Emotions are physical and brought on by neurophysiology changes, variously associated with , feelings, behavior, and a degree of pleasure or suffering.
Research on emotion has increased over the past two decades,
From a mechanistic perspective, emotions can be defined as "a positive or negative experience that is associated with a particular pattern of Physiology activity".
Nowadays, most research into emotions in the clinical and well-being context focuses on emotion dynamics in daily life, predominantly the intensity of specific emotions and their variability, instability, inertia, and differentiation, as well as whether and how emotions augment or blunt each other over time and differences in these dynamics between people and along the lifespan.
Etymology
The word "emotion" dates back to 1579, when it was adapted from the French word
émotion, which comes from the
old french word
émouvoir of the same meaning as "to stir up". The term emotion was introduced into academic discussion as a catch-all term to passions,
feeling and
.
The word "emotion" was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown and it is around the 1830s that the modern concept of emotion first emerged for the English language.
"No one felt emotions before about 1830. Instead they felt other things – 'passions', 'accidents of the soul', 'moral sentiments' – and explained them very differently from how we understand emotions today."
Some cross-cultural studies indicate that the categorization of "emotion" and classification of basic emotions such as "anger" and "sadness" are not universal and that the boundaries and domains of these concepts are categorized differently by all cultures.
History
Human nature and the accompanying bodily sensations have always been part of the interests of thinkers and philosophers. Far more extensively, this has also been of great interest to both Western and Eastern societies. Emotional states have been associated with the divine and with the enlightenment of the human mind and body.
The ever-changing actions of individuals and their mood variations have been of great importance to most of the Western philosophers (including
Aristotle,
Plato,
Descartes,
Aquinas, and
Hobbes), leading them to propose extensive theories—often competing theories—that sought to explain emotion and the accompanying motivators of human action, as well as its consequences.
In the Age of Enlightenment, Scottish thinker David Hume
Definitions
The
Lexico definition of emotion is "A strong
feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others".
Emotions are responses to significant internal and external events.
[Schacter, D.L., Gilbert, D.T., Wegner, D.M., & Hood, B.M. (2011). Psychology (European ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.]
Emotions can be occurrences (e.g., panic) or dispositions (e.g., hostility), and short-lived (e.g., anger) or long-lived (e.g., grief).
Emotions have been categorized, with some relationships existing between emotions and some direct opposites existing. Graham differentiates emotions as functional or dysfunctional and argues all functional emotions have benefits.
In some uses of the word, emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something.[Hume, D. Emotions and Moods. Organizational Behavior, 258–97.] On the other hand, emotion can be used to refer to states that are mild (as in annoyed or content) and to states that are not directed at anything (as in anxiety and depression). One line of research looks at the meaning of the word emotion in everyday language and finds that this usage is rather different from that in academic discourse.
In practical terms, Joseph LeDoux has defined emotions as the result of a cognitive and conscious process which occurs in response to a body system response to a trigger.
Components
According to
Klaus Scherer's Component Process Model (CPM) of emotion,
there are five crucial elements of emotion. From the component process perspective, emotional experience requires that all of these processes become coordinated and synchronized for a short period of time, driven by appraisal processes. Although the inclusion of cognitive appraisal as one of the elements is slightly controversial, since some theorists make the assumption that emotion and
cognition are separate but interacting systems, the CPM provides a sequence of events that effectively describes the coordination involved during an emotional episode.
-
Cognitive appraisal: provides an evaluation of events and objects.
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Bodily symptoms: the physiology component of emotional experience.
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Action tendencies: a component for the preparation and direction of motor responses.
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Expression: facial and human voice expression almost always accompanies an emotional state to communicate reaction and intention of actions.
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Feelings: the subjective experience of emotional state once it has occurred.
Differentiation
Emotion can be differentiated from a number of similar constructs within the field of affective neuroscience:
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Emotions: predispositions to a certain type of action in response to a specific stimulus, which produce a cascade of rapid and synchronized physiological and cognitive changes.
