The conservation of emotion hypothesis Essay Example

his life, namely the applying one which is different from "him" and might exert certain current of emotion upon. For easy comprehension, we pick some daily scene as example. I am happy when got up but my dad wasn't then I tried to conform to him.

If anally was not pappy throughout the entire morning due to the gingerliness and uneasiness.

I love Sash, am excited and later the told Sash is excited stealthily but gar dually lose the initial enthusiasm whether replied yes or not. ( note that if she said yes, the e condition will turn out to be replaced by her nervousness or something as well as me) One might argue that, due to the sophistication of emotion types, how can w e simply determine its transformation process into particular quantity or anticipate things? And do we categories them and analyses respectively?

However, some complex emote on such as Cary cannot be discussed at all and it even conversely attempt to overturn HTH s hypothesis with its superiority of complexity. As" The evidence is indirect because it coins SST mainly of correlations between subjects' reports of their emotional states and their co nuncios appraisals of events, which are not faithful reflections of the cognitive antecedents. " Unluckily, also, as we attempt to figure out the particular proportion of trans formation and something else, uncountable difficulties will absolutely come to us.

I remember an article wrote experimentally about how a little bit daily emote n results in the eventual risky situation. However, I failed to reappear it.

These regularities-?or putative regularities-?are, however, assumed to rest o n underlying causal mechanisms that generate them. I

am suggesting that the laws of emotion AR grounded in mechanisms that are not of a voluntary nature and that are only partially undo ere voluntary control.

Not only emotions Obey the laws; we Obey them. We are subject to 0 our emotions, and we cannot engender emotions at will. The laws of emotion that will discuss are not all equally well established. Not all of them originate in solid evidence, nor are all equally supported by it.

To a large ext NT, in fact, to list the laws of emotion is to list a program of research.

However, the laws provide a coherent picture of emotional responding, which suggests that such a research program might be airworthier. The law of situational meaning What I mean by laws of emotion is best illustrated by the "Constitution" of me action, the law of situational meaning: Emotions arise in response to the meaning structures of given situations; different emotions arise in response to different meaning structures.

Emotions are dicta dated by the meaning structure of events in a precisely determined fashion. On a global plane, this law refers to fairly obvious and almost trivial regularities s. Emotions tend to be elicited by particular types of event. Grief is elicited by personal loss, anger by insults or frustrations, and so forth.

This obviousness should not obscure the fact that regularity and mechanism are involved. Emotions, quite generally, arise in response to events that are important to the e individual, and which importance he or she appraises in some way.

Events that satisfy the individual Xi's goals, or promise to do so, yield positive emotions; events that harm or threaten the individual's

con erne lead to negative emotions; and emotions are elicited by novel or unexpected events. Input some event with its particular kind of meaning; out comes an emotion o a particular kind. That is the law of situational meaning.

In goes loss, and out comes grief. In goes a fur striation or an offense, and out comes anger. Of course, the law does not apply in this crude manner.

It is meanings and the subject's appraisal that count-?that is, the relationship between events and the e subject's concerns, and not events as such. Thus, in goes a personal loss that is felt as irremediable, a ND out comes grief, with a high degree of probability.

In goes a 1272/ frustration or an offense for which someone else is to blame and could have avoided, and out comes anger-?almost certainly. The outputs are highly probable, but are not absolute Ely certain because the inputs can still be perceived in different fashions.

One can view serious, rimier editable personal loss as unavoidable, as in the nature of things; there will be resignation then instead of grief. Frustration or offense can be seen as caused by someone powerful who may have further o offenses in store, and fear then is likely to supplant anger as the emotional response. These subtleties, r ether than undermining the law of situational meaning, underscore it. Emotions change when meanings c angel.

Emotions are changed when events are viewed differently. Input is changed, and output chi engages accordingly.

The substance of this law was advanced by Arnold (1960) and Lazarus (1966). Evidence is accumulating that it is valid and that a number Of subsidiary laws-?for the

Elis taxation of fear, of anxiety, of joy, and so forth-?can be subsumed under it. The evidence is indri etc because it consists mainly of correlations between subjects' reports of their emotional states and their conscious appraisals of events, which are not faithful reflections of the cognitive entrance dents. Still, the correlations are strong (see, e.G.Afraid, 1 987; Smith & Ellsworth, 1987) and us gets mechanisms.

