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Summary Emotions: Scientific & Clinical Aspects
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  • (500192B6)
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  • Tilburg University (UVT)
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  • Understanding Emotions

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  • December 14, 2023
  • December 15, 2023
  • 215
  • 2023/2024
  • Summary

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  • emotions
  • clinical psychology
  • tilburg
  • psychology
  • understanding emotions
  • clinical aspects of emotions

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Summary for



Emotions
-scientific and clinical aspects-




This summary is based on:
o Keltner, D., Oatley, K., & Jenkins, J. M. (2020). Understanding emotions (4th edition, EMEA
edition). Wiley.
o Nyklíček, I. (2011). Mindfulness, emotion regulation, and well-being. In I. Nyklíček, A. Vingerhoets &
M. Zeelenberg (Eds.), Emotion regulation and well-being (pp. 101-118). Springer.
o Weekly knowledge clips
o Weekly lectures




[1] Laura C.

, Chapter 1: Approaches to Understanding Emotions
emotion= a psychological state that relates an event, usually out there in
the world, but sometimes in the mind (the events an emotion relates to are
called concerns)
- an emotion prepares the person for action => one central component of
an emotion is an internal experience (=a state that reflects a present
context relevant to the person’s goals)
- the emotion gives priority to one goal over others; it gives that goal, or concern,
urgency (Sylvan Tomkins) => Emotions are states triggered by events related to our
concerns and that motivate action
- rather than thinking that emotions are irrational, psychologists now tend to think of
emotions as being locally rational: they help us deal adaptively with concerns specific
to our current social context (e.g., concerns over safety, fairness, agency, being
esteemed and respected, moral virtue, and feeling connected to trustworthy others)
that define our identities; emotion gives urgency to a specific concern, and orients us
to specific kinds of action.
- emotions are states that are social- they mediate, or connect, the individual’s pressing
concerns with potential courses of action within the social environment; emotions
connect our context-specific concerns with possible courses of action in the social
environment
- the interpersonal equivalent of an emotion giving priority to a concern is care; in this
context an emotion is a kind of commitment to another- we make the other’s concerns
our own
=>emotions are subjective and intrapersonal, but also powerfully social and interpersonal

Nineteenth-Century Founders

Charles Darwin: The Evolutionary Approach

Darwin asked two broad questions:
o how are emotions
expressed in humans and
other animals?
o where do our emotions
come from?
- he thought that emotional
expressions derive largely
from habits that in our
evolutionary or individual
past had once been useful;
emotional expressions are
based on reflex-like
mechanisms, and some of
them occur whether they
are useful or not; they can

[2] Laura C.

, be triggered involuntarily in circumstances analogous to those that had triggered the
original habits => our emotions link us to our past: to the past of our species and to
our own infancy
- he also observed that many emotional expressions have the same quality (many
emotions can be expressed in similar ways/ look similar) and emotions have useful
functions- they help us navigate our social interactions


- in general, emotional expression are used to communicate two things:
o that the associated emotion program has been activated in the individual (the
individual feels an emotion)
o the identity of the evolutionary recurrent situation being faced (the emotional
expression signal to those around us that something is happening)
=>some emotions have a more automatic display (sadness) but a much larger set of emotions
have no such thing (jealousy, guilt, boredom); the emotions that do not have a specific way of
expression are hypothesised to have developed later

William James: The Bodily Approach
- William James argued against the common-sense idea that when we feel an emotion it
impels us to act in a certain way (if we were to meet a bear in the woods we would
feel frightened and run); instead, James proposed that when we see the bear, “the
exciting fact” as he put it, the emotion, IS the perception of changes of our body as we
react to that fact




- James’s theorizing focuses on the nature of emotional experience- he stressed the way
in which emotions move us in bodily ways

- the core of an emotion, according to him, is the pattern of bodily responses
(=embodied nature of emotion); he said: “If we fancy some strong emotion and then
try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we
find we have nothing left behind”

- his idea guided the study of emotion in two important ways:
o proposed that our experience of many emotions, from fear to joy to reverence,
involves changes of the autonomic nervous system, changes of muscles and joints
and the sensory signals coming from them
o proposed that emotions give “colour and warmth” to experience; without these
effects, he said, everything would be pale



[3] Laura C.

