Theories of Emotions
Emotions:
Definition:
“A response of the whole organism, involving physical arousal, expressive behaviors and conscious experiences are known as emotions” (David Myers, 2007).
Explanation:
Physiologically emotions are closely related to arousal in the nervous system. They are a kind of complex feeling which affects our behavior by changes in the psychological as well as physical surroundings. The explanation of different events is done by the process of cognition; an important feature of emotion.
For instance, when one feels disgust it is the response of something bad or dirty. People who are social express their emotions more often but those who like solitude mostly hide their emotions. So emotions are also linked to tendency of one’s behavior (Schacter, Daniel L. 2011).
Theories of Emotion:
Origin:
The different theories on emotions arose in the 3rd century B.C. at the time of Ancient Greece and Ancient China. While the western philosophical studies labeled emotions in many different ways. According to Aristotle to have virtue it is necessary to have emotions, as its important ingredient. As a result of different attempts made emotions were given importance and studies were performed in an analytical way in the 19th century (Suchy, Yana 2011) (Aristotle).
Evolutionary Theories:
Charles Darwin put forth a point in the 1870 that emotions came into their form because they have modifying features. For instance, disgust emerged because the individual by responding in different ways to this emotion increased his survival rate. The expressions of individuals face are in born, the individual soon identifies the expressions on one’s face to judge whether other person is happy to meet him or not. The different theo...
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...he exciting fact and our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.”
“The nervous system of every living thing is but a bundle of predispositions to react in particular ways upon the contact of particular features of the environment. The neural machinery is but a hyphen between determinate arrangements of matter outside the body and determinate impulses to inhibition or discharge within its organs.” (James, W. 1884).
According to James, when one encounters with any event (approaching car), the physiological response comes automatically and one experiences fear. Jesse Prinz worked on the same theory. For him too, emotions are a mental state due to body messages. Prinz was of the view point that the emotion is a simple representation of information i.e. disgust represents hate, fear; danger and so forth (Prinz, J. J. 2004) (Prinz, J. J. 2004)
Consider the second criteria of emotionality. Emotionality is one’s ability to feel and be affected by emotion. While all average individua...
Darwin in 1872 put forth the notion that emotional expressions are inborn and involuntary displays of one’s inner state (1). Darwin developed this ideology further and proposed what is now known as the Inhibition hypothesis (1). This two pronged theory describes the relation of emotion to facial muscle activation, more commonly known as facial expressions (1). The theory states that (a) specific facial muscles can not be intentionally engaged when the genuine emotion is lacking and (b) certain muscles can not be inhibited when a genuine emotion is experienced - it has been noted that this emotion must be particularly intense (Porter and ten Brinke, 2008; Porter, ten Brinke, & Wallace, 2011).
The biological perspective examines how brain processes and other bodily functions regulate behaviour. It emphasizes that the brain and nervous system are central to understanding behaviour, thought, and emotion. It is believed that thoughts and emotions have a physical basis in the brain. Electrical impulses zoom throughout the brain’s cells, releasing chemical substances that enable us to think, feel, and behave. René Descartes (1596–1650) wrote an influential book (De Homine [On Man]) in which he tried to explain how the behaviour of animals, and to some extent the behaviour of humans, could be like t...
A multitude of opinions are found on the subject: are emotions more a function of the heart or of the head? According to Antonio Damasio (1), emotions and feelings are an integral part of all thought; yet we as humans spend much of our time attempting to disregard and hide them. In the view of source (2), experience is the result of integration of cognition and feelings. In either view, it remains indisputable that emotions are not what we typically make them out to be: the unwanted step-sister of our cultural sweetheart reason. Reason in our culture denotes intelligence, cognition, and control. Emotions seems such a "scary" concept to our collective m...
When babies are born, one of the first reactions that doctors and the parents look for is a sign of crying. This is to ensure that the baby is breathing. This is a natural happening in order to survive. In addition, crying is a form of communication of when a newborn is hungry, sleepy, or is feeling uncomfortable. Even after learning to talk, human still cry in times of joy and sadness. An important lesson taken from Frankenstein, is that emotions are necessary to be considered alive. This can be interpreted as being alive biologically and socially. Emotions play a large role in how we think and behave. Emotions are essential to being animated because they play a role in growth, communication, acceptance, and survival.
Ohman, A., Flykt, A., & Esteves, F. (2001). Emotion Drives Attention: Detecting the Snake in the Grass. Journal of Experimental Psychology,130(3), 466-478.
