Question

Emotions are clearly very subjective experiences. One of the key factors influencing emotional response is stimulus appraisal. Stimuli can be internal sensations and nervous system activation or external stimuli. Using an example from your own life, discuss the role of cognition and stimulus appraisal in dictating emotional responses and how emotions have hindered motivation. What techniques could you apply in the given scenario to regulate your emotions so that they no longer hindered your motivation?

Answer 1

Appraisal theory of emotion proposes that emotions or emotional components are caused and differentiated by an appraisal of the stimulus as mis/matching with goals and expectations, as easy/difficult to control, and as caused by others, themselves or impersonal circumstances.

The most fundamental emotions, known as the basic emotions, are those of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The basic emotions have a long history in human evolution, and they have developed in large part to help us make rapid judgments about stimuli and to quickly guide appropriate behaviour (LeDoux, 2000). The basic emotions are determined in large part by one of the oldest parts of our brain, the limbic system, including the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the thalamus. Because they are primarily evolutionarily determined, the basic emotions are experienced and displayed in much the same way across cultures .
Not all of our emotions come from the old parts of our brain; we also interpret our experiences to create a more complex array of emotional experiences. For instance, the amygdala may sense fear when it senses that the body is falling, but that fear may be interpreted completely differently (perhaps even as excitement) when we are falling on a roller-coaster ride than when we are falling from the sky in an airplane that has lost power. The cognitive interpretations that accompany emotions — known as cognitive appraisal.
Sensation refers to our ability to detect and sense the internal and external physical qualities of our environment.

Our senses include both exteroception (stimuli that occur outside of our body) and interoception (stimuli occurring inside of our bodies).

Our primary senses are considered to be sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

All senses require one of four fundamental sensory capacities: chemoreception, photoreception, mechanoreception, or thermoreception.

The peripheral nervous system (PNS) consists of sensory receptors to communicate with other parts of the body.

Key Terms

chemoreception: A physiological response to chemical stimuli.

mechanoreception: A physiological response to mechanical forces like pressure, touch, and vibration.

photoreception: A physiological response to light, as occurs during vision in animals.

thermoreception: A physiological response to relative or absolute changes in temperature