A person is born with a certain set of emotional reactions, moreover, animals also have emotions. These emotions are called primary. These include fear and anxiety as an expression of the need for self-preservation; joy arising from the satisfaction of vital needs, and anger as a result of the restriction of the need for movement.
At a later age, as a result of communication with people and as a result of the formation of one's own "I", secondary emotions arise. They are not connected with vital needs, but this does not make them less significant, on the contrary, they are the ones that bring the greatest suffering and joy.
Emotional phenomena are divided into affects, actually emotions, feelings, moods and stressful conditions.
The most powerful emotional response affect. It captures the whole person and subjugates his thoughts and movements. Affect is always situational, intense and relatively short-lived. It comes as a result of any strong shock. In affect, attention changes: switchability decreases, only those phenomena that are relevant to the situation are perceived. As a rule, everything that happened before the event that caused the affective reaction is forgotten. Examples of affective reactions can be a state of euphoria after liberation from danger, stupor at the announcement of death, anger - as a reaction to ridicule and bullying.
Actually emotions- this is a longer reaction that occurs not only to past events, but mainly to assumed or remembered ones. Emotions reflect the event in the form of a generalized subjective assessment.
Feelings- stable emotional states that have a clearly expressed objective character. These are relationships to specific events or people (quite possibly imaginary).
Moods- the longest emotional states. This is the background against which all other mental processes proceed. The mood reflects the general attitude of acceptance or rejection of the world. Prevailing this person moods are possibly related to his temperament.
Stress- non-specific reaction of the body to an unexpected and tense situation. This is a physiological reaction, which is expressed in the mobilization of the body's reserve capabilities. The reaction is called non-specific, since it occurs in response to any adverse effect - cold, fatigue, pain, humiliation, etc. The author of the theory of stress, Hans Selye, defines it as a set of phylogenetically programmed reactions of the body that prepare it for physical activity by the type of resistance, fight or flight. These reactions are expressed in a change in the mode of operation of many organs and systems of the body, for example, the heart rate becomes more frequent, blood coagulability and pulse rate increase. All physiological reactions are triggered by hormones released into the blood. We know that different people react differently to stress. In some, the reaction is active - under stress, the efficiency of their activity continues to grow to a certain limit - this is “lion stress”, while in others the reaction is passive, the efficiency of their activity drops immediately - “rabbit stress”.
The psychologist and psychotherapist Yu. M. Orlov tried to explain the nature of some of the negative emotions that arise in the process of communication and significantly darken the lives of many people. These are the emotions of resentment, guilt and shame.
If a donkey kicks you, you will not be offended by it, although it hurts. If a stranger pushes, then get angry, but do not be offended. But if a friend neglects your interests, a loved one does not behave with you the way you expect, and a relative comes from a business trip without gifts, then an unpleasant feeling arises, which is commonly called resentment.
This feeling arises only in communication with people who are significant to us, from whom we expect a special attitude towards us. And when the expected attitude diverges from the real one, resentment arises.
There are three components to any experience of resentment.:
- My expectations regarding the behavior of a person oriented towards me. How should he behave if he is my friend. Ideas about this are formed in the experience of communication.
- The behavior of another, deviating from the expected in an unfavorable direction.
- An emotional reaction caused by a mismatch between expectation and behavior.
These three elements are linked together by our belief that the other person is hard-wired with our expectations, deprived of independence. Such a desire to program the behavior of loved ones comes from childhood. When a small child is uncomfortable and feels bad, he is offended and cries, thereby informing his parents that something is wrong. They must change their behavior. The feeling of resentment in the child stimulates the feeling of guilt in the parents. This is how a child educates his parents. In childhood, such behavior is justified - otherwise the little creature would not survive, and parental skills would not have been formed. The child feels that he is the center of the world and, naturally, that the world should meet his expectations. In old age, people again become touchy: the weak have their own weapon - the formation of a sense of guilt in another. When an adult is offended, he begins to feel small and helpless, even his facial expression becomes infantile.
There is a lot of selfishness in resentment. Being offended, a person exploits the love of another, as it forms a feeling of guilt in him. Since resentment is a painful feeling, we often try to hide it or replace it with other emotions. We take revenge, mentally or really, on the offender - aggression comes to replace the offense. Mental aggression is dangerous because it turns on the mechanisms of the fight, but does not use them. The best way to get rid of resentment is creativity. We can recommend this motto: A good life is the best revenge.
Guilt is the opposite of resentment. Outwardly, she does not characteristic features, expressions, gestures. We experience guilt through the gift of thinking. There are also three components to the experience of guilt.:
- My ideas about how I should be in accordance with the expectations of another person. I do not exactly know the expectations of the other, I only model them. The model is built in accordance with general social attitudes. Our behavior is much more determined by the expectations of others than we think.
- Perception and evaluation of one's own behavior "here and now".
- Comparison of the expectation model with one's own behavior and detection of a mismatch, which is perceived as guilt. This feeling is intensified by the emotion and expression of resentment in the other.
Feelings of guilt are more intense than resentment. We can deal with resentment by accepting the other as he is, that is, by changing our expectations or forgiving the offender. In wine, we need to change the expectations of the other, and this is already unrealistic.
Guilt is good for immature people. So, children can be controlled, not by punishing them, but by causing a feeling of guilt. Here it is important not to overdo it so that the child does not develop a neurosis based on a guilt complex.
Guilt cannot be experienced for too long, since unbearable suffering cannot be long, and it is weakened by feelings of anger or aggression, which draw off the energy of guilt.
From the guilty we become the offender. An irrational sense of guilt can also find a way out in illness. With his physical suffering, a person, as it were, pays for what he is supposedly guilty of, and it becomes easier for him. But it's a heavy payoff.
If we do not meet the expectations of the generalized other or society, then a sense of shame arises. The functional significance of shame lies in the regulation of human behavior in accordance with the "I-concept", which is largely a product of culture, and not personal experience. Parents and educators, books and ideology form a person's idea of what he should be. At the same time, society is guided by considerations of its own security. Even culture can be seen as a mechanism for protecting the integrity of the community and its weakest members. Culture limits instincts, primarily aggressive and sexual ones, develops rules of behavior, for the violation of which a person experiences psychological punishment in the form of shame or guilt. The ancients had an expression: "Chewed by shame, they are drawn to virtue."
The emergence of a feeling of shame can be represented as follows::
- The way I should be "here and now" in accordance with the "I-concept".
- What I am "here and now."
- Mismatch between proper and real behavior and its experience.
Since we receive shame as a punishment, the behavior dictated by shame is often infantile. But how much trouble from him! These are suicides among teenagers, suicides out of honor, revenge, jealousy, aggression. Knowing the causes of one's shame reveals the properties of the "I-concept" hidden in the unconscious. If a person is ashamed that he did not answer the letter of a childhood friend whom he had not seen for many years, then it can be assumed that such a person is obligatory and devoted to friends. The shame that arises from the violation of sexual prohibitions, even imaginary ones, often indicates the suppression of sexual desires in a person. That is, what a person is ashamed of says more about him than many other things.
Shame is similar to guilt, but in wine we are focused on the expectations of a loved one, in shame there can be no such appraiser. But there is such a thing as social shame, when the assessments or opinions of a particular group of people are ashamed.
It is possible to single out attributive shame, the subject of which are individual signs: physical disabilities, the absence of things valued in the group to which a person belongs, and existential shame - holistic, when they are ashamed of all the signs attributed to themselves. Such shame is sometimes called an inferiority complex. No matter how much they convince a person experiencing this complex, he, despite all his successes, does not believe in himself, considers himself unworthy. At the heart of the emergence of an inferiority complex is the loss of basic trust in the world and the lack of love in the early stages of human development. It is difficult to correct the psyche of an unwanted or unloved child, even if he is smart and handsome, he will still have the stain of a loser on him. At the same time, shame is an important emotion that contributes to the adaptation of a person to life in society. Thanks to shame, self-knowledge deepens, self-respect is formed, the ability to evaluate the consequences of one's actions, and sensitivity to the assessments of others. This emotion is necessary at certain stages of development, but then shame must be able not only to experience, but to analyze.
There are other emotions that arise when communicating, but they are not culturally justified. This - envy And vanity.Three components can also be distinguished in the structure of these emotions:
- The assumption that the other person is just like me (we rarely envy the unattainable).
- Concentration of attention on this person or his individual properties and qualities, comparison of these qualities with his own.
- Experience of this or that emotion depending on results of comparison.
- Envy: "He's the same as me, but he's better."
- Vanity: "He's the same as me, but I'm better."
- Schadenfreude: "He's just like me, but he's worse."
The main component of these emotions is comparison. If a person were to refuse comparison or separate himself from its results, then both envy and gloating would be killed in the bud. But we cannot refuse comparison, because it is the main mental operation in the process of thinking and cognition. All properties of natural objects are comprehended in comparison. Rejecting comparison, we would suppress the work of thought.
Comparison is habitual - from early childhood, a child is compared with other children by parents, educators, teachers. As a result of this comparison, not only negative emotions arise (envy), but also positive ones - pride, a sense of one's exclusivity. The child adopts the habit of comparison. Over the years, we begin to compare everyone: parents, friends, lovers, as well as ourselves.
The indomitable desire of man to compare himself and others is constantly supported by the spirit of competition. Society rewards excellence in whatever field it arises. But in conditions of constant rivalry, success and failure are equally dangerous. In case of failure, a person will be “crushed” by more successful ones, and success awakens envy and hostility on the part of other people, and they will unite in the fight against the lucky one. The rejection of rivalry in the conditions of our civilization often contributes to the formation of a sense of insecurity and even inferiority.
Prideful, envious, gloating, we participate in a process built on comparison. Therefore, the knowledge of these emotions always requires an answer to the question: “On what points, signs, properties do I compare myself with others, depriving myself of agreement with myself and involving others in a race that has no end?”
The comparison must be appropriate, otherwise it creates conflict. The words of the ancients should be remembered: "While I am in my mind, I do not compare my dear with anyone."
There is a wide range of hypotheses affecting the probable causes of emotional phenomena.
Emotion as biofeedback from organs involved in expression. One of the first concepts describing the causes of emotional experience, which has retained its significance to this day, is the concept proposed by W. James and S. Lange (James, 1884; Lange, 1895). These researchers lived in different countries and at the same time independently put forward similar ideas. They explained the emergence of emotional experience by the functioning of the feedback mechanism from the effector organs involved in the expression of emotion. According to this notion, we are sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, happy because we laugh. Thus, in this concept, the relationship between awareness of emotion and behavior
Its first expression is the opposite of the obviously observed one: awareness of the emotional state occurs after a physiological reaction.
This hypothesis was initially rejected due to the existence of a significant number of facts that contradict it. However, many researchers are now returning to it again. This is because psychotherapeutic practice relies heavily on the existence of such feedback, and includes techniques such as smiling to change mood or relaxing muscles to calm down.
The importance of feedback from effectors is also confirmed by neurological practice (Hohman, 1966). So, when examining patients with spinal cord injuries, a clear pattern is found, according to which, the higher the level of damage, the less the intensity of emotions experienced by these patients.
Experiments also support the value of reverse stimulation from effectors. In one of the studies, subjects were asked to change the tension of those facial muscles that corresponded to a certain emotion, but nothing was said about the emotion itself (Ekman e. a., 1983; Levenson e. a., 1990). So mimically reproduced the expression of fear, anger, surprise, disgust, grief, happiness. At the moment of muscle tension, vegetative functions were recorded. The results indicated that simulated expression did change the state of the autonomic nervous system. When imitation of anger, heartbeats became more frequent and body temperature rose, when fear was reproduced, the heart rate increased, but the body temperature fell, when simulating a state of happiness, only a slowdown of the heartbeat was noted.
The physiological substantiation of the possibility of participation of reverse stimulation in the formation of psychological experience can be such a sequence of events. During a person's life, classical conditioned reflexes are formed, associatively linking changes in the facial muscles with one or another state of the autonomic nervous system. That is why feedback from the facial muscles can be accompanied by vegetative changes.
So far, there is no reason to reject the possibility that these connections may be innate. Evidence of the possibility of such an assumption may be the fact that when observing other people's emotions, people involuntarily repeat them. Any of those reading these lines, looking at the drawing (Fig. 13.6), cannot intuitively follow the emotion depicted on it.
It is possible that the conditioned reflex connection connecting emotional manifestation and mental experiences arises at very early stages of ontogenesis in the corresponding critical period. It can be so close to the moment of birth and be so brief that it leads to an illusory idea of the innate nature of this kind of connection.
Emotion as the activity of brain structures. W. Cannon (Cannon, 1927) and P. Bard (Bard, 1929) proposed a concept, the essence of which is
that psychological awareness and physiological response in the process of emotional response occurs almost at the same time. Information about the emotional signal enters the thalamus, from it simultaneously to the cerebral cortex, which leads to awareness, and to the hypothalamus, which leads to a change in the vegetative status of the body (Fig. 13.8). Further research has revealed a significant number of brain structures involved in the formation of emotion.
Hypothalamus. WITH using the technique of self-irritation, the pleasure center was discovered (Olds, Fobes, 1981). In such an experiment, electrodes implanted in the brain of a rat, a pedal contact, and a source of electric current are included in one circuit. Moving, the rat could press the pedal. If the electrodes were implanted in the area of the lateral hypothalamus, then after a single pressing the rat did not stop doing it. Some of them stepped on the pedal up to 1000 times an hour and died because they stopped performing the actions necessary for survival.