In fact, a computer program has been written that takes descriptions of event a appraisals as its input and that outputs plausible guesses of the emotion's names. It shows the beginning gas of success. When given the descriptions by 30 subjects of affective states corresponding to 32 emotion n labels, the computer achieved a hit rate of 31 % for the first choice and of 71% for the first five choice sees (with chance percentages of 3% and 17% respectively; Afraid & Swaggerer, 1987).

The law of situational meaning provides the overarching framework to organic zee findings on the cognitive variables that account for the various emotions and their intensity (s e also Oratory, Color, & Collins, 1988).

These cognitive variables pertain not merely to how the individual al thinks the events might affect him or her but also to how he or she might handle these events. They include secondary as well as primary appraisals, in Lazarus (1966) terms.

Fear involves uncertain y about one's ability to withstand or handle a given threat; grief involves certainty about the impossible laity of reversing what appended. Analyses of selectors and of the semantics of emotion terms off ere converging conclusions on the major variables involved (see Scorcher, 1 988, for a

review). Experimental I studies corroborate the importance of many of them. Outcome uncertainty affects fear intensity (e.G. Epstein, 1973). Causal attributions have been shown to influence emotions of anger, pride, shame, a ND gratitude (Winner, 1985).

Unpredictability and uncontrollability contribute to the shaping of memo action response (Monika & Henderson, 1985). They may lead to depressive mood (Abramson, Salesman , & Teasel, 1978) or acutance (Workman & Bream, 1975), depending on one's cognitive set. Errata c behavior in one's friends enrages when one is used to control and saddens when one is used to being controlled.

The workings of the law of situational meaning are not always transparent be cause they can be overridden by conscious control or by less conscious counterforce that I will discuss later.

The law is most evident when resources for control and counterforce fail, such as in lion sees or exhaustion. Postgraduates syndromes show that, under these conditions, almost every b striation is a stimulus for angry '273/ irritation, every loss or failure one for sorrow, every uncertainty one for insect rarity or anxiety, and almost every kindness one for tears. Under more normal circumstances, too, the automatic workings of the law of situational meaning are evident.

One is "sentimentality," the almost compulsion eve emergence of tearful emotions when attachment themes are touched on in films or stories about miracle workers (Fran & Spangles, 1 979), brides marrying in white, or little children who, after years of hardship, find a home or are lovingly accepted by their grandfathers. Tears are drawn, it seems, by a pr ices kind Of sequence: Latent attachment concerns are awakened; expectations regarding their info Lifetime are

carefully evoked but held in abeyance; and then one is brusquely confronted with their fulfillment.

The sequence is more potent than the observer's intellectual or emotional sophistication, a f act to which probably every reader can testify.

The other example concerns falling in love. Data from questionnaire studies ( Runabouts, 1987) suggest that it is also triggered by a specific sequence of events, in which the qualities of the Lovelace are of minor importance. A person is ready to fall in love because of one of a number r of reasons-?loneliness, sexual need, dissatisfaction, or need of variety. An object then incites interest, again for one of a number of reasons, such as novelty, attractiveness, or mere proximity.

Then g vive the person a moment of promise, a brief response from the object that suggests interest. It may be a confidence; it may be a single glance, such as a young girl may think she received from a pop star. The en give the person a brief lapse of time-?anywhere between half an hour or half a day, the selectors s gets-?during which fantasies can develop. After that sequence, no more than a single confirmation n, real or imagined, is needed to precipitate falling in love.

In the emergence of emotions people need not be explicitly aware of these m meaning structures. They do their work, whether one knows it or not.

One does not have to know that some thing is familiar in order to like it for that reason (Cajon, 1980). Distinct awareness comes after the face t, if it comes at all. Emotions In the preceding section, have not specified what mean by "emotions"

nor what it is that the laws of emotion involve. Over, in bootstrapping fashion, by first assuming that w hat we loosely call "emotions" are responses to events that are important to the individual, and t hen by asking of what the responses to such events consist.

Those responses are what the laws are ABA UT. First Of all, those subjective experiences. Their c ore is the experience of pleasure or pain. That core is embedded in the outcome of appraisal, the away renews of situational meaning structure.

Emotional experience contains more, however, that emote on psychology seems to have almost forgotten. Introspections produce a wealth of statements that refer to what I call "aware sees of state of action readiness. " Subjects report impulses to approach or avoid, desires to shout a ND sing or move, and the urge to retaliate; or, on occasion, they /274/ report an absence of desire to do anything, or a lack of interest, or feelings of loss of control (Obviate, 1969; Afraid, 1986, 1987).

