Human Traits and their Social SignificanceEdman, Irwin
Philosophy
Human Traits and their Social Significance
Edman, Irwin
Social psychology
Indeed, so completely did James think the emotions were
explicable as the inner feeling of the complex organic sensations
which go to make up each of them that he did not think
it misleading to say "we feel sorry because we cry, angry
because we strike, afraid because we tremble; we do not cry,
strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as
the case may be."
Whether or not emotions are completely to be explained
as the inner or subjective aspect of the complex of organic
disturbances which accompany fear, rage, and the like, and
which are caused immediately by the perception of the appropriate
objects of these emotions, it is certainly true that
emotional awareness and bodily disturbances are very closely
connected.[1]
[Footnote 1: Recent experiments by Dr. Cannon at Harvard have shown the specific
bodily disturbances which accompany anger, fear, etc. In particular, Dr.
Cannon, and others, have noted that in the emotional conditions of fear and
anger the glands, located near the kidneys, discharge a fluid into the blood
stream, which fluid stimulates the heart to activity, constricts the blood
vessels of the internal organs, causes the liver to pour out into the blood its
stores of sugar, and affects in one way or another all the organs of the body.
The general effect is to put the body into a state of preparedness for the
activities connected with the emotion, whether flight in the case of fear,
attack as in the case of anger. This has led Professor Woodworth to define
emotion as, at least in part, "the way the body feels when it is prepared for a
certain reaction." See the latter's _Dynamic Psychology_, pp. 51-59.]
Various attempts have been made to classify the emotions
which are, in ordinary experience, infinitely subtle and complex.
The subtlety and variety of emotion James explains
as the result of the subtle and imperceptible differences in the
complex of sensations which occur in any given situation. In
general, it has been recognized that the emotions are very
closely connected with the primary tendencies of man.
McDougall, for example, says that each of the great primary
impulses is accompanied by an emotion. Indeed, McDougall
considers, as earlier noted, that the emotion is the affective
or conscious aspect of an instinct which, at the same time, has
a perceptual and impulsive aspect; that, in the case of fear,
the perceptual aspect is the instinctive mechanism for recognizing
objects of danger, the impulsive aspect is the tendency
toward flight, and the affective aspect is the inner feeling or
awareness of fear. Thus, for McDougall, the tender emotion
is the emotional aspect of the instinct of pity, anger of the
instinct of pugnacity, which is, as an impulse, the tendency
to strike and destroy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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