Emotion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Gut reaction)
Jump to: navigation, search
Look up Emotion in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Emotions
Basic

Anger
Fear
Sadness
Happiness
Disgust

Others

Acceptance
Affection
Aggression
Ambivalence
Apathy
Anxiety
Compassion
Confusion
Contempt
Depression
Doubt
Ecstasy
Empathy
Envy
Embarrassment
Euphoria
Forgiveness
Frustration
Guilt
Gratitude
Grief
Hatred
Hope
Horror
Hostility
Homesickness
Hysteria
Loneliness
Love
Paranoia
Pity
Pleasure
Pride
Rage
Regret
Remorse
Shame
Suffering
Surprise
Sympathy

v  d  e

Emotion is a biological arousal produced in response to a stimulus.

An emotion is a "complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements, by which the individual attempts to deal with a personally significant matter of event."[1] It arises without conscious effort and is either positive or negative in its valence.

Other closely related terms are:

  • affect, a synonym for emotion
  • affect display, external display of emotion
  • disposition, referring to a durable differentiating characteristic of a person, a tendency to react to situations with a certain emotion
  • feeling, which usually refers to the subjective, phenomenological aspect of emotion
  • mood, which refers to an emotional state of duration intermediate between an emotion and a disposition

Contents

Emotion is derived from French émotion, from émouvoir, 'excite' based on Latin emovere, from e- (variant of ex-) 'out' and movere 'move'. "Motivation" is also derived from movere.

Emotion is very complex, and the term has no single, universally accepted definition.[2] The study of emotions is part of psychology, sociology, neuroscience, ethics, and metaphysics.

According to Sloman,[3] emotions are cognitive processes. Some authors emphasize the difference between human emotions and the affective behavior of animals.

We often talk about brains as information-processing systems, but any account of the brain that lacks an account of emotions, motivations, fears, and hopes is incomplete.[citation needed] Emotions are measurable physical responses to salient stimuli: the increased heartbeat and perspiration that accompany fear, the freezing response of a rat in the presence of a cat, or the extra muscle tension that accompanies anger. Feelings, on the other hand, are the subjective experiences that sometimes accompany these processes: the sensations of happiness, envy, sadness, and so on.[citation needed] Emotions seem to employ largely unconscious machinery—for example, brain areas involved in emotion will respond to angry faces that are briefly presented and then rapidly masked, even when subjects are unaware of having seen the face. Across cultures the expression of basic emotions is remarkably similar, and as Darwin observed, it is also similar across all mammals. There are even strong similarities in physiological responses among humans, reptiles, and birds when showing fear, anger, or parental love.[citation needed]

Modern views propose that emotions are brain states that quickly assign value or valence to outcomes and provide a simple plan of action. Thus, emotion can be viewed as a type of computation, a rapid, automatic summary that initiates appropriate actions.[citation needed] When a bear is galloping toward you, the rising fear directs your brain to do the right things (determining an escape route) instead of all the other things it could be doing (rounding out your grocery list). When it comes to perception, you can spot an object more quickly if it is, say, a spider rather than a roll of tape. In the realm of memory, emotional events are laid down differently by a parallel memory system involving a brain area called the amygdala.

One goal of emotional neuroscience is to understand the nature of the many disorders of emotion, depression being the most common and costly. Impulsive aggression and violence are also thought to be consequences of faulty emotion regulation.[citation needed]

There has been considerable debate whether emotions should be classified as a position in a continuum (e.g. the circumplex model by Russell, or many of the valence approaches in social psychology) or whether emotions are best identified as distinct (basic) states.

One of the most influential classification approaches in the study of emotion is Robert Plutchik’s classification into eight primary emotions. The emotions that Plutchik lists as primary are:[citation needed]

Similar to the way primary colors combine, primary emotions are believed to blend together to form the full spectrum of human emotional experience. Plutchik reasons that these eight are primary on evolutionary grounds, by relating each to behavior with survival value. For example: fear motivates flight from danger, anger motivates fighting for survival. They are considered to be part of our biological heritage and built into human nature.[citation needed]

