Living in Two Worlds - EMOTIONS & FEELINGS
This morning I woke up with the question: "where are emotions in the LTW model?". Good question, I thought ;-)
By the way, in terms of the LTW model, this question originated in the "passive thought" area:
==> it was not the result of a consciuos search for what may be missing in my model, nor the result of other active reflections.
My first idea for answering that question was to search for inspiration in some books I have in my library (see references).
What I liked reading Luc Ciompi was the idea that every type of activity or experience contains emotional components as well as cognitive ones. What comes out as a result of the action or experience of an individual, are not simply cognitive but always more complex affective-cognitive structures [Ciompi, 1997, p. 47].
I further liked the definition by Antonio Damasio [1999, p. 50 ff], that emotions are complex patterns of bodily responses (biologically determined processes) as well as his distinction between emotions and feelings :
a) feeling = the private, mental experience of an emotion [Damasio 1999, p. 42]
b) emotion = the collection of chemical and neural responses (to an inducer), forming a pattern [Damasio 1999, p. 51]
What induces emotions? Regarding this topic I was not fully satisfied with the explanation given by Damasio [1999, p.56 ff]. The view proposed by Richard Lazarus seems to me more clear [Wikipedia 2022]. Lazarus considers that the inducer is a "cognitive appraisal": the individual assesses an event or object cognitively, and this induces an emotion.
But I agree with Damasio that the inducers are shaped by development (different individuals) and culture (different societies): they shape what constitutes an inducer and they shape the expression of an emotion [Damasio 1999, p. 57].
The sequence of events which constitute an emotion (see Scherer's Component Process Model, [Scherer 2005]) can be represented in my LTW model as follows (see the event numbers in square brackets here and in Figure 1):
- [1] cognitive appraisal: the assessment of an object or event happens in world 1, the logical world. It can happen both in its active side (conscious) or in its passive side (nonconscious).
- [2] bodily symptoms and expression: the appraisal induces some biological changes in the body (such as increased heart rate, pituitary adrenal response, etc.). The facial and vocal expression may change. The body is part of world 2, the shared physical world.
- [3] As next the individual can sense the emotion
- [4] As next the attentional system elaborates the emotion at mental level = the individual has a feeling (conscious or nonconscious)
- [5] Finally the individual may choose to react and how.
References:
- Ciompi, L. 1997. Die emotionalen Grundlagen des Denkens. Entwurf einer fraktalen Affektlogik. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
- Damasio, A. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, San Diego: Harcourt.
- Scherer, K.R. (2005). "What are emotions? And how can they be measured?". Social Science Information. 44 (4): 693–727.
- Wikipedia, 2022. Emotion. Section: Cognitive Theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#Cognitive_theories