,Sigmund Freud: The Psychoanalytic Approach
- one of Sigmund Freud’s most enduring ideas is that certain events can be so damaging
that they leave emotional scars that can affect the rest of our lives
- he was one of the first to argue that emotions are at the core of many mental illnesses
- Freud thought that an emotion in the present could derive from one in the past, in the
patient’s early life
- the method Freud developed was called psychoanalysis; characteristics of his
method:
o the telling by a patient of her or his life story, which is found to have gaps (in this
case the gap of having no idea of whose the awful face was that appeared to her in
her attacks)
o the filling of such gaps by interpretations of the therapist
o the insights of the person receiving the therapy who realizes something that had
been unconscious
- the work of Freud suggests that the emotional life of adulthood is strongly influenced
by relationships we had in childhood with parents or other caregivers- this idea was
the foundation of work of John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who, from 1951 onward,
developed the theory of attachment
- Freud’s theories were also critical to the influential theorist Richard Lazarus who
combined them with the Darwinian evolutionary idea of adaptation, to propose that
emotions derive from how we appraise events in the environment in relation to our
goals

Philosophical and Literary Approaches

Aristotle and the Ethics of Emotions
- Aristotle offered some of the first systematic analyses of
emotions; emotions, in this view, are evaluative judgments
of events in the world; he discussed how different
judgments give rise to different emotions
- drama, said Aristotle, is about human action, and what can
happen when human actions have effects that were
unforeseen; we are humans, not gods- we simply do not
know enough to predict the consequences of everything
we do; nonetheless, this is the root of human tragedy- we
remain responsible for our actions
- Aristotle also talked about katharsis= clarification—the clearing away of obstacles to
understanding; by seeing predicaments of human action at the theatre (when we watch
a drama) we may come to experience emotions of sympathy and fear, and understand
consciously for ourselves their relation to the consequences of human action in a
world that can be known only imperfectly
- two important schools of philosophy developed out of his argument that emotions are
evaluations and depend upon one’s beliefs:
epicureanism
stoicism
- the Epicureans and Stoics are the first Western emotion researchers

[4] Laura C.

, - the Epicureans developed ideas of natural human sociality- the ideas that human
beings have a right to the pursuit of happiness and that they should be living
naturally, in harmony with an environment of which they are stewards; people should
live simply and enjoy simple pleasures, such as good food and spending time with
friends, instead of chasing after things that make them anxious, like wealth, luxury, or
fame- being guided by such desires can only lead to painful emotions
- Chrysippus (a Stoic) distinguished between first movements of emotions (automatic
emotions) and second movements (mental emotions that involve judgment and
decision); one cannot avoid the first movements- they occur in the body and we can’t
do anything about them, but since second movements involve thought, they are “up to
us.”
- Stoics thought that emotions derive from desires => they are subject to one’s own
will; most emotions are damaging to the self and to society, and so the desires that
lead to them should be disciplined out of our daily lives
- Stoic ideas are thought to have influenced the acceptance of Christianity- religion
where all of the sins have an emotional quality, which raises the intriguing question of
when emotions benefit us and those around us and of when they disrupt our social
lives; Christians maintain that sin implies temptation, which, in turn, implies that we
have choice- what we do with our emotions is as important to our well-being, whether
or not we feel them
- Epicurean and Stoic philosophies have come to be parts of ethics- they provided us
with ways to think how best to structure our own lives in relation to others; it’s been
said that, when one gets down to it, there are only two real choices in life:
o Epicureanism, living in a way that is pleasurable though moderate
o Stoicism, living so that rationality and the building of character are the highest
virtues
- Stoics thought of philosophy as a cure for the soul; they focused on emotions as the
chief sources of the soul’s diseases

René Descartes: Philosophically Speaking
- René Descartes is regarded as the founder of modern
philosophy and of the scientific view of the world
- he claimed that the six fundamental emotions—wonder,
desire, joy, love, hatred, and sadness—occur in the
thinking aspect of ourselves that he called the soul; at the
same time, emotions are closely connected to our bodies
(to our heart beating rapidly, to blushing, or to tears)
- he differentiated emotions from perceptions of events that
happen in the outside world and perceptions of events that happen within the body
(like hunger and pain); whereas outer perceptions tell us about the world, and bodily
states like hunger and pain tell us about the body, emotions tell us what is important
in our souls—as we might now say, in our real selves—in relation to our concerns
and our identities
- having identified the origins of the emotions in our souls, Descartes proceeds to
describe how emotions cannot be entirely controlled by thinking, but they can be
regulated by thoughts, especially thoughts which are true (rational thoughts)


[5] Laura C.