Paul Ekman devised a similar list of basic emotions from cross-cultural research on the Fore tribesmen of Papua New Guinea. He found that even members of an isolated, stone age culture could reliably identify the expressions of emotion in photographs of people from cultures with which the Fore were not yet familiar, and concluded that the facial expression of some basic emotions is innate. The following is Ekman’s list of basic emotions:[citation needed]

Ekman holds that this lends further support to the view that at least some emotions are primary, innate, and universal in all human beings.[4]

Lazarus (1991) similarly offers a taxonomy of 'Core Relational Themes' for various emotions; these help define both function and eliciting conditions. They include a demeaning offense against me and mine for anger; facing an immediate, concrete, and overwhelming physical danger for fear; having experienced an irrevocable loss for sadness; taking in or being too close to an indigestible object or idea (metaphorically speaking) for disgust; making reasonable progress toward the realization of a goal for happiness.


Several theoretical traditions in emotion research have been offered. These traditions are not mutually exclusive and many researchers incorporate multiple perspectives in their work.

William James in the late 19th century believed that emotional experience is largely due to the experience of bodily changes. These changes might be visceral, postural, or facially expressive. The most basic of these somatic theories is the James-Lange theory. This theory and its derivates state that a changed situation leads to a changed bodily state. It is this bodily state which in turn gives rise to an emotion. Hence the emotion fear upon encountering a bear in the woods would follow from:

Spot a bear
-> Heart begins beating faster; adrenalin is being produced
-> The emotion fear arises

This approach underlies experiment where through manipulating the bodily state, a desired emotion is induced (e.g. in laughter therapy).[citation needed]

Walter Cannon provided empirical evidence against the dominance of the James-Lange theory of the physiological aspects emotions in the second edition of Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage. Cannon and Bard came up with a different account of the relations between emotions and behavior; where a certain situation leads to an emotion; which in turn activates a typical behavior. Here the emotion fear upon encountering a bear in the woods would result in:

Spot a bear
-> The emotion fear arises
-> Run away

Research in social psychology interprets emotions as a combination of two elements; physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation. The earliest account of such a theory is the Singer-Schachter theory that is based on experiments that varied arousal introducing chemical (adrenaline) and put the participants in different situations. The combination of the appraisal of the situation (cognitive) and whether participants received adrenaline or a placebo together determined the response. In the example of the bear this would lead to:

Spot a bear
-> Adrenalin is released, heart starts beating faster
-> The sight of a bear is interpreted as being dangerous for the health (note this needs not necessarily be a conscious appraisal)
-> The emotion fear arises.

Several other theories have similar ideas, for example, the framework proposed by Nico Frijda where such appraisal leads to action tendencies is related to this idea.

In all these theories, the different emotions causes a detectable physical response in the body. These responses are often perceived as sensation in the body; for example:

  • Fear is felt as a heightened heartbeat, increased “flinch” response, and increased muscle tension.
  • Anger, based on sensation, seems indistinguishable from fear.
  • Happiness is often felt as an expansive or swelling feeling in the chest and the sensation of lightness or buoyancy, as if standing underwater.
  • Sadness is often experienced as a feeling of tightness in the throat and eyes, and relaxation in the arms and legs.
  • Shame can be felt as heat in the upper chest and face.
  • Desire can be accompanied by a dry throat, heavy breathing, and increased heart rate.

A fourth theoretical tradition has been gaining influence once more (see: Cornelius, 1996). This fourth, evolutionary tradition, started in the late 19th century with Charles Darwin's publication of a book on the expression of emotions in man and animals.[5] Darwin's original thesis was that emotions evolved via natural selection for reasons of warning other creatures about your intentions (e.g. a cat with a high back is angry and will strike you unless you back off). Darwin argued that for mankind emotions were no longer functional but are epiphenomena of functional associated habits. Such an evolutionary origin would predict emotions to be cross-culturally universal. Confirmation of this biological origin was provided by Paul Ekman's seminal research on facial expressions in humans. Other research in this area focuses on physical displays of emotion including body language of animals and facial expressions in humans. (See Affect display.) The increased potential in neuroimaging has allowed investigation of this idea focusing on the working brain itself. Important neurological advances where made from this perspectives in the 1990s by, for example, Joseph LeDoux and Antonio Damasio.

Primary emotions (i.e., innate emotions, such as fear) "depend on limbic system circuitry," with the amygdala and anterior cingulate gyrus being "key players".

