“EMOTIONS”

GROUP MEMBERS
Fatima Kausar

BBA(Hons.) – 1st Semester

SUBMITTED TO
Ma’am Ammara
 EMOTIONS

The word emotion is derived from the Latin word ‘emovere’ which means to agitate or
excite.

Definition:

An emotion is a feeling such as love, fear, anger, happiness or hatred, which can
be caused by the situation that you are in or the people you are with.

In psychology emotion is often defined as a complex state of feeling that result in physical
and psychological changes that influence thought and behavior

What is an emotion?

There is no concise definition because an emotion is many things at

once

 Psychological patterns of emotional response

 Expression of verbal of emotional of verbal or non-verbal
 Communication of emotions.

What are emotions according to physiological approach?

Emotions are made up of four components:

 Physiological Feelings
 Nonverbal Reactions
 Cognitive Interpretation
 Verbal Expressions

Emotions that we experience in response to situations.

Emotional states are caused by the autonomic nervous system:

1. The sympathetic nervous system (the ‘fight or flight’ system that generally activates
the body for action) or
2. The parasympathetic nervous system (which generally prepares the body to relax
and recuperate)
Types of emotions:

There are many different types of emotions that have an influence on how
we live and interact with others.

1. Happiness
2. Sadness
3. Fear
4. Disgust
5. Anger
6. Surprise
 Happiness:
is often defined as a pleasant emotional state that is characterized by
feelings of contentment Happiness, joy, gratification, satisfaction, and well-being.
Research on happiness has increased significantly since the 1960s within the number
of disciplines, the branch of psychology known as positive psychology.

This type of emotion is sometimes expressed through:

 Facial expressions such as smiling

 Body language such as a relax stance
 An upbeat, pleasant tone of voice

People have long believed that happiness and health were connected and research has
supported the idea that happiness can play a role in both physical and mental health. Of all
the different types of emotions, happiness tends to be the one that people strive for the most.
During the emotion of happiness, stomach begins to function more actively than usual, the
face brightens up and eyes radiate smiles. Heartbeat and blood circulations accelerate and we
feel fresh and energetic.

 Sadness:

Sadness is another type of emotion often defined as state characterized by feeling of

disappointment, grief, hopelessness, disinterest, and dampened mood. Like often emotions,
sadness is something that all people experience from time to time. In some cases, people can
experience prolonged and severe periods of sadness that can turn into depression.

Sadness can be expressed in a number of ways including:

  Dampened mood
 Quietness
 Lethargy
 Withdrawal from others
 Crying
Sadness can be often lead people to engage in coping mechanisms such as
avoiding other people, self-medicating, and self-ruminating negative thoughts. Such
behaviors can actually exacerbate feeling of sadness and prolong the duration of the
emotion. The face shows the pain in grief and sorrow. The face falls, eyes lose luster and
voice drops.
 Fear:

Fear is a powerful emotion that can also play an important role in

survival. When you face some sort of dangerous and experience fear, you go through what is
known as fight or fight response. Your muscles become tense, your heart rate and respiration
increase, and your mind becomes more alert. Expressions of this type of emotions can
include:

 Facial expressions such as widening the eye and pulling back the chin.
 Attempts to hide or flea from the threat.
 Psychological reactions such as rapid breathing and heartbeat.

Some people may be more sensitive to fear and certain situations or objectives
may be more likely to trigger this emotion. Fear is the emotional response to an
immediate threat. The eyes dilate and the mouth hangs open and goes dry. The
stomach goes slow or stops functioning.

 Disgust:
Disgust is a feeling of very strong dislike or disapproval. Disgust can
be displayed in a number of ways including:
 Turning away from the object of disgust.
 Physical reactions such as vomiting or retching.
 Facial expressions such as wrinkling the nose and curling the upper lip.
To disgust someone means to makes feel a strong sense of dislike and disapproval.
People can also experience moral disgust when they observe other engaging in
 behaviors that they find distasteful, immoral, or evil. Researches believe that this
emotion evolved as a reaction to foods that might be harmful or fatal. When
people smell or taste foods that have gone bad, for example, disgust is a typical
reaction. Poor hygiene, infection, blood, rot, and death can also trigger a disgust
response.
 Anger:
Anger can be a particularly powerful emotion characterizes feelings of
hostility, agitation, frustration, and antagonism, towards others. Like fear,
anger, can play a part in your body’s fight or flight response. Anger is often
displayed through:
 Facial expressions such as frowning or glaring.
 Body language such as talking a strong stance or turning away from
someone.
 Tone of voice such as speaking gruffly or yelling.
 Physiological responses such as sweating or turning red.
 Aggressive behaviors such as hitting, kicking, or throwing objects.

