Report

in
soc sci-III
Group #5
Sotto, Nathaniel Roy L.
Cruz, Christian Ivan D.
Diana, Ryan Jay.
 What is emotion?

 Emotions are complex. According to some theories, they are states of feeling
that result in physical and psychological changes that influence our behavior. The
physiology of emotion is closely linked to arousal of the nervous system with
various states and strengths of arousal relating, apparently, to particular
emotions. Emotion is also linked to behavioral tendency. Extroverted people are
more likely to be social and express their emotions, while introverted people are
more likely to be more socially withdrawn and conceal their emotions. Emotion is
often the driving force behind motivation, positive or negative. According to
other theories, emotions are not causal forces but simply syndromes of
components, which might include motivation, feeling, behavior, and
physiological changes, but no one of these components is the emotion. Nor is
the emotion an entity that causes these components
 What is most basic about emotion?
 It is said that basic emotions evolved in response to the ecological challenges faced by our
remote ancestors and are so primitive as to be ‘hardwired’, with each basic emotion
corresponding to a distinct and dedicated neurological circuit. Being hardwired, basic emotions
(or ‘affect programs’) are innate and universal, automatic, and fast, and trigger behaviour with
a high survival value. So much can hardly be said of more complex emotions such as humility or
nostalgia, which, for example, are never attributed to infants and animals.
 What is Anger ?
 The emotion anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense
emotional state. It involves a strong uncomfortable and hostile
response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat.[1]
 A person experiencing anger will often experience physical
conditions, such as increased heart rate, elevated blood
pressure, and increased levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline.[2]
Some view anger as an emotion which triggers part of the fight
or flight brain response.[3] Anger becomes the predominant
feeling behaviorally, cognitively, and physiologically when a
person makes the conscious choice to take action to
immediately stop the threatening behavior of another outside
force.[4] The English term originally comes from the term anger
of Old Norse language
 How Anger is Expressed?
 Anger can be expressed in many ways; different types of anger affect people
differently and can manifest to produce different actions and signs of anger. It can be
clear that somebody is angry from what they say or how they say it, or from their
tone of voice. Anger can also be expressed through body language and other non-
verbal cues: trying to look physically bigger (and therefore more intimidating),
staring, frowning and clenching of fists. Some people are very good at internalising
their anger and it may be difficult to notice any physical signs. It is, however, unusual
for an actual physical attack to transpire without ‘warning’ signs appearing first.

 What Makes People Angry?

 Grief and/or sadness, loss of a family member, friend or other loved one.
 Rudeness, poor interpersonal skills and/or poor service
 Tiredness, since people may have shorter tempers and be more irritable when tired.
 Hunger.
 Injustice: for example infidelity, being bullied, humiliated or embarrassed, or being
told that you, or a loved one, has a serious illness.
 Sexual frustration.
 Money problems and the stress associated with debt.
 Possible Physical Signs of Anger
 Frequent rubbing of the face.
 Tightly clasping one hand with the other, or making clenched fists.
 Clenching of the jaw or grinding teeth.
 Shallow breathing and/or breathlessness.
 Increased heart-rate.
 Perspiring, sweaty palms.
 Trembling or shaking lips, hands.
 Rocking motion whilst sitting.
 Pacing.
 Being rude and losing sense of humour.
 Talking louder.
 Increased cravings for tobacco, sugar, alcohol, drugs, comfort food
etc.
 Possible Emotional Symptoms of Anger
 A desire to ‘run away’ from the situation.
 Irritation.
 Feeling sad or depressed.
 Felling guilty or resentful.
 feeling anxious can manifest in many different ways.
 A feeling or desire to lash out verbally or physically.