The emotional state of an animal can be changed by introducing certain biologically active substances into certain areas of the hypothalamus (Iktmoto and Panksepp, 1996). The role of this brain structure in emotional response has been demonstrated many times. In the lateral hypothalamus
Rice. 13.8. The Kennon-Bard model assumes the simultaneous flow of information from the thalamus to the cortex and subcortical structures.
soul, two types of neurons have been identified that respond differently to emotional situations. One type of neurons was called motivational, since it showed maximum activity in motivational behavior, and the other type was called reinforcing, since these cells were activated when the animal was satiated (Zaichenko et al., 1995).
Tonsil (amygdala). X. Kluver and P. Bucy (Kluver, Bucy, 1939) removed the temporal lobes of the cerebral cortex in monkeys and described a syndrome later named after them. In the monkey, which was an aggressive alpha male before the operation, after extirpation of the temporal lobe, the former aggressiveness and fear disappeared, but hypersexuality was revealed. On the one hand, these data indicate the importance of the temporal lobes for the development of aggression; on the other hand, they demonstrate the existence of a reciprocal relationship between sexuality and aggressiveness. This contradicts the idea of K. Lorenz (Lorenz, 1969), who asserted the identity of aggressiveness and male sexuality, since, from his point of view, sexual behavior is integral part aggressive.
It has been established that Klüver-Bucy syndrome is caused by the absence of the amygdala. It has now been proven that this structure forms the body's response to an aversive stimulus (causing an avoidance response). Any emotional response is associated with the circumstances in which it occurs. This is how a classic conditioned reflex is developed, where the reinforcement is one or another emotional state of the body. This type of learning is called conditioned emotional response.
The amygdala plays a role in several types of emotional behavior: aggression, fear, disgust, maternal behavior. This structure is the focus of the sensory and effector systems, responsible for the behavioral, autonomic and hormonal components of the conditioned emotional response, activating the corresponding neural circuits located in the hypothalamus and brain stem.
J.E. LeDoux (1987) showed that the central nucleus of the amygdala is necessary for the development of a conditioned emotional response, since in its absence it was not possible to develop a reflex (Fig. 13.9). As can be seen from the figure, the amygdala is associated with the lateral hypothalamus, which is responsible for the autonomic component of the emotional response, and with the periaqueductal gray matter, which organizes the behavioral response. The amygdala also has projections to the hypothalamus involved in the release of stress hormones. That is why irritation of the central nucleus of the tonsil leads to ulceration of the gastrointestinal tract. However, when the tonsil is surgically removed, an ulcer does not form under stress. Apparently, it implements this function through the caudate nucleus.
Sensory association cortex analyzes complex stimuli of sufficient complexity. Although individual emotional reactions in a person are caused by simple stimuli, most of them are quite complex, for example, the appearance of a person in the field of vision. The amygdala receives information from the inferior temporal cortex and the cortex of the temporal tubercle. To the latter are projections from the visual, auditory and
Rice. 13.9. Involvement of the amygdala in the formation of a conditioned emotional response (Carlson, 1992).
somatosensory association cortex. Thus, the amygdala has information of any modality.
D 
and. L. Downer in the experiment destroyed the left amygdala in monkeys, simultaneously performing commissurotomy (Downer, 1961). Thus, the left half of the brain was deprived of a structure synthesizing information from all sensory inputs, and could not compensate for this lack of information from the right hemisphere. Prior to the operation, touching the monkey caused an aggressive reaction. After the operation, this behavior was evoked only when the animal looked with the right eye. When viewed with the left eye, there was no aggressiveness. This suggests, in particular, that the right hemisphere of the brain is of particular importance for emotional reactions.
The role of the thalamus in the implementation of the conditioned emotional response. Most of the emotional reactions are quite primitive, since they arose quite early on the path of evolutionary development. The destruction of the auditory cortex does not entail the absence of an emotional conditioned response, while the destruction of the thalamus inevitably leads to the impossibility of its development.
For the formation of a conditioned emotional response to sound, the preservation of the medial part of the medial geniculate body, which sends auditory information to the primary auditory cortex of the cerebral hemispheres, is necessary (Fig. 13.10). In addition, the neurons of the medial geniculate body project into the amygdala. The destruction of these connections leads to the impossibility of developing an emotional conditioned response to a sound signal. In the same way, in order to develop a conditioned emotional response to a visual signal, the lateral geniculate bodies that carry visual information to the brain must be preserved.
Orbitofrontal cortex located at the base of the frontal lobes (Fig. 13.11). It has direct inputs from the dorsomedial thalamus, temporal cortex, and ventromedial tegmental area. Indirect connections go to it from the amygdala and olfactory cortex, are projected into the singular cortex, the hippocampal system, the temporal cortex, the lateral hypothalamus, and the amygdala. It is connected in multiple ways to other areas of the frontal lobes of the brain.
Rice. 13.10. Medial section of the brain through the medial geniculate body, which receives information from the auditory systems and projects to subcortical structures (Carlson, 1992)
The role of the orbitofrontal cortex first began to be determined in the middle of the 19th century. Important information about the function of this area in emotional behavior was provided by the case of the bomber Phineas Gage. The metal rod ejected by the explosion pierced the frontal part of his brain. Gage survived, but his behavior changed significantly. If before the injury he was serious and thorough, then after this incident he turned into a frivolous and irresponsible person. His behavior was characterized by childishness and carelessness, it was difficult for him to draw up a plan for future actions, and his actions themselves were capricious and random.
Rice. 13.11. Orbitofrontal cortex.
Such injuries reduce the processes of inhibition and self-concentration, change personal interests. Back in the 40s of the XX century, a lot of material was collected on the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in emotional behavior. Most of the data indicated that damage to it, changing the emotional sphere of a person, does not affect the intellectual level.
For example, in one curious case, a person suffered from a syndrome of obsession, which manifested itself in the constant washing of hands. This anomaly prevented him from leading normal life and eventually led to a suicide attempt. The patient shot himself in the head through the mouth, but survived, although he damaged the frontal cortex. At the same time, obsession disappeared, and the intellectual level remained the same.
Numerous studies on the destruction of the orbitofrontal cortex,
conducted on animals, testified to a significant change in their behavior: the disappearance of aggressiveness and the absence of visible intellectual deviations. This led the Portuguese scientist Egas Moniz to the idea of convincing neurosurgeons to perform a similar operation on humans. He believed that such an operation could remove a pathological emotional state from aggressive psychopaths, while keeping their intelligence intact. Several such operations were actually carried out, and their results confirmed the original thought of the author. For this, E. Moniz received the Nobel Prize in 1949.
Later, this operation, called lobotomy performed on thousands of patients. Especially many of these surgical interventions were performed on American soldiers who returned after World War II with a syndrome that later became known as the “Vietnamese”, “Afghan”, etc. an alarming situation to start a physical attack without having time to consider whether such a reaction is justified. In all other respects, they do not differ from the norm, being, moreover, physically healthy and able-bodied. It is now obvious that E. Monitz was wrong, since lobotomy leads not only to a decrease in the intellectual level, but, no less important, to irresponsible behavior. Such patients cease to plan their actions, take responsibility for them and, as a result, lose their ability to work and live independently. Lobotomy as an operation was quite well developed and was carried out not even in the operating room, but in a regular doctor's office. It was performed with a special knife called transorbital leisotome. The surgeon, using a wooden mallet, inserted a knife into the brain through a hole made just below the upper eyelid, and then turned it right and left to the orbital bone near the eye. Essentially, the operation was performed in the dark, because it was not clear where the knife was located or what structures it cut, so there was more damage than necessary, although the main consequence was the separation of the prefrontal region from the rest of the brain (Carlson, 1992).
The results of NMR tomography indicate that the more the activity of the prefrontal cortex, the left temporal region (tonsil), the bridge, the greater the amplitude of the approximate GSR (Raine et al., 1991). It is now believed that the orbitofrontal cortex is included in the evaluation of the sequence of actions. If this area is damaged by a disease, then the subject can theoretically assess the emotional significance of the stimulus, i.e., he can easily analyze situations in pictures and diagrams. However, he will not be able to apply this knowledge in life. Similarly, Gage, who was mentioned earlier, lost one job after another, spent all his savings, and eventually lost his family.
It can be assumed that the orbitofrontal cortex is not directly involved in the decision-making process, but ensures the translation of these decisions into life, into specific feelings and behavior. The ventral connections of this area of the cortex with the diencephalon and the temporal area bring to it information about the emotional significance of the signal. Dorsal connections to the singular cortex allow it to influence both behavior and autonomy.
Rice. 13.12. Singular bark (Carlson, 1992).
Singular bark plays an important role in the formation of emotional experience (Fig. 13.12). J.W. Papez (1937) suggested that the singular cortex, entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and thalamus form a circle that is directly related to motivation and emotion. Psychologist P.D. MacLean (1949) also included the amygdala in this system and called it limbic. The singular cortex provides an interface between the decision-making structures in the frontal cortex, the emotional structures of the limbic system, and the brain mechanisms that control movement. It interacts back and forth with the rest of the limbic system and other areas of the frontal cortex. Electrical stimulation of the singular gyrus can cause the experience of positive or negative emotions (Talairach e. A., 1973).
Damage to the singular cortex is associated with akinetic mutism, in which patients refuse to speak and move. Significant trauma to this area is incompatible with life. There is reason to believe that it plays an initiating role in emotional behavior.
Cannon-Bard theory. W. Cannon found that the bodily changes observed during the occurrence of different emotional states are very similar to each other and not so diverse as to quite satisfactorily explain the qualitative differences in the highest emotional experiences of a person. At the same time, the internal organs are insensitive structures. They are very slow to become aroused, and emotions usually arise and develop quite quickly. Moreover, Cannon discovered that organic changes artificially induced in a person are not always accompanied by emotional experiences. As a result of the experiment, it was found that an artificially induced cessation of the flow of organic signals to the brain does not prevent the emergence of emotions.
Cannon believed that bodily processes during emotions are biologically expedient, since they serve as a preliminary setting of the whole organism for a situation when it will require an increased expenditure of energy resources. At the same time, emotional experiences and corresponding imorganic changes, in his opinion, occur in the same brain center - the thalamus.
Later, P. Bard showed that, in fact, both bodily changes and emotional experiences associated with them occur almost simultaneously, and of all the structures of the brain, it is not even the thalamus itself that is functionally connected with emotions, but the hypothalamus and the central parts of the limbic systems. Later, in experiments on animals, X. Delgado found that with the help of electrical influences on these structures, one can control such emotional states as anger and fear.
Peripheral theory of James - Lange. W. James and, independently of him, G. Lange proposed "peripheral"the theory of emotions, according to which the emergence of emotions is due to changes in the motor sphere (including in the sphere of involuntary acts), which are caused by external influences. The sensations associated with these changes are emotional experiences. James expressed the essence of his theory with the following phrase:" We feel sadness because we cry, we are afraid because we tremble, we rejoice because we laugh. "That is, it is organic changes, according to this theory, that are the root causes of emotions: first, under the influence of external stimuli, changes characteristic of emotions occur in the body, and only then, as a consequence, does the emotion itself arise.The James-Lange theory played a positive role, pointing out the connection of three events: an external stimulus, a behavioral act and an emotional experience.Its weak point remains the reduction of emotions only to the awareness of sensations arising as a result of peripheral Sensation appears here as a primary phenomenon in relation to emotion, which is considered as its direct derivative.
Schechter's cognitive-physiological theory. S. Shekhter revealed the role of human memory and motivation in emotional processes. The concept of emotions proposed by S. Shekhter is called "cognitive-physiological". According to this theory, in addition to the perceived stimuli and the bodily changes generated by them, the person's past experience and his subjective assessment of the current situation influence the emotional state that has arisen. At the same time, the assessment is formed on the basis of the interests and needs that are relevant to him. An indirect confirmation of the validity of the cognitive theory of emotions is the influence of verbal instructions on human experiences, as well as additional information, on the basis of which a person changes his assessment of the situation.
Information concept of emotions by P. V. Simonov. In accordance with this theory, emotional states are determined by the quality and intensity of the individual's actual need and the assessment that he gives of the probability of its satisfaction. A person evaluates this probability on the basis of innate and previously acquired individual experience, involuntarily comparing information about the means, time, resources supposedly necessary to satisfy the need with the information received at the moment. So, for example, the emotion of fear develops with a lack of information about the means necessary for protection.
The approach of P. V. Simonov was expressed in the formula:
E \u003d P (I n - I s)
Where E- emotion, its strength and quality;
P- the magnitude and specificity of the actual need;
I n- information necessary to meet the current need;
And with- existing information, i.e. information that a person has at the moment.
The consequences arising from the formula are as follows: if a person does not have a need (P=0), then he does not experience emotions (E=0); Emotion does not arise even in the case when a person experiencing a need has the full opportunity to realize it. If the subjective assessment of the probability of satisfaction of the need is large, positive feelings appear. Negative emotions arise if the subject negatively assesses the possibility of satisfying the need. Thus, conscious or unconscious of this, a person constantly compares information about what is required to satisfy a need with what he has, and, depending on the results of the comparison, experiences various emotions.
