Psychology Of Emotions Article 2022

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
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Emotions are something that exert incredibly powerful force on the human behaviour.
Often strong emotions could result in forcing a person to take actions that he or she might not
normally perform. According to some of the theories, emotions are universal phenomena,
albeit influenced by culture (Ferrera, 2014). Most of the researchers, philosophers and
psychologists in the field of psychology surround their attention on the various biological
aspects of emotions as being the key source of prevalence of human emotions. This paper
would elaborate on the notion of emotions and would highlight the different controversial
arguments on the notion that emotions are universal phenomena.
In the field of psychology, emotions are often defined as a complicated state of
feeling that ultimately results in psychological and physical changes and this further affect
the behaviour and thoughts of the human beings. According to Seligman and
Csikszentmihalyi (2014), emotions are “internal phenomena that can, but do not always,
make themselves observable through expression and behaviour”. No one can survive without
emotions. They are emotions that allow for the complicated social relationships and networks
and that further helps in enhancing the meaning of the normal and day to day activities. They
are something that drive human beings to pursue happiness and being creative in the field of
art, work, music and drama. With the same, it is the emotions that motivate human to seek for
recreation and for engaging into sports and organising competitions, be it in the Olympic
Games or in the local community Little League. However, it is to note that according to
Jazaieri et al. (2014), while there are certain emotions that are universal and are experience in
same ways as reaction to the similar kind of events over all the cultures, there are also many
other emotions that show some notable cultural differences in their antecedent events as well
as the way in which they are experienced. It is to note that emotionality is linked with a wide
range of psychological phenomena, including mood, motivation, personality and
temperament.

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It is to note that the universality of emotions in terms of biology, Charles Darwin as
an evolutionary theorists have opined that all the facial expressions of human beings are
result of some evolutionary means of survival (Meyer & Terry, 2014). For instance, an
expression of human anger indicates a defensive situation for warning off the predators. On
the other hand the disgusted facial expression might be indicator of the rotten food,
something pugnacious or poisonous or unsuitable for consuming. It is very vital to mention
that Charles Darwin in this regard have suggested that there is a relationship in between facial
expressions of human beings and communication. It also explains that the usage of the facial
expressions from the psychological point of view in terms of the learning behaviour
(Richards, 2015). Hence, the facial expressions are linked with experiencing emotions. This
is what claims the facial-feedback theory of evolution (Reisenzein, Horstmann &
Schutzwohl, 2019). Both William James and Charles Darwin noted early on that “sometimes
physiological responses often had a direct impact on emotion, instead of simply being a
consequence of the emotion”. With the same, it is also claimed that the emotions are directly
tied to the changes in the facial muscles. For instance, the ones who are forced for smiling
pleasantly at the social function would have a better time at event as compared to when they
will if they had carried or frowned a more neutral expressions.
Moreover, as per the appraisal theories of emotion, thinking in human beings take
place first before experiencing the emotion. As per the theory, the various sequence of events
involves a stimulus, followed by thought that leads to simultaneous experience of
physiological emotion and response (Bower & Cohen, 2014). For instance, if one encounter a
bear in woods, one might immediately start to think that he or she is in great danger. It further
lead to an emotional experience of physical reactions and fear that are associated with fight or
flight response.

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According to Diener et al. (2017), culture influence the subjective well-being and this
well-being includes both the general life satisfaction and the relative balance of negative and
positive affect in the day to day life. It direct the attention to various sources of information in
order to make the life satisfaction judgements and in this way the influence the subjective
well-being appraisal. Du and Wei (2015) in this context have claimed that the individualistic
cultures also direct the attention to the inner states and the feelings of human beings, while in
the collective cultures the attention is directed to the outer sources. It is to mention that the
cross-cultural researches have looked for the differences and their search has been a
significantly rewarding one. From the very recent exhaustive comparisons of the American
and the Greek cultures by Seligman and Scikszentmihalyi (2014), the psychological
differences in between the cultures have proved to be enlightening and fascinating. This
search appears to be a very natural consequence of the anthropological period of cultural
relativism and the psychological period of learning and environmentalism theory. With the
very recent upswing of the behaviour genetics and physiological psychology, the way for
searching the cultural constants is being cleared.
Human being experience different types of emotions like positive emotion, pro-social
emotion, self-conscious emotions and moral emotions (Smith, Tong & Ellsworth, 2014).
Several researchers have found that there is a class of emotion known to be “basic emotions”
and these emotions have some special set of characteristics that differentiate them all the
other emotions. These characteristics comprise of distinctive changes in the mental activities
of human beings, unique physiological signatures, subjective experience, attention and the
reliable signals. Furthermore, all these characteristics are universal to every people of every
cultures. These basic emotions comprise of disgust, fear, anger, surprise, sadness, enjoyment,
disgust etc. it is to note that these emotions are regarded as “basic” as human beings share
these emotions with their primate ancestors. This means that they seems to be emotional

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reactions that the non-human primates also have. Although it is not clear that the whether the
nonhuman animals have any other complicated emotions like shame, guilt, love etc. It is
however assumed that these type of emotions have emerged later during the evolution of
mankind and that they are truly unique to the human beings. According to Woodhead (2015),
“this will make sense, given the increased cognitive abilities that seem to be prerequisite to
having these emotions. Or, it could be that our nonhuman primate relatives have these
emotions but we just can’t tell yet because our current research technologies are not
sophisticated enough to do so.” There are other researchers who also claimed that it could be
that primate relatives might have more number of primitive versions of such emotions that
were related to submission and dominance; pain and pleasure. It is to note that emotions like
guilt, pride, embarrassment and shame are also universal as they too are the parts of a system
of moral and social emotions that are related to the environmental contingencies of
interaction.
It is to note that according to Laukka et al. (2015), “human beings all around the
world universally have some prototypic schema in the emotion schema database when they
are born”. This means that there is a small number of events that bring about the same types
of emotions in every individual. For instance, seeing a bug in the food above, seeing open
body cavities, coming in contact with urine or feces, hearing a growling sound at night etc.
All these events are considered to be universal triggers of human emotions. However, the
base system of emotion is also highly flexible and they could be adapted to be linked with
any other kind of event that are available in a person’s experience. Hence, it is to note that
people could learn to have emotions to virtually anything. The potential of learning to have
emotional reactions further allows the human beings for large individual and cultural
differences in different kinds of events that further trigger the human emotions over different

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people and groups, along with the universal triggers that evoke the emotions in every
individuals.
Hence, from the above analysis it is to conclude that emotions are universal to all
people of all the cultures and they are the components of the principal motivation system of
human beings. Every individuals have in fundamental emotions the capacity for a common
set of subjective expressions and experiences. These have a special communication value and
the communication function further facilitates the inter-cultural and interpersonal
understanding of the underlying subjective experience. It might serve as a strong base for the
cross-cultural and interpersonal understanding. The fundamental emotions are innate and
universal phenomena and at the same time, they are the principal motivation system of man.
All people have in the basic emotions the capacity for a common set of subjective expression
and experiences. All these expressions have special communicative value as they are
universally understood and recognised.

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References:
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