Some of the health problems that may occur as a result of

being angry regularly or for long periods of time can include
 Aches and pains, usually in the back and head.
 High blood pressure, which can, in severe cases, lead to serious complaints such
as stroke or cardiac arrest.
 Sleep problems.
 Problems with digestion.
 Skin disorders.
 Reduced threshold for pain.
 Impaired immune system.
 What is Awe ?
refers to a feeling of fearful or profound respect or wonder inspired by the
greatness, superiority, grandeur, etc. of a person or thing and suggests an
immobilizing effect; , reverence is applied to a feeling of deep respect mingled with
love for something one holds sacred or inviolable and suggests a display of
homage, deference, etc.; , veneration implies worshipful reverence for a person or
thing regarded as hallowed or sacred and specifically suggests acts of religious
devotion; , dread, as it comes into comparison here, suggests extreme fear mixed
with awe or reverence
One dictionary definition is "an overwhelming feeling of reverence,
admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely
powerful, or the like: in awe of God; in awe of great political
figures."Another dictionary definition is a "mixed emotion of reverence,
respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty,
sublimity, or might: We felt awe when contemplating the works of Bach.
The observers were in awe of the destructive power of the new weapon.
 How Awe Relates to Other Emotions ?
 In the eyes of emotion researchers, awe maintains a complicated,
sometimes fuzzy, relationship to other positive emotions—it can
sometimes be challenging to differentiate it from other emotional states,
a challenge not uncommon among positive emotions
 One recent paper, which proposes a taxonomy of positive emotions,
theorizes that emotions can be differentiated in part based on the
“adaptive problem they address” and argues that awe is a discrete
emotion that addresses the need to take in novel, complex information
 Importantly, the researchers also note that emotions can also be
differentiated from one another by attributes such as the neural
mechanisms, nonverbal expressions, peripheral physiology, cognitive
aspects, motivations/behaviors, and subjective experiences associated
with each of them. Most of these attributes are largely unknown when it
comes to awe. Awe may very well be its own basic emotion, then, but
other emotional states might overlap with it.
 Effects of awe
 Awe experiences may bring with them a host of physiological,
psychological, and social effects. For example, studies have
found that feelings of awe can be accompanied by heart rate
changes, “goose bumps,” and the sensation of chills, and there
is some evidence that awe may even decrease markers of
chronic inflammation. When it comes to psychological effects,
studies have found that awe can create a diminished sense of
self (an effect known as “the small self”), give people the sense
that they have more available time, increase feelings of
connectedness, increase critical thinking and skepticism,
increase positive mood, and decrease materialism
 Compassion
 Compassion literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion
researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are
confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve
that suffering.
 Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the
concepts are related. While empathy refers more generally to our
ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another
person, compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include
the desire to help. Altruism, in turn, is the kind, selfless behavior
often prompted by feelings of compassion, though one can feel
compassion without acting on it, and altruism isn’t always
motivated by compassion.
 contempt
 Contempt, is a pattern of attitudes and behaviour, often toward an
individual, group but sometimes towards an ideology, which has
the characteristics of disgust and anger
 The word originated in 1393, from the Latin word contemptus
meaning "scorn". It is the past participle of contemnere and from
com- intensive prefix + temnere "to slight, scorn". Contemptuous
appeared in 1529.
 It is classified among Paul Ekman's seven basic emotions of
contempt, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.
 Robert C. Solomon places contempt on the same continuum as
resentment and anger, and he argues that the differences between
the three are that resentment is anger directed toward a higher-
status individual; anger is directed toward an equal-status
individual; and contempt is anger directed toward a lower-status
individual
 Defining features
 Contempt has five features.[7] Contempt requires a judgment
concerning the appearance or standing of the object of contempt.
In particular, contempt involves the judgment that, because of
some moral or personal failing or defect, the contemned person
has compromised his or her standing vis-à-vis an interpersonal
standard that the contempt or treats as important. This may have
not been done deliberately but by a lack of status. This lack of
status may cause the contemptuous to classify the object of
contempt as utterly worthless, or as not fully meeting a particular
interpersonal standard. Therefore, contempt is a response to a
perceived failure to meet an interpersonal standard. Contempt is
also a particular way of regarding or attending to the object of
contempt, and this form of regard has an unpleasant affective
element. However, contempt may be experienced as a highly
visceral emotion similar to disgust, or as cool disregard.
 Virtues
 Contempt can be useful to being a functioning member of the moral community.
An ethics of contempt provides a much larger breadth of answers than other
competing systems of ethics, whether they be based on ethics of actions. or
ethics of feelings (e.g., ethics of resentment). By feeling contempt for those
things which are found to be unethical, immoral, or morally unsavory, one can
both show that they are bad and remove them from the moral community
 Contempt has a certain comparative element. In David Hume's studies of
contempt, he suggests that contempt essentially requires apprehending the
“bad qualities” of someone “as they really are” while simultaneously making a
comparison between this person and ourselves. Because of this reflexive
element, contempt also involves what we might term a “positive self-feeling” of
the contemptuous. A characteristic of contempt is the psychological withdrawal
or distance one typically feels regarding the object of one’s contempt. This
psychological distancing is an essential way of expressing one’s non
identification with the object of one’s contempt and it precludes sympathetic
identification with the object of contempt.
 Disgust
 Disgust is an emotional response of rejection or revulsion to
something potentially contagious or something considered
offensive, distasteful, or unpleasant. In The Expression of the
Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin wrote that disgust is a
sensation that refers to something revolting. Disgust is
experienced primarily in relation to the sense of taste (either
perceived or imagined), and secondarily to anything which causes a
similar feeling by sense of smell, touch, or vision. Musically sensitive
people may even be disgusted by the cacophony of inharmonious
sounds. Research continually has proven a relationship between
disgust and anxiety disorders such as arachnophobia, blood-
injection-injury type phobias, and contamination fear related.
 DEVELOPMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS OF DISGUST