Until now, there is no single point of view on the nature of emotions. Emotional research is still being intensively carried out. The currently accumulated experimental and theoretical material allows us to speak about the dual nature of emotions. On the one hand, these are subjective factors, which include various mental phenomena, including cognitive processes, features of the organization of a person's value system, etc. On the other hand, emotions are determined by physiological features individual.
Classifications of emotions
K. Izard singled out the following emotions: pleasure-displeasure, interest-excitement, joy, surprise, grief-suffering, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, guilt.
Emotions are complex mental phenomena. The following types of emotional experiences are considered to be the most significant: affects, emotional reactions, feelings, moods, emotional stress.
According to duration allocate emotional reactions, emotional states And emotional properties..
1. Emotional reactions - direct experience of any emotion. They are based on primary needs, as a rule, are short-term and reversible and are associated with existing circumstances (fright reaction in response to a cry).
Affect– the most powerful type of emotional reaction. Affects are called intense, rapidly occurring and short-term emotional outbursts that affect the consciousness and activity of a person, and are accompanied by changes in the functioning of the motor, endocrine, cardiovascular, and other systems of the body. The emergence of an affect is associated with evaluative moments, with the personal meaning of what is happening. Distinctive features of affect are its situationality, generality, high intensity and short duration. Effects can be distinguished by content joy, fear, anger, despair, ecstasy etc.
Affect is characterized by a narrowing of consciousness, its fixation on irritants that cause affect. These changes in consciousness are manifested in a concentration on affectively colored experiences and ideas associated with a traumatic situation, a decrease in the completeness and accuracy of its reflection. Therefore, under the influence of affect, a person often does things that he later regrets, and which he would not allow himself in a calm / normal state.
In a state of passion, automatisms are released and manifested outside, i.e. involuntary actions that have a stereotypical character. Actions in a state of passion are chaotic, arise as a result of general excitement. The peculiarity of actions performed under the influence of passion lies not in their complete unconsciousness, but in the fact that there is no sufficiently clear consciousness of the purpose of the action, and conscious control over one's behavior is difficult. There is an awareness of only the immediate, and not the final goals, the weakening of criticism in relation to external influences, which finds its expression in the violation of the purposefulness of behavior, its inflexibility and inconsistency.
The psychological consideration of affect includes an analysis of the conditions and factors that contribute to the occurrence of this state. These include personal And age features human, properties of his nervous system, the presence of an affectogenic situation, as well as factors that temporarily weaken the body.
2. Emotional states more durable and stable. They coordinate the needs and aspirations of a person with his capabilities and resources at any given time.
Mood - the longest-lasting or "chronic" emotional state that colors all behavior. The mood is distinguished by less intensity and less objectivity. It reflects an unconscious generalized assessment of how circumstances are currently developing. The mood can be joyful or sad, cheerful or depressed, cheerful or depressed, calm or irritated, etc.
The mood depends on the general state of health, on the work of the endocrine glands and, especially, on the tone of the nervous system. Moods can vary in duration. The stability of mood depends on many reasons - the age of a person, the individual characteristics of his character and temperament, willpower, the level of development of the leading motives of behavior. Mood can color a person's behavior for days or even weeks. Moreover, mood can become a stable personality trait. It is this peculiarity of mood that is meant when people are divided into optimists and pessimists.
3. Emotional properties - the most stable characteristics of a person, reflecting the individual characteristics of an emotional response typical of a particular person.
These include: reactivity, excitability and lability-rigidity.
Emotional reactivity- the speed of emotional response, the duration of the reaction (response).
Emotional excitability- the speed of emotional inclusion.
Emotional lability- mobility of emotions, change of one emotion by another. Its opposite is emotional rigidity, those. viscosity, persistence of emotions.
At the heart of emotional properties are features of the properties of the nervous system and temperament of a person.
Scientific views on the nature and essence of emotional manifestations are represented by two main directions. Scientists belonging to the first, intellectualistic direction, (IF Herbart, 1824-1825), argued that organic manifestations of emotions are a consequence of mental phenomena. According to Herbart, emotion is a connection that is established between representations, caused by a mismatch (conflict) between representations. This affective state involuntarily causes vegetative changes.
Representatives of another position - the sensualists - on the contrary, declared that organic reactions affect mental phenomena. F. Dufour (1883) wrote about this: “Have I not proved enough that the source of our natural inclination to passions lies not in the soul, but is connected with the ability of the autonomic nervous system to inform the brain about the excitation it receives, that if we cannot arbitrarily regulate functions of blood circulation, digestion, secretion, then it is impossible, therefore, in this case, to explain by our will the violations of these functions that have arisen under the influence of passions. These two positions were later developed in the cognitive theories of emotions and in the peripheral theory of emotions by W. James - G. Lange.
The modern history of emotions begins with the appearance in 1884 of an article by W. James "What is an emotion?". W. James and, independently of him, G. Lange formulated a theory according to which the emergence of emotions is due to changes both in the voluntary motor sphere and in the sphere of involuntary acts under the influence of external influences. The sensations associated with these changes are emotional experiences. According to James, "we are sad because we cry; we are afraid because we tremble; we rejoice because we laugh." Thus, peripheral organic changes, which were usually considered as a consequence of emotions, became their cause. From here, a simplified interpretation of the arbitrary regulation of emotions becomes clear - it was believed that unwanted emotions, such as grief, can be suppressed if you intentionally perform actions characteristic of achieving positive emotions.
The concept of James - Lange caused a number of objections. The main points of criticism were expressed by W. Cannon, who drew attention to the fact that the bodily reactions that occur with different emotions are very similar to each other and, as such, are insufficient to satisfactorily explain the qualitative diversity of human emotions. In addition, organic changes artificially induced in humans are by no means always accompanied by emotional experiences.
According to Cannon, bodily processes during emotions are biologically expedient, since they serve as a preliminary adjustment of the whole organism to a situation when an increased expenditure of energy resources is required from it. Emotional experiences and their corresponding organic changes occur in the same center - the thalamus. Later, P. Bard showed that not the thalamus itself is associated with emotions from all brain structures, but the hypothalamus and the central part of the limbic system. By publishing the book Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872, Charles Darwin showed the evolutionary path of the development of emotions and substantiated the origin of their physiological manifestations. The essence of his evolutionary theory of the emergence and development of emotions is that emotions are either useful or are only remnants (rudiments) of various expedient reactions that were developed in the process of evolution in the struggle for existence. An angry person blushes, breathes heavily and clenches his fists because in his primitive history, all anger led people to a fight, and it required energetic muscle contractions and, therefore, increased breathing and blood circulation, which ensured muscle work. He explained sweating of the hands with fear by the fact that in ape-like human ancestors, this reaction in case of danger made it easier to grasp the branches of trees. Thus, Darwin proved that in the development and manifestation of emotions there is no impassable abyss between man and animals. In particular, he showed that in the external expression of emotions, anthropoids and blind children have much in common.
The "associative" theory of W. Wundt (1880) envisaged to some extent the influence of ideas on feelings, and, on the other hand, characterized emotions as internal changes, characterized by the direct influence of feelings on the flow of ideas. "Bodily" reactions Wundt considers only as a consequence of feelings. According to Wundt, facial expressions arose initially in connection with elementary sensations, as a reflection of the emotional tone of sensations; higher, more complex feelings (emotions) developed later. When an emotion arises in a person’s mind, it always evokes by association a lower feeling or sensation corresponding to it, close in content, which causes those mimic movements that correspond to the emotional tone of sensations. So, for example, facial expressions of contempt (pushing the lower lip forward) are similar to the movement that accompanies spitting out something unpleasant that has fallen into a person’s mouth.
At the end of the 19th century, experiments conducted by physiologists with the destruction of structures that conduct somatosensory and viscerosensory information to the brain allowed C. Sherrington to conclude that the vegetative manifestations of emotions are secondary to its brain component, which is expressed by a mental state.
Physiologist W. Cannon, conducted experimental studies on the study of emotions with the exclusion of all physiological manifestations. When the nerve pathways between the internal organs and the cerebral cortex were cut, the subjective experience was still preserved. Physiological shifts develop with many emotions secondarily, as an adaptive phenomenon (to mobilize the reserve capabilities of the body in case of danger and the fear generated by it, as a form of discharge of tension that has arisen in the central nervous system). Cannon's research revealed two patterns. First, the physiological changes that occur with different emotions are very similar to each other and do not reflect their qualitative originality. Secondly, these physiological changes unfold slowly, while emotional experiences occur quickly, that is, they precede the physiological reaction. He also showed that artificially induced physiological changes that are characteristic of certain strong emotions do not always cause the expected emotional behavior. From the point of view of Cannon, emotions arise as a result of a specific reaction of the central nervous system and, in particular, the thalamus.
According to Cannon, the stages of the emergence of emotions and the physiological changes accompanying it can be represented as follows: the action of the stimulus -> excitation of the thalamus -> development of emotion -> the occurrence of physiological changes. In later studies, P. Bard supplemented Cannon's ideas and showed that emotional experiences and physiological the shifts accompanying them occur almost simultaneously.
3. Freud's psychoanalytic theory of emotions included peculiar views on the development of affect, the theory of drives. Z. Freud essentially identified both affect and attraction with motivation. The most concentrated view of psychoanalysts on the mechanisms of the emergence of emotions is given by D. Rapaport. The essence of these representations is as follows: a perceptual image perceived from the outside causes an unconscious process, during which an instinctive energy is mobilized unconsciously by a person; if it cannot find application in the external activity of a person (in the case when the attraction is tabooed by the culture existing in a given society), it looks for other channels of discharge in the form of involuntary activity. Different types of such activity are "emotional expression" and "emotional experience". They can appear simultaneously, alternately, or even independently of each other.
Freud and his followers considered only negative emotions arising from conflicting drives. Therefore, they single out three aspects in affect: the energy component of instinctive attraction (the "charge" of affect), the process of "discharge" and the perception of the final discharge (sensation or experience of emotion).
Freud's understanding of the mechanisms of the emergence of emotions as unconscious instinctive drives has been criticized by many scientists.
V. K. Vilyunas rightly notes that “much of what is traditionally called the promising word “theory” in the teaching of emotions is, in essence, rather separate fragments, only in aggregate approaching ... an ideally exhaustive theory” (1984, p. .6). Each of them sticks out some one aspect of the problem, thereby considering only a special case of the occurrence of an emotion or some of its components. The trouble is that the theories created in different historical eras do not have continuity. And can there be, in principle, a unified theory for although related to each other, but still such different emotional phenomena as the emotional tone of sensations, emotions and feelings.
Since the time when philosophers and natural scientists began to seriously think about the nature and essence of emotions, two main positions have arisen. Scientists occupying one of them, intellectualistic, most clearly marked by I.-F. Herbart (1824-1825), argued that organic manifestations of emotions are the result of mental phenomena. According to Herbart, emotion is a connection that is established between representations. Emotion is a mental disorder caused by a mismatch (conflict) between ideas. This affective state involuntarily causes vegetative changes.
Representatives of another position - the sensualists - on the contrary, declared that organic reactions affect mental phenomena. F. Dufour (Dufour, 1883) wrote about this: “Have I not proved enough that the source of our natural inclination to passions lies not in the soul, but is connected with the ability of the autonomic nervous system to inform the brain about the excitation it receives, that if we cannot arbitrarily regulate the functions of blood circulation, digestion, secretion, then it is impossible, therefore, in this case, to explain by our will the violations of these functions that arose under the influence of passions ”(p. 388).
These two positions were later developed in the cognitive theories of emotions and in the peripheral theory of emotions by W. James - G. Lange.
3.1. Evolutionary theory of emotions by Ch. Darwin
Having published the book Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872, Charles Darwin showed the evolutionary path of the development of emotions and substantiated the origin of their physiological manifestations. The essence of his ideas is that emotions are either useful, or they are only remnants (rudiments) of various expedient reactions that were developed in the process of evolution in the struggle for existence. An angry person blushes, breathes heavily and clenches his fists because in his primitive history, all anger led people to a fight, and it required energetic muscle contractions and, therefore, increased breathing and blood circulation, which ensured muscle work. He explained the sweating of the hands during fear by the fact that in ape-like human ancestors this reaction in case of danger made it easier to grasp the branches of trees.
Thus, Darwin proved that in the development and manifestation of emotions there is no impassable abyss between man and animals. In particular, he showed that in the external expression of emotions, anthropoids and blind children have much in common.
The ideas expressed by Darwin served as an impetus for the creation of other theories of emotions, in particular the "peripheral" theory of W. James - G. Lange.
3.2. "Associative" theory of W. Wundt
The ideas of W. Wundt (1880) about emotions are quite eclectic. On the one hand, he adhered to Herbart's point of view that, to some extent, ideas influence feelings, and on the other hand, he believed that emotions are primarily internal changes characterized by the direct influence of feelings on the flow of ideas.
Wundt considers "bodily" reactions only as a consequence of feelings. According to Wundt, facial expressions arose initially in connection with elementary sensations, as a reflection of the emotional tone of sensations; higher, more complex feelings (emotions) developed later. However, when some emotion arises in a person's consciousness, it each time evokes by association a lower feeling or sensation corresponding to it, close in content. It is what causes those mimic movements that correspond to the emotional tone of sensations. So, for example, facial expressions of contempt (pushing the lower lip forward) are similar to the movement when a person spits out something unpleasant that has fallen into his mouth.
