Emotions
Emotion refers to positive or negative feelings- generally arousal and characteristic behaviour. Motivation and emotion are closely linked. An emotion is a complex, multi-component episode that creates readiness to act.Types of Emotions:
They may be negative or positive and include :Fear ,Rage, :Anger, Anxiety, Fright, Guilt, Shame, Sadness, Envy ,Jealousy ,Disgust, Happiness ,Pride , Relief, Hope, Love, Compassion .and others.Components of emotions:
An intense emotion has at least six components:
Cognitive appraisal: Which is a person's assessment of the personal meaning of his or her current circumstances. It, in turn, triggers a cascade of responses that represent other loosely connected components of emotion. Cognitive appraisals are largely responsible for differentiating the emotions. It is explained by the cognitive theory. Cognitive appraisals occur both consciously and unconsciously. Amygdala play a key role in this process.
Subjective experience: The feeling component. It is state or feeling tone that colours private experience. The inner feelings serve as a feedback about the personal relevance of our current circumstances. When we feel a negative emotion, like fear or anger , the unpleasant feeling serves as a cue that something in our environment poses us a threat and that we may need to act fast to protect ourselves. When we feel a positive emotion. Like joy or interest, the pleasant feeling signals that we are safe and satiated, and that we can feel free to play or explore. More generally, the feeling component of emotion is thought to guide behaviour, decision making, and information processing.
Thought and action tendencies: Urges to think and act in certain ways. When something sparks your interest, you want to explore it. When someone angers you, you may be tempted to aggress, either physically or verbally. Examples of emotions-and the expected thought action tendency: Anger-Attack, Fear- Escape. Disgust-Expel .Guilt—Make amends. Shame—Disappear. Sadness—Withdraw. Joy—Play. Interest—Explore. Contentment—Savour and integrate. Pride—Dream big. Gratitude—be prosocial. Elevation—Become a better person. -
Internal bodily changes: Physiological responses, particularly those involving the autonomic nervous system such as changes in the heart rate and sweat gland activity. Many of these changes take place during emotional arousal from activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This system prepares the body for emergency action and is responsible for the following changes- (which need not all occur at once).
The changes are:
Blood pressure and heart rate increase.
Respiration 2 becomes more rapid.
Perspiration increases while secretion of saliva and mucus decreases.
Blood- sugar level increases to provide more energy.
The blood clots more quickly in case of wounds.
Blood is diverted from the stomach and intestines to the brain and skeletal muscles.
The hairs on the skin become erect, causing goose pimples.
Facial expression: Muscle contractions that move facial landmarks- ( like cheeks, lips, noses and brows)- into particular configurations. Facial expression that accompanies emotion clearly serves to communicate that emotion. Certain facial expressions seem to have universal meaning, regardless of the culture in which an individual is raised, and seem to be innately associated with particular emotions; certain aspects of them are learned.
Responses to emotion: How people regulate, react to, or cope with their own emotion or the situation that triggered it. This is- emotion regulation or the people's responses to their own emotions. These responses could be summarized as follow:
People almost always respond to or regulate their emotions, by either exaggerating or minimizing them, and the ability to do so predicts social success.
Emotion regulation strategies have been classified as either cognitive or behavioural and as either diversion or engagement.
responses to emotion can influence other components of the emotion process.
the strategies people use to regulate emotions can have unexpected consequences e.g. suppressing facial expression increases autonomic arousal and impairs memory.
Non of these six components by itself is an emotion. They come together to create a particular emotion.
Emotions and Moods:
Viewing emotion as a complex system helps distinguish emotions from closely related states, like moods. Emotions are distinct from moods in the following ways:
emotions are typically have a clear cause. They are about something or someone, while moods are often free- floated and diffuse affective states.
Emotions are typically, brief, lasting only seconds or minutes, but moods endure longer, lasting for hours, even days.
Emotions implicate multiple component systems, but moods may be salient only at the level of subjective experience.
Emotions are considered as a discrete categories, like fear, anger, joy, and interest. while moods are conceptualized as varying along the dimensions of pleasantness and arousal level.
Theories of Emotions
James-Lang theory
In this theory conscious emotional experiences are caused by feedback to the cerebral cortex from physiological reactions and behavior, as follow: The emotional stimulus is routed by the thalamus directly to the limbic system, which produces the body reactions of fear through the thalamus and the sympathetic nervous system. The sensations from this body reaction are then sent back to the cortex and produce what we feel in the conscious experience of emotion .i.e. Stimulus---Physiological arousal specific to an emotion----Subjective experience of the emotion.
There were strong criticisms to this theory but they did not disapprove it. Recently a more acceptable modified version has been developed.
Cannon-Bard Theory-
The theory that emotional experiences and physiological reactions and behavior are relatively independent events. As follow: Information from the emotional stimulus goes first to the thalamus. From there, the information is simultaneously relayed both to the cerebral cortex, where it produces the emotional experience, and to the hypothalamus and autonomic nervous system, where it produces the physiological arousal that prepares the animal to fight, run away, or react in some other way. To Cannon and Bard, the conscious emotional experience and physiological arousal are two simultaneous and largely independent events.
Cognitive Theory:
The theory that the cognitive interpretation of events in the outside world and stimuli from our own bodies is the key factor in emotions. According to this theory the process of cognitive interpretation in emotions has two steps: a- the interpretation of stimuli from the environment and- b-the interpretation of stimuli from the body resulting from autonomic arousal.Interpretation of incoming stimuli: Here the interpretation of the stimulus, not the stimulus itself, causes the emotional reaction. e.g. if you receive a box in the mail that makes a ticking sound, you will feel happy or afraid depending on your interpretation as a clock if sent by a friend or as a bomb if you consider the sender as an enemy. Thus, in the cognitive theory of emotion, information from the stimulus travels first to the cerebral cortex, where it is both interpreted and experienced. Then a message is sent down to the limbic system and autonomic nervous system that results in physiological arousal
Interpretation of body stimuli: Cognitive theory resembles the James-Lange theory in emphasizing the importance of internal body stimuli in the experience of emotion, but it goes further in suggesting that cognitive interpretation of these stimuli is more important than the internal stimuli themselves. This aspect of the cognitive theory of emotion was suggested by Schachter and Singer-1962. They believe that emotional arousal is diffuse and not specific to the different emotions, i.e. the autonomic nervous system and endocrine glands are activated in the same global way, regardless of which emotion is experienced. The internal stimuli from the emotional arousal of the body play an important role in the experience of the emotion, but only through a cognitive interpretation of the source of the arousal. This is the Schachter and Singer- Two-Factor theory of emotions .According to this theory emotions were thought to result from the combination of two factors- an initial state of unexplained arousal plus a cognitive explanation (or appraisal) for that arousal. i.e. Stimulus-----General physiological arousal----Cognitive appraisal of arousal-----Subjective experience of the emotion.