 Like other emotions, disgust shows developmental changes over

time. Although there is some evidence suggesting that children as
young as four years old may experience contamination sensitivity
(Siegal & Share, 1990), studies exposing children to various disgust
stimuli (i.e., imitationfeces,foods,animals)have generally indicated
that most children below eight years of age lack the cognitive
abilities to experience disgust (cf. Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Rozin,
Hammer, Oster, Horowitz, & Marmora,1986).However, the
available evidence suggests that roughly from two or three to
seven to nine years of age, children may learn via
observationtorejectdisguststimuli,eventhoughtheymightnotnecess
arilyfindsuchstimulidisgustingperse(Rozin&Fallon,1987).The curious
absence of disgust in the first years of life suggests that disgust
may not be as evolutionarily prepared as other emotions, such as
fear.
 Disgust Variations
 This progressive extension from potentially contaminated food to
moral offenses can be described as a shift from disgust as a
response to protect the body to disgust as a response to protect
the soul, from “get this out of my mouth” to “get this out of me.”
It seems that cultures have discovered that they can easily enforce
rejection of certain entities or activities by making them disgusting.
In this sense, disgust can be thought of as the emotion of
civilization; to be civilized is to show disgust toward a wide class of
objects and activities. The evolution of disgust from food rejection
is beautifully described by Leon Kass in his book The Hungry Soul,
and the greater of expansion of disgust into the moral world is very
effectively described by William Miller in The Anatomy of Disgust.
 PALATABLE APPROACHES TO STUDYING DISGUST