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Feeling: not all feelings include emotion, such as the feeling of knowing. In the context of emotion, feelings are best understood as a subjectivity representation of emotions, private to the individual experiencing them.
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Moods: enduring affective states that are considered less intense than emotions and appear to lack a contextual stimulus.
Classification
A distinction can be made between emotional episodes and emotional dispositions. Emotional dispositions are also comparable to character traits, where someone may be said to be generally disposed to experience certain emotions. For example, an irritable person is generally disposed to feel
irritation more easily or quickly than others do. Finally, some theorists place emotions within a more general category of "affective states" where affective states can also include emotion-related phenomena such as
pleasure and
suffering, motivational states (for example, hunger or
curiosity), moods, dispositions and traits.
[Schwarz, N.H. (1990). "Feelings as information: Informational and motivational functions of affective states". Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior, 2, 527–561.]
Basic emotions theory
For more than 40 years,
Paul Ekman has supported the view that emotions are discrete, measurable, and physiologically distinct. Ekman's most influential work revolved around the finding that certain emotions appeared to be universally recognized, even in cultures that were preliterate and could not have learned associations for facial expressions through media. Another classic study found that when participants contorted their facial muscles into distinct facial expressions (for example, disgust), they reported subjective and physiological experiences that matched the distinct facial expressions. Ekman's facial-expression research examined six basic emotions:
anger,
disgust,
fear,
happiness,
sadness and surprise.
Later in his career,
Robert Plutchik agreed with Ekman's biologically driven perspective but developed the "wheel of emotions", suggesting eight primary emotions grouped on a positive or negative basis: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation.
Jaak Panksepp carved out seven heredity primary affective systems called SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy). He proposed what is known as "core-SELF" to be generating these affects.
Multi-dimensional analysis theory
Psychologists have used methods such as
factor analysis to attempt to map emotion-related responses onto a more limited number of dimensions. Such methods attempt to boil emotions down to underlying dimensions that capture the similarities and differences between experiences.
Often, the first two dimensions uncovered by factor analysis are valence (how negative or positive the experience feels) and
arousal (how energized or enervated the experience feels). These two dimensions can be depicted on a 2D coordinate map.
This two-dimensional map has been theorized to capture one important component of emotion called core affect.
Core affect is not theorized to be the only component to emotion, but to give the emotion its hedonic and felt energy.
Using statistical methods to analyze emotional states elicited by short videos, Cowen and Keltner identified 27 varieties of emotional experience: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, and surprise.
Theories
Pre-modern history
In Hinduism,
Bharata Muni enunciated the nine rasas (emotions) in the
Nātyasāstra, an ancient Sanskrit text of
dramatic theory and other performance arts, written between 200 BC and 200 AD.
The theory of rasas still forms the
Aesthetics underpinning of all Indian classical dance and theatre, such as
Bharatanatyam,
kathak,
Kuchipudi,
Odissi,
Manipuri dance,
Kudiyattam,
Kathakali and others.
established the following:
Srungara (शृङ्गारः): Romance / Love / attractiveness, Hāsyam (हास्यं): Laughter / mirth / comedy, Raudram (रौद्रं): Fury / Anger, Kāruṇyam (कारुण्यं): Compassion / mercy, Bībhatsam (बीभत्सं): Disgust / aversion, Bhayānakam (भयानकं): Horror / terror, Veeram (वीरं): Pride / Heroism, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Surprise / wonder.
In Buddhism, emotions occur when an object is considered attractive or repulsive. There is a felt tendency impelling people towards attractive objects and propelling them to move away from repulsive or harmful objects; a disposition to possess the object (greed), to destroy it (hatred), to flee from it (fear), to get obsessed or worried over it (anxiety), and so on.
In Stoicism theories, normal emotions (like delight and fear) are described as irrational impulses that come from incorrect appraisals of what is 'good' or 'bad'. Alternatively, there are 'good emotions' (like joy and caution) experienced by those that are wise, which come from correct appraisals of what is 'good' and 'bad'.
Aristotle believed that emotions were an essential component of virtue.
In Chinese antiquity, excessive emotion was believed to cause damage to qi, which in turn, damages the vital organs.