3.3. "Peripheral" theory of W. James-G. Lange
The American psychologist W. James (1884) put forward a "peripheral" theory of emotions, based on the fact that emotions are associated with certain physiological reactions, which were mentioned above. He wrote: “Usually they are expressed as follows: we have lost our fortune, we are distressed and weep; we met a bear, we are frightened and take flight; we are insulted by the enemy, enraged and strike him. According to the hypothesis I defend, the order of events must be somewhat different, namely: the first state of mind is not immediately replaced by the second. Between them there must be bodily manifestations. And therefore it is most rational to express it this way: we are saddened because we cry; enraged because we beat another; we are afraid because we tremble... If bodily manifestations did not immediately follow perception, then the latter would be in form a purely cognitive act, pale, devoid of color and emotional warmth. In this case, we might see a bear and decide that the best thing to do would be to flee, we might be insulted and find it fair to repel the blow, but we would not feel fear or indignation at the same time ”(1991, p. 275).
Regardless of W. James, the Danish pathologist K. G. Lange published a work in 1895 in which he expressed similar thoughts. But if for the first organic changes were reduced to visceral (internal organs), then for the second they were predominantly vasomotor. Joy, from his point of view, is a combination of two phenomena: increased motor innervation and expansion of blood vessels. This is where the expressive expression of this emotion comes from: fast, strong movements, loud speech, laughter. Sadness, on the contrary, is the result of a weakening of the motor innervation and narrowing of the blood vessels. Hence sluggish, slow movements, weakness and soundlessness of the voice, relaxation and silence. Lange reduced his theory to the following scheme:
Weakening of motor innervation .............................................................. ....... disappointment
Weakening of motor innervation + vasoconstriction sadness
Weakening of motor innervation + vasoconstriction + convulsions of organic muscles ....................... fear
Weakening of motor innervation + disorder of coordination .............................................. ................................................. ......... embarrassment
Strengthening of motor innervation + spasms of organic muscles.................................................................. ................................................. ................. impatience
Strengthening of motor innervation + spasms of organic muscles + dilation of blood vessels .................................................. joy
Strengthening of motor innervation + convulsions of organic muscles + dilation of blood vessels + disorder of coordination .................................................. ................................................. ................. anger
From the standpoint of the James-Lange theory, the act of generating an emotion is as follows:
stimulus -> occurrence of physiological changes -> signals about these changes to the brain -> emotion (emotional experience). (1)
The meaning of this paradoxical statement is that an arbitrary change in facial expressions and pantomimics leads to the involuntary appearance of the corresponding emotions. Depict anger - and you yourself will begin to experience this feeling; start laughing - and you will become funny; try to walk in the morning, barely dragging your feet, with your hands down, your back bent and a sad mine on your face - and your mood will really deteriorate. On the other hand, suppress the outward manifestation of the emotion and it will disappear.
W. James did not always provide indisputable evidence for his hypothesis. For example, he describes the story of an acquaintance who experienced fear during seizures associated with difficulty in taking a deep breath, and considers this evidence that the emotion here is simply a sensation of a bodily state and its cause is a purely physiological process. However, the appearance of fear in the described case can be explained in another way: a person who has difficulty in inhaling feared that he would suffocate, and it was the consciousness of this that caused him to experience fear.
One can object to me: if I say that a person was afraid, then this means that he was already afraid, that is, he was afraid. But fear is most often just a probabilistic forecast, a person's assessment of a future event. And it is precisely about this unfavorable prognosis for the life of the subject, i.e. mental process, and not physiological, an emotion arises in him (and not necessarily fear, it can also be anxiety), leading not only to the experience of danger, but also to a physiological response to it. Thus, there is no identity between fear as a forecast and fear as an emotion.
In line with the James-Lange theory, G. Munsterberg also understood the mechanism of the emergence of emotions. Considering the role of the teacher in the upbringing of children, and in particular in managing their emotional sphere, he resolutely opposed the position of the teacher as a passive observer of the emotional life of children, powerless to intervene in the process programmed by nature. “If feelings really were what vulgar psychology tends to see in them, then it would inevitably seem like a hopeless task to try to train and educate them. Artificially give them one form or another. The teacher would be forced to play the role of a passive spectator and wait for natural development, Munsterberg writes. - What could he do in order to change the responses that are born in the soul, since, thanks to the device given by nature, just such and such a wave of organic excitation spreads through the nervous system? He could do just as little to keep the taste of sugar not pleasant and the taste of fish oil to cause pleasure, as he could not achieve that the grass was not green and the sky blue. In such a case, there would be no possibility, no means of mastering feeling... The teacher would have to admit that although he can force or persuade the child to swallow the disgusting fish oil, despite the unpleasantness of this action, he still does not able to turn displeasure into pleasure.
The ordinary view of feelings causes the teacher, if he thinks about it, to fall into a discouraging pessimism. Most important factor inner life seems to be beyond his control. He should just wait for changes... He can only wait with folded hands. And how the perspective changes if the teacher recognizes the presence of a moving element in every feeling and understands that feeling itself is the result of a reaction! ... Convince the child to take an unpleasant medicine with a laughing face and a wide stretch of the whole body, so that he opens his eyes wide and stretches out his arms - in a word, try to artificially recreate all those movements that would express great pleasure. If the child thus opens wide the paths for performing those movements which are the opposite of the involuntary reaction, and if he repeats this experience with some perseverance and energy, the unpleasant medicine will very soon lose its disgustingness and become indifferent” (1997, p. 202-203) .
So, according to Münsterberg, feeling (the emotional tone of sensations, which was discussed in his statement above) is the reaction of the personality to the impression (sensation) received, which is prolonged or interrupted by means of movements. But a completely illogical conclusion follows from this correct postulate: “Thus, the group of muscular sensations that accompany the general expansion is represented in our self-consciousness as pleasure, and the sensations from contraction are displeasure” (Ibid., p. 199). Hence the simple solution to the question: if you want the object to be pleasant, move closer to it, and if you want it to be unpleasant, move away from it, since “the stimulus is pleasant, because, perceiving it, we notice that we are approaching” (Ibid., p. 197). “When we use the sensations that are obtained from these actions of approach and removal in order to catch the stimulus that moves us, then they appear to us simply as expressions of “pleasantness” and “unpleasantness” ”(Ibid., p. 196).
In general, it should be noted that it is difficult to fully understand Münsterberg's views on emotions. Giving hypertrophied significance to motor reactions, he at the same time expresses thoughts that contradict the “peripheral” theory of James-Lange: “Even less should we draw a caricature of the stated view, imagining that purely external behavior can completely change a deeply embedded emotion or feeling” or: “We can experience the emotion of sadness, even if we smile in order to hide it ...” (Ibid., p. 205). “... In such cases, an external smile can even sharpen the feeling of contrast with internal displeasure. If we artificially change these internal reactions, then we really influence the emotion itself” (Ibid., p. 206). So figure it out here, what kind of "internal reactions" or motor elements of feelings are we talking about. If Munsterberg means “motor discharges”, this is one thing, if expression (facial expressions, pantomimes) is another, and if the motor actions of approaching an emotional object or moving away from it are third. Nevertheless, one gets the impression that most often by motor emotional reactions he means “disposition to action”, that is, what is commonly called motivation for action july .
J. Watson (Watson, 1930), the main representative of behaviorism, for whom : all behavior was built on the principle of "stimulus-reaction" and therefore any introspection was "psychologization", criticizing the James-Lange theory, he wrote that, in accordance with it, the best way to study emotions would be to freeze at the moment of their appearance and start introspection. However, in his criticism, I think he went too far, believing that it is impossible to study emotions scientifically.
We can agree that the James-Lange theory has many weaknesses and does not explain all cases of emotional response. Its essential drawback, in my opinion, is the unnatural appearance of emotions. In fact, why should I cry for no reason, and thereby cause a sad mood in myself? Or why should I laugh for no reason in order to become cheerful? In short, why do I always have to play some kind of role as an artist? The emergence of emotions is biologically expedient - there is a discharge of the tension that has arisen, the mobilization of the body's energy resources, etc. The James-Lange theory does not explain this expediency. Moreover, she simply ignores her.
E. Claparede (Claparede, 1928) tried to reconcile the "classical" theory (perception - emotion - experiencing emotions - organic reactions) with the "peripheral" theory. To do this, between the perception of a dangerous situation and the emotion of fear, he introduced a “sense of danger”, which is a reflection of the motor installation that preceded it. As a result, the whole chain of unfolding events takes the following form:
He supports his scheme with the following argument: life observations indicate that the emotion of fear follows a sense of danger when a person is unable to escape or defend himself. It should be added here that fear also arises when a dangerous situation ended successfully due to chance or human actions, but the person begins to realize how it all could have ended.
E. Claparede believes that in cases where an emotion arises suddenly, for example, when we are frightened by an unexpected and loud sound, the James-Lange theory retains its full value in its usual form. It seems to me that he expressed a reasonable thought: it is only because of the biased and unjustified unified interpretation of emotions that classical and “peripheral” theories of emotions seem irreconcilable. It is enough to abandon the attitude to emotions as processes proceeding according to some single pattern, and then one class of emotions can be explained from the standpoint of classical theories, and the other class - from the standpoint of a "peripheral" theory.
Indeed, it is rather strange that critics of the "peripheral" theory of emotions somehow do not notice that it realistically explains the emergence of the emotional tone of sensations. After all, one cannot seriously believe that the experience of pleasant or unpleasant appears before the reaction of receptors to one or another stimulus occurs, or before shortness of breath, stiffness in the muscles, etc., appears, i.e., before the physiological reaction.
It should be noted that there are supporters of this point of view. G. Coghill (Koghill, 1929) and K. Herrick (Herrick, 1956) develop views according to which emotions are phylo- and ontogenetically an earlier form of reflection than sensations. Such primitive emotions are closely related to movements aimed at increasing contact with a useful object or decreasing contact with a harmful object. Among domestic psychologists, this concept is adhered to by K. K. Platonov (1972). He writes that the elementary analyzers in the simplest animals at first gave only two subjectively perceived qualitative signals: vitally useful and vitally harmful. They were two elementary experiences, which later took the form of pleasure and displeasure. In this elementary form, emotions are almost indistinguishable from the simplest need as a reflection of the need for something. The experience of need becomes an effective trigger for a biologically expedient motor reaction. At the same time, emotions were the basis on which sensations developed as a higher form of reflection, giving a subjective image of the objective world. With the development of sensations, emotions also improved, but still continue to be polar ugly experiences.
For example, a feeling of discomfort (negative emotional tone) during prolonged breath holding occurs due to a sharp drop in the oxygen content in the blood. Another negative emotional tone - an unpleasant, painful feeling of fatigue (discomfort) during physical work - is the result of physicochemical changes in the muscles, increased breathing, etc., and not physiological changes due to the appearance of a feeling of fatigue. Among domestic psychologists, the idea that organic changes play a role in the development of certain emotional states was defended by S. L. Rubinshtein.
Another fact that the critics of W. James do not pay any attention to is that under physiological changes he also understood psychomotor changes (expression), in particular, facial expressions (hence - sad, because we cry).
The result of the discussions was mutual concessions. Opponents of this theory recognized that bodily manifestations of emotions affect the emotion itself, giving it new strength, intensity, and W. James, in the later presentations of his theory, recognized that feelings of pain and pleasure can cause bodily changes, that is, precede them. In addition, James changed his view on the mechanism of the appearance of bodily changes. If earlier he believed that they appear as a simple unconditioned reflex reaction of the organism to an external stimulus, then later he attributed these changes to more complex forms of motor reactions. These reactions presuppose an awareness of the significance that an external impression has for a person. The latter is “understood” by a person, is for him the “subject” of emotional experience, that is, it comes from the higher centers of behavior control.
3.4. Theory of W. Cannon - P. Barda
Experiments carried out by physiologists at the end of the 19th century with the destruction of structures that conduct somatosensory and viscerosensory information to the brain gave Ch. Sherrington (Sherrington, 1900) a reason to conclude that vegetative manifestations of emotions are secondary to its brain component, which is expressed by a mental state. The James-Lange theory was also sharply criticized by the physiologist W. Kennon (Cannon, 1927), and he also had grounds for this. So, with the exclusion of all physiological manifestations in the experiment (during the dissection of the nerve pathways between the internal organs and the cerebral cortex), the subjective experience was still preserved. Physiological shifts occur with many emotions as a secondary adaptive phenomenon, for example, to mobilize the body's reserve capabilities in case of danger and the fear generated by it, or as a form of discharge of tension that has arisen in the central nervous system.
Kennon pointed out two things. First, the physiological changes that occur with different emotions are very similar to each other and do not reflect their qualitative originality. Secondly, these physiological changes unfold slowly, while emotional experiences occur quickly, that is, they precede the physiological reaction.
He also showed that artificially induced physiological changes that are characteristic of certain strong emotions do not always cause the expected emotional behavior. From the point of view of Cannon, emotions arise as a result of a specific reaction of the central nervous system and, in particular, the thalamus.
