Psychology

Emotions are psychological responses of the whole organism resulting from physiological arousal, expressive behaviors and conscious experience. Your body works in sync with the psychological phenomena, preparing a person to deal with the emotional arousal accordingly.

Consider the implication of how emotions affect a person's life outside of the immediate effect on their disposition:

Although a 70% accuracy for the polygraph may sound pretty good, it is not. If, for example, 5% of 1,000 employees are guilty of misconduct, and all are given the test, 285 innocent employees would be wrongly accused.

Outward signs of emotions range from our facial expressions, hand and body gestures, to voice inflections and non-verbal cues. Our emotional state is often reflected in our physical appearance.

Facial Expressions

Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, in Unmasking the Face, explain how different facial expressions reflect the emotions of surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness and sadness. The book features several practice exercises that are designed to help the reader become a more adept observer of facial expressions.

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"Catch the Feeling."

For a long time, researchers have observed that therapists tend to "catch" their client's feelings; parents communicate their feelings to their children, and vice versa; and friends resonate with each other's moods. Similarly, most of us perk up when those around us are elated. We also become depressed if others are unusually sad.

Ekman's method for mapping the face is called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). It breaks expressions down into their component muscles: which ones move, how much, and in what combinations. For example, sadness is typically expressed with raised eyebrows and forehead wrinkles that slope downward and out from the center. In contrast, anger is usually expressed by lowered eyebrows, a hard stare, and lips pressed tightly together, or slightly open, forming a square-shaped mouth.

Which occurs first, the emotion or the physical sense of the moment, is a debate that is not settled. There are several theories about how these psychological and physiological issues are linked.

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The Theories

There are two theories that currently describe the relationship of emotion to physical and cognitive factors: James-Lange and Cannon-Bard.

William James, and later Carl Lange, place the physical stressor or factor first followed by the emotional expression. To use the text book's illustration, if you were about to be run over by a car, your first thought would be to move quickly out of the way, followed by the emotion of fear for almost having become an accident victim.

Walter Cannon teamed up with Philip Bard to refute the James-Lange concept, by explaining that the physiological stimulus and the emotional experience occur simultaneously!

The consensus of opinion is actually somewhere in between these two. Arousal is an important ingredient of emotion but there is more to the experience of emotion than seeing the physiological aspect.

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The Brain and Fear

Ralph Adolphs and his colleagues at the University of Iowa report the case of a 30-year-old woman known as S.M., who seems to know no fear and has trouble seeing it in others.

When Adolphs showed the woman dozens of photographs of common facial expressions, she could readily identify pure happiness, disgust, and surprise. However, she had difficulty identifying mixed emotions. Fearful expressions mystified her completely. He reports, "When she talks about instances when she 'feels afraid,' there isn't the tension in her voice that you or I have." Rather, he says, S.M. seems adroit at recognizing rationally when she should be afraid based on cues such as loud voices, dark alleys, speeding cars, and manages to stay out of harm's way. Because everyday life is rich with such signals, the woman functions fairly normally and claims she does not feel at all impaired. "She's unconcerned," says Adolphs, "though one could argue that's a symptom of her problem."

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Do We Need to Vent Our Rage?

The notion of catharsis is usually credited to Aristotle. Although he said nothing about aggression, he suggested that we could purge our emotions by experiencing them. Viewing the classic tragedies presumably enabled a "purgation" of pity and fear. Today, some therapists believe that aggressive action or fantasy can reduce the aggressive urge. The "bataca" fight is presumably one form of constructive physical release. A bataca is a foam bat with which people can hit each other without causing injury. Both parties must agree upon the fight, and any differences in physical strength must be compensated. For example, the stronger person may be required to use the non-dominant arm. Rules must also be made, for instance, only legs and arms may be hit and the fight will last for five minutes.

A bataca spanking has been suggested as another appropriate physical release for anger and aggression. It is used when one person admits wrongdoing and allows the victim to retaliate. The offender must stand still so that the other person can hit squarely. Other rules are negotiated, as in the bataca fight.

Ann Landers, the noted advice columnist, also argues that youngsters ought to be taught to vent their anger in controlled ways. Not all her readers agree, as is evident from this letter:

Dear Ann: I was shocked at your advice to the mother whose 3-year-old had temper tantrums. You suggested that the child be taught to kick the furniture and "get the anger out of his system." I always thought you were a little cuckoo. Now I'm sure.

My younger brother used to kick the furniture when he got mad. Mother called it "letting off steam." Well, he's 32 years old now, and still kicking the furniture - what's left of it, that is. He is also kicking his wife, the cat, the kids, and anything else that gets in his way. Last October, he threw the TV set out the window when his favorite team failed to score and lost the game. (The window was closed at the time.)

Why don't you tell mothers that children must be taught to control their anger? This is what separates civilized human beings from savages, Dummy. - Star Witness

Dear Star: You, like some others who wrote to criticize, ignored the most important part of my answer. I did not condone destroying furniture. I suggested that a punching bag or an old chair, specifically set aside for the purpose, be the object of the child's hostility. And P.S. - the most important part of my answer went like this: "Youngsters should be taught to vent their anger against things - not people."

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Flow

The text reports that Michalyi Csikszentmihalyi (hereafter referred to as Dr. C) and his colleagues found that people felt happier if mentally engaged by work or active leisure than if they were passive. To be in flow is to be so absorbed in an activity that we lose consciousness of self and time. Dr. C formulated the flow concept after studying artists who worked with enormous concentration. Immersed in a project, they would work as if nothing else mattered and then would promptly forget about it once it was finished. The artists seemed driven less by external rewards of money or recognition than by the intrinsic rewards of creating the work. Think of a time when you were so involved in an activity that you lost consciousness of self and time.

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