Emotions - Universal or A Learned Phenomenon Essay

Science released an article entitled “Facial Expressions—Including Fear—May Not Be as Universal as We Thought”, written by Michael Pierce on October 17, 2016. In this article Pierce discusses how 50 years ago it was assumed that facial expressions were universal. However, it has been found that in the present day, this may not be the case. Expressions such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, or hunger, were all assumed to be expressed the same way as well as interpreted the same way. A study was conducted in the Trobriand Islands, were Trobrianders were shown as series of photos with facial expressions. They were asked to describe the emotions they interpreted from the photos, the results were intriguing. Pierce (2016) describes how

Bronfenbrenner and Evans (2000) signify that environment is a dominate factor with child development and as emotions are central to all humans; a child’s environment produces significant influence on emotion development and emotion expression. The base emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, interest and surprise) are considered universal as they appear across all cultures, are present from

Charles Darwin was the first scientist to ever study animals in a systematic way (Bekoff “The Emotional Lives” 6). In his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin discussed the

Attempts to define “emotion” have proved to be rather difficult. Instead of searching for a comprehensive definition, Gross (2011) describes the three core features of emotions. First, emotions occur when an individual decides that a situation is relevant to his or her goals. Second, emotions are multi-faceted, and involve both subjective and physiological experiences, as well as behaviors. The third feature involves the authoritative nature of emotions. They have the powerful ability to interrupt ongoing processes, assert their priority over other activities, and force their way into awareness. For example, some traditions describe emotions as “disorganized interruptions of mental activity” (Salovey & Mayer, 1989). Emotions are such an

Christakis and Fowler suggest that emotions most likely began in early human evolutionary stages to promote the bonding of mother and child; later expanding to other family members, then non family members. The ability to read moods and pass them onto each other could have aided early humans in their everyday activities, due to the lack of fully developed verbal communication. It is also stated, emotions travel faster than words. It is faster to read an individual’s face to understand their emotions than it is to wait for the verbal communication that comes along with it; which leads into what the authors call Emotional

Thesis Statement: Body language expresses emotions and actions unconsciously and differs between men and women depending on their brain type, emotional experience and culture.

Emotions are used in everyday life, whether it be just a simple smile that makes happiness disperse in your brain, or a death of a loved one that causes sadness. The basic emotions are joy, interest, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt. The way we see emotion in ourselves and others can be very complex because we sometimes assume they feel a certain way just based on their actions or even facial expressions. When emotion is discussed in psychological terms, it is not based on one thing, instead it’s a mix of bodily arousal, expressive behaviors, conscious experience. Many theories try to explain how emotion works.

In chapter 8 of Handbook of Emotions, The Evolutionary Psychology of the Emotions and Their Relationship to Internal Regulatory Variables, Tooby & Cosmides (2008) thoroughly discuss the theories of how emotions came to be. The overall conclusion is that emotions did not inadvertently occur, but instead were specifically designed and evolved to solve distinct issues that would affect the probability of fitness. Emotions evolved to utilize physical responses based on environmental cues in order to promote the individual’s overall success.

Are facial expressions of emotion culturally universal? This has been an ongoing debate since Darwin’s, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. He states that there is such a thing as a universality hypothesis, which claims, “all humans communicate six basic internal emotional states (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) using same facial movements by virtue of biological and evolutionary origins” (abstract). However, there have been disagreements concerning this theory.

The human face is dynamically expressive. With the forty-two muscles of the face constantly moving, minute variations in expression can convey an expansive breadth of emotion. Despite this, some individuals seem to be able to utilize these muscles far better than others. Some individuals naturally seem to emit more emotional exuberance through their face, than others. Thus, an inquiry into the perceived degrees of emotions conjured on an individual’s face could have vast implications. Ebner, He & Johnson (2011) conducted an experiment, which sought to test our cognitive system’s sensitivity to the differences in the levels of emotion that younger faces conveyed, when compared to older faces. They

The facial feedback hypothesis suggests there is a significant relationship between muscular manipulations and an individuals emotional experience, for instance, manipulations resulting in a more positive facial expression may lead to a more positive emotional state. The current study aims to expand upon previous literature (e.g. Laird, 1974) and will therefore examine whether facial expressions can initiate emotion rather than modulating them and so, 424 psychology students were recruited and were prompted to complete a questionnaire that acted as a distractor

Researchers have debated about the phenomenon with emotions. Debates on this topic have and will continue to for many more years. Researchers have attempted to understand why one has emotions and came up with the five different theories. The first theory is the James-Lange theory, which argues that an event can cause physiological arousal first and, it can be interpret this as an arousal. Second theory is the Cannon-Bard theory that argues that all humans experience a physiological arousal and an emotional one at the same time. It still does not give any attention to the role of the thoughts or an outward

Paul Ekman was influenced by Charles Darwin’s book titled, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, originally published in 1872. Charles Darwin used photos, drawings and body postures from animals and humans and compared them with facial expressions and emotions. For instance, a growling dog has many facial features similar to an angry human. “Darwin argued that the existence of these similarities demonstrates that emotional expression must have evolved through natural selection in the same way that other characteristics evolved. He further contended that the expressions must serve a function; they enhance survival of the organism”. (Reevy, G. 2010 Encyclopedia of Emotion (Vol. 2, pp. 410-411). I believe

The aim of the present study was to investigate which hemisphere is specialised for the perception of emotion. It was hypothesised that participants will judge chimeric faces with smile presented in the left visual field as happier more often than chimeric faces with the smile presented in the right visual field. Twenty-six psychology students were asked to judge chimeric faces with one half being a smiling expression and the other half with a neutral expression. The images were presented in their left and right visual field. Over 28 experimental trials the participants were asked to judge which face they thought looked happier. The percentage of chimeric faces judged as happier for both left and right visual field was recorded. The hypothesis was supported: chimeric faces with smile presented in the left visual field as happier more often than chimeric faces with the smile presented in the right visual field.

Chapter 2 is centered on the early attempts to identify the brain’s components of emotions. Key researchers that are discussed are a Cornell neuroanatomist, James Papez, and aforementioned physician and neuroscientist Paul MacLean, who worked at Yale and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Together, this pair of researchers conducted seminal medial temporal lobe lesion experiments. The resulting idea was that the emotional brain is composed of a set of interconnected structures in the core of the brain. MacLean dubbed these structures as the “limbic system”. The function of the limbic system and it relationship to emotion was widely debated by many researchers.