Thus, according to Cannon, the scheme of the stages of the emergence of emotions and the physiological changes that accompany it looks like this:
stimulus -> thalamus excitation -> emotion -> physiological changes. (2)
In later studies, P. Bard (Bard, 1934 a, b) showed that emotional experiences and the physiological changes that accompany them occur almost simultaneously. Thus, scheme (2) takes on a slightly different form:
3.5. Psychoanalytic theory of emotions
3. Freud based his understanding of affect on drive theory and essentially identified both affect and drive with motivation. The most concentrated view of psychoanalysts on the mechanisms of the emergence of emotions is given by D. Rapaport (Rapaport, 1960). The essence of these representations is as follows: a perceptual image perceived from the outside causes an unconscious process, during which an instinctive energy is mobilized unconsciously by a person; if it cannot find application in the external activity of a person (in the case when the attraction is tabooed by the culture existing in a given society), it looks for other channels of discharge in the form of involuntary activity; different types of such activity are "emotional expression" and "emotional experience". They can appear simultaneously, alternately, or even independently of each other.
Freud and his followers considered only negative emotions arising from conflicting drives. Therefore, they single out three aspects in affect: the energy component of instinctive attraction (the "charge" of affect), the process of "discharge" and the perception of the final discharge (sensation or experience of emotion).
Freud's understanding of the mechanisms of the emergence of emotions as unconscious instinctive drives has been criticized by many scientists (Holt, 1967 and others).
3.6. Vascular theory of expression of emotions by I. Weinbaum and its modification
At the beginning of the 20th century, I. Weinbaum noted the close interaction between facial muscles and cerebral blood flow, from which he suggested that facial muscles regulate blood flow. By acting oppositely on the veins and arteries, they increase the inflow or outflow of blood to the brain. The latter is accompanied by a change in subjective experiences.
In our time, R. Zayants revived this theory, but in a modified form. Unlike Weinbaum, he believes that the muscles of the face do not regulate arterial blood flow, but the outflow of venous blood. In one of the experiments (Adelman, Zajonc, 1989) with blowing warm and cold air into the nostrils, it was shown that the former is rated as pleasant, and the latter as unpleasant. This was regarded by the authors as the result of a change in the temperature of the brain, including the hypothalamus, due to a change in the temperature of the blood flowing into the brain.
This theory is confirmed by the connection of the sign of emotions with the temperature of the forehead, as well as the correlation between changes in blood temperature and the emotional tone of sensations, depending on the pronounced phonemes. Adelman and Zayants explain this by saying that when different phonemes are pronounced, different facial muscles are activated, which leads to different cooling of venous blood.
According to Zayanets, in some cases, efferent signals from the facial muscles can initiate emotional experiences. Thus, the author partially revives the James-Lange theory of emotions.
3.7. Biological theory of emotions by P. K. Anokhin
Within the framework of this theory, emotions are considered as a biological product of evolution, an adaptive factor in the life of animals.
The emergence of needs leads, according to P. K. Anokhin (1949, 1968), to the emergence of negative emotions, which play a mobilizing role, contributing to the most rapid satisfaction of needs in the best way. When feedback confirms that the programmed result has been achieved, that is, that the need has been satisfied, a positive emotion arises. It acts as the ultimate reinforcing factor. Being fixed in memory, in the future it participates in the motivational process, influencing the decision to choose the way to satisfy the need. If the result obtained is not consistent with the program, emotional anxiety arises, leading to the search for other, more successful ways to achieve the goal.
Repeated satisfaction of needs, colored with positive emotion, contributes to learning the appropriate activity, and repeated failures in obtaining the programmed result cause inhibition of inefficient activity and the search for new, more successful ways to achieve the goal.
3.8. Frustration theories of emotion
This group of theories explains the emergence of negative emotions as a result of dissatisfaction of needs, drives, as a result of failure. In this case, we are talking about rational emotions, i.e., emotions that arise not as an assessment of the stimulus, which is observed with unconditional reflex emotional reactions, but as an assessment of the degree of success (or rather, failure) of achieving the goal, satisfaction of need. These are emotions of annoyance, anger, anger, rage, fear.
The development of these theories was initiated by J. Dewey (Deway, 1895). He believed that emotion arises only when the implementation of instinctive actions or arbitrary forms of behavior encounters an obstacle. In this case, trying to adapt to new conditions of life, a person experiences an emotion. Dewey wrote that psychologically emotion is an adaptation or tension of habits and an ideal, and organic change is a manifestation of this struggle for adaptation.
Close to this position is the point of view of E. Claparede (1928): emotions arise only when, for one reason or another, adaptation becomes difficult. If a person can run away, he is not afraid.
In subsequent years, L. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance arose and was thoroughly developed (Festinger, 1962; Russian translation - 2000). According to this theory, when there is a discrepancy between the expected and actual results of an activity (cognitive dissonance), negative emotions arise, while the coincidence of expectation and result (cognitive consonance) leads to the appearance of positive emotions. The emotions arising from dissonance and consonance are considered in this theory as the main motives for the corresponding human behavior.
Despite many studies confirming the correctness of this theory, there are other data showing that in some cases, dissonance can also cause positive emotions (Hunt, 1962). According to J. Hunt, for the emergence of positive emotions, a certain degree of discrepancy between attitudes and signals is necessary, some “optimum discrepancy” (novelty, unusualness, inconsistency, etc.). If the signal does not differ from the previous ones, then it is evaluated as uninteresting; if it differs too much, it will seem dangerous, unpleasant, annoying, etc.
3.9. Cognitivist theories of emotion
These theories emerged as a consequence of the development of cognitive psychology and reflect the point of view according to which the main mechanism for the appearance of emotions is cognitive processes.
Cognitive-physiological theory of emotions by S. Shekhter. This theory was developed by S. Schachter (Schachter, 1964) and colleagues within the framework of cognitivist theories of emotions. It was found that visceral reactions that cause an increase in the activation of the body, although they are a necessary condition for the emergence of an emotional state, are not sufficient, since they determine only the intensity of the emotional response, but not its sign and modality. According to this theory, some event or situation causes excitement and a person needs to evaluate its content, i.e., the situation that caused this excitement. According to Schechter, the emergence of emotions, along with the perceived stimuli and the physiological changes generated by them in the body, is influenced by a person's past experience and his assessment of the current situation from the point of view of current needs and interests. Thus, the visceral reaction causes emotion not directly, but indirectly.
This point of view is supported by the fact that the emergence of emotions can be determined by verbal instructions and emotional information intended to change the assessment of the situation that has arisen (i.e., when using the phenomenon attributions).
So, in one experiment, people were given a physiologically neutral solution as a "medicine", and in one case they were told that this "medicine" would cause them euphoria, and in the other - a state of anger. And indeed, after taking the "medicine" after the time period allotted by the instructions, the subjects had the expected emotional experiences.
In favor of cognitive theories of emotions is the fact that the visceral reactions caused by the introduction of adrenaline depended on the situation of the experiment and the nature of the instructions: in one case they evoked a reaction of anger, in another - fear, in the third - joy, etc. (Schachter , Singer, 1962).
Experiments with false feedback. The emotional attitude of the subjects to the perceived objects was determined in such an experience not by real visceral changes, but by the assessment of false information about visceral changes that allegedly occur during the perception of certain objects (Valins, 1970).
It was also shown that the nature and intensity of a person's emotional experiences largely depend on how other people nearby empathize with this person. Moreover, this effect depends on how the empathizer relates to the person he empathizes with.
According to Schechter, emotional states are the result of the interaction of two components: activation ("arousal") and the conclusion of a person about the reasons for his excitation based on an analysis of the situation in which the emotion appeared.
However, the verification of Schechter's hypothesis in many cases did not confirm it. For example, attributing the cause of an emotional state to a neutral factor did not in all cases lead to a decrease in the intensity of the experience. Negative results in these experiments were obtained on individuals with high personal anxiety, as well as those in a state of stress. This method is not. worked in the clinic, which is explained by the strong concentration of patients' attention on the true causes of their illnesses. X. Leventhal and A. Tomarken (Leventhal, Tomarken, 1986) showed that the phenomenon of attribution occurs only in new conditions and with an average level of negative effects.
Cognitive theory of emotions M. Arnold - R. Lazarus. The concepts of M. Arnold (Arnold, 1960) and R. Lazarus (Lazarus, 1991) are also in line with the views of S. Shakhter. For M. Arnold, an intuitive assessment of an object acts as a cognitive determinant of emotions. Emotion, like action, follows this assessment. “First I see something, then I imagine that this “something” is dangerous - and as soon as I imagine it, I am scared and run” (p. 178). Thus, according to Arnold, we are afraid because we think we are being threatened. She believes that as soon as a person in a direct and intuitive way comes to the conclusion that this or that subject is worth mastering, he immediately feels the attraction of this subject. As soon as a person intuitively concludes that something threatens him, he immediately feels that it has acquired a repulsive character and that it must be avoided. The emerging tendency to act, being expressed in various bodily changes, is experienced as an emotion. Evaluation, according to Arnold, is characterized by instantaneousness, immediacy and unintentionality, i.e., intuitiveness. This intuitive evaluation is understood by the author as a "sensory judgment", in contrast to the abstract "reflexive judgment".
In the concept of R. Lazarus (Lazarus et al., 1970), the idea of cognitive determination of emotions is also central. He believes that cognitive mediation is a necessary condition for the emergence of emotions. However, he criticizes M. Arnold for the fact that the concept of "assessment" remains subjective and is not associated with facts that can be directly observed, which leads to ignoring the question of the conditions that determine the assessment. In addition, Lazarus does not agree with Arnold about the fact that the assessment is recognized by her as sensual (emotional) in nature.
Two provisions are central to the concept of Lazarus:
- every emotional reaction, regardless of its content, is a function of a special kind of cognition or evaluation;
- the emotional response is a kind of syndrome, each of the components of which reflects some important point in the overall reaction.
The central concept of the concept of Lazarus is "threat", understood as an assessment of the situation based on the anticipation of a future encounter (confrontation) with harm, and the anticipation is based on signals assessed using cognitive processes. In essence, Lazarus considers affective reactions, and not just experience, since for him emotion, judging by the first and especially the last works, is a syndrome that includes three main groups of symptoms - subjective experiences, physiological changes and motor reactions. As soon as a certain stimulus is assessed as threatening, the processes aimed at eliminating or reducing harm, i.e., the processes of overcoming the threat, are immediately put into action. Tendencies to act on the presence of a threat and its elimination are reflected in various symptoms of emotional reactions.
Thus, the scheme of the emergence of emotion looks like this:
perception -> primary assessment -> exploratory activity -> (personal meaning of actions in the assessed situation) -> secondary assessment -> tendency to action -> emotion as a manifestation of a tendency in experience, physiological changes and motor reactions.
According to Lazarus, each individual emotion is associated with a different assessment inherent in it. Therefore, this or that structure of emotional excitation is a derivative of impulses for action, developed by evaluating the situation and evaluating possible alternatives to action. In this case, the assessment can be carried out at any level of consciousness.
Positive in the views of the author is that the determinants of evaluation are both situational factors and dispositional, i.e. personality traits. Hence, the same situation evokes different assessments in different people and, as a result, different emotional reactions. However, it should be noted that in Lazarus's theory too much attention is paid to both the analysis of the determinants of the evaluation process and adaptive reactions to the perception of a threat, and less to the mechanisms of the emergence of the emotion itself.
A detailed critical analysis of the concept of Lazarus was given by I. A. Vasiliev (1976). Assessing this concept as a whole as a step forward on the path of rapprochement between emotion and action, the emotional sphere and behavior, he makes a number of remarks. The most significant, in my opinion, are the following.
1. Emotion appears not only at the end of cognitive activity as its result, but also in the course of cognitive activity, contributing to its success. Lazurus ignores this.
2. There are two meanings of the concept of "evaluation", in one of which the emotion itself performs an evaluative function (emotional evaluation). Lazarus does not correlate his understanding of evaluation with the existing one in psychology, which creates uncertainty in its interpretation.
3. Lazarus proves the dependence of the emergence of emotions on evaluation, using primitive cognitive activity in experiments. Therefore, the actual evaluation processes remain hypothetical in the author's concept.
4. Lazarus, identifying motivation only with motivation, i.e. narrowing this concept, criticizes the motivational theory of emotions not entirely justifiably. (This is striking; after all, the diagram above itself resembles the stages in the development of motivation.)
5. If emotion is the final stage of the evaluation process, then it remains unexplained what it is for.
Finally, it is hardly justified to associate the emergence of emotions only with cognitive activity.
Another version of the cognitive theory of emotions (Ortony et al., 1988) argues that only the verbal factor (language and self-report) is relevant to the mechanism of triggering emotional experiences. At the same time, physiological and behavioral manifestations of emotions are considered only an accompaniment or consequence of these experiences. According to N. Frijda (Frijda, 1986), the neurophysiological mechanism is not capable of evoking emotions, it only creates the conditions for them.
K. Izard (Izard, 1993) notes that information processing processes can be not only controlled by human consciousness, but also automatic. And if this is so, then some information processes that generate emotions may not be cognitive.
