Philosophers and psychologists have long debated the nature of emotions. Although they are a universal experience, emotions become very difficult to define. They involve bodily sensations and certain behaviours yet they are much more sophisticated than brute feeling such as hunger and thirst as they also involve a cognitive aspect. Emotions can generally defined by cognitive, behavioural and physiological reactions to some external stimulus, therefore we know that emotions are a combination of the three, but there are many different theories 1 to how emotions work and in which order these responses occur. In this essay, I will discuss some of these theories focusing mainly on James-Lange theory which states; emotions directly resulted from
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According to the Cannon-Bard Theory of emotion, emotions and bodily changes do not share a cause-and-effect relationship. Rather, they occur simultaneously, following a stimulating event.6
Unlike many of the other theories of emotion, James-Lange theory does not account for the cognitive aspect. It is important to note that they do not deny the importance of the labeling or appraisal. For example, it is true that two friends could go skydiving and one could feel extreme fear before jumping while the other might feel joy and excitement but it is still our bodily processes that are causing these fundamental emotions regardless of why you are feeling them. There is still cognition occurring but you do not need it in order to feel the emotion, it is just there to explain why you might feel a particular emotion at a particular …show more content…
It is true that emotions are vital for our survival and connection with other humans and James was inspired by Darwin which inclined him to link the emotion with instincts, focusing on the biological aspect of the emotional experience. James-Lange theory emphasizes the important connection between emotion and action; it is much more efficient for us, in evolutionary terms, to react first and feel later. If we refer back to the snake analogy, when seeing a snake on the ground, you would be much faster feeling the bodily processes of fear then interpreting this emotion as fear and, in turn, running in the opposite direction than to spend time labeling it through some cognitive process.
If emotions have an evolutionary aspect, this would mean they would have to be universal across all humans.
There have been some studies on this before, that try to make profiles for universal emotions, but they were deemed unreliable as most of these studies were conducted in the western world where we are all exposed to the same media and similar language. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen investigated members of a preliterate
According to the Cannon-Bard Theory of emotion, emotions and bodily changes do not share a cause-and-effect relationship. Rather, they occur simultaneously, following a stimulating event.6
Unlike many of the other theories of emotion, James-Lange theory does not account for the cognitive aspect. It is important to note that they do not deny the importance of the labeling or appraisal. For example, it is true that two friends could go skydiving and one could feel extreme fear before jumping while the other might feel joy and excitement but it is still our bodily processes that are causing these fundamental emotions regardless of why you are feeling them. There is still cognition occurring but you do not need it in order to feel the emotion, it is just there to explain why you might feel a particular emotion at a particular …show more content…
It is true that emotions are vital for our survival and connection with other humans and James was inspired by Darwin which inclined him to link the emotion with instincts, focusing on the biological aspect of the emotional experience. James-Lange theory emphasizes the important connection between emotion and action; it is much more efficient for us, in evolutionary terms, to react first and feel later. If we refer back to the snake analogy, when seeing a snake on the ground, you would be much faster feeling the bodily processes of fear then interpreting this emotion as fear and, in turn, running in the opposite direction than to spend time labeling it through some cognitive process.
If emotions have an evolutionary aspect, this would mean they would have to be universal across all humans.
There have been some studies on this before, that try to make profiles for universal emotions, but they were deemed unreliable as most of these studies were conducted in the western world where we are all exposed to the same media and similar language. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen investigated members of a preliterate