 Disgust has arguably been the most understudied of all emotions

.The unique expansion of disgust from our mouth to our minds as
well as its role as a means of socialization suggests that
programmatic research is needed to further evaluate this complex
emotion. As the role of disgust in multiple contexts, such as concerns
of oral incorporation of contaminated foods, defense against
reminders of our animal nature, and in specific social/moral and
interpersonal contexts, continues to be identified, the opportunities
for related research may be unlimited.
 Embarrassment
 is considered one of the self-conscious emotions, quite at ease in
the company of guilt, shame, and pride. Given that embarrassment
happens in relation to other people, it is a public emotion that
makes you feel exposed, awkward, and filled with regret for
whatever your wrongdoing happens to be. Potential negative
evaluations concerning standards about actions, thoughts, and
feelings that govern our behavior are at the core of embarrassment
and other self-conscious emotions. The experience of
embarrassment alerts you to your failure to behave according to
certain social standards, which threaten the beliefs you hold
concerning how others evaluate you as well as the ways in which
you evaluate yourself. For example, if in the middle of giving an
important presentation you inadvertently belch loudly,
embarrassment would be linked to your concern that others, who
generally hold a high evaluation of you, might instead think
negatively as you would about yourself.
 The effects of embarrassment on cognition and
behavior
 Several studies have found that specific emotions can have distinct
effects on decision making, however, very few include
embarrassment. A few theoretical frameworks have been put forth
to understand the effects of emotions on decisions. These
frameworks are typically based off of research that investigates
emotions that are unrelated to subsequent judgments or choices.
This dissertation presents findings that examine the effects of
embarrassment on decision making.
 Envy
 Envy is a secretly held emotion. If you are envious of someone it's
unlikely that you will admit it to anyone, except perhaps to
someone who might also be envious of that other person and will
participate with you in denigrating them. The circumstances in
which you might be envious will always involve a social comparison
or competition between yourself and another person. Such
competition and comparison with others are a part of the yardstick
by which you measure yourself--your self-evaluation. Since envy is
triggered only when you come up short, that's part of the reason
why it is experienced as such an "ugly" emotion. In order to adjust
the measurements that will neutralize your envy, you will have to
diminish the source, elevate yourself, or do both. Envy makes you
work hard and it seems as though you keep coming back again and
again to measuring your self-worth against that of the other
person.
 The hostile component of envy
 Definitions of envy and scores of scholarly treatments also point to the
hostile side of the emotion. Cassius' envy is characterized by feelings of
inferiority, painful longing, frustration, and subjective injustice, but he
also feels hostile.
 Hostility is a defining component of the envy. Without it, the emotion
might better take another label, such as "admiration." Those who have
studied envy usually acknowledge non hostile forms (e.g., Parrott, 1991;
Rawls, 1971; Silver & Sabini, 1978) but also argue that these benign
varieties are less prototypic and are more straightforward to grapple with
as an object of study (e.g., Foster, 1972). It is the hostile component of
envy that moves the envious Cassius to bring Caesar down, that explains
why envy is one of the seven deadly sins (e.g., Schimmel, 1993; Silver &
Sabini, 1978), that accounts for why envious people will sacrifice their
own outcomes to diminish the envied person's advantage (e.g., Zizzo,
2000), that suggests the reasons why envy is such a strong predictor of
malicious joy when the envied person suffers (Brigham et al., 1997; Smith
et al., 1996), that explains why people often worry when they are the
targets of envy (e.g., Foster, 1972; Schoeck, 1969), and that, in general,
shows why envy may produce a multitude of antisocial behaviors (e.g.,
Beck, 1999; Duffy & Shaw, 2000; Schoeck, 1969).
 Fear
 Fear is a feeling induced by perceived danger or threat that occurs
in certain types of organisms, which causes a change in metabolic
and organ functions and ultimately a change in behavior, such as
fleeing, hiding, or freezing from perceived traumatic events. Fear in
human beings may occur in response to a certain stimulus
occurring in the present, or in anticipation or expectation of a
future threat perceived as a risk to body or life. The fear response
arises from the perception of danger leading to confrontation with
or escape from/avoiding the threat (also known as the fight-or-
flight response), which in extreme cases of fear (horror and terror)