Cognitive theories do not take into account the presence of emotions that arise unconditionally reflexively. Biologically significant stimuli are the source of various emotional experiences. At least, all experiences associated with the emotional tone of sensations (pleasant - unpleasant, pain, etc.) cause an emotional response on their own, without cognitive processes. Many emotions do not require the participation of the cerebral cortex and the processes of conscious processing of information. J. LeDoyx (1989) showed that when the visual and auditory cortex is removed from rats, the fear reaction occurs when the subcortical structures of the thalamus and amygdala are excited. Thus, often we first feel, experience the sensation, and only then do we recognize and understand what we experience. Therefore, the way in which emotion arises may not only be as described by cognitive theories:
cognitive process (attribution) -> emotion,
but also like this:
sensation -> emotional response -> cognitive responses -> increased emotional response.
As noted by N. N. Danilova (2000), cognitive, evaluative operations that affect emotions are realized in the brain, which is already emotional and is not affectively neutral. She believes that a purely cognitive determinant of emotions does not exist at all. Emotion to a significant stimulus is the unity of affective-cognitive processes.
3.10. Information theory of emotions by P. V. Simonova
The original hypothesis about the causes of the appearance of emotions was put forward by P. V. Simonov (1966, 1970, 1986). He believes that emotions appear due to a lack or excess of information necessary to satisfy a need. The degree of emotional stress is determined, according to P. V. Simonov, by the strength of the need and the magnitude of the deficit of pragmatic information necessary to achieve the goal. This is presented by him in the form of a "formula of emotions":
E \u003d - P (In - Is),
where E - emotion; P - need; Ying - information necessary to meet the need; IS - information that the subject has at the time of the need.
It follows from this formula that emotion arises only when there is a need. There is no need, there is no emotion either, since the product E = 0 (In - Is) also becomes equal to zero. There will be no emotion even if there is a need, and (In - Is) \u003d 0, that is, if a person has the information necessary to satisfy the need (Is - In). Simonov substantiates the importance of the difference (In - Is) by the fact that on its basis a probabilistic forecast of meeting the need is built. This formula gave Simonov reason to say that “thanks to emotions, a paradoxical at first glance assessment is provided. measures of ignorance"(1970, p. 48).
In a normal situation, a person orients his behavior to signals of highly probable events (that is, to what happened more often in the past). Due to this, his behavior in most cases is adequate and leads to the achievement of the goal. In conditions of complete certainty, the goal can be achieved without the help of emotions.
However, in unclear situations, when a person does not have accurate information in order to organize his behavior to satisfy the need, another tactic of responding to signals is needed. Negative emotions, as Simonov writes, arise when there is a lack of information necessary to achieve the goal, which happens most often in life. For example, the emotion of fear and anxiety develop with a lack of information necessary for protection, i.e., with a low probability of avoiding an undesirable effect, and frustration develops with a low probability of achieving the desired goal.
Emotions contribute to the search for new information by increasing the sensitivity of analyzers (sense organs), and this, in turn, leads to a response to an expanded range of external signals and improves information retrieval from memory. As a result, when solving the problem, unlikely or random associations can be used, which would not be considered in a calm state. This increases the chances of achieving the goal. Although responding to an extended range of signals whose usefulness is not yet known is redundant and irregular, it prevents the really important signal from being missed, the ignoring of which can cost a life.
All these arguments of P. V. Simonov can hardly cause serious objections. The point, however, is that he tries All cases of the emergence of emotions "to drive into the Procrustean bed" of his formula and recognizes his theory the only true and comprehensive one.
Simonov (1970) believes that the merit of his theory and the "formula of emotions" based on it is that it "categorically contradicts the view of positive emotions as a satisfied need", because in the equality E = - P (In - Is) the emotion will be equal to zero when the need disappears. From his point of view, a positive emotion will arise only if the received information will exceed the previously available forecast regarding the probability of achieving the goal - meeting the need, i.e. when Is is greater than Ying. Then, for example, an athlete, if this postulate is true, in case of success, i.e., satisfaction of the need to become the winner of the competition or break the record, should not experience any emotions if this success was expected by him. He should only rejoice unexpected success, i.e. when the forecast was worse than it turned out. Otherwise, a person will have neither joy nor triumph if he finds himself at a goal, the achievement of which was obviously not in doubt. And indeed, why, for example, should an athlete - a master who defeated a beginner rejoice?
Thus, P. V. Simonov is trying to refute the theory of "drive reduction" of Western psychologists (Hull, 1951 and others), according to which living systems tend to reduce the need, and the elimination or reduction of the need leads to a positive emotional reaction. He also opposes the views of P. K. Anokhin, who, in essence, adheres to the theory of "reduction" when presenting his "biological" theory of emotions. According to Anokhin (1976), "a positive emotional state such as the satisfaction of some need arises only if the feedback from the results of the action that has taken place ... exactly matches the apparatus of the action acceptor." On the contrary, “the discrepancy between the reverse afferent sendings from the defective results of the act and the acceptor of the action leads to the emergence of a negative emotion” (p. 14). From the point of view of Simonov, the satisfaction of vital needs, eliminating negative emotions, only contributes to the emergence of positive emotions, but does not cause them. If, under the influence of a negative emotion, a person or an animal will strive to quickly satisfy the need that caused this emotion, then everything is much more complicated with a positive emotion. Since the elimination of a need inevitably leads to the disappearance of a positive emotion, the “hedonic principle” (“the law of maximization”) induces a person and an animal to prevent the absence of a need, to look for conditions for its maintenance and renewal. “The situation is paradoxical from the point of view of the drive reduction theory,” writes Simonov (1970, p. 62). Noting the differences between positive and negative emotions, Simonov points out that the behavior of living beings is aimed at minimizing influences that can cause negative emotions and maximizing positive emotional states. But minimization has a limit in the form of zero, rest, homeostasis, and for maximization, he believes, there is no such limit, because theoretically it represents infinity. This circumstance, Simonov believes, immediately excludes positive emotions from the scope of application of the drive reduction theory.
Critical analysis of the theory of P. V. Simonov. B. I. Dodonov (1983) laid the foundation for a serious critical examination of the theory of P. V. Simonov. True, a significant part of his criticism is directed against the pejorative assessments given by P.V. Simonov of the merits of psychology in the study of emotions. But still, despite some vehemence in defending the priority of psychology on a number of points, Dodonov also gives constructive criticism. He rightly notes that its author gives a number of inconsistent interpretations to the "formula of emotions" and, first of all, because he freely handles such concepts as "information", "forecast", "probability", borrowed from cybernetics, which led to distortion of understanding of their essence and the laws connected with them.
All these seemingly minor inaccuracies lead people who adhere to a clear understanding of cybernetic terminology to a misunderstanding of what PV Simonov wants to say. It is precisely the ambiguity of Simonov’s interpretation of the “formula of emotions” and the theory itself that allows him, as Dodonov rightly notes, to easily fend off any criticism addressed to him. Dodonov also finds logical inconsistencies in a number of Simonov's examples.
Since many aspects of Simonov's theory were left out of Dodonov's field of vision, a critical examination of this theory and the "formula of emotions" is also given in one of my works (Ilyin, 2000). This criticism comes in two directions. The first is the theoretical positions of P. V. Simonov, reflected in his “formula of emotions”.
The weaknesses of this position regarding the emergence of emotions, especially positive ones, are visible to the naked eye. The "Formula of Emotions" not only does not have the indicated Simonov dignity, but also contradicts common sense and actually observed facts.
First of all, I will dwell on the position that there is no need - there is no emotion. It is difficult to argue with this, if we keep in mind the initial lack of need. However absence needs and disappearance needs in its satisfaction, i.e., achieving the goal - psychologically different situations. This is especially true for social needs. It is one thing - the initial lack of need, and hence - the absence of a motivation process, the presence of a goal. There are no them, there is no reason for the emergence of emotions. Another thing is when, as a result of the existing need and the unfolding motivational process, the goal conditioned by them is achieved. In this case, pleasure arises from the elimination of the need, and not its absence.
Contrary to Simonov's statements, people also experience joy when they expect success, that is, when their needs (desires) are satisfied. Simonov himself notes that “an unsatisfied need is necessary for positive emotions no less than for negative ones” (1981, p. 10). And this means that the main thing in the emergence of emotions is not a lack or excess of information that a person possesses, and not even having a need, and significance its satisfaction for the subject. So, in a number of cases, the presence of a social need (the need to do something) and the lack of opportunities for this will not only not cause a negative emotion, but will lead to a positive emotion. Suffice it to recall how schoolchildren rejoice when a lesson is disrupted due to a teacher's illness. And schoolchildren would have reacted completely differently to the disruption of the lesson in the event that it was a consultation for the upcoming exam.
A number of ambiguities also arise about "excessive information". Why is it needed if Is, equal to Ying, is sufficient to satisfy the need? Why should a chess player be happy only if he has several options for checkmate; can't he rejoice in only one way to achieve the goal that he has found?
What is "excess information"? One that is no longer needed to achieve a goal or make a forecast? And if it is needed for the forecast, then why is it “excessive”? And can it not happen that this "redundancy" (for example, the presence of many equivalent options for achieving the goal) will only prevent the chess player from achieving success, since he will start choosing the best of them and get into time trouble? As a result, instead of a positive emotion, information redundancy will cause a negative emotion. Simonov also writes about this: “Emotions are expedient only in a situation of information deficit. After its elimination, emotions can become more of a hindrance to the organization of actions than a factor conducive to their effectiveness” (1970, p. 86). Therefore, under certain conditions, the merits of emotions dialectically turn into their shortcomings. From this statement of Simonov, it should follow that with excessive information, positive emotions that arise are certainly harmful to the organization of human behavior. What then is their role? It is difficult to understand all these contradictory statements.
In addition, in many cases, a positive emotional background for the upcoming activity (excitement) arises precisely in connection with the uncertainty of the forecast due to a lack or absence of information at all. On the other hand, it is boring for an experienced chess player who has “overinformation” to play with a beginner. As Simonov writes, “the desire to preserve positive emotions dictates an active searching for uncertainty because the fullness of information 'kills pleasure'” (1970, p. 62). In a later work, Simonov (1987), arguing with Dodonov about whether emotions are a value, discusses cases when a person experiences positive emotions from a risk situation. “The subject deliberately creates a deficit of pragmatic information, a low probability of achieving the goal, in order to get the maximum increase in probability in the end ...” (p. 82). It is strange, however, that, while stating this, the author does not notice that he is in conflict with his formula of emotions, according to which positive emotion arises due to redundancy of information.
And doesn’t he contradict himself when he writes: “It is necessary to understand to the end that emotions are only a secondary product of the needs hidden behind them, only indicators of the degree of their satisfaction"(1981, p. 194, emphasis mine. - E. I.). I emphasize that we are not talking about the fact that emotions are indicators probabilities satisfaction of the need, on which the author insists; It's about satisfaction. Is it logical to reject the drive reduction theory after such statements?
Recognizing the presence of complex, bimodal emotions, in which there are both positive and negative experiences of a person (“I am sad and light, my sadness is bright ...”), Simonov does not even try to explain them from the point of view of the “formula of emotions”. Yes, and how to do it, after all, a person cannot have both a deficit and an excess of pragmatic information at the same time. True, he tries to explain the duality of experiences by the fact that a person immediately actualizes several needs with different probability of their satisfaction, but this is only a general phrase that the author does not disclose in any way.
In connection with the unfolding controversy, Simonov writes: “... each time we emphasize that our formula represents structural model, demonstrating the internal organization of emotions in an extremely brief and graphic form” (1981, p. 64).
But in understanding the formula as a structural model showing the internal organization of emotions, Simonov is again not accurate. On the one hand, he argues that emotions and needs are different phenomena. On the other hand, calling his formula structural, he thereby includes needs (and information too) in the structure of emotion.
So, he believes that the main constituents(!) emotional reactions are "the strength of the need and the prognostic assessment of the effectiveness of actions aimed at satisfying it" (1970, p. 34). That Simonov's last statement is not accidental is also confirmed by his phrase "transformation of need into emotional excitation" (1970, p. 28); I emphasize that this is not about the appearance of an emotional response (excitation) when a need arises, but about the transformation (transformation, transformation) of the latter into an emotion. In another work, he again repeats that “... the formula clearly reproduces a complex internal structure emotions, the interdependence of emotions, the need and the probability of its satisfaction...” (1987, p. 73). Although in the same work he can also find an exact statement regarding the relationship between emotion, need and probabilistic forecast: and unambiguously defines that objectively existing reality, that “standard” that receives subjective reflection in emotions human and higher animals: need and probability (possibility) of its satisfaction”(Ibid., p. 87, highlighted by me. - E. I.).
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In fact, the relationship between emotion, on the one hand, and need and information, on the other, is not structural, but functional, and therefore the more correct formula is the one that Simonov himself (1970) presented in a general form:
where LI \u003d Ying - Is.
This formula denotes only the dependence of the magnitude of emotions both on the magnitude of the need, and on the deficit or excess of information, and nothing more. He himself writes about this quite clearly: “an emotion is a reflection by the human and animal brain of some actual need (its quality and magnitude) and the probability (possibility) of its satisfaction, which the brain evaluates on the basis of genetic and previously acquired individual experience” (1981, p. p. 20). I emphasize that in this case he speaks only about the reflection of the need and probability by the brain, and not about the fact that both are structural components of emotion.
