Posted by Estella on August 25, 2006, at 2:14:47
In reply to Re: Holding my sides laughing... » Racer, posted by Estella on August 25, 2006, at 1:51:44
When I thought I was going to write my thesis on emotions I got to reading...
There has been much debate over whether judgements (cognitions, thoughts) are necessary causes of emotions or whether emotions can occur in their absence.
James and Lange agreed that emotions are feelings of bodily changes. James offered the 'argument from subtraction' which goes a little like this... If you imagine feeling intense fear and then subtract the feeling of sweaty palms and racing heart and all the bodily changes... Then what you are left with is a cool cognitive state that isn't an emotion at all.
Then Cannon came along (at least he is next up on the way I'm telling the story) and said that different emotions can have the same pattern of bodily changes so there must be more to emotions than patterns of bodily changes (ie there must be judgement or cognition).
But that was in the 60's (or maybe 50's) and thats because we didn't have many fine grained measures of the differences. (Failure to find a difference doesn't entail there is no difference to be found). Damasio and Ekman have done some interesting work on that...
Zajonc did some experiments and found he could induce emotional states by subliminally presenting stimuli (if you are presented with a picture in less than 250 milliseconds you don't become consciously aware of it). But... You can still experience an emotional response to it. One guy who has a commissurotomy (split brain operation where the corpus callosum is severed so the cerebral hemispheres can't communicate so well) reported feeling afraid but he didn't know why. They had presented some scarey picture to his right (mute) hemisphere which managed to communicate fear but not verbal awareness of WHAT he was afraid of to his left (verbal) hemisphere.
Then (was this Cannon?) there were experiments that were supposed to show that judgements / appraisals / cognitions are necessary causes of emotions. This is how the experiment went:
There were three groups. The first was injected with amphetamine and were told that it was a viamin (or similar) and they should wait in this room for the experimentor to come and fetch them to do the experiment. There was a person in the room who acted euphoric playing with hula hoops and making paper airplanes and stuff like that.
Those people were observed to act euphorically and they subjectively rated themselves as feeling happy or elated.
The second group was told the same but while they were 'waiting for the experiment to begin' they were asked to fill in this survey. The survey purposely asked rude questions like 'how many men aside from your father has your mother slept with? 5 or less. between 5 and 30. between 30 and 50. 50 or more.' (or something like that). The other person in the room expressed rage and indignation about the questionare and the subject was observed to express similar rage and indignation.
The control group... I can't remember what happened with them.
Anyways... That is the significant experiment that is supposed to show that emotions aren't just feelings of patterns of bodily change... They are the result of interpretation or judgement or appraisal.
But the results haven't been replicated so well...
Also... For what it is worth... The subjects in the second group reported feeling similarly elated. Apparantly the experimentors failed to report that because it didn't fit so well with what they wanted to show.
Also...
What is there to show that the subjects in both conditions were in the same physiological state? Sure they were both given a shot of adrenaline, but a shot of adrenaline isn't an emotional response.
But that seems to be the data that cognitive behaviourist theorists cling to with their cognitive restructuring in order to feel better notions.
I have some sympathy. One can surely wind oneself up by thinking about things in a certain way. But the point is that emotions are physiological responses. Evaluation / judgement / appraisal happens at the sub-personal level and can't be changed by our conscious will. Just like... The line and edge detectors involved in vision work at the sub-personal level and we can't be aware of them at the conscious level. (sorry about that structuralists).
Sorry for the rant... But pisses me off yup.
poster:Estella
thread:679557
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060808/msgs/679881.html