Emotions are part of a management system to co-ordinate each individual's multiple plans and goals under constraints of time and other resources. Emotions are also part of the biological solution to the problem of how to plan and to carry out action aimed at satisfying multiple goals in environments, which are not always predictable. Emotions are based on non-propositional communications that can be called 'emotion signals’. An interesting aspect of research is “Can emotions exist and exert influence at the unconscious level?” Freud's view was that emotions could not be unconscious, that their experience is bound with the conscious experience, and that only predispositions towards certain emotions can exist in the unconscious (contempt, disgust, and shame); supplying it’s own unique kind of motivating information. According to our textbook (Bukato & Daehler 1998) emotions have three components. The physiological component involves body changes. This includes respiration, increased heart rate and sweating. Smiles, grimaces, frowns and laughter are all facial displays that are part of the expressive component. How a person interprets and evaluates their emotional state is the experiential component. Development of Emotions the question to scientists is whether or not emotion and mood is formed through mind processes or biologically innate traits. Scientists are searching the brain for a particular area that stimulates emotion in humans. They have changed their idea that it might be the hippocampus and now feel that part of it may come from the amygdala. Supposedly when something known by our senses comes in interaction with us, an impulse is sent to this amygdala and it sends another impulse to our cortex. ...
Human emotion is a very fickle and ever changing thing that can range from fury to jubilance to depression depending on the situation the person is in at any point in time. These ever changing emotions shape the person and their identity both psychologically and physically. A person who generally resides in a more hostile environment would be more prone to having negative emotions, sometimes even in calm or benign situations. Vice versa, someone who generally resides in a benign or joyful environment can have a calmer or more positive reaction towards a hostile situation. These traits, coming from average emotions, eventually show on the person physically. Laugh or smile lines appear on people who show positive emotions; while anger lines can show on people who experience more negative emotions. People also dress according to their mood. On a more cheerful day, a person might dress in brighter, more aesthetically pleasing colors. On a negative day, a person might dress in darker, less aesthetically pleasing colors. Eventually, emotions shape the identity of the person experiencing said emotions.
preceeding the display of emotion we may be able to attribute a cause to it, but
Subjective feelings describe the emotion which is brought about through a person’s experience (Carter & Grivas 2005). For example, two people in love will not describe their feelings in the same way. Expressive behaviour refers to the exterior physical indication that an emotion is being experienced (Carter & Grivas 2005). An example of this is body language. Physiological responses refers to the internal response that an emotion can cause to one’s body (Carter & Grivas 2005). When a person experiences an emotion, physiological changes can occur within their body, for example, their heart may begin to race as a fight of flight response to prepare the body to act in a threatening
Plutchik, Robert (1980), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion, 1, New York: Academic
Discuss the "cognition versus biology" debate in the study of emotion. Outline first the cognitive position and then the biological position. Discuss one possible, satisfying resolution to the cognition versus biology debate, using an original example to illustrate this
Emotion is the “feeling” aspect of consciousness that includes physical, behavioral, and subjective (cognitive) elements. Emotion also contains three elements which are physical arousal, a certain behavior that can reveal outer feelings and inner feelings. One key part in the brain, the amygdala which is located within the limbic system on each side of the brain, plays a key role in emotional processing which causes emotions such as fear and pleasure to be involved with the human facial expressions.The common-sense theory of emotion states that an emotion is experienced first, leading to a physical reaction and then to a behavioral reaction.The James-Lange theory states that a stimulus creates a physiological response that then leads to the labeling of the emotion. The Cannon-Bard theory states that the physiological reaction and the emotion both use the thalamus to send sensory information to both the cortex of the brain and the organs of the sympathetic nervous system. The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial expressions provide feedback to the brain about the emotion being expressed on the face, increasing all the emotions. In Schachter and Singer’s cognitive arousal theory, also known as the two-factor theory, states both the physiological arousal and the actual arousal must occur before the emotion itself is experienced, based on cues from the environment. Lastly, in the cognitive-mediational theory
We are able to feel emotions like greed and anger, but also feel generosity and happiness. Most languages have a copious amount of words that describe emotions. According to Michael Bamberg, author of “The Role of Language in the Construction of Emotions,” “Language is a mean of making sense of emotions.” The most obvious way that language helped with the development of emotions is that language is used to describe emotional experiences with different words and phrases. When describing an emotion to someone, a person may have a “temporary reduction in the accessibility” of the word used to describe it. This shows a bridge between language and emotion because if a person can’t think of the word they want to use to describe the emotion, this could lead to a less intense feeling of the emotion. The development of language led to a higher perception of more complex emotions. Language is seen to influence the greater development of higher emotion with reading as well. According to an experiment conducted by the journal, Psychological Science, reading the words “to laugh”, led to the activation of the smiling muscle. Reading those words didn’t activate the frowning muscle though. This means that the language has not only influenced the development of higher emotions, but also how we convey these emotions to the world. The study also said that muscle activity is “induced in the reader when reading verbs representing facial
What are emotions defined as? And are there any universal emotions? Well the definition of emotion can be defined as the body’s adaptive response to certain situations. As for universal emotions. There are 6 emotions set by Ekman et al. (1972) as universal emotions. These emotions are most commonly known as Fear, Anger, Surprise, Sadness, Happiness and Disgust. What did Ekman et al. mean by universal emotions? Well they meant that these emotions are expressed in the same way (or at least in very similar ways).