I chose to read the book, “The Emotional Life of Your Brain” written my Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D. Over the past 30 years as a researcher at Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison he has made great strides connecting human emotions with brain functions and location. Davidson is also a devout Buddhist who incorporates Buddhist teaching and practice into his work. Throughout this book Davidson refers back to his experiences in India and Sir Lanka meditating and teachings from the Dalai Lama. This book covers longevity of Davidson research and the six emotional continuums that human’s fall into, which he calls our emotional fingerprint. The six emotional dimensions are as follows, Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Sensitivity to conduct, and Attention. Davidson concluded that every person has these traits, and the ability to make them stronger. Through numerous experiments and with convincing data, we now know that a person can improve upon these areas. Our DNA has predetermined who we are going to be, but through practice, exercises, experiences and meditation we can change what was predetermine about us. This book goes into a step-by-step outline of the six dimensions …show more content…
This type of experiment often referred to nature vs. nurture. According to Davidson and Begley (2012), “Children, in short, seem to come into the world with preexisting temperaments and Emotional Styles, suggesting that they must be shaped by the genes they inherit from their parents. After all, a newborn has not had any life experience that could influence their Emotional Style, which leaves only genes as presumptive determining factors” (p. 91-92). To test this theory Davidson did a longevity study to determine if child Emotional Style is determined by their DNA or does environmental factors also play a role in determining a child’s Emotional
The ability to express and control our own emotions is vital for our survival in society and the work place but so is our ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. Salovey and Mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of emotional intelligence (Cherry, 2015).
Everything is criticized at every level in this story, the people by the main character, the main character by the author and even the story by the author as well. The cruel egoistic personality of Anders is definitely identifiable through these different levels of criticism. I will prove that the inner motivation of this behaviour derives from Anders' egoistic personality which sometimes makes him cruel against others, sometimes against himself. Furthermore, I will prove that whenever Anders criticizes somebody or something he actually tries to punish because of the imperfectness of the object. In order to make the referring to the different part of the story easier I divide it into three parts. The first part ends when the robbers appear at the door of the bank, the second ends when one of the robbers shoots at Anders and the left is the third part.
Science cannot explain everything but it strives to look for answers and relies on proof. Religion is based solely on faith and believes in many things that do not make sense and do not have proof to support its ideas. The belief that there is a substance beyond the element that takes up no space, but is still connected with the body is one of them. The belief that the mind or soul are not linked to the body and that they are both two separate substances. The body is one and the mind is another. This belief is not logical and does not make sense now that without the brain, which is a substance that makes up a body, a person could not function in the world. The mind and the brain are one, and these two elements cannot be separated now that the brain is just another part of the body.
One such example of this was the Stanford Prison Experiment. “In 1971, the psychologist Phillip Zimbardo tried to show that prison guards and convicts would tend to slip into predefined roles, behaving in a way that they thought was required, rather than using their own judgement and morals” (Shuttleworth). Zimbardo believed that the test subjects would act based on the environment they were placed in, and he was correct: “The experiment appeared to show how subjects reacted to the specific needs of the situation…” (Zimbardo). Both the prisoners and guards began behaving in a way that suited the circumstances, regardless of how they believed they should act. They were changed by the environment. A second example of this can be found in the 1960’s Milgram Obedience Experiment. In this investigation, “Each participant took the role of a ‘teacher’ who would deliver a shock to the ‘student’ every time an incorrect answer was produced. While the participant believed that he was delivering real shocks to the student, the student was actually a confederate in the experiment who was simply pretending to be shocked” (Cherry). In the end, the experiment produced results in favor of the ‘nature’ side of the nature versus nurture argument. “...this experiment suggests that situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining obedience…” (Cherry). The environment obviously affects human behavior strongly, and both of these investigations reflect that
As far as I could remember I was never really any good at school. I couldn’t concentrate on things for no more than 5 minutes at a time I would either get discouraged or find it too easy and just give up. An author by the name of Carol Dweck wrote an article called “Brainology” in it Dweck describes that there are two types of mindsets fixed and growth. Those who are afraid to fail so they never try anything new are ones with a fixed mindset and the growth mindset are those who are not afraid to fail and find a new challenge an opportunity to learn something new. I guess you can say that I had a bit of a fixed mindset growing up I was always too scared to look stupid that I didn’t want to fail because I didn’t want to disappoint my siblings
Scientists make a good point about genes but I believe physical aspects come through genetics, but that personality development is shaped based solely on how a person has been nurtured through their lives. All children are bad at one time in their lives; consider this, a 4 year old girl throws a book at her brother, and is punished she is put in the corner.
In the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, the central thesis that he tries to point out is that emotional intelligence may be more important than I.Q. in determining a person’s well being and success in life. At first I didn’t know what Goleman was talking about when he said emotional intelligence, but after reading the book I have to say that I agree completely with Goleman. One reason for my acceptance of Goleman's theory is that academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. To me, emotions can be just as intelligent as your I.Q. In this essay I hope to provide sufficient evidence to show why I agree with Goleman’s thesis on emotional intelligence.
