Emotion Essay

Discuss how researchers from different traditions in emotion research define ‘an emotion’.

Academic

‘History and Philosophy of Psychology’

'Coursework essay submitted as partial fulfilment for the Degree of Bachelor of Science'

'Birkbeck University of London 2014'

Word count

The oxford dictionary defines an emotion as “disturbance of the mind; mental sensation or state: instinctive feeling as opposed to reason.” According to Gleitman (book), emotions are affective responses characterised by loosely linked changes. Emotion has been studied extensively in the field of psychology and many researchers have aimed to define what emotions are as well as theorise how emotions develop and arise in particular situations. It is important to note that there is a difference between an emotion and a mood: moods are typically longer lasting than emotions. Where emotions usually have a target (e.g. Something makes us feel happy), moods on the other hand, do not.

There are four main perspectives into defining an emotion, these being the evolutionary perspective, the biological perspective, the cognitive perspective and the social constructionist perspective. It is of course important, however, to begin with the earlier perspectives of emotion before we delve into the above main perspectives. Early perspectives into emotion stem from Plato, Descartes and Aristotle. Plato said that emotion responds to the object of impulse without thought or a system of regard to the overall good of a person as a whole. According to Plato, emotions are uncontrollable forces that conflict or interfere with reason and that emotions should be controlled by reason. He proposed a dualist conception of the mind and the body, in which there ...

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...uals are encouraged to be expressive, whereas in Japan, too much expressiveness could be seen as rude. In order to support the idea that emotions are culturally defined, Ekman and Friesen (1972) carried out a study with both Japanese and American men, who were shown various film clips either in the presence of an interview or privately. It was found that when an interviewer was present, Japanese participants were quick to mask their emotions whereas in private they made no attempt to do so.

To conclude, it goes without saying that the definition of an emotion remains unsolved, however many theories provide good explanations as to their function and how they arise. Although, as can be seen, much of the research into emotion is biological, suggesting that physiological arousal is of the utmost importance when it comes to discussing emotion and how it is defined.