Emotions 101

Emotions tend to impact our everyday life; we make decisions based on whether we are happy, sad, angry, frustrated etc. We choose our hobbies and activities based on the way that they make us feel.

There has been lots of research into the evolution of emotions. Darwin, 1872 proposed that emotions have evolved and adapted over time. Primal emotions such as fear would have evolved among our premmamal ancestors and would have come about to help protect us, human emotions such as a mother’s love would probably have evolved among early mammals to increase the likelihood of the survical of that species and social emotions such as guilt and pride may have evolved among social primates.

Eckman, 1970 said that we have 6 basic emotions; anger, fear, surprise, disgust, joy and sadness. Over time this has been added to, taken away and reshaped and it has been concluded that human emotions are universal.

Neuroscience has suggested that brains generate emotions through a combination of cognitive appraisal and bodily perception. Therefore emotions are either a result of a judgement of any current situation or a perception of changes taking place within our bodies.

Emotions are incredibly important as they help us to judge whether the current situation meets our goals or whether there is something blocking our goal. Emotions tend to take over and trigger immediate behavioural responses in split seconds with the intention to prevent negative outcomes. Emotions help us to take action and survive, strike and avoid danger, to make decisions, to understand others and to help others understand us. Emotions, cognitions and behaviour of humans can easily be affected by emotional stimuli.

An emotion classification system known as the ‘wheel of emotions’ demonstrates how different emotions can be combined or mixed together, similar to how an artist mixes primary colours to create other colours (Plutchik, R. 1984).

There tends to be 3 key elements to an emotion; the subjective experience, the physiological response and the behavioural response:

The Subjective Experience; it is believed that there are a number of basic universal emotions that are experienced by everyone but experiencing emotion can also be highly subjective. Everyone tends to feel emotions on a sliding scale.

The Physiological Response: Many of us can relate to the feeling of a racing heart or a flip of the stomach…the autonomic nervous system controls the involuntary body responses such as blood flow and digestion. The sympathetic nervous system is in control of the body’s fight or flight reactions, when facing a threat your body will decide whether to fight, flight or freeze. The part of the brain called the amygdala (part of the limbic system) plays an important role in emotion and fear, when people sense threat the amygdala becomes activated. The amygdala is also linked to motivational states such as hunger and thirst as well as memory and emotion.

The Behavioural Response: The behavioural response refers to the actual expression of emotion; we spend a significant amount of time interpreting the emotional expressions of those around us. Our ability to accurately understand what these expressions are tied to is ‘emotional intelligence’

Reference:

Darwin, C. (2007) [1872]. The expression of the emotions in man and animals. New York: Filiquarian. ISBN 0-8014-1990-5.

Plutchik, R. (1984). Emotions: A general psychoevolutionary theory. Approaches to emotion, 1984, 197-219.