, - emotions depend on how we evaluate events and serve important functions: “… the
utility of all the passions consists alone in their fortifying and perpetuating in the soul
thoughts which it is good it should preserve, and which without that might easily be
effaced from it. And again, all the harm which they can cause consists in the fact that
they fortify and conserve those thoughts more than necessary, or that they fortify and
conserve others on which it is not good to dwell.”
- before the mid-seventeenth century, it was thought that the emanations of humors
gives raise to certain kinds of emotions- e.g., we become melancholic from an excess
of black bile that gives off the experience of sadness as a stagnant pool gives off a
stench; according to the new physiology (supported by Descartes, too and to which he
contributed) emotions arise in the mind- not only do they often affect our bodies, but
functionally they enable our plans and actions


George Eliot: The World of the Arts
- emotions are not just in individuals but between people as
well; G. Eliot says that sympathies—emotions that
connect us to each other—can be extended to people
outside our usual circle of friends and acquaintances
- Eliot’s question is this: if we are unable to foresee the
outcomes of all our actions, if there is no fate or divine
force guiding us toward an inevitable destiny, how should
we find our way in life? Her answer is that our emotion can
act as a sort of compass- think of emotions as narratives, or stories, that move us
forward in life in the pursuit of what we care about (our concerns)
- emotions are what relationships are made of- they have powerful effects upon how we
perceive other people and situations in which we find ourselves
- it’s also vital for us to understand that we experience our own emotions differently
from how people see them


Brain Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology

John Harlow, Tania Singer: Toward a Brain Science of
Emotion
- one of the earliest and most striking pieces of evidence
about how the brain is involved in emotions came from
a horrific accident, written up by a country doctor, John
Harlow
- he wrote about Phineas Gage- a rod entered Gage’s
skull just beneath the left eyebrow, exited via a hole in
the top of his head, and landed 50 feet away; Gage bled
profusely, suffered an infection of his wound, but
recovered, in body though not in mind- it turns out that damage to the frontal lobes
causes disruption of judgement and emotions; people with such injuries often show
inappropriate judgments when it comes to risk, morality, money, pleasure, or the

[6] Laura C.

, trustworthiness of other people; given that emotions link a person’s current concerns
to suitable courses of action in the present situation, when emotions are disrupted
through such brain damage, people can’t gauge which concerns matter, and their
actions often can be inappropriate
- among the pioneers of more modern brain research on the emotions was Walter
Cannon, who argued for a different view of the emotions than the embodied
perspective; Cannon showed that when, in a laboratory cat, the cerebral cortex was
severed from the lower parts (subcortical regions- structures located deep within the
brain, beneath the cerebral cortex) of the brain, or removed altogether, the result was
an animal that showed very intense emotions, for instance, strong anger with no
provocation
o this observation contributed to the idea that the higher region of the brain—the
cortex—acts to inhibit the subcortical regions where emotions reside; not
everyone finds the idea helpful- that the main job of the cortex is to inhibit the
lower regions; most functions of the cortex are more active and add meaning to
subcortical beginnings of emotion
- empathy- Tania Singer defined empathy as follows:
1. having an emotion, which
2. is in some way similar to that of another person, which
3. is elicited by observation or imagination of the other’s
emotion, and that involves
4. knowing that the other is the source of one’s own
emotion

q: might empathy engage specific regions of the brain?
o some areas of the brain (for instance, the somatosensory cortex) are activeonly
when we experience pain through our own senses; other regions of the brain are
activated both when we receive pain and when we know that our loved ones are in
pain
o similar components of the “empathy network” in the brain—the anterior
insular cortex and anterior cingulate cortex—are activated when we respond
empathically to other people’s experiences of fear, anxiety, disgust, and
pleasure
- similar things happened with sympathy and compassion- which are related to
empathy; in sympathy (or compassion), we respond to others’ suffering or pain with
our own feelings of concern and the motivation to help that person; sympathy and
compassion involve a concern for the other person’s welfare and gives rise to an urge
to help; sympathy (compassion) activates different regions of the brain than empathy,
including an old region of the brain—the periaqueductal gray—that enables nurturant
behaviour in mammals, and reward-related regions of the brain




[7] Laura C.

