EMOTIONS AND COGNITION

Emotions and Cognition

Emotions and Cognition

Introduction

Modern emotion theory is usually traced back to the writings of Charles Darwin or William James. Writing in the second half of the 19th century, these authors focused on issues that are still the subject of research and debate nearly 150 years later. Darwin's focus was on the relation between subjective emotion and overt behavior. He argued that three principles explain the relation between emotions and expressive behavior. Of these, the first, the principle of serviceable associated habits, is the one most commonly linked to Darwinian explanations for expressive behavior.

Facial Movements and Emotions

Here the argument is that movements of the face that originally served a purpose during emotional experiences have become automatic accompaniments of those emotions (Levenson, Gotman, 1983, 587). Thus, the frowning that often accompanies anger might help to protect the eye socket by drawing the brows forward and together, or the eye widening that often accompanies surprise might help to take in more visual information when sudden, novel events occur (Levenson, Gotman, 1983, 588). Surprisingly, given the general theory of evolution for which Darwin is better known, his writings on emotional expression did not treat this expression as the outcome of a process of natural selection. Rather, he saw the emotion-expression link as a learned habit that then gets passed on to one's progeny. However, modern evolutionary theory can readily be applied to this issue, resulting in the view that it was the adaptive significance for the individual or the group that led to emotions being outwardly expressed (Lerner, Keltner, 2001, 146). The notion that there is a close relation between emotional experience and bodily expression is certainly one that is echoed in modern emotion theory.

Determinants of Emotion

James focused on the fundamental question of the determinants of emotion. James advocated what has come to be called a peripheral theory of emotion, in which he argued that the perception of an arousing stimulus causes changes in peripheral organs, such as the viscera (heart, lungs, stomach, etc.) and the voluntary muscles, and that emotion is quite simply the perception of these bodily changes. To use James's own example, it is not that people tremble and run because they are afraid; rather, they are afraid because they tremble and run (Levenson, Gotman, 1983, 589).

This raises the question of how the bodily changes come about. Here James argued for a direct link between perception and bodily change, using the analogy of a lock and a key. The fit between the perception of emotion-arousing stimuli and the human mind is, in James's view, such that the stimuli automatically unlock physiological changes in the body, and it is the perception of these changes that is the emotion (Levenson, Gotman, 1983, 590). The idea that there is a close link between perception and emotion, relatively unmediated by conscious cognition, is still found in modern emotion theory, as is the notion that changes in the peripheral activity of the body results in changes in emotion (Levenson, Gotman, 1983, ...