Psychology Part 15

It has proved very difficult to submit this theory to a satisfactory test. The only real test would be to cut off sensations from the interior of the trunk entirely; in which case, if the theory is right, the conscious emotion should fail to appear, or at least lack much of its "emotional warmth". Evidence of this sort has been slow in coming in. One or {130} two persons have turned up at nerve clinics, complaining that they no longer had any emotions, and were found to have lost internal bodily sensation. These cases strongly support the theory, but others have tended in the opposite direction. The fact that the internal response is the same in anger, and in fear of the energetic type, shows that the difference between these emotions must be sought elsewhere. Possibly sufficient difference could be found in the expressive movements, or in minor internal responses not yet discovered. If not, the theory would certainly seem to have broken down at this point.

In any case, there is no denying the service done by the James-Lange theory in calling attention to bodily sensations as real components of the conscious emotional state.

Emotion and Impulse

Most people are rather impatient with the James-Lange theory, finding it wholly unsatisfactory, though unable to locate the trouble precisely. They know the theory does not ring true to them, that is all. Now the trouble lies just here: what they mean by "being afraid"

is "wanting to get away from the danger", what they mean by "being angry" is "wanting to strike the offending person", and in general what they mean by any of the named "emotions" is not a particular sort of "stirred-up conscious state", but an _impulse_ towards a certain action or a certain result. Evidently it would be absurd to say we want to get away from the bear because we tremble, or that until we started to tremble we should be perfectly indifferent whether the bear got us or not.

The tendency to escape is aroused directly by the perception of danger; of that there can be no doubt. It does not depend on trembling, but for that matter neither does it depend on _feeling_ afraid. Sometimes we recoil from a {131} sudden danger before experiencing any thrill of fear, and are frightened and tremble the next moment, after we have escaped. The stirred-up state develops more slowly than the tendency to escape. The seen danger directly arouses an adjustment towards the end-result of escape, and both the preparatory bodily responses and the feeling of fear develop after this adjustment has been set up. If the end-result is reached instantly, the preparatory reactions and the feeling may not develop at all, or they may put in an appearance after the main act is all over. There is nothing in all this that speaks either for or against the James-Lange theory.

These statements need further elucidation, however. Notice, first, that psychology makes a perfectly proper and important distinction between emotion and impulse. In terms of consciousness, emotion is "feeling somehow", and impulse is "wanting to do something". In behavior terms, emotion is an organic state, and impulse an adjustment of the nerve centers towards a certain reaction. An impulse is a conscious tendency.

Since emotion and impulse so often go together, common sense does not bother to distinguish them, and the common names for the "emotions"

are more properly names of impulses. Fear means the impulse to escape, rather than any specific stirred-up state. Psychology has, indeed, made a mistake in taking over these names from common speech and trying to use them as names of specific emotional states. We were having some difficulty, a few moments ago, in finding any great distinction between fear and anger, considered as emotional states--just because we were overlooking the obvious fact that "fear"

is an impulse to escape from something, while "anger" is an impulse to get at something and attack it. The adjustments are very different, but the organic states are much alike.

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The organic state in fear or anger cannot generate the escape or fighting tendency, since the two tendencies are so different in spite of the likeness of the organic state. The tendencies are aroused directly by the perception of the dangerous or offensive object. The order of events is as follows. The stimulus that sets the whole process going is, let us say, a bear in the woods. First response: seeing the bear. Second response: recognizing the dangerous situation.

Third response: adjustment towards escape. Fourth response (unless escape is immediate): internal preparatory reactions, adrenal, etc.; also, probably, external expressive movements and movements steered in the general direction of escape. Fifth response: conscious stirred-up state consisting of blended sensations of all these preparatory reactions. Sixth response (by good luck): definitive escape reaction.

Seventh response: satisfaction and quiescence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 24.--Here the stimulus-response diagram is complicated to take account of the emotional state. The ellipse here stands for the brain. S arouses T, a tendency towards the response R.

But T also arouses P, a bodily state of preparedness, and sensations (E) of this bodily state, together with T, const.i.tute the conscious state of the individual while he is tending towards the response, or end-result, R.]

Emotion Sometimes Generates Impulse

Typically, impulse generates emotion. The reaction tendency is primary and the emotion secondary.

But suppose the organic state of fear to be {133} present--never mind how it got there--might it not act like hunger or fatigue, and generate a fear impulse? Could it not be that a person should first be fearful, without knowing what he was afraid of and without really having anything to be afraid of; and then, as it were, _find_ something to be afraid of, something to justify his frightened state?