In the early 11th century, Avicenna theorized about the influence of emotions on health and behaviors, suggesting the need to manage emotions.
Early modern views on emotion are developed in the works of philosophers such as René Descartes, Niccolò Machiavelli, Baruch Spinoza,[See for instance Antonio Damasio (2005) Looking for Spinoza.] Thomas Hobbes[Leviathan (1651), VI: Of the Interior Beginnings of Voluntary Notions, Commonly called the Passions; and the Speeches by which They are Expressed] and David Hume. In the 19th century emotions were considered adaptive and were studied more frequently from an empiricism psychiatric perspective.
Evolutionary theories
19th century
Evolutionary perspectives on emotion began in the mid-to-late 19th century with
Charles Darwin's 1872 book
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
[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] In that work Darwin argued that emotional expressions have evolutionary origins and can serve adaptive and communicative functions.
He pioneered the systematic study of nonverbal behaviour, concluding that expressions are universal
cross-cultural and that homologous forms of emotional expression occur in other animals. Darwin interpreted these similarities as evidence that emotional expression had been shaped by evolutionary processes such as natural selection.
Contemporary
More contemporary views along the evolutionary psychology spectrum posit that both basic emotions and social emotions evolved to motivate (social) behaviors that were adaptive in the ancestral environment.
[Gaulin, Steven J.C. and Donald H. McBurney (2003). Evolutionary Psychology. Prentice Hall. , Chapter 6, pp. 121–142.] Emotion is an essential part of any human decision-making and planning, and the famous distinction made between reason and emotion is not as clear as it seems.
Paul D. MacLean claims that emotion competes with even more instinctive responses, on one hand, and the more abstract reasoning, on the other hand. The increased potential in
neuroimaging has also allowed investigation into evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain. Important neurological advances were derived from these perspectives in the 1990s by Joseph E. LeDoux and
Antonio Damasio. For example, in an extensive study of a subject with ventromedial frontal lobe damage described in the book Descartes' Error, Damasio demonstrated how loss of physiological capacity for emotion resulted in the subject's lost capacity to make decisions despite having robust faculties for rationally assessing options.
Research on physiological emotion has caused modern neuroscience to abandon the model of emotions and rationality as opposing forces. In contrast to the ancient Greek ideal of dispassionate reason, the neuroscience of emotion shows that emotion is necessarily integrated with intellect.
Research on social emotion also focuses on the physical displays of emotion including body language of animals and humans (see affect display). For example, spite seems to work against the individual but it can establish an individual's reputation as someone to be feared.
Somatic theories
Somatic theories of emotion claim that bodily responses, rather than cognitive interpretations, are essential to emotions. The first modern version of such theories came from
William James in the 1880s. The theory lost favor in the 20th century, but has regained popularity more recently due largely to theorists such as John T. Cacioppo,
,
Joseph E. LeDoux
[LeDoux J.E. (1996) The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon & Schuster.] and
Robert Zajonc who are able to appeal to neurological evidence.
James–Lange theory
In his 1884 article
argued that feelings and emotions were
secondary to
physiology phenomena. In his theory, James proposed that the perception of what he called an "exciting fact" directly led to a physiological response, known as "emotion".
To account for different types of emotional experiences, James proposed that stimuli trigger activity in the autonomic nervous system, which in turn produces an emotional experience in the brain. The Danish psychologist Carl Lange also proposed a similar theory at around the same time, and therefore this theory became known as the James–Lange theory. As James wrote, "the perception of bodily changes, as they occur,
is the emotion". James further claims that "we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and either we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be".
[
]
An example of this theory in action would be as follows: An emotion-evoking stimulus (snake) triggers a pattern of physiological response (increased heart rate, faster breathing, etc.), which is interpreted as a particular emotion (fear). This theory is supported by experiments in which by manipulating the bodily state induces a desired emotional state.[Laird, James, Feelings: the Perception of Self, Oxford University Press] Some people may believe that emotions give rise to emotion-specific actions, for example, "I'm crying because I'm sad", or "I ran away because I was scared". The issue with the James–Lange theory is that of causation (bodily states causing emotions and being a priori), not that of the bodily influences on emotional experience (which can be argued and is still quite prevalent today in biofeedback studies and embodiment theory).