While anger is often thought of as a negative emotion, it can sometimes be a

good thing. It can be constructive in helping clarify your needs in a
relationship, and it can also motivate you take action and find solutions to
things that are bothering you. Anger can become a problem, however, when it
is excessive or expressed in ways that are unhealthy, dangerous, or harmful to
others. Uncontrolled anger can quickly turn to aggression abuse, or violence.
During the emotion of anger, the brain is strongly stimulated and heartbeat or
blood circulated accelerates.

 Surprise:

Surprise is usually quite brief and is characterized by a psychological

startle response following something unexpected. This type of emotion can be
positive, negative or neutral. An unpleasant surprise, for example pleasant surprise
would be arriving home to find that your closest friends have gathered to celebrate
your birthday. Surprise is often characterized by:
  Facial expressions such as raising the brows, widening the eyes, and
opening the mouth.
 Physical responses such as jumping back.
 Verbal expressions such as yelling, screaming, or gasping.

Surprise is another type of emotion that can trigger the fight or flight response.
Surprise can have important effect on human behaviors. The mouth falls open in
surprise; eyes widen, become motionless and feel unable to utter even a word and
sometimes let out a muted scream and then become silent.

PHYSIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS

dealing with the different situation that arises in our emotional lives. Happiness
cues the brain to suppress worrisome or negative feeling and increases the body’s
energy level.

Psychologists have identified a number of important functions that emotions play

in our daily life. Among the most important of those functions are the following:

1. Preparing us for action: Emotions act as a link between events in the external
environment and behavior responses that an individual makes. For example, if we
saw an angry dog charging toward us, the emotional reaction would be associated
with psychological arousal of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous
system. The role of the sympathetic division is to prepare us for emergency
situation, which presumably would get us moving out of the dog’s way quickly.
Emotions are thus stimuli that aid in the development of effective responses to
various situations.

2. Shaping our future behavior: Emotions serve to promote learning of

information that will assist us in making appropriate responses in the future. For
example, the emotional responses that occur when a person experiences
something unpleasant such as the threatening dog teaches that person to avoid
similar circumstances in the future. Similarly, pleasant emotions act as
reinforcement for prior behavior and there are apt to lead an individual to seek out
similar situation in the future.
 3. Helping us to regulate social interaction: The emotions we experience are
communicated through our verbal and non-verbal behaviors. These behaviors can
act as a signal to observers, allowing them to better understand what we are
expecting and to predict our future behavior.

The relationship between different emotions is the following brain stimulations:

Insula The insula is activated when we experience various social emotions such as lust,
pride, and disgust. Amygdala Compared with those watching angry faces, those watching
fearful faces show more activity in their amygdala.

 Prefrontal Cortex:
When experiencing negative emotions such as disgust, the
right prefrontal cortex is more active than the left.

 Frontal Lobe:
Depression prone people and those with generally negative
personalities show more right frontal lobe activity.

 Facial Features:
Change fear and joy effect the heart similarly but stimulate
different facial muscles; fear causes brow muscles to tense, while joy causes
eye and cheek muscles to pull into a smile.

 Psychological Reponses:
Psychological arousal is much the same from one
emotion to another.

PSYSIOLOGYICAL CHANGES:
Psychological changes occur when the individual is upset or disturbed
emotionally. When we are emotionally disturbed, certain changes take place in
our body. The lover loses his appetite, trembles on seeing his beloved and may
become tongue-tied in her presence. The college student about to give a report
 to his class feel disturbance in his stomach tenses his muscles and become
nervous. All of us have experienced these and others emotional sensations on
various occasions. During this body reacts in different ways. According to
psychologists, strong emotions are specifically with three kinds of changes:
 Change in peripheral nervous system
 Glandular changes/roles of adrenal gland
 Role of brain/central nervous

Changes in Peripheral Nervous System:

Peripheral nervous system is comprised of two main parts, the somatic

nervous system and autonomic nervous system. The somatic system
innervates our smooth muscles (including facial expressions) making it
possible for us to interact with our social and physical environment.

