Table of Contents
What is emotional processing?
Emotional processing is defined as the modification of memory structures that underlie emotions. This model of anxiety reduction is partly based on Peter Lang’s model of bioinformational processing and Jack Rachman’s work on the concept of emotional processing. A network of brain regions that process emotions is called an emotion processing network (see Figure 3). Let us name some of those brain regions that are activated by emotions. They are the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, the cingulate cortex, the hippocampus, and the basal ganglia [3]. Emotional experiences have three components: a subjective experience, a physiological response and a behavioral or expressive response. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple behaviors like crying, laughing, or saying thank you, and more complex behaviors like writing a letter or giving a gift.
What plays a role in emotional processing?
Emotions arise from activations of specialized neuronal populations in several parts of the cerebral cortex, notably the anterior cingulate, insula, ventromedial prefrontal, and subcortical structures, such as the amygdala, ventral striatum, putamen, caudate nucleus, and ventral tegmental area. 1The experience of emotion is a fundamental part of human consciousness. Think, for example, of how different our conscious lives would be without such experiences as joy, anger, fear, disgust, pity, anxiety, and embarrassment. It is uncontroversial that these experiences typically have an intentional content. There are four kinds of basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger, which are differentially associated with three core affects: reward (happiness), punishment (sadness), and stress (fear and anger). Positive emotions are conscious processes that involve a variety of components, such as a pleasant experience, facial/body expressions, evaluations, and especially behavioural plans and activation states. Dr. Ekman identified the six basic emotions as anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, and sadness. His research shows the strongest evidence to date of a seventh emotion, which is contempt.
Why is emotional processing important?
“Emotions are indicators of how safe, stable, and secure we feel,” says Manly. “They’re of great value in that, when we attend to them and use them wisely, we’re able to assess how a situation is affecting us and then make necessary shifts to ensure our needs are met.” Anger, Fear, Sadness, Disgust & Enjoyment Understanding our emotions is an important part of good mental health. Below is a diagrammatic representation of the five basic emotions, which contains different words to describe the varying intensity of feelings in these five domains. Both positive emotions, like happiness, and negative emotions, like anger, can get in the way of communication. For example, if you’re really happy about something, you might agree to do things that you shouldn’t or wouldn’t normally agree to do. For example, you might find yourself yelling at a rude or annoying coworker for whatever reason. Your feelings and emotions might, in fact, be “natural” in these situations. However, they can also have negative results, like the co-worker getting upset or you getting in trouble for throwing a fit. Dr. Fredrickson identified the following as the ten most common positive emotions: Joy, Gratitude, Serenity, Interest, Hope, Pride, Amusement, Inspiration, Awe, Love. They include sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.
What plays a key role in emotional processing?
It is well-known that amygdala plays a pivotal role in emotional regulation. Several studies found that this structure is responsible for detecting, generating, and maintaining fear-related emotions (for a review see Phan et al., 2004). Emotions help us to communicate with others, such as when we feel sad and need some help. They also can help us to act quickly in important situations. For example, when you’re about to cross the street and see a car coming quickly, fear gets you to jump back onto the curb. Summary: Emotions are not innately programmed into our brains, but, in fact, are cognitive states resulting from the gathering of information, researchers conclude. The limbic system controls the experience and expression of emotions, as well as some automatic functions of the body. By producing emotions (such as fear, anger, pleasure, and sadness), the limbic system enables people to behave in ways that help them communicate and survive physical and psychologic upsets. The patterns of emotion that we found corresponded to 25 different categories of emotion: admiration, adoration, appreciation of beauty, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, … Researchers at University of California, Berkeley identified 27 categories of emotion: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, …
What are the different types of emotional processing?
Summary: People react to their user experience at 3 levels of emotion, as defined by Don Norman: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective emotions. Facial expressions that give clues to a person’s mood, including happiness, surprise, contempt, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger. Furthermore, emotional processing difficulties may be defined as the problematic emotional reactive states that individuals experience when the threshold of emotional activation is overwhelming, unbearable, painful, or alienating. c, The 12 distinct varieties of emotional prosody that are preserved across cultures correspond to 12 categories of emotion—Adoration, Amusement, Anger, Awe, Confusion, Contempt, Desire, Disappointment, Distress, Fear, Interest and Sadness.