Emotions

Emotions

Perhaps all of us have experienced both positive and negative feelings. We all have felt joy, sorrow or fear. All these feelings represent emotions – feelings that generally have both physiological and cognitive elements and that influence behavior. So when we experience a feeling it is likely that there are changes, for example, in our heart rate. What is more, it probably involves some cognitive elements such as our understanding. However, it is possible to experience an emotion without tthe presence of cognitive elements. For example, we can react with fear to an unusual or new situation.

Some psychologists argue that only separate systems influence cognitive and emotional responses. The discussion is based on the question whether the emotional response predominates over the cognitive response or conversely. Some theorists suggest that we first respond to a situation with an emotional reaction and then try to understand it. Others believe that people first develop cognitions about a situation and then react eemotionally. The question isn‘t solved yet. Perhaps the sequence varies from situation to situation, with emotions predominating in some instances and cognitive processes occuring first in others. But both sides agree that we can experience emotions that involve little or nno conscious thought.

The functions of emotions.

Emotions not only make our lives more interesting but also play some other important functions:

• Preparing us for action. Emotions act as a link between events in our environment and our responses.

• Shaping our future behavior. Emotions promote learning that will help us make appropriate responses in the future.

• Helping us interact more effectively with others. Our verbal and nonverbal behaviors can act as a signal to other people, allowing them to understand better what we are experiencing and to predict our future behavior.

Labeling feelings.

But there is one more challenge for psychologists – to make the list of words that identify the most important, fundamental emotions. There have been lots of discussions and theorists have come up with ddifferent lists, depending on how they define the concept of emotion. Some of them reject the question entirely, saying that no set of emotions should be singled out as most basic, and that emotions are best understood by breaking them down into their component parts. Others look at emotions in terms of a hierarchy, dividing them into positive and negative categories, and then organizing them into narrower sub-categories. Still, most researchers suggest that a list of basic emotions would include, aat least, happiness, anger, fear, sadness, and disgust. Hundreds of studies show that these emotions are distinct and identifiable.

One difficulty in defining emotions is the differences in descriptions among cultures. There are lots of ways to describe how we feel. It‘s interesting that the language we use to describe emotions is based on the physical symptoms.

Imagine the experience of a fear. Pretend that you are walking down a dark road in the evening and hear a stranger following you. You will probably think about what you will do if he try to rob or hurt you. While you are thinking about it, something is happening with your body as well. The most likely reactions include an increase in your rate of breathing, an acceleration of your heart rate, etc. All these physiological changes are likely to occur without your awareness. At the same time, the emotional experience accompanying them will be obvious: it‘s fear. But although it is easy to describe these physical reactions, defining the specific role that those responses play in the experience of emotions has proved to be a major puzzle for psychologists. Some of them sugest that specific bodily reactions cause us to experience a particular eemotion, while others – that the physiological reaction results from the experience of an emotion.

The James–Lange theory.

It states that emotional experience is a reaction to instinctive bodily events that occur as a response to some situation or event in the environment. We can summarize this in James‘s statement: „we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble“. James and Lange suggested that for every major emotion there is an accompanying physiological or „gut“ reaction of internal organs – called a visceral experience. It helps us to describe the emotional experience.

However, there are some serious drawbacks. For the theory to be valid, visceral changes would have to occur relatively quickly. Yet emotional experiences often occur even before certain physiological changes. So it is hard to see how they could be the reason of immediate emotional experience.

There is another difficulty: physiological arousal does not consistently produce emotional experience. For example, a person who is jogging has an increased heartbeat and he is breathing faster, but it isn‘t an emotion.

Finally, our internal organs produce a relatively limited range of sensations. Although some types of physiological changes are associated with specific emotion, it is difficult to imagine that all eemotions could be the result of a unique visceral change.

The Cannon–Bard theory.

This theory rejects the view that ...