Understanding Emotions and Their Components

Emotion

• Emotion is a complex response from a person interacting with the environment.
• All emotional behaviors have motivating and volitional aspects and are associated with overt or covert cognitive activity.

Healthy Motivating Emotions

• Appropriate to the situation
• Adequate in relation to the goal
• Enough and persistent until the goal is reached
• Relatively observable to an optimal degree
• Partially awakened as a distinct subjective experience
• Concordant with other functions

Components of Emotion

• 1. Emotional Experience (Mood):
  • The sustained internal emotional state of a person.
  • In a normal person, the mood varies in line, matching the context and remaining within a normal range.
• 2. Emotional Expression (Affect):
  • The external expression of the current emotional state.
  • Variations in affect (reactivity) include, but are not limited to facial expression, tone of voice, use of hands, and body movements.
  • Emotions have a broad effect on the body, including the autonomic and endocrine systems.
  • Stable affect: no rapid mood swings between extremes (lability).

Negative Emotions

• Sad, down, lonely, unhappy
• Anxious, worried, fearful, scared, tense
• Angry, mad, irritated, annoyed
• Ashamed, embarrassed, humiliated
• Disappointed
• Jealous, envious
• Guilty
• Hurt
• Suspicious

Physiology of Emotions

• The Papez circuit theory (1937) details the functional neuroanatomy of emotion.
• Emotional experiences come about when the cingulate cortex integrates signals from the hypothalamus and sensory cortex.
• The pathway includes sensory cortex, cingulate cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, and output from the cingulate cortex to the hippocampus and then to the hypothalamus, allowing for top-down cortical control.

Disorders of Affect

• Affect varies in amount and range of expressive behaviors.
• Abnormalities include incongruity with mood and a decrease in amount and range.

Disorders of Mood

• They can be divided into pleasant and dysphonic emotions.
• 1. Pleasant emotions: Elation means an exaggerated, cheerful mood, exceeding typical levels.
• 2. Dysphonic Emotions:
  • Dysphoric mood: Not well-defined and not toward a provocation source.
  • Irritable mood: Easily annoyed and provoked to anger.
• 3. Depression-related dysphoria:
  • Depression, characterized by exaggerated sadness, often pathological and impeding or dangerous.
  • Associated with gloominess about self, life, and the future.
  • Often accompanied by a lack of initiative and inertia.
• 4. Fear-Related Disorders (e.g., Anxiety):
  • Anxiety is a pervasive feeling of fear, potentially not connected to a specific idea or situation.
  • Apprehension is intense fear of any non-fearful stimuli, often accompanied by a sense of imminent danger.
  • Phobia is a pathological exaggerated dread of a specific idea, stimulus, or situation.
• 6. Primitive Emotions (e.g., Rage):
  • Rage is an explosive, overwhelming anger with limited connection to cognition or volition.

This quiz explores the complexity of emotions, including healthy motivating emotions and their various components such as emotional experience and expression. It delves into how these aspects interact with our environment and influence behavior. Test your understanding of how emotions function in different contexts.