This may be the way in which abnormal fears sometimes arise: a naturally timid individual is thrown by some obscure stimulus into the state of fear, and then attaches this fear to anything that suggests itself, and so comes to be afraid of something that is really not very terrific, such as the number two, "I mustn't do anything twice, that would be dangerous; if I do happen to do it twice, I have to do it once more to avoid the danger; and for fear of inadvertently stopping with twice, it is best always to do everything three times and be safe." That is the report of a naturally timorous young man. We all know the somewhat similar experience of being "nervous" or "jumpy"

after escaping from some danger; the organic fear state, once aroused, stays awhile, and predisposes us to make avoiding reactions. In the same way, let a man be "all riled up" by something that has happened at the office, and he is likely to take it out on his wife or children. Slightly irritating performances of the children, that would usually not arouse an angry reaction, do so this evening, because that thing at the office has "made him so cross."

In the same way, let a group of people get into a very mirthful state from hearing a string of good jokes, and a hearty laugh may be aroused by a feeble effort that at other times would have fallen flat.

In such cases, the organic state, once set up in response to a certain stimulus, persists after the reaction to that stimulus is finished and predisposes the individual to make the same sort of reaction to other stimuli.

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Emotion and Instinct

Anger, fear, l.u.s.t, the comfortable state appropriate to digestion, grief (the state of the weeping child), mirth or amus.e.m.e.nt, disgust, curiosity, the "tender emotion" (felt most strongly by a mother towards her baby), and probably a few others, are "primary emotions".

They occur, that is to say, by virtue of the native const.i.tution, and do not have to be learned or acquired through experience. They are native states of mind; or, as modes of behavior, they are like instincts in being native behavior.

One distinction between emotional and instinctive behavior is that the emotion consists of internal responses, while the instinct is directed outwards or at least involves action on external objects. Another distinction is that the emotional response is something in the nature of a preparatory reaction, while the instinct is directed towards the end-reaction.

The close connection of emotion and instinct is fully as important to notice as the distinction between them. Several of the primary emotions are attached to specific instincts: thus, the emotion of fear goes with the instinct to escape from danger, the emotion of anger goes with the fighting instinct, the emotion of l.u.s.t with the mating instinct, tender emotion with the maternal instinct, curiosity with the exploring instinct. Where we find emotion, we find also a tendency to action that leads to some end-result.

It has been suggested, accordingly, that each primary emotion is simply the "affective" phase of an instinct, and that every instinct has its own peculiar emotion. This is a very attractive idea, but up to the present it has not been worked out very satisfactorily. Some instincts, such as that for walking, seem to have no specific emotion attached to them. Others, like anger and fear, resemble each other very {135} closely as organic states, though differing as impulses.

The really distinct emotions (not impulses) are much fewer than the instincts.

The most important relations.h.i.+p between instinct and emotion is what we have seen in the cases of anger and a few others, where the emotion represents bodily readiness for the instinctive action.

The Higher Emotions

We have been confining our attention in this chapter to the primary emotions. The probability is that the higher emotions, esthetic, social, religious, are derived from the primary in the course of the individual's experience.

Primary emotions become refined, first by modifications of the motor response, by which socially acceptable reactions are subst.i.tuted for the primitive crying, screaming, biting and scratching, guffawing, dancing up and down in excitement, etc.; second by new attachments on the side of the stimulus, such that the emotion is no longer called out by the original simple type of situation (it takes a more serious danger, a subtler bit of humor, to arouse the emotional response); and third by combination of one emotion with another. An example of compound emotion is the blend of tenderness and amus.e.m.e.nt awakened in the friendly adult by the actions of a little child. Hate is perhaps a compound of anger and fear, and pity a compound of grief and tenderness. There are dozens of names of emotions in the language--resentment, reverence, grat.i.tude, disappointment, etc.--which probably stand for compound emotions rather than for primary emotions, but the derivation of each one of them from the primary emotions is a difficult task. The emotional life cannot be kept apart from the life of ideas, for the individual is a good deal of a unit.

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EXERCISES

1. Outline the chapter.

2. Make a list of 20 words denoting various emotional states.

3. Trace the expressive facial movement of pouting back to its probable origin in the history of the individual.

4. What internal nerves are concerned with digestion? With fear?

5. Show by diagrams the differences between (a) the common-sense theory of the emotions, (b) the James-Lange theory, (c) the James-Lange theory modified to take full account of the reaction-tendency.

6. Make a list of objections to the James-Lange theory, and scrutinize each objection carefully, to see

(a) whether it really attacks the theory, or misconceives it.

(b) whether it carries much or little weight.

7. Act out several emotions, (a) by facial expression alone, and (b) by facial expression plus gestures, and let another person guess what emotion you are trying to express. How many times does he guess right under (a), and under (b)?

8. Discuss the relative practical importance of emotion and impulse.

REFERENCES

For the James-Lange theory, see the chapter on the emotions by William James, in his _Principles of Psychology_, 1890, Vol. II, pp. 442-485.

For Darwin's views on expressive movements, see his _Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals_, first published in 1872.

For pictures of facial expression in various emotions, see Antoinette Feleky, in the _Psychological Review_ for 1914, Vol. 21, pp. 33-41.

For the internal physiological changes, see Walter B. Cannon's _Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage_, 1915.