  • Smell carries directly to limbic areas of the mammalian brain via nerves running from the olfactory bulbs to the septum, amygdala, and hippocampus. In the acquatic brain, olfaction was critical for detecting food, foes, and mates from a distance in murky waters.
  • An emotional feeling, like an aroma, has a volatile or "thin-skinned" quality because sensory cells lie on the exposed exterior of the olfactory epithelium (i.e., on the bodily surface itself).
  • A sudden scent, like a whiff of smelling salts, may jolt the mind. The force of a mood is reminiscent of a smell's intensity (e.g., soft and gentle, pungent, or overpowering), and similarly permeates and fades as well. The design of emotion cues, in tandem with the forebrain's olfactory prehistory, suggests that the sense of smell is the neurological model for our emotions.

Secondary emotions (i.e., feelings attached to objects [e.g., to dental drills], events, and situations through learning) require additional input, based largely on memory, from the prefrontal and somatosensory cortices. The stimulus may still be processed directly via the amygdala but is now also analyzed in the thought process. Thoughts and emotions are interwoven: every thought, however bland, almost always carries with it some emotional undertone, however subtle.

Main article: Attitude change

Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism.


Based on discoveries made through neural mapping of the limbic system, the neurobiological explanation of human emotion is that emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain.

Defined as such, these emotional states are specific manifestations of non-verbally expressed feelings of agreement, amusement, anger, certainty, control, disagreement, disgust, disliking, embarrassment, fear, guilt, happiness, hate, interest, liking, love, sadness, shame, surprise, and uncertainty. If distinguished from reactive responses of reptiles, emotions would then be mammalian elaborations of general vertebrate arousal patterns, in which neurochemicals (e.g., dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin) step-up or step-down the brain's activity level, as visible in body movements, gestures, and postures. In mammals, primates, and human beings, feelings are displayed as emotion cues.

For example, the human emotion of love is proposed to have evolved from paleocircuits of the mammalian brain (specifically, modules of the cingulated gyrus) designed for the care, feeding, and grooming of offspring. Paleocircuits are neural platforms for bodily expression configured millions of years before the advent of cortical circuits for speech. They consist of pre-configured pathways or networks of nerve cells in the forebrain, brain stem and spinal cord. They evolved prior to the earliest mammalian ancestors, as far back as the jawless fishes, to control motor function.

Presumably, before the mammalian brain, life in the non-verbal world was automatic, preconscious, and predictable. The motor centers of reptiles react to sensory cues of vision, sound, touch, chemical, gravity, and motion with pre-set body movements and programmed postures. With the arrival of night-active mammals, circa 180 million years ago, smell replaced vision as the dominant sense, and a different way of responding arose from the olfactory sense, which is proposed to have developed into mammalian emotion and emotional memory. In the Jurassic Period, the mammalian brain invested heavily in olfaction to succeed at night as reptiles slept — one explanation for why olfactory lobes in mammalian brains are proportionally larger than in the reptiles. These odor pathways gradually formed the neural blueprint for what was later to become our limbic brain.

Emotions are thought to be related to activity in brain areas that direct our attention, motivate our behavior, and determine the significance of what is going on around us. Pioneering work by Broca (1878), Papez (1937), and MacLean (1952) suggested that emotion is related to a group of structures in the center of the brain called the limbic system, which includes the hypothalamus, cingulate cortex, hippocampi, and other structures. More recent research has shown that some of these limbic structures are not as directly related to emotion as others are, while some non-limbic structures have been found to be of greater emotional relevance. The following brain structures are currently thought to be most involved in emotion:

