, as we tend to avoid confusion when we’re learning something new. We enjoy understanding the new information that is presented to us, and a prolonged state of confusion can escalate to frustration or boredom.

However, confusion can be productive when it comes to learning. The key is to recognize it and not allow it to persist for too long. So when a person is challenged with new concepts or ideas, instead of growing frustrated or bored, they should get comfortable with the feeling and seek to resolve it. Feeling confused can indeed be difficult, especially in a society that has attached a negative stigma to it. Thinking through problems and persevering can yield very positive results.