What is interesting about these felt states of action readiness is that the kinds of states reported correspond to the kinds of state of action readiness that are manifest in overt behavior, for instance, facial expression and organized action. Awareness of state of action readiness s a rough reflection of state of action readiness itself C... The law of situational meaning can now be phrased more precisely. Meaning structures are lawfully connected to forms of action readiness.

Events appraised in terms of their me awnings are the emotional piano player's finger strokes; available modes of action readiness are the keys that are tapped; changes in action

readiness are the tones brought forth. The keys, the available modes of action readiness, correspond to the behavior systems and general response modes with which humans are endowed.

These include the program ms for innate behavioral tatters, of which elementary defensive and aggressive behaviors, laughter a ND crying, and the universal facial expressions (Seaman, 1982) are elements.

They further Include the general activation or deactivation patterns of exuberance, undirected excitement, and apathetic re spoons, and the pattern of freezing or inhibition. They also include the various autonomic and hormonal response patterns-?those of orienting, of active or passive coping, and the like, described by the Lackeys ( aces & Lacey, 1970), Boris (1 981 and Mason (1975), among others. These physiological patterns f arm, so to speak, the egoistic support of the action readiness changes involved.

And last, the response SE modes include the action control changes that are manifest in behavioral interference and that w e experience as preoccupation and urgency; sometimes, these are the only aspect of our Chain GE in action readiness that we feel or show.

The law of concern The law of situational meaning has a necessary complement in the law of con CERN: Emotions arise in response to events that are important to the individual's goals, motives, or co incense. Every emotion hides a concern, that is, a more or less enduring disposition to prefer particular r states of the world. A concern is what gives a particular event its emotional meaning.

We suffer whew n ill befalls someone because, and as long as, we love that someone. We glow with pride upon such sees and are dejected upon failure when and

because we strive for achievement, in general or in that part ocular trade.

Emotions point to the presence of some concern. The concern may be different from on e occurrence of an emotion to another. We fear the things we fear for many different reasons. N Tote that the law of concern joins different and even opposite emotions. One suffers when a cherished pee son is gravely ill; one feels joy at his or her fortune or recovery; one is angry at those who harm hi m or her.

Emotions arise from the interaction of situational meanings and concerns.

One may question whether a concern can be found behind every single instant I-Ice Of emotion. It would not be meaningful to posit a "concern for the unexpected" 1275/ behind startle (but, also, it may not be meaningful to regard startle as an memo Zion; CB. Seaman, Ferries, & Simons, 1985). But by and large, the law of concern holds and is of consider able value in understanding emotions.

Why does someone get upset at the news of another person's illness? Because he or she seems to love that person. Why does someone feel such terrible Jew lousy?

Because, perhaps, he or she yearns for continuous possession and symbiotic proximity. Emotion s form the prime material in the exploration of an individual's concerns. The law Of apparent reality According to the law of situational meaning emotions are dictated by the way a person perceives the situation. One aspect of this perception is particularly important for the elicits Zion of emotion.

I will call it the situation's "apparent reality. " Emotions are subject to the law of apparent really: Emotions are

elicited by events appraised as real, and their intensity correspond ends to the degree to which this is the case.

What is taken to be real elicits emotions. What does not impress one as true a ND unavoidable elicits no emotion or a weaker one.

The law applies to events taken to be real when in fact they are not. It also applies to events that are real but that are not taken seriously. Whatever is present counts; whatever lies merely in the future can be taken lightly or disregarded, however grim the prospects. Mere warnings usually are not heeded. Examples are found in the responses to UNC Lear energy dangers that tend to evoke emotions only when consequences are felt.

Unrest arose when restrictions on milk consumption were imposed after Coherency. Symbolic information generally has weak impact, as compared to the impact of pictures and of events actually seen-?the "vividness effect" discussed in social psychology (Fiske & T lord, 1984). A photograph of one distressed child in Vietnam had more effect than reports a bout thousands killed.

Although people have full knowledge of the threat of nuclear war, they tend t o remain cool under that wreath, except for the emotions rising during a few weeks after the showing Of a film such as The Day After (Fiske, 1987).

Examples abound from less dramatic contexts. Telling a phobic that spiders a re harmless is useless when the phobic sees the crawling animal. Knowing means less than seeing.

When someone tells us in a friendly fashion that she or he does not appreciate our attentions, we ten d not to heed her or him. Words mean less than

tone voice. When someone steps on our toes, we GE t angry even when we know that he or she is not to blame. Feeling means more than knowing.