In this part of our learning of emotion we looked into the biological, cognitive and social aspects of emotion. In my haste in recording these reflections what should have been the introduction to this topic was the conclusion for the last! Anyway… if it’s still fresh in your mind, let take it from there!
As mentioned in my last entry, emotions are (although not entirely!) partly a biological reaction to events and situations around us. At some time or another all of us should be able to relate to the following… when we are about to face an important life even, a situation of personal significance the body does indeed prepare itself to cope. For example, this situation could be a job interview, the reason for your study and now so near to the dream! Your waiting for your interview, your big chance in life! As you wait you become aware, as defined by Reeve (2009, pp. 330-1), of the following:
· Biologically, your heart starts to beat, your breathing increases and your muscles become a little tense.. you may even start to sweat. That would be your autonomic nervous system (ANS) responding. Your hormones (endocrine system) start to fire a little. Could be cortisol and adrenaline.. Of course this is mediated somewhat by the amygdala (neural brain circuits) and neural activity and the rate of information flow increases, perhaps to a dizzying rate or at least… that’s how it feels. Finally, there are discrete expressions within the facial muscles, a nervous twitch in the eye or a nervous smile that can barely hold itself steady.
· Cognitively, your emotions are regulated via past appraisals (or lack of…), your current knowledge, attributions, social history and cultural identity.
I found James-Langes theory of emotion to be very interesting. He asked… did different emotions each have a unique biological reaction associated with them? For example, we clearly know (feel?) the difference in our bodies when we experience fear as compared to joy or love. But does the biological reaction actually cause the emotion? He suggested that our biological reactions do not follow the emotional experience…
Stimulus -> Emotion -> Biological Response
Rather that the emotional experience follows the biological change. In this case, the flow should then look like the following:
Stimulus -> Biological reaction -> Emotional Response
Hence, he suggests that biological are responsible for the emotional experience. His theories (as stated in Reeve, p. 331) rested on two assumptions:
· The body reacts uniquely to different emotion-stimulating events; and
· The body does NOT react to non-emotion-stimulating events.
Essentially, emotion was seen as a way to make sense of bodily changes. From the cold water in the shower example, this made sense. Say for example you are having a nice warm shower, suddenly the water runs cold! Your muscles contract, your heart rate increases! The emotion of shock explains the changed you felt in your body. But from here we also see flaws in this theory. The biological reactions are strikingly similar to fight-flight responses… is it shock? Or is it fear? Ultimately, the response did not vary between emotions. Additionally, emotion is experienced faster than biological reactions (Neill, 2010). However, James-Lange was not completely incorrect…. Later contemporary perspectives DID find that certain emotions had distinct ANS patterns, those which had survival value and would help to facilitate it, via fighting or fleeing.
Further research looked for emotion specific patterns of brain activity. Notably that of Jeffrey Grey, he found a three distinct areas (in nonhuman mammals) which each regulated a different pattern of emotional behaviour. Firstly, the opportunity seeking behavioural approach system, the fight-flight system & finally the behavioural inhibition system (Reeve, 2009, p. 334). This was further added to by Silvian Tomkins, who believed that neural firing increased, decreased or remained constant. To conceptualise this.. he felt that fear/shock was a sudden rise in neural firing, a high constant level of firing was anger and that a drop in neural firing was joy/happiness (Reeve, 2009, p. 334). I have chosen to include a slide from our lecture (Neill, 2010) which I felt gives a great visualisation of the emotions that these rises, drops and constants can cause.
What I felt gave a nice explanation of emotion was Izards Differential emotions theory. What struck me about this, as stated in Reeve (2009, p. 335), is that it suggests:
· Each emotion has its own unique, subjective and phenomenal quality,
· Each emotion has its own unique facial-expressive pattern,
· Each emotion has its own neural rate of firing that activates it,
· Each emotion has a unique purpose that seeks to motivate or serve as an adaptive function.
To me this takes away from the cold feeling that biological explanations give, while not denying the importance of biology either!
Ekman the facial feedback hypothesis – primary emotions
The picture below should give you a humorous example of the number of different emotions that can be expressed via facial expressions. Additionally, it also proves what most of us have known for a long time….
Cognitive aspects of emotion – appraisal theory
References
Neill, J. (2010). [Aspects of Emotion Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/
Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. USA: Wiley.
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