Perspectives on the conceptualization of emotion

Emotions, understood as experiences that include neurological, physiological, motor and verbal processes, with sensory-perceptual, autonomic-hormonal, cognitive-attentional and affective-sentimental aspects (Ostrosky & Velez, 2013) permeate all areas of life and they influence daily life, which makes their study imperative. This disturbing need to understand human emotions has caught the attention of different theorists, scientists, philosophers and researchers through time and in various disciplines, from Ancient Greece to Our times.

For this reason, philosophical, evolutionary, psychophysiological, neurological, behavioral and cognitive theories have proposed constructs that turn out to be contradictory and / or complementary, but their value lies in the contributions they make in the approach to the conceptualization and functionality of the emotions.

In this PsychologyOnline article, we will show the Perspectives in the conceptualization of emotion.

Index

1. First approaches
2. New insights
3. Conclusions

The Greeks, as the first humans to come close to understanding emotions, they seek to rationalize them by turning them into theory. Among these, that of Aristotle stands out, who defines emotions or pathe as psychophysical affections, accompanied by pleasure or pain, which include physiological alterations, cognitive processes (sensations or perceptions, beliefs or judgments), dispositions towards the world and desires or impulses (Trueba, 2009). For Aristotle, emotions fulfill the function of disposing of the body to movement, since as they are what is suffered, they imply taking it out and seeking balance (Malo Pé, 2007). On the other hand, Hippocrates affirmed that emotional stability depended on the balance of four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile (Belmonte, 2007).

Continuing with the philosophical approaches, Discards He recognizes emotions as affections in the soul, which resides in the pineal gland and whose function is to incite the soul to preserve the body or make it more perfect (Casado & Colomo, 2006). In opposition, Spinoza states that emotion comprises soul and body and that its objective is to preserve being for an indefinite time (Casado & Colomo, 2006). These philosophers distinguish between good and bad emotions, those that tend towards perfection and those that, on the contrary, make it difficult to preserve the essence of being and move it away from perfection.

On the other hand, the evolutionary perspective, where the theory of Darwin, emotion is a response to the demands of the environment, where its function is mainly that of adaptation and perpetuation of the species. According to this theory, expressions of emotion evolve from behaviors that indicate what the animal is likely to do next (excitation of the nervous system); if the signals that these behaviors provide are beneficial for the animal that shows them, they will evolve (Principle of Utility); and opposite messages are often indicated by opposite movements and postures (Antithesis principle) (Chóliz, 2005).

Darwin also raises the postulate of basic and secondary emotions, in which facial expression and the body are the main means for their expression; The first are universal, they are found in all animals including man, they are transcultural and innate, and secondary schools depend on social interaction and more elaborate cognitive components (Ostrosky & Vélez, 2013).

James (1884/1985) introduces psychophysiological changes to explain emotion, since according to him, this is the sensation of the bodily changes produced by the perception of a triggering event or stimulus. To differentiate and describe emotions, it is enough to analyze and quantitatively measure observable physiological changes (Malo Pé, 2007). At the same time, Lange affirms that emotion does not derive directly from the perception of a stimulus, but rather that it causes some bodily changes, the perception of which by the subject gives rise to emotion (Ramos, Piqueras, Martínez & Oblitas, 2009). In these theories, the function of emotions is given by the performance of adaptive behaviors and the generation of orientation reactions for the organism.

Cannon (1931, cited by Belmonte, 2007) performs a criticism of James, stating that the sensation of physiological changes is not emotion, on the contrary, that specific areas of the brain, particularly the hypothalamus and thalamus, are the responsible for integrated emotional responses, providing the cerebral cortex with the information required to activate the brain's mechanisms of awareness of the emotion.

Therefore, its function is to prepare the body for a possible response that would involve significant energy expenditure; specifically, Cannon demonstrated that bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and anger contribute to the well-being and self-preservation of the individual (Ostrosky & Vélez, 2013). Within the activation theories, Lindsley, Hebb and Malmo (1951; 1955; 1959, cited by Chóliz, 2005), suggest the existence of a unique activation process in which the cortical systems, autonomic and somatic would be perfectly coordinated and that would be responsible for the quality of the different reactions affective.

