Thought and Emotion before Perception of an Experience

Generally we talk as though the experiences we encounter make us think certain things and feel certain ways.

However I think more often than not, the case is that we feel the need to have certain thoughts and emotions and then construct our understandings of experiences so it would make sense that we would think and feel those things in that experience. For example we need to feel that we love someone so we meet a person and craft our idea of them to be a person that we love so then it makes sense when we love them.

I think this is also the case with dreams. We need to think and feel certain things we don't get to during the day, so then we put together these crazy dream scenarios so it will make sense for us to feel and think these things at night.

There are no doubt instances that do effect our thoughts and emotions, but for most of us I think it is far from a one to one correlation we have any understanding of.