Emotion & Feeling, Essay Example

Scientific Explanation of Emotions

Emotion is an adaptive form of psychological responses which regulate the feelings of an individual. Emotions are expressed extensively through facial expressions and posture, theater of the body, and other internal processes such as blood pressure and heart rate. These responses are transmitted back to the brain centers through humeral channels as well as neural channels, which bypass all neural signaling. Primary emotions such as happiness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and sadness that are related to experiences are expressed physically. On the contrary, some emotions can manifest themselves in an individual non-consciously.  For instance, an individual can expresses emotion before perceiving what is causing the response. Science explains that the response to emotions is automatic, and is largely determined by genes that respond to certain categories of situations.

Emotions such as agony, disgust, and solitude generate approach behavior or withdrawal behavior that has been declared as important tools of survival. These behaviors are inherited and are sorting for sorting out what is good or bad to help individuals preserve themselves. The administration of negative or positive reinforcement or withholding defines the emotion state of a person. This explanation intends to provide a platform for locating diverse emotions, their varying degrees of intensity and their independent dimensions. According to the view of classical behaviorism, scientists have come up with three stages in which human beings respond to different stimuli in their environment. The first stage is specified phylogenetically: genes are deployed to set goals (punishment or reward) to determine the direction in which organisms are expected to direct their emotions. The second stage comprises acquired and innate stimuli that distinguish the value of both basic and secondary reinforcing elements in reward associations. The last stage comprises experience-dependent instrumental knowledge of different methods of achieving goals through action-outcome learning.

The flexibility of instrumental learning emphasizes that emotions determine the resultant goals rather than the actions to achieve them. Cognitive factors and individual consciousness of goals and aspirations influence behavior and emotion. Many studies have shown that in normal human beings, the amygdala, brain centers for recognizing fear and agony, is activated when a person is expecting some grueling and traumatizing information. The brain records the signal that is conspicuously masked at conscious levels. Conversely, damaged amygdala in individuals may result in loss of ability to detect stimuli, which can be disastrous in their lives.

The Relationship between Chopin’s Story and Emotions

According to the case study provided, Mrs. Mallard is exhibiting emotional withdrawal. After receiving news of her husband’s death from her sister, she feels like she exists alone in her world and ponders in solitude. This can be seen through her inability to communicate her emotion state, and, as a result detaches form her sister to reflect on her past life with her husband. Her marriage comprised so many ups and down that her husband’s death seemed like a relief to her. From the explanation of her case, Mrs. Mallard is also suffering from emotional exhaustion due to the chaos related to her past marriage life. As a result, she lacks energy to share her downturns in life since she cannot recharge properly. She experiences immense agony that she feels that her sister and Richards, her husband’s best friend, cannot help. Although her agony is subsiding at the end, her health conditions also contribute towards acute depression.

From Mrs. Mallard’s health condition, her heart problems may have contributed to the destruction of certain sections of her frontal lobe which causes inability to accept negative outcomes. Despite maintaining her normal knowledge and intelligence, her emotional state does not operate effectively. Reasonably, she reflects on her past marriage life and identifies several mistakes that help her face the future consequences. Although she can think logically, her decision-making ability is compromised. Such individuals lose their emotional reactivity since they can longer sense shame, painful situations, or guilt. Their ability to feel emotions that are related to future consequences are no longer used to quantify different choices as either “potentially bad” or “potentially good.” She is clear when she thinks that she will weep at the sight of her husband in the casket. Additionally, she is very keen on her emotion state to repress her health state as well as the traumatizing news of her husband’s death. At the end, she is emotionally composed as she watches Josephine, her sister, crying relentlessly.