The System of Primary Emotions - Essay Example

Intro: It is something that all of us have, even if we don’t always think about it. A part of our life that never quite leaves, that makes us who we are and defines our self. The things in life that confuse us, and make us think and wonder. All of us have them, and often refer to them as emotions. Also know as feelings, these strong patterns of behavior and internal motions can help guide our life in extreme ways. Everyone has at one point or another felt, something. Be it pain, happiness, or sadness, everyone in the worlds feels, and we have applied these words to the different emotions that we feel. Happiness is nothing more than a word pasted unto a chemical feeling inside our body, and tries to explain how a person feels during that certain emotion. Emotions are what cause the feelings we feel, and while similar, there is a difference between the two. Emotions are the triggers that trigger the different feelings we feel. Different events, actions, or people can also stir up different emotions. Movies for example, often play off of these emotions. Scary movies are meant to entertain fear into us, while funny movies rely on the emotion of humor and fun lovingness. A tragic event can incur a horrible feeling, or a joyous one can make a person have positive emotions. Emotions can often be triggered by the different actions that also happen in our life, while at the same time they can influence these actions. For example, is a person is experiencing sad emotions, they may act in a way unlike their normal behavior, and be moody or ill tempered towards other people. This shows how different emotions can affect our lives in different ways, and these emotions can make our life positive or negative as well. Body: The very concept of Emotion is one not easily defined. One trying to describe it can come up with a myriad of different answers, all trying to define the same struggling concept. One definition of emotion is that emotion is “an intense mental state that arises in the nervous system rather than through conscious effort, and evokes either a positive or negative psychological response” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion). In other words, emotions happen inside of us, and there is nothing we can do about them, they live and work on their own, and we cannot control them, or make them happen by effort. These emotions then evoke a response, which can be either positive or negative, depending on the emotion. However, it is important to remember that emotion is a concept ideal, and that there is no officially correct definition. Emotions are left up to high debate, and one definition may not be agreed upon by all professionals. Starting hundreds of years ago, we start to see human beings struggle over this concept of emotion. One such researcher was Charles Darwin, famous for his research and findings on natural selection. He believed that “emotions evolved via natural selection but are not functional anymore. Therefore they are epiphenomena of functional associated habits. They have cross-culturally universal counterparts. Most research in this area has focused on physical displays of emotion including body language of animals and facial expressions in humans” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion). He thus, believed that emotions may not deserve that much credit, and may simply have grown into habits from how certain organism deal with certain situations. Another researcher from the 1800s, William James, had beliefs that differed from Darwins. He believed that emotions were expressed, mostly because of bodily changes. He believed that these “emotions” could be expressed by different parts of the body, however, his theory was later discredited by Walter Cannon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion). A third perspective into emotions is the cogitative perspective. This is the idea that “thought and in particular cognitive appraisal of the environment is an underlying causal explanation for emotional processes.”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion). Some of them even will go on to say that emotions can possibly express subliminal beliefs, or may even be different kinds of beliefs. To help us further dissect the idea of emotions, Robert Plutchik came up with a system of primary emotions. His list of the primary emotions include “anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, curiosity and acceptance.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion). This idea is similar to the primary color idea in art, in which these primary emotions can mix and shape themselves together to fully from the different emotions that a human can experience. Plutchick also believed that these emotions are based off of evolutionary grounds, and that each emotion can be based off of survival. One example of this would be fear motivating flight from danger, an example of how emotion could lead to survival. These emotions, he believed, are biological and built into our very human nature. Going hand in hand with the idea of primary emotions is that idea that each emotion triggers a response from the body. These are often felt as sensations or experiences on the physical realm of the human body. Such bodily reactions to emotions include “Happiness, which is often felt as an expansive or swelling feeling in the chest and the sensation of lightness or buoyancy, as if standing underwater. Sadness is often experienced as a feeling of tightness in the throat and eyes, and relaxation in the arms and legs. Shame can be felt as heat in the upper chest and face. Desire can be accompanied by a dry throat, heavy breathing, and increased heart rate.”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion). All of these are physical examples of bodily reactions to the various emotions we feel. Recent discoveries have also helped us further understand how emotions work. It has been shown that emotions are a pleasant or unpleasant mental state, which occurs in the limbic system of the mammal brain. These emotions can be manifestations of certain hidden feelings, and can vary by as many different feelings we can feel based off of these emotions. Another new theory comes from The Unified Theory of the Nervous System and Behavior. This theory states that “it can be noted that every perception, sense and thought has an emotional component of good or bad, which is interpreted as a mix of pleasure and pain as expressed in proportions of the mix between these basic units in relationship to frequencies of cell firing.” This is just another definition that tries to explain the reoccurring phenomena that happens every time we feel something, a feeling that stemmed from an emotion. Conclusion: Emotions are not an easily touchable subject. Unlike some subjects, emotions are merely ideas, and are not tangible things. They cannot be seen, felt, or touched, and thus make it difficult to really grasp on the idea of what exactly an emotion is. Throughout the years, many different professionals and researches have spent much time trying to pinpoint exactly what an emotion is, and have come up with answers as far reaching as the word they are trying to describe. Emotions mean different things to different people, and are hard to exactly pin point as to what they are. The biological process of them can be explained, but does that explain what they truly are? And why do some emotions happen and some don’t, and how come some people have certain emotions while others don’t? These are questions that may never be answered, as the human mystery of emotions may keep eluding our minds. Everybody feels them, yet nobody can exactly describe what they are. They happen to us every day, and often guide how well our day goes. If we are full of negative emotions, we may have a horrible day, while on the other hand positive emotions can make a day worth while. Everyone experiences them, and they are one of the many mysteries of the human body yet fully explained. Emotions are as varied as the stars in the sky, and it may take us many more years of work and research to fully understand these complex states of mind, and how exactly they work inside the human body. Read More