Although mostly abandoned in its original form, Tim Dalgleish argues that most contemporary neuroscientists have embraced the components of the James-Lange theory of emotions.
Cannon–Bard theory
Walter Bradford Cannon agreed that physiological responses played a crucial role in emotions, but did not believe that physiological responses alone could explain subjectivity emotional experiences. He argued that physiological responses were too slow and often imperceptible and this could not account for the relatively rapid and intense subjective awareness of emotion.
Phillip Bard contributed to the theory with his work on animals. Bard found that sensory, motor, and physiological information all had to pass through the diencephalon (particularly the thalamus), before being subjected to any further processing. Therefore, Cannon also argued that it was not anatomically possible for sensory events to trigger a physiological response prior to triggering conscious awareness and emotional stimuli had to trigger both physiological and experiential aspects of emotion simultaneously.
Two-factor theory
Stanley Schachter formulated his theory on the earlier work of a Spanish physician, Gregorio Marañón, who injected patients with adrenaline and subsequently asked them how they felt. Marañón found that most of these patients felt something but in the absence of an actual emotion-evoking stimulus, the patients were unable to interpret their physiological arousal as an experienced emotion. Schachter did agree that physiological reactions played a big role in emotions. He suggested that physiological reactions contributed to emotional experience by facilitating a focused cognitive appraisal of a given physiologically arousing event and that this appraisal was what defined the subjective emotional experience. Emotions were thus a result of two-stage process: general physiological arousal, and experience of emotion. For example, the physiological arousal, heart pounding, in a response to an evoking stimulus, the sight of a bear in the kitchen. The brain then quickly scans the area, to explain the pounding, and notices the bear. Consequently, the brain interprets the pounding heart as being the result of fearing the bear.
Cognitive theories
With the two-factor theory now incorporating cognition, several theories began to argue that cognitive activity in the form of judgments, evaluations, or thoughts were entirely necessary for an emotion to occur.
These theories acknowledge that emotions are not automatic reactions but result from the interplay of cognitive interpretations, physiological responses, and the social context. A prominent philosophical exponent is Robert C. Solomon (for example, The Passions, Emotions and the Meaning of Life, 1993
Two-Process Theory
George Mandler provided an extensive theoretical and empirical discussion of emotion as influenced by cognition, consciousness, and the autonomic nervous system in two books ( Mind and Emotion, 1975,
Situated perspective on emotion
A situated perspective on emotion, developed by Paul E. Griffiths and Andrea Scarantino, emphasizes the importance of external factors in the development and communication of emotion, drawing upon the situationism approach in psychology.
Genetics
Emotions can motivate social interactions and relationships and therefore are directly related with basic physiology, particularly with the stress systems. This is important because emotions are related to the anti-stress complex, with an oxytocin-attachment system, which plays a major role in bonding. Emotional phenotype affect social connectedness and fitness in complex social systems.
In the five million years since the lineages leading to modern humans and chimpanzees split, only about 1.2% of their genetic material has been modified. This suggests that everything that separates us from chimpanzees must be encoded in that very small amount of DNA, including our behaviors . Students that study animal behaviors have only identified intraspecific examples of gene-dependent behavioral phenotypes. In (Microtus spp.) minor genetic differences have been identified in a vasopressin receptor gene that corresponds to major species differences in social organization and the mating system.
Formation
Neurobiological explanation
Based on discoveries made through neural mapping of the limbic system, the neuroscience explanation of human emotion is that emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. If distinguished from reactive responses of , emotions would then be mammalian elaborations of general vertebrate arousal patterns, in which (for example, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) step-up or step-down the brain's activity level, as visible in body movements, gestures and postures. Emotions can likely be mediated by (see fear).
For example, the emotion of love is proposed to be the expression of complex neural networks of the mammalian brain, involving the ventral tegmental area, thalamus, substantia nigra, putamen, caudate nucleus, and anterior cingulate cortex.
