Feelings Of Emotions

In my attempt to study in WLB, I unwittingly stumbled upon several interesting studies on the links between physiology and psychology which quelled my interest in such a field. And one happened to be about an interesting analysis of Feelings of Emotions.

There seems to be an apparent direct link between the feelings of people and their subsequent reactions which confirm their feelings, but quite to the contrary of the widespread perception that feelings come first, then the physical reaction, it is rather that the reaction reacts in a vice-versa manner.

In the James-Lange theory that i stumbled upon in a book, William James (An American psychologist) and Carl Lange (Danish physiologist) argued a theory in which they state that the behaviors & physiological responses are directly elicited by situations, and that feelings of emotions are produced by feedback from these behaviours & responses.

Thus, emotion- producing situations elicit an appropriate set of physiological responses, such as trembling (when u see a hot chick),or increased heart rate (when you are feverishly making out). Oh yah, and also behaviours such as clenching of fists & kicking pple in the ribs. (That explains it, Al-Hafiz). The brain (eg Al-Hafiz's) receives sensory feedback from the muscles & from the organs that produce these responsed & it is this feeback that constitutes our feelings of emotion.

Our own emotional feelings are based on what we find ourselves doing and on the sensory feedback we receive from the activity of our muscles. When we find ourselves trembling, we experience fear. However, we normally think that the process is vice-versa, as we may think that we experience emotions directly, internally. And we may consider outward manifestations of emotions to be secondary events.

But think about it, have you ever found yourself in an unpleasant confrontation (eg. with your subject teacher) in which you discovered that you were trembling, even though you did not think that you were so bothered by the encounter? Or did you ever find yourself blushing in response to some public remark that was made about you? Or did you find tears welling up in your eyes while you watched a movie that you did not think was affecting you? What would you conclude about your emotional states in situations like these? Would you ignore the evidence from your own physiological reactions?

Thus, this is what explains why the adage "To think before you act" is crucially ironic. In essence, we cannot respond psychologically feelings-wise before the physiological response acts first, thus feelings are the results, not the causes of emotional reactions.

Even simulating an emotional expression causes changes in the nervous system. Perhaps feeback from these changes explains why an emotion can be contagious( which explains the fact that laughter, fear can be contagious.) We see someone smile with pleasure, and we ourselves imitate the smile, and the internal feedback makes us at least somewhat happier. To make it simple, we don't feel happy and laugh, we laugh (particularly when we do at Jipang), and then we feel the happiness within. So what if we happen to lose our physical abilities?

Depressingly enough, a study of patients with spinal cord damage supported the James-Lange theory, where people who could no longer feel the receptions from most of their body reported a loss of intense emotional states. And that applies to a loss of emotional love, and sex drive as well!

Damn, I think im going crazy


Rant 11:04 PM of Azmie
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