,[8] Laura C.

,Magda Arnold, Sylvan Tomkins: New Psychological Theories

- Magda Arnold proposed that emotions are based on
appraisals of events
- Tomkins offered a theory about the relation of emotion
to facial expression

- most researchers now assume that emotions derive from
people’s appraisals of events- the typical emotion arises
when a person perceives, or thinks about something (= concern: something important
to us); if we know what appraisals (or evaluations) are made of an event, we can
predict what emotion is likely to occur; and if we know what emotion is currently
being experienced, we can infer what appraisals are likely to have been made
- Arnold proposed that an emotion relates self to object- unlike perception, which is
about our knowledge of what is out there, or personality, which is about what each of
us is like in ourselves, emotions are essentially relational- emotions mediate, or link,
our interior concerns with events and objects in the world
- appraisals involve at first attraction to, or repulsion from, some object, and they
determine whether the emotion is positive or negative; then come further distinctions,
depending on whether the object of the emotion is present or not and whether there
are difficulties in acting
- “impulsive” emotions arise if there is no difficulty in attaining or avoiding an object,
while the “emotions of contention” arise when there are difficulties in acting
=>particular emotions arise according to these appraisals- if an object is judged suitable and
if it is present, then the impulsive emotion tends to be love; if an object is judged unsuitable
and is not present, then the contending emotion is fear

- Sylvan Tomkins developed a similar line of theorizing: affect is
the primary motivational system; emotions are amplifiers of
drives- in Tomkins’s account, human action and thought reflect
the interplay of motivational systems, each capable of fulfilling
a certain function (such as eating, breathing, sex), each
potentially capable of taking over the whole person; emotions
prioritize these systems- it does so by amplifying one particular
drive signal (it had long been assumed that drives, such as
hunger, thirst, and sex, are the primary determinants of behaviour)
o Tomkins’ illustrations of his point of view on emotions:
first: when, for any reason, there is some sudden obstruction to breathing, as
when drowning or choking, it is not the shortness of oxygen that is obvious, it
is a panicky fear that amplifies the drive signal making us struggle to breathe
again
second: when we are sexually excited, it is not the sexual organs that become
emotionally excited; it is the person who is excited, and moves toward the
other person and to fulfilment; the bodily changes, for instance, in the sex



[9] Laura C.

, organs, amplify the sexual drive, making it urgent, and taking priority over
other matters

Erving Goffman, Arlie Russell Hochschild, and Lila AbuLughod: Emotions as Moral
Dramas Involving Selves and Others
- Erving Goffman: we literally give dramatic
presentations of ourselves to each other and
create the social reality in which we live; from
such performances moral worlds are created and
from them we derive our own selfhood and others
derive their sense of who we are
- emotions are constructed within specific roles,
such as being with your family, or with your boss, or out on a first date; we take on a
social role, we give a certain performance to sustain our role, following the outline
rules or scripts that are relevant within that world- these performances are viewed by
ourselves and others as good or bad, as correct, incorrect, or partially correct; they
also invite commentary from others
- Goffman’s insight into emotions: as well as giving a more or less good performance
we can ask how strongly engaged we are in a role; certain roles center upon the
experience of certain emotions: love and passion expected of new romantic partners
or the sympathy and filial love expected of new parents
- our full engagement in roles is enabled by enthusiasm and produces emotional
rewards; sometimes the performances in which we engage in our social lives can
produce inner conflict- we can feel we are not enacting the role in all its details and
expectations which gives ‘birth’ to various emotions—anxiety, sadness, anger,
shame—that are upsetting and unsatisfying aspects of our lives

- Arlie Hochschild explored the tension that so often
occurs when the person is in conflict about the role
he or she plays, when there are questions about who
one is in oneself, and the performance one is giving;
she developed a theory of “feeling rules”- these
rules specify what emotional feelings are
appropriate to the specific context; they can be
private and unconscious, or socially engineered in
occupations that require us to influence other people’s emotions and judgments
- work that involves constructing emotions in oneself in order to induce them in others
is widespread: Hochschild calls it emotional labor; 38 percent of paid jobs in the
United States needed substantial emotional labor (airline flight attendants, airline
flight attendants, debt collecting agency owners, etc)

- the central insight of Goffman and Hochschild: emotions are kinds of social
performances in which we embody specific roles and identities




[10] Laura C.

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