1000 word limit essay on universal basic emotion for 2nd year 'Biological Psychology' module.
Answering the question: 'What does basic emotion theory propose? Critically evaluate whether there are universal basic emotions in all humans'.
What does the basic emotion theory propose? Critically evaluate whether there are
universal basic emotions in all humans.
Basic emotion theory proposes that there are a set of emotions that are universal to
all people which were formed through an evolutionary process to aid survival (Ekman, 1992).
A main contributor for this is Paul Ekman who throughout the years has put forward several
pieces of work to say that there are a basic set of emotions that are universal.
The main premise is that humans have a set of limited emotions such as anger, joy
and fear which are universal and that are defined as biologically and psychologically basic,
with the capability to have complex emotion to be formed from combining the basic emotions
together. These basic emotions came about due to evolution to handle the fundamental
everyday tasks there were faced before civilised societies were formed but also stay
important to this day. Ekman suggested that there are seven basic emotions with those
being fear, anger, disgust, sadness, contempt, joy, and surprised however did make change
to this reducing the number to six removing contempt. Ekman’s work is based on research
he did using facial expressions which he conducted with indigenous groups in Papua New
Guinea due to their isolated nature from the rest of the world (Ekman, 1972). This study
shows the strongest evidence in favour of basic emotion theory as the people in the study
were able to show and read each of the aforementioned emotions accurately showing an
understanding in facial expression and that the people in the indigenous group had the same
emotion range as the rest of the world despite the cultural difference.
The studies and work done by Ekman are a strong argument in favour of the theory
as they are able to show clear signs of a universal basis of emotion using facial expressions
which have been shown (from Ekman’s work) to be a universal form of emotion
communication across cultures. The use of an indigenous tribe as a sample for the study
further increases the value of the results due to their prehistoric way of life as despite this,
they were able to identify facial expressions of people away from said tribe and vice versa,
which still holds up today as people can still use what Ekman recorded to demonstrate such.
The main example used to prove basic emotion theory is fear. Fear is defined as the
feeling of anxiety caused by a threat of harm, pain and or danger with specific aspects that
can relate to an outcome of something but is also short lived as it dissipates when the
danger is gone. Fear is used as a prime example as of the evolutionary link that fear aids
survival as it keeps us alive when faced with danger. Innate fear is what is typically
associated with such as that is a universal an example of such is separation or loud noises
which is something that is easily observable in young children. Loud noises are quick to elicit
fear in young children, the ‘Little Albert’ study is evidence of this as loud noises were used to
cause Albert to be fearful to the extent a phobia was formed. Along with the innate fear,
behaviours in response to fear are universal. The fight and flight response are a universal
response to fear inducing situations as well as freezing and an emotional expression like a
facial expression. However, there is an issue with such as it brings up the question on if
there is a universal threshold and or definition of each emotion not just specifically fear. It
can be seen that fear itself is not a universal as people experience fear to varying levels with
some people not being about to feel such. This also brings forth the question on what about
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