Emotions are defined as “an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness” (Dictionary.com). As humans the emotions are an integral part of our existence. The phenomenon of emotions is universal it however varies at individual level. Imagine a world where there is no sorrow or happiness, life would have a very different form from the one we enjoy today.
There was a time when the psychologists and analysts considered emotions as “passions” and they referred this psychological response to as “sufferings of the soul” or internal changes to the soul triggered by some external forces. Cognitive, Subjective and Behavioral components are the three major components involved in it, the cognitive component: a subjective conscious experience where the events that are only significant to our concerns, goals, needs, values, wellbeing or preferences can elicit the emotion. The physiological component is the next component, physical arousal; the automatic nervous system is directly connected to the changes in emotions. It is a sensory commotion, more precisely the feeling which one gets when he is in the hold of any strong emotion. The last component is the behavioral component; Emotion is conveyed or communicated via facial expressions, voice and postural changes.
William and Carl proposed in their James-Lange theory of emotion that as a result of subject’s perceived automatic arousal a Conscious experience of emotion occurs. It hence emphasizes on the physiological determinants of emotion. There are certain patterns of automatic activation that lead to these emotions. The emotions are thus being differentiated by living beings like joy, fear, anger, sorrow etc.
Another of the early theories of emotion found from the past is the Cannon-Bard theory. The theory explains that when the signals are sent to the cortex simultaneously that will create a conscious experience of emotion, & to the automatic nervous system that will create a visceral arousal, emotion are made or felt. The neural center is thalamus for emotion.
There is another debate that is whether the emotions are innate or they are developed? Ekman conducted an experiment in which he used some standardized pictures of human facial expressions displaying some emotions and were meant for diverse nations worldwide. A percentage of instances of correctly identified emotions was then measured. A high agreement of cross cultures was used in this experiment. A number of researchers have replicated this experiment by modifying it accordingly so as to make the participants to screen both primary and secondary emotions depicted in the pictures. They found that
"although there are cultural differences in judgments of the intensity of emotional experience, agreement is very high across cultures regarding which emotion is most intensely expressed by facial features." (Ekman et al. 145)
In 1872, almost a century before Ekman’s experiment, Darwin proposed that the emotions were
"instinctive behavior patterns selected by pressures of natural selection."
(deCatanzaro 32)
In his studies, Darwin found the evidences of emotions present in other animals as well. He suggested that the differences in emotional expressions between the cultures are a cause of inheritance not learning. Darwin's theory strongly supports Ekman's response to the experiment that the emotional responses are not learned but they are innate.
McDougal developed a response on pleasure/ pain, this response was consistent with Ekman's findings. McDougal found that the basic emotions are the pleasure/pain emotions & while experiencing primary emotions one does not come across any cultural differences.
Campos is however of the opposite views, he suggests that the emotions are not innate they rather develop with time. He designed an experiment on babies to demonstrate the affects of parenting behavior on the emotions. An eight months old baby would generally display an emotion of fear from strangers, those babies however whose mothers responded cheerfully to the strangers, showed different response accordingly. These results suggest that the actual physiological reaction is innate whereas the emotional response is learned.
In Summary, emotion is a highly complex subject and has been researched and discussed a hundred years. Emotions are related to communicative, verbal and nonverbal behavior of humans as well as other living species on the face of this earth. Facial behavior depicts how the person feels in a certain situation. Facial expressions are a great source to know the present emotion affected state of a person, his mood personality and temperament.
Works Cited
[EKM 92] Ekman, P., Huang, T. S., Sejnowski, J. & Hager, J. C. Final report to NSF of the
planning workshop on Facial expression understanding. San Francisco, 1992.
[EKM 78] Ekman, P. Facial signs: Facts, fantasies, and possibilities. In T. Seboek (Ed.), Sight,
sound, and sense, p. 124-156. Bloomington: Indiana University press, 1978.
Emotion. Defination. [Web]. WWW,Dictionary.com. [n.d]
