Analyzing Emotions: The Startle Effect

Anxiety is defined as the body’s natural response to danger, an automatic alarm that goes off when you feel threatened, under pressure, or are facing a stressful situation. A little bit of anxiety can actually help a person stay attentive and on track. If we did not feel a certain level of pressure at a job or school, then perhaps we wouldn’t care about it as much. We might slack or leave a few loose ends that may cause us to fall behind. A little bit is actually beneficial, but unfortunately there are people who have to deal with anxiety as part of a mental illness or disorder. There are different types of anxiety which include: general anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and social phobia.

This experiment was put through to show how prisoners act within a prison environment while being isolated within the cell and being forbidden from contact with people outside the jail. The prisoners were arrested in their homes and taken to the police station. The normal procedures for a convicted criminal were given, and the prisoners were then transferred to the basement of the psychology department. The basement was designed to replicate an average prison. Standard rules such as forbidden prisoner to guard eye contact were given. Guards were not allowed to address the prisoners by anything besides their uniform number. Although just an experiment, the subjects were quickly adapting to their roles. Prison guards began to harass the inmates, and the inmates began to verbally abuse each other to extreme levels. Guards also started using major brutality. Due to the drastic escalation of the physical and verbal abuse, the experiment was terminated early (McLeod). This suggests that when isolated, people can start to act more cruel than they would in

Eiseberg (1995) examined the structure of sociopathy and found that the role that emotions play in the psychopathic mind is problematic and complex. In his evaluations, Eisenberg established that the study in sociopathy an understanding into the roles of anxiety, love, and sympathy, or lack thereof, as factors contributing to psychopathy. In his findings, Eiseberg (1995) suggested that low anxiety, neuroticism, and absence of love and empathy characterize emotional traits leading to psychopathy. However, the unanswered question that remains from this research is how such emotions are triggered to begin with.

In the Zimbardo’s The Stanford Prison Experiment; however, the ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ were placed in the same facility and were face to face on a daily basis unlike the Milgram experiment. The ‘guards’ would tell the ‘prisoners’ jokingly to do something, however the ‘prisoners’ would do what they were commanded to do to try to hang on to their identity. (Zimbardo 393) By the end of the experiment most ‘prisoners’ showed increased stress levels in the ‘prisoners’ within days, some ‘prisoners’ could not handle the stress induced and had to be released early. The ‘guards’ were equally changed do to the scenario they were put in. One journal of the ‘guards’ showed how a passive person became a person shoving food down another person’s mouth and locking them up in solitary confinement (Zimbardo 389-399).

Anxiety has both mental and physical effects, it is our internal alarm system to put our mind on a physical alert and prepares for us a "fight or flight response". This alarm can go away when we know that everything is okay and there is no danger nearby or nothing is going to happen but sometimes our alarm will not shut off and then an anxiety problem persists. There are different types of anxiety disorders and I will discuss generalized anxiety disorder

Pincham, H. L., Bryce, D., & Pasco Fearon, R. M. (2015). The neural correlates of emotion processing in juvenile offenders. Developmental Science, 18(6), 994-1005. doi:10.1111/desc.12262

Anxiety is something that many people go through all over the world. It affects about 18% of the United States population. Anxiety is an emotion characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil, often accompanied by nervous behavior, such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints and rumination. Anxiety has different causes, types, symptoms, treatments, and myths.

The most common traits associated with antisocial personality disorder are general cognitive and emotional dysfunction, especially in regards to callousness, manipulation and shallow affect. This study examined specific brain functioning tendencies of both mentally healthy participants and patients diagnosed with psychopathy by comparatively analyzing their facial emotion processing. The comparison allowed researchers to determine the relationship between psychopathological tendencies in relevance to patterns of responses. Generally, people diagnosed with psychopathy demonstrate reduced autonomic responses to expressions of distress or sadness, which in turn leads

The experimentors proposed that these reactions were caused by a loss of personal identity, dependency, emasculation and acceptance sadistic treatment from the guards and the unpredictable and arbitrary control of the prison system.

A scientific study in England compared the brains of psychopaths with a group of mice. The result of this experiment directly correlates with the mental and physical behaviors of psychopathic humans. One mouse

A way to direct the topic of anxiety is to look into the theories behind different peoples emotions and also reactions. Anxiety can occur in an individual because distress and fear take action. It could be as simple as being afraid of insects or heights, or it could a larger scale, like due self consciousness with physical appearance or body weight. Reading an individuals anxiety can be hard to comprehend and as an individual who understands psychology we all know that we should deal with anyone who suffers from a heavy load of anxiety in a gingerly manor. Many people go about hiding their anxiety, or express in it an unhealthy habits. Psychologist try and work with through counseling to shorten stress and dissect the situation thats causing

Anxiety can be a very serious (disease/disorder) it is simply defined as an abnormal fear or tension which can occur without any obvious trigger or session; a recurrence, unwelcome and intrusive thought. Anxiety can also be defined as a subjective state of fear or tension. There are two types of anxiety, anxiety can provide signals that alert the body to trigger it to improve mental and physical performance

     Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. It helps some one deal with a tense situation in the office, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it helps some one cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder.

Anticipation is essential to prepare the motor system for voluntary actions (31) and muscle reflexes (32). Two distinct aspects of anticipatory behaviour exist: what and when. The anticipation of emotional content (what) affects the startle reflex (33), and so does knowledge about the timing of the startling stimulus (when) (7). As indicated above, this project focuses on the temporal aspects of anticipation as a clear link between temporal predictability and neural oscillations exists (see Figure 3). Since the temporal predictability of the startling stimulus mitigates the startle reflex, one fundamental research question is: How does the brain use temporal knowledge to moderate an undesirable startle response? The answer to this question

Analyzing research methods used for uncovering basic emotions applied to the Cannon-Bard emotion theory and Drive reduction arousal theory. The Cannon-Bard theory of emotion is a stimulating event takes place, emotional, and physiological changes occur (Changing Minds, 2010). A person may feel muscular tension as well as sweating to the situation. A research method associated with the Cannon-Bard emotion theory would be the evolution theory. This method is an idea where emotion aids species survival (Decker, 2010). An example: A person is hiking through the woods approaches a snake. The appearance of the snake evokes fear, which in return causes the emotional experience. Fear produces behavior and emotion to run, muscular tension, or possibly cry. The emotion evoked by the predator or event causes the survival. The Drive reduction arousal theory is an approach to motivation that assumes behavior arises. Arousal is the source of emotions. Second, arousal is the impetus for attending to