Other emotions like fear and anxiety long thought to be exclusively generated by the most primitive parts of the brain (stem) and more associated to the fight-or-flight responses of behavior, have also been associated as adaptive expressions of defensive behavior whenever a threat is encountered. Although defensive behaviors have been present in a wide variety of species, Blanchard et al. (2001) discovered a correlation of given stimuli and situation that resulted in a similar pattern of defensive behavior towards a threat in human and non-human mammals.
Whenever potentially dangerous stimuli are presented, additional brain structures activate that previous thought (hippocampus, thalamus, etc.). Thus, giving the amygdala an important role in coordinating the following behavioral input based on the presented neurotransmitters that respond to threat stimuli. These biological functions of the amygdala are not only limited to the "fear-conditioning" and "processing of aversive stimuli", but also are present on other components of the amygdala. Therefore, it can referred the amygdala as a key structure to understand the potential responses of behavior in danger like situations in human and non-human mammals.
The motor centers of 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 , 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 emotion and emotional memory. 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 certain activities in brain areas that direct our attention, motivate our behavior, and determine the significance of what is going on around us. Pioneering work by Paul Broca (1878),
Prefrontal cortex
There is ample evidence that the left prefrontal cortex is activated by stimuli that cause positive approach.
Two neurobiological models of emotion in the prefrontal cortex made opposing predictions. The valence model predicted that anger, a negative emotion, would activate the right prefrontal cortex. The direction model predicted that anger, an approach emotion, would activate the left prefrontal cortex. The second model was supported.
This still left open the question of whether the opposite of approach in the prefrontal cortex is better described as moving away (direction model), as unmoving but with strength and resistance (movement model), or as unmoving with passive yielding (action tendency model). Support for the action tendency model (passivity related to right prefrontal activity) comes from research on shyness
Homeostatic/primordial emotion
Another neurological approach proposed by Arthur Craig in 2003 distinguishes two classes of emotion: "classical" emotions such as love, anger and fear that are evoked by environmental stimuli, and "homeostatic emotions"attention-demanding feelings evoked by body states, such as pain, hunger and fatigue, that motivate behavior (withdrawal, eating or resting in these examples) aimed at maintaining the body's internal milieu at its ideal state.
Derek Denton calls the latter "primordial emotions" and defines them as "the subjective element of the instincts, which are the genetically programmed behavior patterns which contrive homeostasis. They include thirst, hunger for air, hunger for food, pain and hunger for specific minerals etc. There are two constituents of a primordial emotion – the specific sensation which when severe may be imperious, and the compelling intention for gratification by a consummatory act".
Emergent explanation
Emotions are seen by some researchers to be constructed (emerge) in social and cognitive domain alone, without directly implying Heredity characteristics.
Joseph LeDoux differentiates between the human's defense system, which has evolved over time, and emotions such as fear and anxiety. He has said that the amygdala may release hormones due to a trigger (such as an innate reaction to seeing a snake), but "then we elaborate it through cognitive and conscious processes".
Lisa Feldman Barrett highlights differences in emotions between different cultures, and says that emotions (such as anxiety) are socially constructed (see theory of constructed emotion). She says that they "are not triggered; you create them. They emerge as a combination of the physical properties of your body, a flexible brain that wires itself to whatever environment it develops in, and your culture and upbringing, which provide that environment".
Disciplinary approaches
Many different disciplines have produced work on the emotions. In psychiatry, emotions are examined as part of the discipline's study and treatment of mental disorders in humans.
often examine emotion for the role that it plays in human culture and social interactions. In sociology, emotions are examined for the role they play in human society, social patterns and interactions, and culture.
In economics, the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, emotions are analyzed in some sub-fields of microeconomics, in order to assess the role of emotions on purchase decision-making and risk perception. In criminology, a social science approach to the study of crime, scholars often draw on behavioral sciences, sociology, and psychology; emotions are examined in criminology issues such as anomie theory and studies of "toughness", aggressive behavior, and hooliganism. In law, which underpins civil obedience, politics, economics and society, evidence about people's emotions is often raised in tort law claims for compensation and in criminal law prosecutions against alleged lawbreakers (as evidence of the defendant's state of mind during trials, sentencing, and parole hearings). In political science, emotions are examined in a number of sub-fields, such as the analysis of voter decision-making.
