0.7 A conversation about measuring emotion and its conclusion: mood  (Page 12/26)

So the person mowing the lawn for an hour or so I would say developed a certain mood for that hour. A mood is just an emotional state, a set of feelings that are similar or point in a certain direction. Like someone could be a mood to do cooking, and they could have a certain set of feelings that come along with that. From the time they start cooking to the time they finish the feeling of the mood they are in for cooking is going to change, but is still the same mood with the same basic feelings. So a mood then in my view is just a certain set of feelings that relate to one thing (like cooking, mowing a lawn, or being happy or sad). An emotional state is also a certain set of feelings however they aren't necessarily about one thing, it is your entire emotional state including everything going on. A mood is just the emotions related to what the mood is about, which is probably going to be what you are doing. You could be in the mood to do cooking without actually doing cooking, and in that way you'd be experiencing some of the emotions you do when you cook without actually doing it. However, you could describe your entire emotional state as a mood if you labeled the mood well enough or if your entire emotional state was simple enough to be described as one mood (though I don't know if you could say someone's entire emotional state was of "cooking" or "happiness" for example).

Classifying moods

A psychological mood is a relatively long lasting emotional state (a few days or so) (a temporary mood I would say (which is the kind of mood I am referring to in this article) lasts from a few minutes to a few hours). A mood therefore could be comprised of many different feelings at the same time. Moods can be positive, negative, neutral, or a mix. You could have a unique mood that maybe only you experience, such as a certain attitude that comes up around someone or someplace. You could then be in your own personal "mood" - because this mood has a unique feeling. Maybe in this mood you are both sad and happy at the same time, maybe you can classify what emotions are occurring and know that you might be the only person to experience a mood like that. Any emotion or feeling could be a part of a mood. It is really just a matter of how much of the feeling you can identify and label.

I would say that love is more of a mood than joy, because love is a much more complex emotion. If you are joyful, then you aren't sad, you are only describing the single emotion of happiness. If you are experiencing love, there might be many emotions that go along with it. Similarly, aggressiveness is more complicated than just being vigilant - if you are aggressive, you could be happy, frustrated, sad, optimistic; however if you are vigilant you are just being "ready". However, that is just how it seems to me, you could be joyful but still be in a more complicated mood than if you were experiencing the emotion of love, and you can be vigilant and be in a more complicated mood than you are when it seems to you that you are being "aggressive".