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Can we trust our emotions in the pursuit of knowledge
Emotions in the process of learning
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Emotion is an indispensable aspect of our lives, but its necessity in gaining knowledge is often disregarded by people, and therefore this essay will analyze, and justify why it is to a great extent that emotion is needful when obtaining knowledge. Emotion plays an enormous role in helping an individual obtain knowledge, as emotion can aid the person in making sense of knowledge, developing it, and it also has an immense effect on our thought process.
Even though some argue that emotion isn’t necessary in obtaining rational knowledge in areas of knowledge like physics and math, this is falsified by the fact that emotion assists us in enhancing our learning. Which is due to the presence of secondary emotions such as “passion”, and “determination”.
It is noticed that it is easier to obtain knowledge that has a connection with our lives or our feelings. This is a result of how emotion and memory are closely related and since we tend to recall knowledge kindred with our emotions. The knowledge newly obtained is retained more easily in our memories because it’s easier to develop knowledge that is emotionally arousing, than disinteresting knowledge. This was proven from the results of a psychology “emotional Stroop test”. The test required people to name the color each word was written in and the results showed that people were affected by the emotional content of each word even though it seemed that this was irrelevant to the color-naming task. (MacKay,
This is proven in Elliot’s case who lost the part of his brain responsible for emotion from a brain tumor, although he didn’t show a drop in his IQ, he was no longer able to make decisions, and therefore Elliot was fired from his job because of the way he seemed stupid as he was unable to develop knowledge because of his inability to take decisions (Baer, 2016).
Emotional experiences are vital as they provide us with knowledge that are hard to obtain through other ways of knowing. Studies have shown that people responded correctly, when tested on past mistakes due to the presence of emotional experience (Zolfagharifard, 2015). This is owing to negative emotions such as shame, guilt, or disappointment, which increase our ability to become aware of our mistakes and gain knowledge about moral
As humans, emotions are an unavoidable occurrence. People get angry, sad, happy, surprised, etcetera. In some cases, it is harder
Sight cues came as no surprise to me, as I had assumed since the start that those would be the most prevalent. What was surprising to me was that I had a memory cued by a memory. Although I did not think it impossible, I had assumed that such a cue would not happen to me. I also noted the pattern of influence on my emotional state. Five memories influenced me positively, one negatively, and six did not influence me at all. The emotional content of the memories lined up about the same as the influence it had on my emotional state. The only part that came as a surprise to me was that some of my memories had no emotional content. I had assumed that all of the memories I would write down would have emotion to them and influence my emotion in some way. All of the memories I recorded were dealing with unusual events in my life, which suggests there is no correlation between my emotion and the unusualness of the memory. I found this interesting, as I thought the purpose of most of my involuntary memories would be of things I do often and that is why they would be remembered out of the blue. Based on what I recorded, the purpose of my involuntary memories seems to be to make sure I remember things I do not think about that
In Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence,” he dives into the science behind the brain and how emotions can affect a person’s decision making process. The human brain consists of two main parts: the neocortex, or the thinking brain, and the amygdala, the emotional brain. The neocortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for rational thoughts. “It contains the centers that put together and comprehend what the senses perceive” (Goleman 11). Contrasting the neocortex is the amygdala, which “acts as a storehouse of emotional memory; life without the amygdala is a life stripped of personal meanings” (Goleman 15). According to Goleman, one man, whose amygdala was surgically removed, became completely uninterested in people, preferring to sit in isolation with no human contact. “Without an amygdala he seemed to have lost all recognition of feeling, as well as any feeling about feelings” (Goleman 15). The amygdala has its own circuitry attaching it to the pre-frontal cortex, which is the center for the brain for working memory. If this circuitry was cut, a person’s decision making process would be greatly affected. However, if this connection was broken, a person’s score on an IQ test would not be affected at all. This is true because the emotional aspect of the brain, which is used in making decisions, would be affected but the rational thinking portion would not be affected. The amygdala
Holt, Michael. “Guilt, Its Effects and How to Overcome Regretful Feelings”. Yahoo, 30 April 2007. Web. 16 February 2014.
Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2005). With sadness comes accuracy; with happiness, false memory. Psychological Science, 16(10), 785-791.
Cultural based explanations posit that emotions are acquired via socialisation and recognise that cultural beliefs play an important role since research has indicated cultural variations amongst individualistic (USA) and collectivists (Japan) cultures. Studies have also focused on recognition rates of emotions and in relation to age.
Emotions are very important to how changing how humans experience the world physically, mentally, and cognitively. Restorative justice is heavily based on how to identify one’s own emotions and balance them properly. By managing their emotions, participants of restoratives justice can help remove the negative feelings associated with the crime (Van Ness & Strong, 2002). In order to do that, participants of restorative justice must learn emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and balance one’s emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Mayer and Salovey define it as:
The ability to express and control our own emotions is vital for our survival in society and the work place but so is our ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. Salovey and Mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of emotional intelligence (Cherry, 2015).
Hamilton, L.W. (2012). The Brain and Our Emotional Future: Foundations of Emotions [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences Online Course site: rutgersonline.net.
However, using emotions is not all bad and misleading. Some consider that not only do emotions help make sense of social and cultural experiences and behaviors, but they are also the source of specific ethical and political knowledge by helping us form an understanding of the world arou...
It is a well-known fact that different factors affect on human behavior as well as various aspects of people’s life. Among them the emotions detect a powerful force on humans. Strong emotions may cause people to take actions they might not perform as usual, or obviate situations that they generally enjoy. Psychologists, researchers, and philosophers have proposed a set of different theories that explain how and why people experience the emotions. I have chosen two theories of emotion that I am interested in such as: the James-Lange Theory of Emotion and the Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion. This paper describes those theories by comparing and contrasting them;
By using our ways of knowing, such as emotion, imagination and intuition it can affect our decision to take part in the project or not. Emotion is the instinctive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or
One scientist, Damasio, provided an explanation how emotions can be felt in humans biologically. Damasio suggested, “Various brain structures map both the organism and external objects to create what he calls a second order representation. This mapping of the organism and the object most likely occurs in the thalamus and cingulate cortices. A sense of self in the act of knowing is created, and the individual knows “to whom this is happening.” The “seer” and the “seen,” the “thought” and the “thinker” are one in the same.” By mapping the brain scientists can have a better understandi...
A recently published article seems to lend new information as to the way in which emotions influence our decision-making process. While emotions and reasoning are considered inherently separate by some, new experiments are challenging that perception. A series of studies done by experimental psychologists now show us that emotion plays a very natural role in decision-making situations. The experiments, ranging in type from neuroimaging to simple classical conditioning, suggest that emotions can affect everything from simple judgments of other people to severe behavioral disabilities seen for example in sociopathic individuals.
Happiness is the most popular emotion, but are other emotions necessary? Positive psychologists argue that there are other emotions that are more important in life than happiness. Experiencing other emotions are important because both emotions can create happiness. Negative emotions are as equally important as positive emotions because negative emotions help the thinking processes and promote growth and improvement.