Research - Week 3 "Understanding Emotions"

This week I’ve been researching the book entitled “Understanding Emotions” by Keith Oatley and Jennifer M.Jenkins. After the meeting with our two lecturers Phil and Brian it came to our attention that we should also be researching emotions in general and how they are recognized and defined.

Chapter 4 (Page 95-133) – “What is an Emotion”

This chapter initially defined a breakdown of what emotions are. Accordingly it refers to something that is caused by a person consciously or unconsciously evaluating an event as relevant to a concern. This emotion can be felt in a positive or negative way. This emotion is usually experienced as a distinctive type of mental state which can sometimes we followed by bodily chances, expressions, actions (more onto this later). Below is a breakdown based on this definition (Frijda, 1986) defining an emotion by a set of stage.

Appraisal -> Context Evaluation -> Action Readiness -> Physiological Change, Expression, Action

Appraisal - Research into this area has implied that they are typically caused by events and are intentional. They all have an object of some sort for example one is not afraid but afraid of something.

Context Evaluation – This is dependent on the person’s thoughts at the current time. They‘re salient in somebody’s experience of emotions.

Action Readiness – This is where a person will do a particular action dependent on their emotion at the time.

Physiological Change, Expression and Actions – This is quite important in Team Mercury’s research since this allows the group to determine through somebody’s actions how they are feeling. Examples of these are nonverbal expressions, voice, facial expressions and others. In terms of non verbal expression, according to Ekman and Friesan (1969) nonverbal expressions can be identified in five different categories.

- Emblems – Commonly known as gestures.
- Illustrators – Usually accompany speech and vary with the degree of excitement, such as arm waving or clenching of the fist.
- Regulators – Such as nods or changing the flow of conversations.
- Affect Displays – Expressions such as smiling or frowning
- Adaptors – Self-grooming, Self-touching and so forth, often occur because of signs of anxiety or inner conflict (Maestripieri, 1992)
These are good for the group at they’re easily identifiable ways of noticing emotions by their bodily responses.

Other changes can be things such as vocal expressions, heart rate changes (low rate suggests happiness, disgust and surprise. High rate suggests fear, sadness and anger) and also skin temperatures (low temperature suggests fear and sadness, high temperature suggests anger)

Conclusion

Reading this book has brought some new information to the team, not only does it clearly define what an emotion is but also the process of an emotion and how to indentify it. There are more chapters in this book which may be researched later since so far it’s been quite useful and a good recommendation from the lecturers.

References

- Oatley, K. Jenkins, J., 1996. Understanding Emotions. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc.