Author: Dr. Evgenia Leonova
“Never play with the feelings of others, because you may win the game, but the risk is that you will surely lose the person for a lifetime.” —William Shakespeare
“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
“One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
An aggressive behavior is considered to be one of the most difficult issues in modern society: unanticipated shootings, homicides, unstoppable wars, and arguments on a global level.
Aggressive behavior is associated with the explicit or implicit desire to cause physical and/or emotional harm to themselves or others.
Aggression is not always associated with physical violence; often it can be directly related to manipulation, selfishness, emotional insensitivity, and a lack of morality.
An interesting fact is that aggression is often the main reason for a range of mental illnesses, starting from anxiety to bipolar disorder.
Scientifically, the aggressive type of mental impairment has multiple subtypes.
According to the recently published articles, narcissism and Machiavellianism can be considered types of aggressive behaviour.
Blackmailing, gaslighting, and exploitation of others are good examples of explicit aggression.
The causes of this emotion are widely varied and often not directly related to others’ social skills.
The general idea of understanding how emotions work represents an amazing opportunity to understand the feelings and behaviour of others.
Humanity was trying to leash the nature of emotions via multiple physiological ideas, religion, social movements.
Ancient philosophers attributed emotions to something metaphysical and spiritual and described them as “pathos” or “affectus.” The most prominent philosophers associated emotions with suffering and with ethics.
Religion sees emotions as a spiritual experience caused by the forces beyond human awareness.
Modern science helps us to be more precise and take a deeper look at what is happening in our brains. That helps to take control of the situation, but also understand others better and even help others with dealing with strong emotions.
The First Theory of Emotions
The theories of emotions based on neuroscientific knowledge were developed relatively recently, and their core findings represent amazing opportunities for personal development. The first theory was developed only in 1886. Before, it was assumed that emotions or feelings could come from a particular life situation, but that turned out to not be true. According to William James and Carl Lange, physiological arousal comes first. The state of the body can initiate and induce emotions. When your heartbeat is out of normal, You can experience anxiety. The brain reacts to the physiological change in your body and then reacts via the nervous system. The fear can be experienced via the body first by a specific environmental stimulus happening in a specific region of your brain (the autonomic nervous system), and then the cognitive part of the brain interprets the happening as a fear. Interestingly enough, people who use botulism toxin to stop growing experience an elevating mood. Moreover, according to the theory, a particular emotion leads to a particular body state.
The theories of emotions based on neuroscientific knowledge were developed relatively recently, and their core findings represent amazing opportunities for personal development. The first theory was developed only in 1886. Before, it was assumed that emotions or feelings could come from a particular life situation, but that turned out to not be true. According to William James and Carl Lange, physiological arousal comes first. The state of the body can initiate and induce emotions. When your heartbeat is out of normal, You can experience anxiety. The brain reacts to the physiological change in your body and then reacts via the nervous system. The fear can be experienced via the body first by a specific environmental stimulus happening in a specific region of your brain (the autonomic nervous system), and then the cognitive part of the brain interprets the happening as a fear. Interestingly enough, people who use botulism toxin to stop frowing experience an elevating mood. Moreover, according to the theory, a particular emotion leads to a particular body state.
Cannon-Bard Theory
The Cannon-Bard theory, the thalamic theory of emotion, was established in 1927 and expressed the importance of the thalamus as a coordinating center for emotional reaction.
Physiological change in the body happens separately, independently, and simultaneously with emotional expression.
Animal tests show that when the prefrontal cortex is removed, the animal continues to demonstrate an emotional reaction. But when the thalamus is removed, the animals are not able to express their emotions.
In the case of the thalamus tumor, some significant changes in emotional expression happen, such as laughter or crying without a reason.
Two-factor theory of emotion
A new two-factor theory was created in 1962 by researchers Stanley Schachter and Jerome E. Singer. According to the theory, the expressed emotions depend on two factors: physiological arousal and cognitive labeling.
Their experiment included an uninformed group of participants who experienced physiological change, but they didn’t know that it was a consequence of an adrenaline injection, and the only attribution they had was the behavior of the assistant.
Another group didn’t receive any physical stimulation, but they only had the attribution part.
As a result, the second group didn’t experience any emotions at all.
The experiment concluded that emotion completely depends on the interpretation and evaluation of physical arousal.
Lazarus’s theory of emotions
The most modern theory of emotion and adaptation was published in 1991 by Arnold Allan Lazarus. According to his theory, the ANS is not accountable for emotion generation, and emotional expression is mostly a cognitive process. Three main dimensions of coping with a situation emotionally imply judgments that can be beneficial or harmful: the presence or absence of an incentive or arousing stimulus, and the degree of difficulty in avoiding or approaching that stimulus.
Lazarus was a leader in the self-help movement beginning in the 1970s.
The main conclusions that can be drawn from the model theories of emotions are:
Core self-image defines the way a person can experience emotional arousal.
Interception is a key to emotional intelligence.
Humans learn the core primary and innate emotions in the first six months via cognitive embracing of physiological processes and interception.
So, the way we perceive internal processes is crucial for our emotional regulation.
Allostasis does matter.
Allostasis is the way our brain naturally allocates the physical and emotional load to achieve and maintain homeostasis, the necessary state for survival, reproduction, and growth.
Allostasis is the process of integrating the brain’s knowledge to optimize regulatory decisions. According to the latest research, allostasis depends on our ability to sense the current state and our prior knowledge of optimizing decisions.
As it turned out, most of us have a hard time understanding and mentally processing our own emotions.
Multiple models exist to better cognitively understand emotions.
James Russell developed a circumflex model, where he allocated the emotions according to their levels of arousal and valence.
This model can be used to testify to emotional expressions and affective states.
Healthy Happy HelpFul, by Dr. Evgenia Leonova
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