In philosophy, emotions are studied in sub-fields such as ethics, the aesthetics (for example, sensory–emotional values, and matters of taste and sentimentality), and the philosophy of music (see also music and emotion). In history, scholars examine documents and other sources to interpret and analyze past activities; speculation on the emotional state of the authors of historical documents is one of the tools of interpretation. In literature and film-making, the expression of emotion is the cornerstone of genres such as drama, melodrama, and romance. In communication studies, scholars study the role that emotion plays in the dissemination of ideas and messages. Emotion is also studied in non-human animals in ethology, a branch of zoology which focuses on the scientific study of animal behavior. Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with strong ties to ecology and evolution. Ethologists often study one type of behavior (for example, aggression) in a number of unrelated animals.
History of emotions
The history of emotions has become an increasingly popular topic recently, with some scholars arguing that it is an essentialism category of analysis, not unlike class, race, or gender. Historians, like other social scientists, assume that emotions, feelings and their expressions are regulated in different ways by both different cultures and different historical times, and the constructivist school of history claims even that some sentiments and , for example schadenfreude, are learnt and not only regulated by culture. Historians of emotion trace and analyze the changing norms and rules of feeling, while examining emotional regimes, codes, and lexicons from social, cultural, or political history perspectives. Others focus on the history of medicine, science, or psychology. What somebody can and may feel (and show) in a given situation, towards certain people or things, depends on and rules; thus historically variable and open to change.
Furthermore, research in historical trauma suggests that some traumatic emotions can be passed on from parents to offspring to second and even third generation, presented as examples of transgenerational trauma.
Sociology
A common way in which emotions are conceptualized in sociology is in terms of the multidimensional characteristics including cultural or emotional labels (for example, anger, pride, fear, happiness), physiological changes (for example, increased perspiration, changes in pulse rate), expressive facial and body movements (for example, smiling, frowning, baring teeth), and appraisals of situational sensory cue.[Turner, J.H. (2007). Human emotions: A sociological theory. London: Routledge.]
Attempts are frequently made to regulate emotion according to the conventions of the society and the situation based on many (sometimes conflicting) demands and expectations which originate from various entities. The expression of anger is in many cultures discouraged in girls and women to a greater extent than in boys and men (the notion being that an angry man has a valid complaint that needs to be rectified, while an angry women is hysterical or oversensitive, and her anger is somehow invalid), while the expression of sadness or fear is discouraged in boys and men relative to girls and women (attitudes implicit in phrases like "man up" or "don't be a sissy").
Sociological attention to emotion has varied over time. Émile Durkheim (1915/1965)[Durkheim, E. (1915/1912). The elementary forms of the religious life, trans. J.W. Swain. New York: Free Press.] wrote about the collective effervescence or emotional energy that was experienced by members of totemic rituals in Australian Aboriginal society. He explained how the heightened state of emotional energy achieved during totemic rituals transported individuals above themselves giving them the sense that they were in the presence of a higher power, a force, that was embedded in the sacred objects that were worshipped. These feelings of exaltation, he argued, ultimately lead people to believe that there were forces that governed sacred objects.
In the 1990s, sociologists focused on different aspects of specific emotions and how these emotions were socially relevant. For Cooley (1992),[Cooley, C.H. (1992). Human nature and the social order. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.] pride and shame were the most important emotions that drive people to take various social actions. During every encounter, he proposed that we monitor ourselves through the "looking glass" that the gestures and reactions of others provide. Depending on these reactions, we either experience pride or shame and this results in particular paths of action. Retzinger (1991)
Subsequent to these developments, Randall Collins (2004)[Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.] formulated his interaction ritual theory by drawing on Durkheim's work on totemic rituals that was extended by Goffman (1964/2013; 1967)[Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual. New York: Anchor Books.][Goffman, E. (1964/2013). Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interactions. Mansfiled Centre, CT: Martino Publishing.] into everyday focused encounters. Based on interaction ritual theory, we experience different levels or intensities of emotional energy during face-to-face interactions. Emotional energy is considered to be a feeling of confidence to take action and a boldness that one experiences when they are charged up from the collective effervescence generated during group gatherings that reach high levels of intensity.
