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The concepts emotion and motivation are not easy to study because the are hard to define. They are
very important in determine human behavior from children to adolescence to adults. But they are
also difficult to measure and to conceptualize. So there is some general knowledge on the brain on
how those functions work, but it is not always very concrete because the definition of emotion..
there are a lot of constructs involved as you will see. And the same is for motivation.
Defining Emotion & Motivation
Let’s start with defining emotions. In order to define emotions we look at different theories that try
to explain emotions. In this example there is a dog and its looking quite dangerous, its barking and
maybe is even other noises to you. And there is this response. So in the different examples you will
see different aspects of emotions. So in the common sense, kind of what most people would think,
we would say okay I’m trembling because I feel afraid. So there is a stimulus, that’s the dog, then
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,there is this conscious feeling of fear and that will give you the autonomic arousal in your body and
that will make you tremble for example. So we would think about the stimulus, the conscious feeling,
the concrete emotion and then the response in the autonomic nervous system in the body. And
that’s kind of how people think it would work. We have a feeling and that is why we show a certain
behavior. But other people who study emotion in more detail they have suggested different routes.
So for example James-Lange suggested that actually we feel afraid because we have those automatic
responses in our automatic nervous system and that is why we have the emotions. So he suggests
that there is a stimulus like the dog that is dangerous. There is an automatic bodily response. The
emotion of fear is the interpretation of what is going on in our body. So that is a different
perspective. And that is the interpretation of really the bodily reaction, so the heartbeat and the
trembling and those kinds of things. So that is one theory.
And another theory, the Cannon-Bard theory says that there is a dog, it is again dangerous. Then
there is all kind of brain processing and the cortical and subcortical level which results both in the
emotion, as well as in the autonomic nervous system responses like the increased heartbeat and the
trembling. So this theory does not really mention that for example the bodily responses are following
the emotion, or the emotion is actually followed by the bodily reactions. It just mentions that there is
a lot of brain processes at different levels and that results in both conscious feelings, so emotions as
we would think you know you have your own personal emotions. And the body responses.
And then there is another theory who takes an important role for appraisal which is the conscious
reflection on what is going on. Is says that there is this dog who is barking, is dangerous. Then there
is the autonomic response in the body, so that is an automatic probably evolutionary driving
response in the body to fear or to dangerous stimuli. And then there is the appraisal. So you think
about this. In this theory there is a step in between that says that as soon as you start to think about
this body reactions, then there is the emotion.
There is not really an answer to what theory is correct.
The only thing I can say is that if we
define emotion, like here the APA
definition of emotions. It says that
emotion is a complex pattern of
changes, including physiological
arousal (so that is the autonomic
nervous system), feeling, cognitive
processes and behavioral reactions.
The cognitive processes are kind of the
reappraisal that you saw in one of the
models. The feelings are the conscious
emotion. And there are also behavioral
reactions like action tendency so if you see a dog that is dangerous, you will probably step back. All
that together is taken into account in the definition of emotion by APA. And those responses
together they made up a situation to be perceived as personally relevant or significant so important
to you. So in this interpretation or definition of emotion that is used by the APA suggests that there
are indeed different aspects that all together contribute to emotion.
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, that is also what is listen on this slide. So
different components of emotion are
mentioned here. It is the autonomic
response so that is the nervous system,
an increased heart rate. And it is very
much associated with the hypothalamus.
By now you know that the hypothalamus
is kind of in charge of the automatic
nervous system, and I will go into that
again in this lecture today.
We have subjective feelings, that is the
subjective feeling of fear and that is very much related to the amygdala and the frontal lobes.
And then we have the cognitions and the appraisal that is very much going on at the highest level in
the brain hierarchy, the cerebral cortex, who makes sense of all the information that is coming into
the brain.
So those different components of emotions you can see them in those different theories on two
slides earlier.
So that is what is really involved in the emotion. And then there is something else and that is the
regulation of emotions. So we express many emotions during the day, so you may be happy, you may
be sad so maybe something sad happens in your environment and then for example you have an
exam the next day so you have to regulate your emotion. There is a lot related to emotions
regulation. It is the reappraisal, reinterpretation, the monitoring of your own emotions and behavior,
you can maybe inhibit your behavior at certain moments when they are not appropriate. It may
result in attentional bias if you are feeling sad you may notice other people who are feeling sad
maybe easier. So all those kinds of things are related to emotion regulation. As soon as we talk about
the regulation of emotion we often talk about the prefrontal cortex, it may be very often involved in
those processes because it is really about how do we respond to the emotions and that is a much
higher order level of functioning.
I already gave away the definition that I
think is most appropriate at the
moment. As you saw in the different
theories there are different definitions
of emotions. And one has emotion as a
cognitive interpretation of subjective
feelings, that is most strongly
expressed in the book and that is the
Schachter view.
But you can also have emotions before
interpreting them. So you may sometimes have this down day that you don’t really know why you
are feeling down it is just a day that is not going well and you have this maybe more in your body
than in your mind, you have this urghhh feeling. And maybe your partner will ask you at the end of
the day ‘what is going on?’ and then you notice like ‘yeah I actually was like that all day’. So, you may
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