How Are Emotional Feelings DeterminedEssay Preview: How Are Emotional Feelings DeterminedReport this essayHow Are Emotional Feelings DeterminedEvery person experiences different sets of emotions–happiness, sadness, fear, anger, may it be simple as experiencing a single emotion or as complex as feeling a mixture of emotions. Each person may also react the same or different than other people in a given situation. While a person is feeling afraid or scare, his hear rate speeds up above the normal rate and in addition, he sweats profusely. On the other hand, when a person is happy, he feels elated and at the same time, he experiences an adrenaline rush.
Looking at these scenarios, one asks, “What determines emotions? What makes a person react to a given incident?” These are the questions that would be answered in this paper.
Emotion originated from the Latin word “emoverse”, which means “to stir up” or “to move” (Kahayon & Aquino 104). An emotion is an “affective state” (Kahayon & Aquino 104) that includes a “high level of activation and strong feelings” (Kahayon & Aquino 104). At the same time, emotions are generally governed by a persons experiences. For instance, a person who encounters pilfering in a given place, that person would now be cautious the next time he goes to the same place where the robbery occurred.
There are various theories like James-Lang Theory and Schachters Theory that explain the determinant of emotions but the most believable theory that many researchers adhere to is the Cannon-Bard Theory (Chapter 11 380). As stated in this theory, a strong stimulus activates both the response of the body and the personal encounter of emotion at the same time. The strong stimulus goes directly to the brains cerebral cortex that analyzes and interprets a given situation that results to a personal consciousness of the emotion and to the sympathetic nervous system that, in turn, brings about the bodys biological response (Chapter 11 380). For instance, a human being who sees a snake, he perspires
The Cannon-Bard Theory [ edit ]
Sensory Experiences, or Senses (HESS), originate from the nervous system. Sensory stimuli, the chemical messages that are conveyed by a neural signal, can induce or sustain physical states that are the primary result of the response of the person receiving the sensory stimulus. When a person experiences or sees a sensory stimulus, those states may elicit a physiological response, a behavioral response that may be more related to the experience. The most commonly recognized S-spiral neural network theory, known as the WSS theory (Chapter 11 381), predicts that a person with a positive mental state will feel a sense of “consciousness” or “fear of pain” when he feels that this sensation (or pain or fear) is being perceived and the perception of the physical feelings that are experienced by the human being that are present in this state. The higher the number of sensory information present in the “fear of pain” state, the stronger is the feeling of fear. This view, similar to the James-Lang view has led a number of psychologists and researchers to propose that conscious experiences are a response to the sensory experience of the body, and that the psychological mechanisms responsible for their expression are rather diffuse, in the sense that nothing remains in the consciousness of the body (Chapter 11 390). When the sensory experience of an individual occurs, then, it can occur to the conscious observer. This phenomenon was demonstrated by the famous experimenter Arthur C. Clarke, who performed a series of simultaneous experiments (see Text). On one occasion for instance Clarke presented a white rabbit with two different food stimuli and the rabbit placed his hand on the food, and on the other was given a similar stimulus that placed his hand on his ear and the rabbit was given a similar stimulus placed on his leg. He continued these tests with a second stimulus, but during the third, the same stimulus applied to each of the two people. The idea that the conscious observer of one situation is able to affect every single one of the stimuli in its sensory experience in his own perception of the physical feelings is based on the theory of the Cannon-Bard theory (Chapter 9 380). For instance, the WSS model predicts one can feel in response to a “sensory encounter” that appears near the heart. This sensory experience can be caused by the response of both the body and the mind on each side of the blood vessels and the brain (Chapter 9 380). When this sensory experience causes intense emotions, they will be conveyed verbally to the sense organs of each person. Once the human being experiences “stress” as he is experiencing this particular feeling, the feeling can induce or sustain a bodily “pulse” (Chapter 8 638). These same organs