Emotions Paper

The connection between motivation and emotions can be seen in everyday life. To show the connection this paper will discuss two of the historical theories of emotion and arousal as they relate to human motivation. Then it will analyze two research methods used for uncovering basic emotions. Finally it will cover the facial feedback hypothesis, particularly the event-appraisal-emotion sequence. James-Lange Theory There have been numerous theories on emotions and arousal. The James-Lange theory is one of the earliest theories of emotion (Goodwin,2008).
William James was considered America’s first psychologist. James was captivated with understanding the functions of consciousness. Carl Lange was a psychologist and physician in Denmark. Even though his work is directly linked to James, his deconstruction of emotions has made his work a precursor to the theories of emotion (Wassmann, 2010). He is not as popular as James but was an important contributor to the James-Lange theory. The theory discusses how emotions are directly affected by the physiological arousal of the body in reaction to an exciting stimulus (Deckers, 2010).
According to the James-Lange theory one will feel emotions in a specific sequence. The theory’s sequence is emotional stimulus followed by physiological response leading to an affective experience (Deckers, 2010). For example, if a person is involved in a car accident he or she will feel the physiological responses of the body. One may experience heart pounding, hands shaking, or jaw tightening. These responses bring forth emotions like fear, panic, anger, or anxiety. Therefore the physiological arousal is what determines the emotions (Deckers, 2010). Cognitive Arousal Theory

The cognitive arousal theory takes emotions to next level by focusing on the interaction between arousal and cognition (Deckers, 2010). According to this theory when a person experiences a situation, he or she will interpret the physiological arousal, and will extract information needed to have an affective experience (Deckers, 2010). Within this theory there are two dimensions of emotions, they are quality and intensity. Quality is a person’s interpretation of the experience where as the intensity of the experience depends on the degree of the arousal.
For example when experiencing a car accident, one will focus in on the actual occurrence of the accident, and then based on the severity, the person will analyze and respond effectively. So according to the cognitive arousal theory the intensity of the emotional experience will be dictated by physiological arousal and will directly affect how a person feels (Deckers, 2010). Facial Feedback According to Buck (1980), facial feedback hypothesis states that the facial expressions of a person provides a necessary requirement for a person’s emotional experience or behavior to affected (page 812).
A person’s facial feedback, or facial expressions, can change how another person will react to a particular event or situation. There are two versions that may play a role in the actual hypothesis itself based on specific personalities. Between-subjects version of facial feedback hypothesis implies that a lack of overt expression can be detrimental to the emotional process as a whole (Buck, 1980). The premise of this version is that if a person is nonexpressive with one emotion then that person would be nonexpressive on all other emotions and vice versa.
Within-subjects version of the facial feedback hypothesis states that a person will have a higher emotional experience on other emotions if they are expressive in general (Buck, 1980). The backbone of this version is that if a person is expressive in general they may have a higher emotional experience across the board. The event-appraisal-emotion sequence has three varying assumptions in emotional events. To begin, different emotions can be produced by varying appraisals of the same event. For example, the end of a sporting event can elicit two different emotions.
The winning team will feel excited, happiness, and victory while the losing team may feel disappointment, neglect, and failure. Next, similar appraisal of varying events can create similar emotions. Two people purchasing like vehicles may walk into a dealership and the first may pay $5,000 for a vehicle and the second may pay $10,000. Though there is a difference in purchase prices, both customers may walk out with feelings of success as they are satisfied with the purchase price of their vehicles because it fell within their budget.
Lastly, the outcome of the appraisal process provokes automatic emotions. In many situations, a person will be unable to avoid feeling happiness or sadness. Research Methods Uncovering basic emotions can be handled with various research methods such as category analysis of emotion words and facial expressions. Category analysis of emotions words is based on the belief that certain words have been created or modified to describe people’s emotional responses (Deckers, 2010).
Words like love, sad, or angry have been labeled as such because people have experienced such emotions and needed the words to categorize the feelings. With category analysis, the feelings or the emotions drive the creation of emotion words and so without the emotions themselves, the words would not exist. Through this type of analysis, words were classified by emotional category based on word meaning and resulted in five basic emotion categories: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust (Deckers, 2010). Facial expression analysis states that there is a specific facial expression for each basic emotion.
Furthermore, any “emotion” that does not have a distinctive facial expression should not be considered an emotion. There are six major facial expressions of emotions that are easily identifiable by people of different cultures throughout the world: happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. It is also believed that the intensity of any emotion and the intensity of its corresponding facial expression will increase at the same rate.
Conclusion References Buck, R. (1980). Nonverbal behavior and the theory of emotion: The facial feedback hypothesis. Journal Of Personality ;amp; Social Psychology, 38(5), 811-824. Deckers (2010). Motivation, Biological, psychological and environmental (3rd ed. ). Boston, MA: Allyn ;amp; Bacon. Dimberg, U. , ;amp; Soderkvist, S. (2011). The voluntary facial action technique: A method to test the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal Of Nonverbal Behavior, 35(1), 17-33. doi:10. 1007/s10919-010-0098-6. Goodwin, C. J. ((2008)). A History of Modern Psychology (3rd ed. ). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.