Essay Questions
3. Discuss the role of physiological changes in our perception of emotion.
Key Points:
- The physiological perspective is one perspective among many that has been influential regarding the perception of emotion.
- The physiological changes associated with emotion are very familiar to us, e.g. arousal.
- When we are happy or sad, afraid or angry, jealous or disgusted, the changes in our bodies are obvious.
- We are more aware of the peripheral nervous system than we are of the central nervous system (CNS). We cannot feel our brain doing its work, emotional or otherwise.
- How do we learn to recognize the bodily changes that accompany our emotional states? Do they differ, depending on the emotion we are experiencing? Can there be emotion without physiological change?
- Emotion is about coping with sudden changes in our environment, changes that have significance for our survival (physical or social).
- The autonomic nervous system (ANS) prepares the body for action and helps it back to quiescence later. These are what we refer to when we talk about changes in arousal.
- Psychologists have proposed that the various emotions experienced in everyday life have their own specific response patterns, in terms of arousal. These suppositions are endorsed by the much-quoted study of Wolf and Wolff (1947) . . .
- Lacey and Lacey (1970) found some evidence for emotion specificity in the cardio-vascular system, but it was not until 1990 that Levenson, Ekman and Friesen offered clear support for emotional response patterning . . .
- The physiological arousal aspect of emotion has been responsible for many theoretical developments.
- Discussion of the James–Lange theory of emotion, which stressed the importance of physiological mechanisms in the perception of emotion.
- James–Lange theory drew attention to bodily changes occurring in response to environmental events, and suggested that emotion is our feeling of the bodily changes that follow perception. This reverses the commonsense idea that we perceive something that causes the emotional experience, which, in turn, causes the bodily changes.
- The first and most vociferous opposition to the James–Lange theory came from Walter Cannon (1915, 1927, 1931, 1932) in what has come to be known as the Cannon–Bard theory of emotion. Cannon put forward some cogent criticisms of James’ theory. (Discussion of these.)
- Nevertheless, the psychophysiological analysis of peripheral mechanisms in emotion makes it abundantly clear that arousal is an integral part of emotion. It also seems that the various emotions might have some characteristic patterns of psychophysiological reactions associated with them.
- It is therefore possible that, as measurement techniques become more advanced in the future, patterns of psychophysiological responses might be found for the various emotions. But the current belief is that for any subtle emotional differentiation, cognitive mechanisms underlying emotion need to be directly addressed.
- Further credit for a consideration of the mechanisms underlying the lie detector and criticisms of this instrument.
- Further credit for a consideration of the limbic system and its important role in the physiological mechanisms involved in emotion perception.
- Acknowledgement that the physiological perspective alone is not sufficient in understanding emotion perception.
- Extra credit received for relevant topics and issues discussed by the student which are not presented within chapter 6, e.g. other theories of physiological arousal and its significance (or otherwise) that have been presented elsewhere in the literature; e.g. possible discussion of arousal and its relevance to memory formation.