The discoveries and with it the approaches from the neuroscience progressed through the description of the Papez circuit, the evolutionary organization of the Mac Lean brain, the connection between cerebral cortex, limbic system and brainstem activator of the endocrine system proposed by Henry, and many others (Belmonte, 2007; Chóliz, 2005; Ostrosky & Vélez, 2013). Currently, within the neuronal structures involved in emotion is the brain stem, hypothalamus, basal forebrain, amygdala, ventromedial prefrontal cortex and cngulate cortex (Damasio, 1994 cited by Chóliz, 2005; Lane et al., 1997).

The quartet theory (Koelsch, et al., 2015) shows an integrative theoretical, methodological and epistemological perspective that allows a holistic understanding of emotions human from four systems: centered on the brainstem, diencephalon, hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex, to starting from the afferent and efferent pathways, where in addition to the importance of neural connections and neurotransmitter systems, recognizes the fundamental role of language in the codification of these, as well as in their expression, regulation and generator of emotions in others. It recognizes that there are emotional processes associated with basic needs and self-regulation, that is, expression and satisfaction of emotions associated with hunger, sleep, sex, among others, regulated by the Hypothalamus

In this way, the quartet theory not only focuses on basic emotions, but on attachment, thus explaining how they are created. Affective ties between members of the same species, which generate affiliation, prosocial and protective behaviors of their like-minded people. In the same way, how structures associated with cognitive and executive processes intervene, such as the orbitrofrontal area in charge of decision-making, also associated with emotional processing and reward.

Moreover, within behavioral theorists, Watson poses emotion as an inherited reaction that contains changes in body mechanisms (limbic system) that is activated by the situation (Melo Pé, 2007). That is, they are conditioned responses that are generated when a neutral stimulus is associated with an unconditioned stimulus capable of producing an intense emotional response (Chóliz, 2005). On his part, Skinner conceives emotion as an operant behavior or behavior that produces the desired result, which tends to be repeated (Melo Pé, 2007). The function of emotion is given by the achievement of reinforcers product of the interaction with the environment.

In opposition, cognitive theories propose that the reaction to an emotion is physiological, and what is important is the cognitive interpretation of said physiological reaction, which determines the quality of the emotion. Emotion only occurs after making a cognitive assessment of the relevant event or stimulus, where causality, properties and judgments are attributed to it (Schachter and Singer, 1962; Lazarus, 1984; Averill, 1982; Arnold, 1960, cited by Chóliz, 2005), with the function of adapting the individual to her environment and that it functions adequately in society (Melo Pé, 2007).

In conclusion, they are diverse contributions between theories philosophical, evolutionary, psychophysiological, neurological, behavioral and cognitive, all of them given from the understanding of the world in its historical moment and the tools they had to carry out their research. All recognize the adaptive function of emotions, the importance of these in the interaction social, in the pro-social disposition, survival, decision-making and processing rational.

Emotions color life of each human being, as exposed by Aristotle from pleasure and pain, since as a fundamental part of life, they are always present and are constituted as the two faces of the same coin in the human being, given from the activation of cortical and subcortical structures that promote physiological, motor, visceral, verbal and cognitive. As a form of behavior mediated by the limbic system, emotions impact the health of each person, hence the importance of analyzing each of the theoretical perspectives that, in addition to proposing an approach to understanding, determine the routes of action and treatment for pathologies that mostly have a substrate of alteration emotional.

Finally, it is stated that there are divergences between Aristotle's theory, which states that emotion is implied an intellectual process and not the only physiological activation, since it requires language and therefore implies the reason; in contrast to what was raised centuries later by James, who affirms that emotion is the simple perception of physiological changes. Likewise, it is evidenced large differences between physiological and neural theories, since the former understood emotion as the visceral, vascular or motor response, while the neuronal ones focus the genesis and process of emotion in the brain where different cortical structures are involved and subcortical.

Likewise, cognitive theories with their relevance in mentalist processes, where cognitive functions and assessment processes determine emotion is opposed to what raised by behaviorist theories where emotion is one more form of behavior given by conditioning and whose function is given by the relationship framework of contingencies.

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