It no longer necessarily follows from the last formula that if (In - Is) is equal to zero, then there is no emotion. It can either take place or not. In addition, from the definition of emotion given by Simonov, it follows that the dependence of emotion on need and information that he designates has only a one-sided direction - from cause (need and information) to effect (emotion), but it does not at all follow that between emotions, needs and the probability of satisfying the latter exists interdependence, i.e. that P \u003d / (E) or / (In - Is) or that (In - Is) \u003d / (E, P). This is the case when cause and effect cannot be interchanged. Although, contrary to logic, the last two options are considered by the author. He believes that, according to the formula, an emotionally excited subject tends to exaggerate the lack of information, i.e. worsen the prognosis, and that an increase in the lack of information In many cases(but not in all!) Depresses the need, weakens it. This follows from the equality P - E: (In - Is): the greater the deficit, the less the quotient of the division E: (In - Is) will be at a constant value of emotion and, accordingly, less P. But with an increase in the deficit, information should increase, as says Simonov, and a negative emotion, then the quotient of the division should remain constant. As we can see, in this case, too, the "formula of emotions" conflicts with the logic developed by its author.
Taking into account the unidirectionality of the functional dependence of emotions on the need and the forecast, the opposite statement does not follow from the formula, that emotions increase the need. Which statement is correct? If both, then under what conditions and why is this not reflected in the formula, not explained in the text?
In general, Simonov's assertion that emotions increase the need is rather risky. After all, if you follow it, not forgetting the "formula of emotions", then the relationship between them should look like this: a need leads to the appearance of an emotion, an emotion strengthens the need, but the stronger the need, the more emotion, according to the formula, but the more emotion, the the more it intensifies the need, and so on ad infinitum. A system with positive feedback would arise, which would certainly lead the nervous system to a breakdown. It seems to me that emotion arises not to enhance the need, but to enhance the activity of the motivational process and motivation aimed at satisfying the need. B. I. Dodonov correctly noted that in the “formula of emotions”, based on Simonov’s reasoning, P should be replaced by M (motive).
It should also follow from the formula that the need affects the forecasting (estimation) of the probability of achieving the goal. The question is - why? And doesn't the author himself claim that the forecast depends on the difference (In - Is), that is, on information, and not on need? The author’s statement also raises doubts that “for a huge variety of emotions, it is typical to predict the probability of achieving the goal (satisfying the need) for unconscious level” (1983, p. 137).
Criticism of the "formula of emotions" as a tool for measuring the intensity of emotional stress. Initially, P.V. Simonov believed that this formula can be both structural, i.e., it shows what exactly constitutes basis emotions, and quantitative, ie express and intensity of emotion. The author notes that his formula “is by no means a purely symbolic record of the factors whose interaction leads to the emergence of emotional tension. The formula reflects the quantitative dependence of the intensity of emotional reactions on the strength of the need and the size of the deficit or increase in information necessary to satisfy it” (1970, p. 24). We will not find fault with the inaccuracies made by the author (information cannot satisfy a biological need, it is only used to build a plan to satisfy the need). We note the main thing: with the help of this formula, according to Simonov (1970, 1983), it is possible to measure the intensity of emotions (however, so far only the simplest ones). To do this, you only need to measure the magnitude of the need, as well as the necessary and available information. However, it is here that both the theoretical and practical weaknesses of the "formula of emotions" become especially obvious.
It is not at all clear how Ying can be determined in each particular case. How do the brain and the person know what Ying should be - from the genetic memory? Most often a person can only be aware that he does not know how to achieve the goal, and not how much Is he lacks in order to achieve it. After all, the knowledge of what you need to have and do to meet the needs is a special case of human behavior in stereotypical situations. In many cases, a person is forced to make decisions and act in an uncertain environment, without knowing Jin in advance. And without knowing this value, it is impossible to determine the difference between it and Is. In addition, in order for an emotion to get a negative value, it is necessary that the minus sign does not accompany a need (need itself cannot be either negative or positive, it gets this color when an emotion arises), but the difference between Yin and Is. But this will only happen if (Is - Ying) is written in the formula. Then, for Yn > Yi, the difference will indeed become negative, as will the entire product P (Is - Yn).
There are other logical and mathematical inconsistencies in this formula. One of them, for example, is Simonov's assertion that a positive emotion will also arise if the difference between Yin and Is decreases, that is, if the probability of achieving the goal increases. But after all, according to his own statement and the “formula of emotions”, the closer (In - Is) to zero, the less negative emotion and nothing more. The situation of the appearance of a positive emotion with an increase in the probability of achieving the goal (if the genesis of emotions is considered in dynamics) does not fit into the “formula of emotions” proposed by him, since with any lack of information, even if it progressively decreases, the emotion, according to the formula, should still have a negative sign. Simonov, on the other hand, turns out that the smaller the negative emotion, the greater the positive emotion (some compensatory relationships between positive and negative experiences are obtained). But he emphasizes the specificity of positive emotion and the mechanisms of its occurrence in comparison with negative emotions. Where is the truth in this case?
P. V. Simonov himself understands the complexity of the implementation of the possibility of measuring emotional stress with the help of the formula he proposed. Hence his reservations: - "Of course, our formula idealizes and simplifies the real complexity of the phenomena under study"; “The existence of a linear dependence of emotional stress on the magnitude of the need and the deficit (or increase) of information undoubtedly represents only a special case of real existing relationships. In addition, here, of course, the time factor, the individual (typological) characteristics of the subject, and many others, including unknown factors, are involved” (1970, p. 24; 1983, p. 139). But at the same time, Simonov writes: “After all the reservations and clarifications, we will insist that the “emotion formula” reflects not only logical, but also quantitative relationships between emotion, need and pragmatic information that determines the probability of achieving the goal (satisfying the need” (1970, p. 25).
A little over ten years later, under the influence of criticism that fell upon him (Bechtel, 1968; Dodonov, 1978; Lomov, 1971; Parygin, 1971; Putlyaeva, 1979; Rappoport, 1968; and others), in which it was noted that the "formula of emotions" is not comprehensive and quantitative in the strict sense, Simonov (1981) is forced to write: “Of course, we do not have universal units for measuring needs, emotions, and the pragmatic value of information” (1981, p. 64).
Thus, the "formula of emotions" cannot serve to measure the degree of emotional stress.
It is strange that, when conducting experiments on people that were supposed to support the information theory of emotions, Simonov completely ignored the self-reports of the subjects and trusted more the change in GSR and heart rate when subjects were presented with certain stimuli. But can any change in these indicators necessarily be considered evidence of the emergence of emotion? After all, they also react to intellectual tension, which is not excluded in Simonov's experiments.
Trying to prove the unprovable, he gives any facts only those explanations and draws from them only those conclusions that fit into his "theory". For example, referring to the data of M. Yu. Kistyakovskaya (1965), he argues that the satisfaction of vital needs (hunger, thirst) leads to peace and drowsiness of the baby, and not to positive emotions. But does the first interfere with the second? And how is it known that when an infant is satisfied with hunger and thirst, a positive emotional tone of sensations does not appear? Maybe you can ask him about it?
Many of the "life" examples cited by Simonov to confirm his theoretical calculations regarding the mechanism of the appearance of emotions, in particular, positive ones, do not convince of the correctness of the formula. For example, why, when a person discovers his own delusion, should he laugh at him, as the author writes, “from the height of newly acquired knowledge”, and not be annoyed? Does a chess player who analyzes a lost game and discovers a mistake laugh merrily at his mistake? But if this is so, then it will be laughter through tears.
Or another example with pilots experiencing weightlessness for the first time. In the first seconds, they feel like they are in a crash, but then, because they see that the plane does not fall, they have an emotion of joy. According to Simonov, this is because they received super-information that the situation is not dangerous. But where does the presence of pragmatic information (i.e., information about how to escape) and, all the more so, super-information, if at that time the pilot did nothing and did not plan to do anything, but was just a passive observer of what was happening to him in a state of weightlessness?
Considering this theory, one cannot fail to note Simonov's sometimes free treatment of the basic concepts that reveal his formula, which significantly complicates the understanding of what exactly is being discussed.
There is much unclear in the author's use of such concepts as "pragmatic information", "pragmatic uncertainty". In one case, this is the “true amount of forthcoming activity” (1970, p. 65), in the other, information about how to satisfy the need, that is, about the means and methods for achieving the goal.
"Lack or excess of information" suddenly becomes identical to "forecast" for him, although it is obvious that the forecast is secondary in relation to information. Thus, arguing that positive emotions “arise in a situation of an excess of pragmatic information (i.e., information about how to satisfy a need) compared to a pre-existing forecast (with an “instantaneous cut”)” (1987, p. 74), he incorrectly contrasts information with a forecast. The information that the subject has at the time of the need (IS) turns into a hypothesis, he considers the achievement of the goal (reinforcement of the correctness of the forecast) as an increase in the probability of the correctness of the hypothesis, without indicating that this matters for the future (for the present, the increase in the probability of the forecast is no longer matters because the need is satisfied).
Significantly confusing the issue is the fact that Simonov does not separate two cases of the emergence of emotions - about the forecast in the process of motivation and about the actual achievement or failure to achieve the goal during actions aimed at satisfying the need. In addition, it should be more clearly defined in which case we are talking about the emergence of an emotional tone of sensations, and in which - about emotions, since these phenomena are not equivalent. For example, a person has not yet begun to satisfy the need for water, but he was already happy because he found in the desert an object to satisfy his need - water in a well. Finding an object evokes emotion. When a person begins to drink, that is, to satisfy a need, then an emotional tone of sensations will arise in him - pleasure, pleasure.
So, we can draw the following conclusions. The theory of emotions, called by P. V. Simonov “informational”, explains some special cases of the occurrence of emotions in the process of motivation namely, when constructing a probabilistic forecast of meeting the need. Therefore, rather, it should have been called "motivational". In fairness, it should also be noted that the “formula of emotions” met with support from a number of authors (Gorfunkel, 1971; Smirnov, 1977; Shingarov, 1970; Shustik and Serzhantov, 1974). D. Price and J. Barrell (Price, Barrell, 1984) even confirmed in one of the experiments with self-esteem the existence of a relationship between emotion, the strength of the need and the probability of its satisfaction. Actually, this does not require special confirmation, since the dependence of emotions on the other two factors is obvious. The question is whether the hypothesis and formula proposed by Simonov can explain all cases of the emergence of emotions, whether this dependence can be considered a general law of human emotions.
This theory ignores emotional reactions that are not related to the motivational process (for example, those that occur when a goal is achieved, i.e., satisfaction of a need), or emotions that arise without the participation of intellectual activity and comparison of In with Is (for example, fear that occurs instantly and is realized by us after the fact). The “Formula of Emotions” sometimes simply conflicts with reality. It is neither quantitative nor structural; This functional a formula showing the dependence of the magnitude of emotion on the strength of the need and the availability of pragmatic information used in predicting the achievement of the goal. Explaining the emergence of positive emotions, the author proceeds from the magical power of the formula he invented, and not from the really existing facts. Hence the appearance in his theory of super-information, the practical necessity of which for forecasting he does not substantiate, but argues according to the principle: it is necessary, because the "formula of emotions" requires it. At the same time, it turns out that positive emotions, based on what Simonov writes, can arise not only with excess information, but also with a simple decrease in information deficiency, i.e., with an improvement in prognosis. In general, it seems that when the author forgets about the notorious "formula of emotions", he makes reasonable and logically consistent judgments about the causes and role of positive and negative emotions.
The object of study in this theory is private emotions, each of which is considered separately from the others as an independent emotional-motivational process. K. Izard (2000, p. 55) postulates five main theses:
1) the main motivational system of human existence is formed by 10 basic emotions: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame/embarrassment, guilt, surprise, interest;
2) each basic emotion has unique motivational functions and implies a specific form of experience;
3) fundamental emotions are experienced in different ways and affect the cognitive sphere and human behavior in different ways;
4) emotional processes interact with drives, with homeostatic, perceptual, cognitive and motor processes and influence them;
5) in turn, drives, homeostatic, perceptual, cognitive and motor processes affect the course of the emotional process.
In his theory, K. Izard defines emotions as a complex process, including neurophysiological, neuromuscular and sensory-experiential aspects, as a result of which he considers emotion as a system. Some emotions, due to their underlying innate mechanisms, are organized hierarchically. The sources of emotions are neural and neuromuscular activators (hormones and neurotransmitters, drugs, changes in brain blood temperature and subsequent neurochemical processes), affective activators (pain, sexual desire, fatigue, other emotion) and cognitive activators (evaluation, attribution, memory, anticipation).
Speaking about basic emotions, K. Izard highlights some of their features:
1) basic emotions always have distinct and specific neural substrates;
2) the basic emotion manifests itself with the help of an expressive and specific configuration of facial muscle movements (facial expressions);
3) the basic emotion is accompanied by a distinct and specific experience, realized by the person;
4) basic emotions arose as a result of evolutionary biological processes;
5) the basic emotion has an organizing and motivating effect on a person, serves his adaptation.
However, K. Izard himself admits that some emotions classified as basic do not have all these features. Thus, the emotion of guilt does not have a distinct mimic and pantomimic expression. On the other hand, some researchers attribute other characteristics to basic emotions.
