Why Do We Have Emotions?

We are exposed to various emotions everyday, whether it is at work, at school, on the street, or even at home. An emotion could be described as an individual’s reaction to an event, in which that individual is aware of his/her own feeling. There are two types of emotions, positive and negative. Positive emotions could include feelings such as love, joy, and bliss. Negative emotions could include feelings like fear, anger, and anxiety. Social psychologists are under the impression that negative emotions are stronger than positive emotions. Emotions have physiological as well as mental components. This means that there is some form of arousal and thinking involved. Now that we know a little about emotions, one might ask, what are the basic

Emotions are used in our everyday lives help us understand and comprehend a situation. The way we feel can affect the way we think through a situation and the situation that we make. Our emotions are expressed when we play sports, when a loved one dies, or when we see our newly born baby for the first time. Emotions are a state of consciousness like joy, sorrow, fear, hate, and love. Whenever we are presented with a situation, our brain responds in feelings, and our feeling determine what will happen next.

Life is full of emotions, whether it be happy or sad. It is what keeps everyone going.

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 state that emotions themselves contain several elements. Emotions contain a conscious element, meaning people are aware of what they’re feeling. They have a physical aspect; emotions are tied to an individuals’ health. They also have a neurological affect; altering activity and blood flow levels in the brain. Finally, emotions contain a visual aspect; they can be expressed in facial expressions and body language.

Emotions are often thought to be personal. One may say “I am sad.” or “I am mad.” or I am scared.” and frequently we believe those emotions are inhabiting just the body in which they were created.

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.

Emotions are feelings (Alder 140). Emotions involve a variety of components. These components include physiological factors, nonverbal reactions, cognitive interpretations, and verbal expressions. Physiological factors influence a person when they experience strong emotions (Alder 141). For example, if you experience fear, your heart rate will begin to increase, stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. This results in your blood pressure to increase and an abundant amount of adrenaline to be released. To Saman, emotions are an assortment of different

Emotions are a necessary part of our whole humanity. They may be more than we have learned to be comfortable with, but they are not too much.

Emotions are things that we feel. We can feel a certain way and our choice on our emotions and the actions we make in order to feel this way and the words we say in order to feel better are on

The universal basic emotions that are joy-happiness, interest-excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame and guilt (taken from the slides) both brothers show these emotions throughout the film for example when both Jamal and salim saw their mother get killed right in front of their eyes they had both fear and anger and throughout the movie you can see that at least for salim that maybe since he saw that he feels as if he is obliged to take some sort of revenge for jamal you don't notice that in the film. When jamal and salim got rescued by marmon at first they both felt joy-happiness because they were going through such rough times and here comes this guy who just saves them from what they had to endure on a day to day basis but later on when salim sees another boy getting his eyes burned so it would make him a better begger he felt the emotion of fear jamal didn’t see that firsthand himself.

Webster’s dictionary defines Emotion as: a strong feeling (such as love, anger, joy, hate or fear). An emotion is a function that allows a human being to make judgements on actions and choices within situations in which one sees an importance or significant connection. Our emotions allow us to prepare for action such as; fight or flight, approach, or to undergo action to obtain a goal that was forged by an emotion. "An emotion is a complex psychological state that involves three distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioural or expressive response." In the 1980’s Robert Plutchik introduced a system of emotional identification which he termed the “wheel of emotions.” His aim was to draw attention to how emotions can be combined together to move one from a basic emotion to a more complex and powerful emotional state that forces action. Plutchik suggested that there are 8 primary emotional dimensions: happiness vs. sadness; anger vs. fear; trust vs. disgust; and surprise vs. anticipation. He then went on to say that, for example, happiness and anticipation can be combined to create an emotional state of excitement.

Emotions occur in relationships. There are many different types of relationships, including intimate, friendly, and family relationships. The type of relationship I am going to focus on is an intimate relationship. This is one of the most interesting types of relationships because there are many different feelings and emotions that occur ranging from happiness to sadness, excitement to anger, and feeling “in love” to feeling “out of love.”

Chapter 3 explores the concept of universally shared basic emotions, an idea that was first advanced as a theory by Charles Darwin. Paul Ekman and Jakk Panksepp studied the concept of

When talking about emotion it seems a fairly simple topic and immediately "feeling" words come to mind; sad, happy, and confused. These are basic emotions and easy to understand. What isn't so simple about emotions is their process and how they form and work. Emotions are reactions to sensory information like sight, smell, taste, touch and sound (Tracing Emotion’s Pathways 94). However, it is not that simple; an emotional reaction or response is made aware of and understood by a part of the brain called the sensory cortex. These emotional responses or reactions to sensory stimuli are processed by a part of the brain called the amygdala (What’s An Emotion). The amygdala is a huge asset to the cognitive factors of emotions because in processing emotions you become able to understand, recognize, and control them. So then how do emotions evoke a physiological reaction such as tearing up when one feels sad, laughing with joy, and trembling with fear? These physiological reactions that one may experience come from the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is, “a collection of fibers that extend throughout