can be a freeze response or paralysis.
 In humans and animals, fear is modulated by the process of
cognition and learning. Thus fear is judged as rational or
appropriate and irrational or inappropriate. An irrational fear is
called a phobia.
 Causes of fear
 Fear is incredibly complex. Some fears may be a result of
experiences or trauma, while others may represent a fear of
something else entirely, such as a loss of control. Still, other fears
may occur because they cause physical symptoms, such as being
afraid of heights because they make you feel dizzy and sick to your
stomach, even if you're watching a video or looking at a picture and
in no actual danger.
 Scientists are trying to understand exactly what fear is and what
causes it, but this is a supremely difficult undertaking in light of the
differences between individuals in terms of what they fear and
why.3 There is no agreement between scientists who study fear as
to whether it's a sort of behavior that's only observable or
something our brains are physically wired to do.
 How fear works?
 The process of creating fear takes place in the brain and is entirely
unconscious. There are two paths involved in the fear response:
The low road is quick and messy, while the high road takes more
time and delivers a more precise interpretation of events. Both
processes are happening simultaneously.
 The idea behind the low road is "take no chances." If the front door
to your home is suddenly knocking against the frame, it could be
the wind. It could also be a burglar trying to get in. It's far less
dangerous to assume it's a burglar and have it turn out to be the
wind than to assume it's the wind and have it turn out to be a
burglar
 Common fears
 A Gallup Poll conducted in 2005 reveals the most common fears of
teenagers in the United States. The top 10 list goes like this:
 Terrorist attacks
 Spiders
 Death
 Failure
 War
 Heights
 Crime/Violence
 Being alone
 The future
 Nuclear war
 Happiness
 Happiness is a subjective experience - what brings elation to one
person will not necessarily satisfy another - but from a
psychological viewpoint, we must be able to quantify this state of
mind in order to understand it.
 When we discuss happiness, we are referring to a person’s
enjoyment or satisfaction, which may last just a few moments or
extend over the period of a lifetime. Happiness does not have to be
expressed in order to be enjoyed - it is an internalized experience,
varying in degrees, from mild satisfaction to wild euphoria.
 Psychologists often refer to happiness as positive affect - a mood
or emotional state which is brought about by generally positive
thoughts and feelings. Positive affect contrasts with low moods
and negativity, a state of mind described as negative affect in
which people take a pessimistic view of their achievements, life
situation and future prospects.
 Quantifying Happiness
 With positive affect being subjective and relative to the individual,
can happiness be measured? The United Nations seems to believe
that it can, and releases the World Happiness Report, which ranks
countries by the self-reported happiness of its citizens.
 In 2016, the report listed Denmark as the happiest nation, followed
by Switzerland and Iceland. The US was the 13th happiest country
with the UK ranking 23rd. Nordic countries feature prominently as
being amongst the happiest societies in the world (Helliwell, Layard
and Sachs, 2016).1
 Benefits of Happiness
 Happiness signifies an increased enjoyment of life, which is of
course beneficial in itself. But beyond this obvious advantage, are
there any further gains to be had from increased happiness?
 One study looked at wide-ranging research into happiness to better
understand the link between happiness in successful people.
 Researchers suggested that there may be a causal link between
positive affect and success - that success not only brings happiness,
but that a person who is happy has an higher chance of achieving
success than somebody experiencing negative affect (Lyubomirsky
et al, 2005).4
 The findings of this research support another, earlier, study by
Daubman and Nowicki (1987) which artificially induced positive
affect in participants in a series of experiments by subjecting them
to watching comic films and providing them with sweets.
 Self-Determined Happiness
 Positive affect might be influenced by external factors in our
everyday life, but if people yearn for more happiness, can they
bring it about themselves? Schütz et al (2013) studied the habits
and happiness of people whose affect levels varied. The study
observed a number of ways in which some people were able to
proactively nurture their own happiness:13
 The self-fulfilling participants showed significantly higher results
than all other profiles on the direct attempts strategy, suggesting
that in order to increase their happiness the self-fulfilling
individuals are more prone to directly attempt to smile, get
themselves in a happy mood, improve their social skills, and work
on their self-control.