Posted by llrrrpp on May 19, 2006, at 7:36:34
In reply to Re: three factors of emotion pulled apart, posted by Estella on May 19, 2006, at 7:20:10
oh my!
this is getting over my head. I am learning a lot. Thank you for correcting me earlier when I asserted that emotions are responses to external stimuli (duh, of course can be internally generated too... can you hear me kicking myself?)The amygdala is a fascinating little bit of tissue isn't it?
Are you psycholinguist, or cogn. psychologist?
you might be interested in some work on pain by Jean Decety. He's looking at neural correlates of this, and I like his theory. It may not be descriptive or useful to describe less somatic emotions, like... I don't know? Schadenfreude?
Also, you asked me earlier when I was talking about babies and cats about behavior being a good proxy for emotion. Well, in judeging others' emotional states, I think it's about all we have to go on. Thank goodness for theory of mind! I believe you have a mind that is like mine, so when you cry, I think "wow she must be sad" I'm not exactly sure what the cat is thinking (cat has a different mind, certainly), but I think that her odd behavior in certain circumstances is consistent with processing the meaning of events, and reacting to them in a way that shows that she's attached to her humans. With babies, there is a nice developmental continuum. The same rage in infants is found in toddlers, who have the rudimentary vocabulary to tell you what they are feeling. Lacking first-person insight into the minds of others, we can now feel somewhat more confident that it is rage, because the report and the behavior are in correspondence.
I don't know much about different theories of emotion. But I'm learning from your posts. This has been really fascinating. I'm sorry I don't have anything of more substance to write. I try to avoid lectures that include "social" "emotion" or "linguistic" in the course description. Scares the bejeezus out of me!!
poster:llrrrpp
thread:645293
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060513/msgs/645825.html