Human Emotions
Emotions affect everything we do, colouring every thought and action. They are an essential ingredient to our lives and our survival. But how and why do we experience these emotions? What function do they …show more content…
It is still believed that the cerebral cortex and the hypothalamus are at the centre of these emotions but each network is different.
What function do these convoluted emotions have? I believe that there are two reasons why emotions exist. The first and probably most important reason published by Darwin. He believed that emotional expressions were innate and so do not have to be learnt. He believed that as they were inherited from our ancestors and had survived the process of evolution that they must be essential to our survival. Many experiments have been conducted to prove this theory. Ekman and Friesen showed that isolated New Guinea tribesman could recognise western facial expressions illustrating emotions just as they too could make facial expressions to illustrate emotions themselves. Also another study showed that blind children had very similar facial expressions to sighted children. This clearly shows that people do not have to learn to express emotions. This in itself illustrates my second reason. It would seem that the facial expression associated with a particular emotion is clearly innate but we very rarely see …show more content…
On the other hand there is a world without happiness, fun, excitement, a world that does not bare thinking about. A perpetual nightmare that we do not imagine and that is only seen in films. Then there is a world with no emotions? As we have seen it would appear that all emotions have a function otherwise they would not have survived the evolutionary processes. They are all essential to our survival and so by definition without them survival would not be possible. Every single action, thought or dream is accompanied by an emotion and many of these reach the conscious level. They control us and are our moral guides. The basis of modern morals has grown up out of the evolution of emotional experiences and an empathy for others' experiences. We try to understand the emotions that a person is going through when they are in a situation. This situation tends to be considered morally wrong if it induces unnecessary negative emotions such as anger, pain, hurt, fear and hatred in a person or even animal. These
Emotions affect everything we do, colouring every thought and action. They are an essential ingredient to our lives and our survival. But how and why do we experience these emotions? What function do they …show more content…
It is still believed that the cerebral cortex and the hypothalamus are at the centre of these emotions but each network is different.
What function do these convoluted emotions have? I believe that there are two reasons why emotions exist. The first and probably most important reason published by Darwin. He believed that emotional expressions were innate and so do not have to be learnt. He believed that as they were inherited from our ancestors and had survived the process of evolution that they must be essential to our survival. Many experiments have been conducted to prove this theory. Ekman and Friesen showed that isolated New Guinea tribesman could recognise western facial expressions illustrating emotions just as they too could make facial expressions to illustrate emotions themselves. Also another study showed that blind children had very similar facial expressions to sighted children. This clearly shows that people do not have to learn to express emotions. This in itself illustrates my second reason. It would seem that the facial expression associated with a particular emotion is clearly innate but we very rarely see …show more content…
On the other hand there is a world without happiness, fun, excitement, a world that does not bare thinking about. A perpetual nightmare that we do not imagine and that is only seen in films. Then there is a world with no emotions? As we have seen it would appear that all emotions have a function otherwise they would not have survived the evolutionary processes. They are all essential to our survival and so by definition without them survival would not be possible. Every single action, thought or dream is accompanied by an emotion and many of these reach the conscious level. They control us and are our moral guides. The basis of modern morals has grown up out of the evolution of emotional experiences and an empathy for others' experiences. We try to understand the emotions that a person is going through when they are in a situation. This situation tends to be considered morally wrong if it induces unnecessary negative emotions such as anger, pain, hurt, fear and hatred in a person or even animal. These