There is a growing body of research applying the sociology of emotion to understanding the learning experiences of students during classroom interactions with teachers and other students (for example, Milne & Otieno, 2007;[Olitsky, S. (2007). "Science learning, status and identity formation in an urban middle school". In W.-M. Roth & K.G. Tobin (Eds.), Science, learning, identity: Sociocultural and cultural-historical perspectives. (pp. 41–62). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.] Tobin, et al., 2013;
Apart from interaction ritual traditions of the sociology of emotion, other approaches have been classed into one of six other categories:
-
evolutionary/biological theories
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symbolic interactionist theories
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dramaturgical theories
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ritual theories
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power and status theories
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stratification theories
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exchange theories
This list provides a general overview of different traditions in the sociology of emotion that sometimes conceptualize emotion in different ways and at other times in complementary ways. Many of these different approaches were synthesized by Turner (2007) in his sociological theory of human emotions in an attempt to produce one comprehensive sociological account that draws on developments from many of the above traditions.
Psychotherapy and regulation
Emotion regulation refers to the cognitive and behavioral strategies people use to influence their own emotional experience.[Schacter, Daniel. "Psychology". Worth Publishers. 2011. p. 316] For example, a behavioral strategy in which one avoids a situation to avoid unwanted emotions (trying not to think about the situation, doing distracting activities, etc.).[Schacter, Daniel. Psychology. Worth Publishers. 2011. p. 340] Depending on the particular school's general emphasis on either cognitive components of emotion, physical energy discharging, or on symbolic movement and facial expression components of emotion different schools of psychotherapy approach the regulation of emotion differently. Cognitively oriented schools approach them via their cognitive components, such as rational emotive behavior therapy. Yet others approach emotions via symbolic movement and facial expression components (like in contemporary Gestalt therapy).
Cross-cultural research
Research on emotions reveals the strong presence of cross-cultural differences in emotional reactions and that emotional reactions are likely to be culture-specific.[Shaver, Phillip R.; Wu, Shelley; Schwartz, Judith C. "Cross-cultural similarities and differences in emotion and its representation" In: Clark, Margaret S. (Ed), (1992). Emotion. Review of personality and social psychology, No. 13., (pp. 175–212). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc, ix, 326 pp] In strategic settings, cross-cultural research on emotions is required for understanding the psychological situation of a given population or specific actors. This implies the need to comprehend the current emotional state, mental disposition or other behavioral motivation of a target audience located in a different culture, basically founded on its national, political, social, economic, and psychological peculiarities but also subject to the influence of circumstances and events.[North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO Standardization Agency AAP-6 – Glossary of terms and definitions, p. 188.]
Computer science
In the 2000s, research in computer science, engineering, psychology and neuroscience has been aimed at developing devices that recognize human affect display and model emotions.[ the more modern branch of computer science originated with Rosalind Picard's 1995 paper][ "Affective Computing" MIT Technical Report #321 ( Abstract ), 1995] on affective computing.
Effects on memory
Emotion affects the way autobiographical memories are encoded and retrieved. Emotional memory are reactivated more, they are remembered better and have more attention devoted to them.
Notable theorists
In the late 19th century, the most influential theorists were William James (1842–1910) and Carl Lange (1834–1900). James was an American psychologist and philosopher who wrote about educational psychology, psychology of religious experience/mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. Lange was a Danish physician and psychologist. Working independently, they developed the James–Lange theory, a hypothesis on the origin and nature of emotions. The theory states that within human beings, as a response to experiences in the world, the autonomic nervous system creates physiological events such as muscular tension, a rise in heart rate, perspiration, and dryness of the mouth. Emotions, then, are feelings which come about as a result of these physiological changes, rather than being their cause.
