Emotion & Cognition
Why study emotions?
- Emotions are an integral part of our lives; they shape the experiences of the world around us
- Emotion influences memory, attention, decision-making, regulation of social behavior,
communication, and health
- Emotions occur on different levels
- E.g., facial expressions, bodily changes, feelings, actions, and neural responses
- Emotions are shared, but individual differences exist as well
Historical background of emotion:
- Ancient greeks separated reason from passion, thinking from feeling, and cognition from emotion
- Cognition and emotion were seen as forces battling for control over the human psyche
- Plato’s chariot allegory (375 BC): emotions seen as inferior to reason
- According to Chritian tradition, emotions are sins and temptations, which have to be resisted using
reason and willpower
- Control over emotions is limited
- ‘Crimes of passion’ in the legal system
- Dualism: sould (mind) and body (brain) are separate
- Body as a machine → insignificant
- Soul as containing emotions
- Descartes noted that emotions tell us how events affect our thinking and how emotions
are shaped by the way we appraise events
- Saw emotions as conscious operations
- Descartes’ error: he ignored the influence of bodily processes in understanding emotion
- Freud’s 3 component theory
- ID: conscious desires
- EGO: self
- SUPEREGO: moral and societal rules
- Freud’s view on emotions:
- Emotions are tied to bodily states
- Emotions reveal underlying, unconscious thoughts and perceptions
- Emotions can precede conscious awareness of important facts
- Humans defend themselves against emotionally-disturbing facts
- Emotional conflicts lead to psychological and physical ailments
- Putting emotions into language/conscious advances coping
- Recent findings support this
- Alexithymia: subclinical inability to identify and describe emotions
experienced by one’s self or others
, - Darwin proposed that emotions are universal and exist to serve an evolutionary purpose
- Darwin sent out questionnaires to the missionaries in non-christian cultures, made
photographs, and observed mental patients
- Darwin concluded that emotions are evolutionary habits (i.e., reflexes). However, he did
not attribute any particular role to emotion (i.e., claimed emotions are vestigial), with the
exception of communication
- Darwin’s taxonomy of emotions:
James-Lange theory: emotions arise as the result of perception and analysis of our bodily states
- The feeling (e.g., fear) consists of three components, namely (1) cognitive appraisal, (2) expressive
behavior, and (3) subjective feeling state
- Eliciting event → activation of the ANS → emotion
- As opposed to the traditional view: eliciting event → emotion → activation of the ANS
Criticism by Canon (1920s):
- Thought that the autonomic nervous system (i.e., visceral signals) was too slow to account for the
subjective feeling of emotions
- Experience happens quickly in the mind, but events in the body take much longer, at least
a second or two to react (e.g., you may feel embarrassed before you blush)
- Hence, Canon suggested that emotion must be processed by the brain
- Also noted that too many emotions produce similar bodily responses. The similarities make it too
difficult for people to determine quickly which emotion they are experience
- E.g., anger, excitement, and sexual interest all produce similar changes in heart rate and
blood pressure
- So how exactly do we go from a certain eliciting event to a specific emotion, given that
bodily feedback is not very specific? ⇒ see contemporary theories of emotion
- Feedback from ANS is also important (i.e., somatic feedback; fast)