  • Amygdala — The amygdalae are two small, round structures located anterior to the hippocampi near the temporal poles. The amygdalae are involved in detecting and learning what parts of our surroundings are important and have emotional significance. They are critical for the production of emotion, and may be particularly so for negative emotions, especially fear.
  • Prefrontal cortex — The term prefrontal cortex refers to the very front of the brain, behind the forehead and above the eyes. It appears to play a critical role in the regulation of emotion and behavior by anticipating the consequences of our actions. The prefrontal cortex may play an important role in delayed gratification by maintaining emotions over time and organizing behavior toward specific goals.
  • Anterior cingulate — The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is located in the middle of the brain, just behind the prefrontal cortex. The ACC is thought to play a central role in attention, and may be particularly important with regard to conscious, subjective emotional awareness. This region of the brain may also play an important role in the initiation of motivated behavior.
  • Ventral striatum — The ventral striatum is a group of subcortical structures thought to play an important role in emotion and behavior. One part of the ventral striatum called the nucleus accumbens is thought to be involved in the experience of goal-directed positive emotion. Individuals with addictions experience increased activity in this area when they encounter the object of their addiction.
  • Insula — The insular cortex is thought to play a critical role in the bodily experience of emotion, as it is connected to other brain structures that regulate the body’s autonomic functions (heart rate, breathing, digestion, etc.). This region also processes taste information and is thought to play an important role in experiencing the emotion of disgust.

Like aromas, emotions are experienced as either positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant; emotions do not seem to be neutral. Like odors, feelings come and go, but are logical, and clearly show upon our face in mood signs. It is likely that many emotions evolved from aroma paleocircuits a. in subcortical nuclei (e.g., the paleocortex of the amygdala), and b. in layers of nerve cells within the forebrain's outer covering of neocortex. The latter's stratified architecture resembles that of the olfactory bulb, which is organized in layers as well.

Main article: Sociology of Emotions

We try to regulate our emotions to fit in with the norms of the situation, based on many - sometimes conflicting - demands upon us which originate from various entities studied by sociology on a micro level -- such as social roles and 'feeling rules' the everyday social interactions and situations are shaped by -- and, on a macro level, by social institutions, discourses, ideologies etc. For example, (post-)modern marriage is, on one hand, based on the emotion of love and on the other hand the very emotion is to be worked on and regulated by it.


Depending on the particular school's general emphasis either on cognitive component of emotion, physical energy discharging, or on symbolic movement and facial expression components of emotion, different schools of psychotherapy approach human emotions differently. While, for example, the school of Re-evaluation Counseling propose that distressing emotions are to be relieved by “discharging” them - hence crying, laughing, sweating, shaking, and trembling.[6] Other more cognitively oriented schools approach them via their cognitive components, or via symbolic movement and facial expression components (like in contemporary Gestalt therapy[7]).

Main article: Meta-emotion

Meta-emotion refers in accordance with the general definition of the prefix "meta-" to second-order emotions about first-order emotions. Meta-emotions can be short-lived or long-lived. The latter can be a source of discouragement or even psychological repression, or encouragement of specific emotions, having implications for personality traits, psychodynamics, organizational climate, emotional disorders, but also emotional awareness, and emotional intelligence.

Main article: Affective computing

A flurry of recent work in computer science, engineering, psychology and neuroscience is aimed at developing devices that recognize human affect display and modelling emotions generally (Fellous, Armony & LeDoux, 2002).

Main article: Emotion in animals

Animals have physiological responses that are analogous to human emotional responses, as has been recognized at least since Darwin published The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872.

  1. ^ vandenBos, Gary B. (2006). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
  2. ^ Emotional Competency discussion of emotion
  3. ^ Sloman, Aaron (1981) Why Robots Will Have Emotions. In proc.[1]. University of Sussex, UK
  4. ^ Ekman, P. & Friesen, W. V (1969). The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: Categories, origins, usage, and encoding. Semiotica, 1, 49–98.
  5. ^ Darwin, Charles (1872). The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. Note: This book was originally published in 1872, but has been reprinted many times thereafter by different publishers
  6. ^ Counseling recovery processes - RC website
  7. ^ On Emotion - an article from Manchester Gestalt Centre website