Clark (2005) found three temperament dimensions that underlie both personality and psychopathology: negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and disinhibition. Her theory is that these temperaments differentiate during development, becoming specific traits, and that the sharing of these traits with certain environmental factors leads to specific personality-disorder associations. Her temperament dimensions bear a resemblance to factor analytic studies that have found DSM disorders to divide into two or three dimensions: negative affectivity (internalization), externalization (disinhibition), and psychotic experiences (Widiger & Samuel, 2005; Wright et al., 2013). Mood, anxiety, and many personality disorders map onto the negative affectivity dimension, while substance use and antisocial disorders map onto the externalization dimension (Widiger & Samuel,
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something- your gut, destiny, life, home, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life” (Steve Jobs, 1955). Throughout all of my 25 years blessed on planet earth, my personality have somewhat been compared to that of a roller coaster, filled with many ups and downs, positives and negatives, rewards and punishments. As such, I have frequently embarked on numerous journeys in a dyer attempt to discover and recollect the shattered fragments left of me. With this being said, the term personality however, could be defined as “the patterns of behavior and ways of thinking and feeling that are distinctive for each individual” (Tischler, 2007). At the completion of this paper, I intend to achieve answers to some pertinent questions for instance how has the development of personality affected or impacted on human nature. I also hope to discover the various transitions of my personality starting from infancy to present and the reason or motives behind such changes. Finally, I would like to be able to gain an in-depth understanding of a variety of Personality Theories especially the Psychoanalytical Theory of
When discussing the relationship of brain and behavior, the materialist view of human experience runs into conflict with the historically dominant religious accounts. Recent studies, however, suggests that there may be a "middle view" between the two world-views. Religions, especially Buddhism, stress the role of meditation in one's spiritual growth. Meditation has tangible psychological and physiological benefits, though, which can be explained strictly in neurobiological terms. Understanding of how meditation affects the brain, and, by extension, human behavior, also gives insight into consciousness, the role of feedback loops, and the nature of the I-function.
Some experts believe that our Emotional Intelligence Quotient is more important that are basic Intelligence Quotient. Some researchers believe that individuals are born with their attributes of Emotional Intelligence, yet others believe Emotional Intelligence can be learned and strengthened. Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer have led research efforts on the theory of Emotional Intelligence. In their article titled “The Intelligence of Emotional Intelligence,” they claim that Emotional Intelligence is “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” This definition has led Salovey and Mayer to propose a model identifying four different factors of Emotional Intelligence within an individual.
A website called “Daily Mail” titled “Is Personality Determined by Nature or Nurture?” was spot on. Author Nicola Rowe talked about a study that resembled my initial outlook on the subject. Minus a few minor details I agreed. Apparently “scientists found foster parents have a greater impact on personality than directly inherited genes from parents. Researchers at University of Hamburg used Zebra Finches to study how personality is transferred between offspring and
Nature versus nurture is a long question of whether genetics influence environmental or environmental influences, genetics (Myers, 2014). While we are all born with 20,000 to 25,000 genes there are some that are dormant and some active; believed that environmental influences effect which stay dormant and which become active (Myers, 2014). Throughout Bandura’s experiment, we can see that while some children already seem exposed to elements to awaken the genes for anger and aggression. While others seem to repeat what they saw the adult do, but not with as much force and
in said children. A study that can be used to explain the effect parents have on their
Emotions have developed along with the sophistication of the brain as an organ throughout the process of evolution. Instinctive feelings necessary for survival, such as thirst, hunger, and sex drive, are the oldest and most primitive “emotions”, and they are present in many non-human creatures. The monitoring systems in an animal’s body send signals to the brain when the body is in need of food or water, and this triggers the firing of neurons that in turn advise the creature to search for these necessities. Because these instinctual feelings are reflex related, they originate in the brain stem of primitive creatures (do Amaral). As animals progressed and their brains advanced from just a brain stem into the cerebellum and eventually the cerebral hemispheres, they began to experience more complex, affective emotions including love, friendship, and maternal care (Bekoff 861). Humans possess the most complex brains, and therefore it is believed that humans experience the widest range of emotions. Experimental evidence has shown that human emotions result largely from interactions between several different parts of the brain, known collectively as the limbic system (Thompson 29). The more psychological view of emotions claims an emotion is expressed in reaction to one’s individual interpretation of the surrounding environment. This explanation provides a slightly higher-level view of the issue at hand. However, how and why humans feel something during an emotional experience is still unknown and heavily debated. I believe that these feelings arise as part of the epiphenomenon of consciousness that is unique to living beings, and therefore the complete human emotional experience cannot be mechanically replicated....