What Processes Control Our Emotions – Emotions in the Unconscious

One emotion-processing system (a fast response system) operates mainly at an unconscious level – it screens incoming stimuli quickly and helps people to respond to the potentially dangerous event quickly. The system is linked to implicit memory – a deep-brain circuit operates without the deliberate conscious control.

 

What Processes Control Our Emotions – Conscious Emotional Processing

The other emotional system involves conscious processing and has links to explicit memory – a conscious control that has a different brain circuit from the former.

Theories of Emotion – The Neuroscience of Emotion

Understanding emotion is critical to find effective treatments for emotionally linked problems (i.e. eco-guilt, eco-anxiety or eco-grief). However, different psychologists have come up with different theories to explain the internal process that accounting for the production of emotion. The three theories are James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory and Schachter’s Two-Factor theory.  Do our feelings come from physical responses? Or do our feelings come from cognitions? Or both?

 

James-Lange Theory

Based on James-Lange theory, the proposal states that an emotion-provoking stimulus produces a physical response that, in return, produces an emotion. This stems from his view that emotion is beyond than just feelings – it is a combination of cognitions and physical sensations. The manifestation of feelings is reflected in physical sensations. This states that emotion corresponds to a distinctive pattern of physiological arousal. We experienced the feeling after experiencing physiological arousal. This is exemplified in the “somatic markers” of emotion in the brain – where the brain conjures a body-memory of the physical response previously experienced.

 

Cannon-Bard Theory

However, the variations in physical responses may not be able to fully account for the various emotions we felt. The counterproposal is that an internal physiological response occurs simultaneously with an emotional feeling – Cannon-Bard Theory. It is theorised that one is not the cause of the other and both led to the result of cognitive appraisal of the situation. Emotion can result from conscious thought (as when you fret over the consequence of air-travel) or from unconscious memories (as when you feel guilty at the sight of a poster illustrating the amount of CO2 produced previously).  It arises from a cognitive appraisal (interpretation) of the stimulus.

 

Schachter’s  Two-Factor Theory

The more you think about the dire consequences of “air travel”, the probability in the intensity of ecological guilt increases. Schachter’s two factor theory adds an interesting insight to the role of cognition in emotion. The theory posits that the emotions we experience correspond on our appraisal from two factors: Foremost, the external situation we find ourselves (emotion-provoking stimulus). Next, our internal physical state (physical arousal). Emotions stem from physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation of the stimulus. Sometimes, however, the person attributes feelings of arousal (eco-guilt) to a stimulus (eg: air travel), even though the eco-guilt may have been caused by another stimulus (eg: climate change).  The theory illustrates that in a complex environment where there are many stimuli seeking our attention, we may tend to misattribute the source of our emotion – knowing what causes our emotion.

 

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