Emotions are what people feel. They are very ancient, and can be seen in allmammals.
Emotions are caused by a complex mixture ofhormones and theunconscious mind. Only with great difficulty can we control our emotions by conscious effort. They cause mammals to changebehaviour according to changes in their situation. In our case, they sometimes run against our attempt to live our lives in a logical way.
Ascientificdefinition is not simple; over 90 definitions have been offered by experts.[1] A definition of emotion needs to include three things:
"Emotion is a complexpsychologicalphenomenon which occurs as animals or people live their lives. Emotions involve physiological arousal, appraisal of the situation, expressive behaviours, and conscious experience. Emotion is associated with feeling,mood,temperament,personality,disposition, andmotivation".[2][3]
In physical terms, emotions involve body systems which have operated for hundreds of millions of years. These are thehormone system, theautonomic nervous system and the 'lower'brain centers (hindbrain andmidbrain).
If so, the mechanisms which made the expressions must beinherited. They must have been developed in the same way as all other features of man,evolution bynatural selection. It was already known fromanatomy that the muscles and nerves of the face were the same or similar in all humans.
Darwin illustrated the expression of the emotions with a series ofphotographs andwoodcut illustrations. Ekman did the same thing on a research visit toNew Guinea, where he asked villagers to identify the emotions shown in the photographs.[5] This was part of a long-term effort to test and extend Darwin's insights into emotions.[6][7][8][9] Some of Ekman's conclusions are:[9]
Micro expressions last only a fraction of a second. They occur when people conceal their feelings. (p15, p222)
Emotions areautoappraisers, reactions to matters which seem to be very important to our welfare. (p21)
Emotions often begin so quickly that we are not aware of the processes in our mind which set them off. (p21)
Autoappraisers scan for events which are critical to our welfare and survival. (p23)
Our evolutionary heritage makes a major contribution to the shaping of our emotional responses. (p26)
The desire to experience or not to experience an emotionmotivates much of our behaviour. (p217)
An efficient signal – clear, rapid and universal – informs others of how the emotional person is feeling. (p217)
It is obvious that some animals, mostly mammals, but also some birds, have emotions which are somewhat similar to human emotions as far as one can tell. The most obvious cases are domestic pets which are clearly happy to see owners after a long separation.[10]
Because two large groups of vertebrates have developed emotions (mammals and birds at least), it must be that emotions are helpful in group behaviour. In a quite different group, social insects, the group behaviour is controlled bypheromones: inherited scent patterns. Scent is also important to most mammals, but birds are more sight-oriented.
↑Myers, David G. 2004. Theories of emotion inPsychology. 7th ed, Worth, New York.
↑Charles Darwin (1873) 1999.The expression of the emotions in man and animals, edited by Paul Ekman. HarperCollins.ISBN0-00-255866-1
↑Ekman P. 1980.The face of man: expressions of universal emotions in a New Guinea village. New York: Garland.
↑Ekman P. (ed) 1973.Darwin and facial expression: a century of research in review. New York: Academic Press.
↑Ekman P. & Friesen W.P. 1984.Unmasking the face. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press.
↑Ekman P. & Rosenberg E.L. (eds) 1997.What the face reveals: basic and applied studies of spontaneous expression using the facial action coding system (FACS). Oxford University Press.
↑9.09.1Ekman P. 2003.Emotions revealed: understanding faces and feelings. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.ISBN978-0-7538-1765-0
