State of the Art
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Emotionsal Response in Psychology Emotions are a feeling state that involves thoughts,
physiological reactions and outward behaviours. However psychologists have continued to debate about how exactly the mind and body relate to each other and a unified theory of emotions remains elusive. According to Levenson, emotions are a survival instinct preserved from natural selection “due to the need for an efficient mechanism able to mobilise and organise the selection of quick responses from highly differentiate and disparate systems when environmental stimuli pose a threat to survival” (Bota et al., 2019, p. 140992). The seeming common ground among researchers is that emotion is particularly difficult to define (Fortkamp, 2005). Scientific discussion of emotions can be traced to 1872 when Charles Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Keltner, Oatley, Jenkins, 2013). Darwin investigated the physiological and behavioural components of emotions but ultimately regarded them as ‘expressions’ of feelings felt by animals and humans. Emotions were taken for granted as subjective states of experience until the early twentieth century (Griffiths, 2003). In the 1980s psychologists began to recognize the importance of affect in human experience, prompting much research related to emotionality and mood (Watson & Clark, 1997). However, several lines of thinking emerged defining affect as it relates to emotions in different ways. Most definitions of emotions are relative to a larger theoretical explanation of why we experience emotion or what causes emotions. Fig 38 is a diagram of just some of the different theoretical frameworks addressing the origins of emotions. Seeking to clear up the confusion, a seminal study Core Affect, Prototypical Emotional Episodes, and Other Things Called Emotion: Dissecting the Elephant was published in 1999 introducing the Circumplex model of emotions. Episodes of emotion vary along different dimensions like intensity, pleasure or degree of activation. The disparate experiences of riding a roller coaster or being chased by a bear can both have a high level of activation, though the former would be a more pleasurable experience. Factor analysis and multidimensional scaling are used for analyses of self-reported emotions, facial expression 58
and vocal expressions often yield two broad dimensions
