Emotions are a combination of physiological and cognitive responses to thoughts/experiences.
They have several components which are neural responses, physiological factors, subjective feelings, emotional expressions, and the desire to take action.
Ex. You come across a growling dog without an owner nearby. What happens? You stop suddenly, feel a sense of dread (subjective feeling), recognize your heart is racing etc. (physiological factors). Your eyebrows are raised (emotional expression), all while you figure out how to get away from the dog (desire to take action). While all of this is happening, your brain is processing info about the dog and the enivronment and is producing hormones to help you accomplish your goals (neural responses) these happen so quickly they’re almost simultaneous.
The discrete emotions theory argues that emotions are innate and each emotion has a specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions.
The functionalist perspective argues that the basic function of emotions is to promote action towards achieving a goal. Emotions are not discrete from another and vary somewhat based on the social environment.
3 groups of infants:
Easy babies
Difficult babies
Slow-to-warm-up babies
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