Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
Something was said before about "organic states", under the general
head of tendencies to reaction. Fatigue was an example. Now we could
include fatigue under the term, "stirred-up state of the organism"; at
least, if not precisely "stirred-up", it is uneasy. It is a deviation
from the normal or neutral state. Also, it is often a conscious state,
as when we speak of the "tired feeling"; not a purely cognitive state,
either--not simply a recognition of the _fact_ that we are
fatigued--but a state of disinclination to work any longer. Though
fatigue is thus so much like an emotion that it fits under our
definition, it is not called an emotion, but a sensation or complex of
sensations. After hard muscular work, the state of the muscles makes
itself felt by "fatigue sensations", and the sum total of these,
coming from many different muscles, makes up the complex sensation of
fatigue. After prolonged mental work, there may be fatigue sensations
from the eyes and perhaps from the neck, which is often fixed rigidly
during strenuous mental activity; and there are perhaps other obscure
fatigue sensations originating in other organs and contributing to the
total sensation which we know as mental fatigue, or as general
fatigue.
Many other organic states are akin to emotion in the same way. The
opposite of fatigue, the "warmed-up" condition, brought on by a
certain amount of activity after {120} rest, is a case in point. It is
a deviation from the average or neutral condition, in the direction of
greater readiness for activity. The warmed-up person _feels_ ready for
business, full of "ginger" or "pep"--in short, full of life. The name
"euphoria" which means about the same as "feeling good", is given to
this condition. Drowsiness is another of these emotion-like states;
but hunger and thirst are as typical examples as any.
How These Organic States Differ from Regular Emotions
Now why do we hesitate to call hunger, fatigue and the rest by the
name of emotions? For two reasons, apparently. There are two salient
differences between an organic state such as hunger, and an emotion
such as anger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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