  1. Anderson, J. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  2. Arbib, M. and Fellous, J-M (editors). (2005) Who Needs Emotions?: The Brain Meets the Robot. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
  3. Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37, 122-147.
  4. Breckler, S. J., & Wiggins, E. C. (1992). On defining attitude and attitude theory: Once more with feeling. In A. R. Pratkanis, S. J. Breckler, & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.) Attitude Structure and Function (pp. 407-427). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  5. Brehm, S. S., & Brehm, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. San Diego, CA: Academic.
  6. Chaiken, S., Liberman, A., & Eagly, A. H. (1989). Heuristic and systematic informaiton processing within and beyond the persuasion context. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh. (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 212-252). New York: Guilford.
  7. Cornelius, R. (1996). The science of emotion. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
  8. DeLancey, C. (2002/2004). "Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal about Mind and Artificial Intelligence", Oxford University Press.
  9. Dillard, J. (1994). Rethinking the study of fear appeals: An emotional perspective. Communication Theory, 4, 295-323.
  10. Eagly, A., & Chaiken, S. (1995). Attitude strength, attitude structure and resistance to change. In R. Petty and J. Kosnik (Eds.), Attitude Strength. (pp. 413-432). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  11. Ekman P. (1999). "Basic Emotions". In: T. Dalgleish and M. Power (Eds.). Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Sussex, UK:.
  12. Ekman P. (1999). "Facial Expressions" in Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. Dalgleish T & Power M, Eds. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. New York, New York.
  13. Fazio, R. (1986). How do attitudes guide behavior? In R. H. Sorrentino & E.T. Higgins. (Eds.), The handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundation of social behavior. (pp. 204-243). New York: Guilford.
  14. Fazio, R., & Williams, C. (1986). Attitude accessibility as a moderator of attitude-perception and attitude-behavior relation: An investigation of the 1984 presidential election. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 505-514.
  15. Fellous, J.M., Armony, J.L., & LeDoux, J.E. (2002). "Emotional Circuits and Computational Neuroscience" in 'The handbook of brain theory and neural networks' Second Edition. M.A. Arbib (editor), The MIT Press. [2]
  16. Frijda, Nico H. (1986). The Emotions. Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press. [3]
  17. Higgins, E. (1996). Knowledge activation: Accessiblity, applicability, and salience. In E. T. Higgins, & A. W. Kruganski (Eds.), Social Psychology, Handbook of basic principles (pp. 133-168). New York:Guilford Press.
  18. Jaeger, C., & Bartsch, A. (2006), "Meta-emotions". Grazer Philosophische Studien, 73, 179–204.
  19. Lazarus, R. (1991). "Emotion and adaptation". New York: Oxford University Press.
  20. LeDoux, J.E. (1986). The neurobiology of emotion. Chap. 15 in J E. LeDoux & W. Hirst (Eds.) Mind and Brain: dialogues in cognitive neuroscience. New York: Cambridge.
  21. Loewenstein, G. (2007). Affect regulation and affective forecasting. In Gross, J. J. (Ed.) Handbook of Emotion Regulation (pp. 180-203). New York: Guilford.
  22. Maase, S. W., Fink, E. L., and Kaplowitz, S. A. (1984). Incongruity in humor: The cognitive dynamics. Communication Yearbook, 8, 80-105.
  23. Nabi, R. L., Moyer-Guse, E., & Byrne, S. (2007). All joking aside: A serious investigation into the persuasive effect of funny social issue messages. Communication Monographs, 74, 29-54.
  24. Petty, R., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol 19, pp. 123-205). New York: Academic Press.
  25. Plutchik, R. (1980). A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3–33). New York: Academic.
  26. Moore, S. C. & Oaksford, M. (2002) Emotional Cognition: From Brain to Behaviour. Amsterdam: John Benjamin’s Publishing Company.
  27. Loewenstein, G. F., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C.K., & Welch, E. 2001. Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127: 267–286
  28. Mellers, B., &McGraw, A. P. (2001). Anticipated emotions as guides to choice. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 10(6), 210–214.
  29. Isen, A. M. (2001). An influence of positive affect on decision making in complex situations: Theoretical issues with practical implications. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 11(2), 75–85
  30. Shavelson, R. J., & Stanton, G. C. (1975). Construct validation: Methodology and application to three measures of cognitive structure. Journal of Educational Measurement, 12, 67-85.
  31. Witte, K. (1992). Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model. Communication Monographs, 59, 329-349.
  32. Zaichkowsky, J. L. (1985). Measuring the involvement construct. The Journal of Consumer Research, 12(3), 341-352.
  33. Buller, D.B. and J.K. Burgoon (1996). Interpersonal Deception Theory. Communication Theory, 6(3), 203–242.

Find more information on Emotion by searching Wikipedia's sister projects
Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
Images and media from Commons
News stories from Wikinews
Learning resources from Wikiversity

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.