Emotional Behaviors
11.1 What is Emotion?
Emotion has components:
● cognitions (“This is a dangerous situation.”)
● feelings (“I feel afraid.”)
● actions (“Run away now.”)
● physiological changes (increased heart rate and breathing rate)
Emotions and Autonomic Arousal
➔ sympathetic nervous system stimulates organs (e.g. heart), while inhibiting others
(e.g. intestines and stomach)
➔ most situations evoke a combination of sympathetic and parasympathetic N.S
James-Lange theory → what you experience as an emotion is the label you give to
your responses: you feel afraid because you run away, and you feel angry because you
attack (event → appraisal/cognition → action → emotional feeling)
a. Is Physiological Arousal Necessary for Emotional Feelings?
➔ damage to the spinal cord => people still report emotions the same as before
➔ people with pure autonomic failure (output from autonomic nervous system to
the body fails) do not react react to stress with changes in heart rate, but still report
having the same emotions as anyone else (but less intensely)
b. Is Physiological Arousal Sufficient for Emotions?
➔ a panic attack is a sudden intense arousal of the sympathetic nervous system
➔ physiological responses are rarely sufficient to produce emotions, they increase the
feelings (e.g. watching a horror movie in a cold room where you already shiver)
c. Is Emotion a Useful Concept?
➔ the limbic system is critical for emotion
➔ various components of an emotion do not always occur together
➔ there is a lack of consistency between emotions and corresponding brain activity
=>emotion might not be a coherent/natural category
Do People Have a Few Basic Emotions?
➔ people recognize emotions based on facial expressions, but the recognition depends
partly on culture and experience (people recognize expressions easier from their
own culture)
11.1 What is Emotion?
Emotion has components:
● cognitions (“This is a dangerous situation.”)
● feelings (“I feel afraid.”)
● actions (“Run away now.”)
● physiological changes (increased heart rate and breathing rate)
Emotions and Autonomic Arousal
➔ sympathetic nervous system stimulates organs (e.g. heart), while inhibiting others
(e.g. intestines and stomach)
➔ most situations evoke a combination of sympathetic and parasympathetic N.S
James-Lange theory → what you experience as an emotion is the label you give to
your responses: you feel afraid because you run away, and you feel angry because you
attack (event → appraisal/cognition → action → emotional feeling)
a. Is Physiological Arousal Necessary for Emotional Feelings?
➔ damage to the spinal cord => people still report emotions the same as before
➔ people with pure autonomic failure (output from autonomic nervous system to
the body fails) do not react react to stress with changes in heart rate, but still report
having the same emotions as anyone else (but less intensely)
b. Is Physiological Arousal Sufficient for Emotions?
➔ a panic attack is a sudden intense arousal of the sympathetic nervous system
➔ physiological responses are rarely sufficient to produce emotions, they increase the
feelings (e.g. watching a horror movie in a cold room where you already shiver)
c. Is Emotion a Useful Concept?
➔ the limbic system is critical for emotion
➔ various components of an emotion do not always occur together
➔ there is a lack of consistency between emotions and corresponding brain activity
=>emotion might not be a coherent/natural category
Do People Have a Few Basic Emotions?
➔ people recognize emotions based on facial expressions, but the recognition depends
partly on culture and experience (people recognize expressions easier from their
own culture)