 The innervations of facial muscles are of particular interest to emotional

researchers. Most of our smooth muscles are attached to skeleton: they enable us
to move around. The facial muscles are attached to skin and connective tissue,
not bone. Their sole function is to move skin on the face producing changes in
facial expressions. Other somatic changes are discussed here:
 Cardio Visceral Changes:

These changes are concerned about heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate.
For example, heart rate increases during extreme emotional state and so also blood
pressure. Breathing also becomes more rapid. Muscles tend to be tense and
tremble.

 Galvanic Skin Responses:

Neural activity occurring during emotion follows by certain significant changes in

electrical properties of the body. Two important changes that occurs in the skin:

 The tissues actually generate an electro-motive force.

 The electrical resistance of the skin is changed.
 Pupillometric:
 The pupil of the eye dilates during emotion that arouses a fair reaction in the
subject and contracts in response to distasteful stimulus.

 Role of Autonomic Nervous System in Emotion:

The psychological changes in emotion are activated by and integrated through the
autonomic nervous system, which is largely under hypothalamus control. This
system is purely a motor function. The two main branches include; the
sympathetic and parasympathetic. These system works in opposition. The
sympathetic connection is heart accelerates parasympathetic connection checks
its. Secretions of the adrenal gland are activated in sympathetic.

 Glandular Changes/Role of Adrenal Gland:

When a person experiences a strong emotion such as anger, the medulla of the
adrenal glands pours an excessive amount of the hormone adrenaline into blood
stream. There is evidence that the thyroids and the pituitary gland are also
involved in the emotional response.

 Role of Brain in Emotion:

The brain activates and regulates the psychological aspects of emotion. Both
the sympathetic and parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system
are controlled and regulated by centers located in the brain. Cannon and Bard
(1928) in their studies were interested in discovering which part of the brain is
necessary in emotion. A number of structures in the core of the brain and
directly involved in the activity of the stronger emotions, especially fear, anger,
and pleasure. The core parts that are involved are hypothalamus and complex
this is known as limbic system.

THEORIES OF EMOTIONS
Some of these theories are discussed here:
1. James-Lange theory
2. Cannon-Bard theory
3. Schachter Singer theory
 1) James-Lange theory:

William James and Carl Lange were among the first researchers to explore the
nature of emotions and the instinctive bodily changes that occurred as a
response. Their two theories were latterly combined into what is presently
known as the James-Lange Theory of Emotion. Lange theory gives attention
to the physiological changes. The James-Lange theory of emotion states that
emotion is equivalent to the range of physiological arousal caused by extreme.
The changes that produce specific sensation.
The layman generally believes that the physiological changes
typically of strong emotion follows the conscious experience of the emotion.
Emotions results from the perception of bodily change.

 COMMON SENSE VIEW:

Perception of the angry bull (feeling of fear)
Psychological reactions

 JAMES-LANGE VEIW:
Perception of the angry bull (Physiological reactions)
Felling of fear
The perception of emotion – arousing stimuli is followed by specific
physiological reactions.
  CRITICISM

 Physiological experience of emotion does not apper to differ from each other to
the extent that would be essential to discriminate one emotion emotion from
another based only on bodily reactions.

 Physiological aspect of emotion shadows our subjective experience of the

motion, at times.

 Physiological response that are made artic ally do not result in emotions.

2) Cannon-bard theory:
 CRITICISM

 Researchers shows that hypothalamus is central to the experience to emotion

rather than the thalamus.

Cannon-Bard (1929) also added a motivation function to emotion; the function

of emotion is to prepare the body to deal with. ‘emergency’ situations, are in
the urge towards ‘fight or flight’.

3) Schaachter-Singer theory:
The two-factor theory of emotion states that emotion is based on two factors.
Physiological arousal and cognitive labs. The theory was created by
researchers. Stanley Schacter’s and Jerome E. Singer. According to this theory
when an emotion is felt a physiological arousal occurs of the person uses the
immediate environment to search for the emotional cues to label the
physiological arousal.
  CRITICISM:

 Sometimes emotions are experienced before we think about them.

 Others researches have supported James-Lange initial suggestion that there are
actual physiological differences between emotions.

 Others researches have only partially supported the finding of the original study
and have at times shown result.

CONCLUSION
Emotion is a complex state of feeling that result in physical and psychological
changes that influence thought and behavior. Different types of emotions include
happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise etc. Emotion is a sensory experience
through which we can express our feeling. We recognize emotion in others and
communicate our own feelings in language of gestures, postures, and facial
expressions. Emotional behavior varies considerably according to the conventions of
society and obedience to its rules. Some major theories of emotions include James-
Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory and Schachter Singer theory.