Silvan Tomkins (1911–1991) developed the affect theory and script theory. The affect theory introduced the concept of basic emotions, and was based on the idea that the dominance of the emotion, which he called the affected system, was the motivating force in human life.
Some of the most influential deceased theorists on emotion from the 20th century include Magda B. Arnold (1903–2002), an American psychologist who developed the appraisal theory of emotions;[Nico Frijda (1986). The Emotions. Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press] Jaak Panksepp (1943–2017), an Estonian-born American psychologist, psychobiologist, neuroscientist and pioneer in affective neuroscience; John T. Cacioppo (1951–2018), one of the founding fathers of social neuroscience; George Mandler (1924–2016), an American psychologist who wrote influential books on cognition and emotion.
Influential theorists who are still active include the following psychologists, neurologists, philosophers, and sociologists:
-
Michael Apter – (born 1939) British psychologist who developed reversal theory, a structural, phenomenological theory of personality, motivation, and emotion
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Lisa Feldman Barrett – (born 1963) neuroscientist and psychologist specializing in affective science and human emotion
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Randall Collins – (born 1941) American sociologist from the University of Pennsylvania developed the interaction ritual theory which includes the emotional entrainment model
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Antonio Damasio (born 1944) – Portuguese behavioral neurologist and neuroscientist who works in the US
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Richard Davidson (born 1951) – American psychologist and neuroscientist; pioneer in affective neuroscience
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Paul Ekman (born 1934) – psychologist specializing in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions
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Barbara Fredrickson – Social psychologist who specializes in emotions and positive psychology.
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Arlie Russell Hochschild (born 1940) – American sociologist whose central contribution was in forging a link between the subcutaneous flow of emotion in social life and the larger trends set loose by modern capitalism within organizations
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Joseph E. LeDoux (born 1949) – American neuroscientist who studies the biological underpinnings of memory and emotion, especially the mechanisms of fear
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Jesse Prinz – American philosopher who specializes in emotion, moral psychology, aesthetics and consciousness
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James A. Russell (born 1947) – American psychologist who developed or co-developed the PAD theory of environmental impact, circumplex model of affect, prototype theory of emotion concepts, a critique of the hypothesis of universal recognition of emotion from facial expression, concept of core affect, developmental theory of differentiation of emotion concepts, and, more recently, the theory of the psychological construction of emotion
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Klaus Scherer (born 1943) – Swiss psychologist and former director of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences in Geneva; he specializes in the psychology of emotion
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Ronald de Sousa (born 1940) – English–Canadian philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of emotions, philosophy of mind and philosophy of biology
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Jonathan H. Turner (born 1942) – American sociologist from the University of California, Riverside, who is a general sociological theorist with specialty areas including the sociology of emotions, ethnic relations, social institutions, social stratification, and bio-sociology
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Dominique Moïsi (born 1946) – authored a book titled The Geopolitics of Emotion focusing on emotions related to globalization
See also
Notes
Further reading
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Glinka, Lukasz Andrzej (2013) Theorizing Emotions: A Brief Study of Psychological, Philosophical, and Cultural Aspects of Human Emotions. Great Abington: Cambridge International Science Publishing. .
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Dana Sugu & Amita Chaterjee "Flashback: Reshuffling Emotions" , International Journal on Humanistic Ideology, Vol. 3 No. 1, Spring–Summer 2010.
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Cornelius, R. (1996). The science of emotion. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
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González, Ana Marta (2012). The Emotions and Cultural Analysis. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
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Paul Ekman (1999). " Basic Emotions". In: T. Dalgleish and M. Power (Eds.). Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Sussex, UK:.
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Nico Frijda (1986). The Emotions. Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press
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Hogan, Patrick Colm. (2011). What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Hordern, Joshua. (2013). Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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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.
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Mandler, G. (1984). Mind and Body: Psychology of emotion and stress. New York: Norton. Wayback Machine
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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.
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Roberts, Robert. (2003). Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Solomon, R. (1993). The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
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External links
