Physiology of Emotions
Varying Theories on the Physiology of Emotions
In their theory, "How Emotion Shapes Behavior: Feedback, Anticipation, and Reflection, Rather Than Direct Causation," Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall and Zhang show how the secondary function of emotions is much more important to humans than their initial response to an emotion. Emotions in response to stimuli provoke actions that usually begin too late to effectively react to the stimuli. Thus, it makes more sense to consider the function of emotions as part of a learning process than it does to imagine their value rests with the initial human response. Human emotion is studied as a feedback system that shapes current and future behaviors based on processing prior actions and reactions motivated by emotions. We need this feedback system to successfully function in such complex social and cultural systems. For example, if one is in a public place and moved to anger by another to the point of violence. The subject punches the stimulus; the stimulus punches back, people in the surrounding environment react to the violence with disapproval, fear, disappointment and attempts to restore order. The subject may be thrown in jail where he will reflect upon all that occurred. In his reflection, he will consider all of the consequences of his reaction to his emotions. Through such experiences and considerations, he will...
They explain how our emotional reactions involve an integration of direct responses to stimuli and conscious, controlled processing of those stimuli. They discuss the limitations of the "modal model" which focuses on how discrete emotions are generated automatically by different situations. Barret, Ochsner, and Gross show how a constraint-satisfaction approach better represents the spectrum of emotional phenomena observed. In reaction to stimuli, a human subject responds with constraint matching to create patterns and constraint interpretation to shape the emotional reaction. This theory shows how different parts of the brain engage throughout the process creating more flexible responses to emotional stimuli involving as much conscious processing and automatic reactions as necessary from remembered prior similar events.
In their theory, "Affect and Proto-Affect in Effective Functioning," Ortony, Norman, and Revelle look at the function of emotions on four domains (affect, motivation, cognition, and behavior) in three levels (reactive, routine, and reflective). The reactive level is more…