Obviously, those emotions that have deep phylogenetic roots, i.e., are present not only in humans, but also in animals, can be called basic. So, S. Chevalier-Skolnikov (S. Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1973) rightly points out that the ways of emotional expression indicate the fundamental nature of emotions only if their phylogenetic origin is traced, that is, if there is an expressive similarity in the expression of emotions in facial expressions in humans and other primates. Therefore, such discrete emotions, inherent only to man, as shame and guilt, do not apply to them. Interest and shyness can hardly be called emotions either.
Without denying the motivational significance of emotions, it is difficult to agree with K. Izard that emotions are the main motivational system of the body and, as fundamental personal processes, give meaning and significance to human existence. Motivation is much more complicated than it seems to K. Izard, and emotions act only as one of the motivators that influence decision making and human behavior. In the same way, the meaning and significance of human existence is determined not only by emotions, but also by values, social needs, etc. It is somewhat strange to consider emotions, on the one hand, as a motivational system organism, on the other hand, as a fundamental personal process.
3.12. Physiological mechanisms of emotional reactions
Anatomical formations associated with emotional response. As noted by E. D. Khomskaya and N. Ya. Batova (1998), the question of the brain organization of the emotional sphere is little developed. I will not give a detailed analysis of physiological studies aimed at determining the brain localization of emotions. This is the prerogative of neurophysiologists. I will note only the most significant points in the development of this issue, directly related to the differentiation of emotions, their classification, as well as emotional disturbances in focal brain lesions.
E. D. Khomskaya and N. Ya. Batova distinguish two directions in the study of the brain organization of the emotional sphere: narrow localizationism and a systematic approach.
Supporters of narrow-localization concepts argue that each "basic" emotion has its own centers. Thus, in experiments on animals and in therapeutic interventions on humans using electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain, it was shown that the anterior parts of the insula, the posterior sections of the hypothalamus, the tegmentum, the amygdala are associated with the emotion of fear, the amygdala and the median center of the thalamus - with rage, the anterior section hypothalamus, amygdala, medial nuclei of the thalamus - with the emotion of anxiety, ventromedial nuclei of the thalamus, septal zone and frontal regions - with the experience of pleasure (Delgado, 1971; Bekhtereva, 1980; Smirnov, 1967; Collier et al., 1977; Grossman, 1970). Thus, these authors associate emotional response mainly with subcortical centers.
However, these studies have shown that narrowly localized brain stimuli evoke only a small number of emotions. The remaining emotions do not have a strict localization and are formed as conditioned reflex combinations of basic emotions that are formed in the process of acquiring social experience.
Researchers who adhere to systematic views on the subcortical substrate of emotions speak of the existence of an "emotional brain" or the so-called "Peypetz circle". The "emotional brain" is depicted as a system consisting of three interconnected links: 1) the limbic system of the forebrain (hippocampus, septum, periformal cortex and other formations); 2) hypothalamus (32 pairs of nuclei of the anterior complex associated with the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system, as well as the posterior complex associated with the sympathetic nervous system); 3) limbic region of the midbrain (central gray matter, near-central reticular formation).
Currently, the limbic system is assigned the role of coordinator of various brain systems involved in providing emotional response, since the central link of the "limbic brain" has bilateral connections both with subcortical structures and with various areas of the cerebral cortex. Role new cortex in the regulation of emotions has been shown in a number of animal experiments and clinical observations in humans.
Reflex mechanisms of occurrence of emotional reactions. Emotional reactions can occur both involuntarily and voluntarily. Their involuntary occurrence can be unconditioned reflex (for example, the emotion of fright or the emotional tone of sensations) and conditioned reflex.
Newborn children, even those born without cerebral hemispheres, react to food with an expressive grimace of disgust (Steiner, 1973). As learning progresses, once the child begins to understand what "spoiled food" means (this happens around the age of 7), he begins to become disgusted with any food that seems to him spoiled, it does not matter whether it really is so (Rozin , Fallon, 1987).
American psychologists J. Watson and R. Raynor (Watson, Raynor, 1920) conducted an experiment on fear conditioning. The subject was an 11-month-old boy. He was shown a white mouse, towards which he showed no sign of fear. Then the experimenters began to make a loud clanging sound every time the boy was shown this mouse. Because of the sound, the boy cried and crawled away. After several such combinations, the child began to get frightened even when only one mouse appeared. And soon he became afraid of other white furry objects.
This experiment shows how a person has acquired fears that manifest themselves when a person gets into a situation that was once traumatic for him.
Arbitrary mechanism The emergence of emotions is associated, first of all, with a person's assessment of the possibility and degree of satisfaction of needs. Emotions can also be the result representation a person of certain objects, as well as events, both past and future (emotional mood and the use of emotional memory).
Emotions and higher nervous activity. After the famous Pavlovian session in 1949, when the doctrine of higher nervous activity was declared the only correct one in our country, and all phenomena were associated with conditioned reflex activity, the mechanisms of emotions began to be considered only from these positions not only by physiologists, but also by psychologists. The point of view has become widespread that the violation of a dynamic stereotype, conditioned reflex connections leads to the appearance of emotions. So, A. G. Kovalev (1970), based on the ideas and statements of I. P. Pavlov, wrote that “the ease of establishing systems of temporary connections or relationships, which is determined by favorable external and internal conditions, is associated with positive emotions. And vice versa, negative experiences are caused by difficulties in the formation of temporary connections... A person experiences especially intense emotions when the systems of temporary connections are broken or altered, when the conditions or requirements imposed on him change dramatically. The most vivid manifestation of emotions can be observed when habitual attachments are broken, that is, when a stereotype or an ingrained system of connections is violated” (p. 151).
Pavlov himself spoke of congenital emotions associated with the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of innate needs and instincts, and about acquired(according to the mechanism conditioned reflexes) emotions aimed at satisfying the needs acquired in ontogenesis. At the same time, he surprisingly easily explained the physiological mechanisms of positive and negative emotions: the former are associated with excitation, and the latter with inhibition. “There is no doubt,” he said at one of the meetings, “that the physiological basis of fear is inhibition. This means that in the entire longest series of fear and fear - these will be all different degrees and small variations of the inhibitory process ”(Pavlovskie sredy, 1949, p. 316). Or: “an emotion of a negative nature is inhibition” (Ibid., 1954, p. 316).
In the report “Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity”, Pavlov said: “We must think that the nervous processes of the hemispheres, when establishing and maintaining a dynamic stereotype, are what are usually called feelings in their two main categories - positive and negative, and in their huge gradation of intensities. The processes of setting the stereotype, completing the setting, supporting the stereotype and violating it are subjectively diverse, positive and negative feelings...” (Pavlov, 1951, p. 230). Such a too straightforward binding of the mechanism of the emergence of emotions to higher nervous activity and the dynamic stereotype associated with it was characteristic of Pavlov's thinking, since in another report - "Dynamic Stereotypy of the Higher Part of the Brain" he again repeats the same idea: "It seems to me that often heavy feelings when changing the usual way of life, when stopping habitual activities, when losing loved ones, not to mention mental crises and breaking beliefs, have their physiological basis to a large extent precisely in change, in violation of the old dynamic stereotype and in the difficulty of establishing a new one. (Ibid., pp. 234-244). Of course, breaking the stereotype can be the reason negative emotions, but this is the cause, not the physiological mechanism of emotional response.
R. Solomon and D. Corbit (Solomon, Corbit, 1974) put forward a hypothesis about the induction mechanism of the emergence of emotions opposite in sign, according to which the activation of a positive affect indirectly activates the negative affect opposite to this emotion. Conversely, negative affect activates positive affect. Therefore, joy is a function of some primary negative experience. This corresponds to the physiological concept of induction by simultaneity, when the excitation of one center leads to the inhibition of the adjacent one, and the inhibition of the first leads to the excitation of the second.
Emotions and the autonomic nervous system. Some authors associate negative emotions mainly with the activation of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, central adrenergic structures, and positive emotions with the activation of the parasympathetic division and structures of a cholinergic nature (Anokhin, 1957; Kalyuzhny, 1964; Bovard, 1961).
However, P. V. Simonov (1970) notes that numerous experimental facts (Bartelt, 1956; Gellhorn, 1964, etc.) indicate the participation of both parts of the autonomic nervous system in the implementation of both positive and negative emotional states and that the interaction of the central representations sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions is not reduced to direct reciprocity: increased activity of these divisions can occur simultaneously. According to J. Lacey et al. (Lacey et al., 1963), with the same emotional reaction, an increase in heart rate (sympathetic shift) and an increase in GSR (parasympathetic shift) can be observed. With negative emotions, along with symptoms of excitation of the sympathetic division, there are also signs of excitation of the parasympathetic division (Smith, Wenger, 1965). So, when a person expects pain irritation in the last 6-18 seconds before turning on the current, the heart rate clearly slows down. In a study by N. D. Scriabin (1974), some people experienced a decrease in heart rate when frightened. Conversely, with positive emotions, such as watching an entertaining movie, there is a sympathetic-adrenal shift (Levy, 1965).
Simonov believes that the degree of participation of sympathetic and parasympathetic influences depends on the nature of the negative emotion. Actively defensive, aggressive reactions of monkeys are accompanied by an increase in heart rate, while passive defensive reactions are accompanied by a slowdown in heart rate (Dzhaliev et al., 1963).
The result of the consideration of this issue can serve as Simonov's scheme, shown in Fig. 3.1.
Emotions and the reticular formation. The development of physiology, and especially electroencephalography, led to the emergence of another theory of the emergence of emotions - activation, which was formulated by D. Lindsley (Lindsley, 1951) and D. O. Hebb (Hebb, 1955). According to their ideas, emotional states are determined by the influence of the reticular formation of the lower part of the brain stem. The "activation complex" that occurs when the reticular formation is excited is a physiological expression of emotion and is reflected in the electroencephalogram. This theory suffers from one-sidedness in understanding the anatomical and physiological mechanisms of the emergence of emotions.
Emotions and the hormonal system. It is shown that different hormones cause different emotions. Thus, norepinephrine deficiency causes depression in the form of melancholy, and serotonin deficiency causes depression, which manifests itself in the form of anxiety. A study of the brain of patients who committed suicide in a state of depression showed that it is depleted in both norepinephrine and serotonin. Increasing the concentration of serotonin in the brain improves mood (Danilova, 2000).
VK Myager and AI Goshev (1964) studied the relationship between adrenaline and norepinephrine in various negative emotions. The data obtained by them are presented in table. 3.1.
P. Henry's vegetative-humoral theory of emotions is also based on hormonal regulation (Henry, 1986). Explaining the origin of positive and negative emotions, he identifies two orthogonal activation systems that cause the emergence of two tendencies: fight/flight - serenity and depression - high spirits. Henry believes that each of the three negative emotions that he considers has its own type of autonomic reaction patterns (Fig. 3.2).
Table 3.1 Correlation between adrenaline and norepinephrine in different negative emotions
He associates anger with the excitation of the central nucleus of the amygdala and an increase in the content of norepinephrine and testosterone. For fear arising from the excitation of the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala, the predominance of the release of adrenaline over norepinephrine is characteristic. The amount of cortisol in the blood increases, although not by much, indicating an increase in the activity of the adrenal cortex. Depression, according to Henry, is associated with the excitation of the pituitary-adrenal cortex system and is characterized by the release of corticosteroid, adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), endorphins and a decrease in testosterone.
According to Henry, for the emotions of anger and fear there is a single opposite pole - a positive emotion in the form of an experience. a state of serenity.
It is combined with a decrease in the activity of the adrenal cortex, therefore, with a decrease in adrenaline and norepinephrine (Fig. 3.3).
The opposite of depression is a state of elation. It corresponds to a decrease in the level of ACTH, cortisol and endorphins. The content of sex hormones in the blood (testosterone in men, estrogen and progesterone in women) increases.
Emotions and functional asymmetry of the cerebral hemispheres. There is already quite a large literature on this issue, but the opinions expressed in it do not always coincide. At one time, the idea was established that emotional reactions are associated with the functioning of only the right hemisphere (Luria, "1973; Suvorova, 1978). This gave reason to speak of the left hemisphere as a "non-emotional structure" (Tucker, 1981). However, later scientists came I. A. Pereverzeva (1980) in a review of the literature, mainly relating to clinical observations in focal lesions of one or another hemisphere, identified three groups of scientists based on their assumptions:
1) about the predominant role of the right hemisphere;
2) about the connection of the right hemisphere with negative emotions, and the left hemisphere with positive ones;
3) about the differentiated participation of both hemispheres in the implementation of a single emotional act with the predominant role of the left hemisphere. Let's use this division and see how convincing the evidence cited by each group of scientists is.
First group cites the facts that in case of damage to the right hemisphere, the changes relate mainly to perception and the generation of emotional expression. So, in the study of L. Ya. Balonov et al. (1976) a sharp deterioration in the recognition of emotions in photographs was shown during a unilateral (right-sided) convulsive seizure. X. Gardner et al. (Gardner et al., 1975) revealed a violation of the understanding of humor in patients with lesions of the right hemisphere. The advantage of the right hemisphere was found in the perception of not only facial expression, but also speech, and not only in patients (Heilman et al., 1975), but also in healthy people (Carmon, Nachson, 1973; Haggard, Parkinson, 1971). According to V.P. Morozov (1985,1988), “emotional hearing” (i.e., the ability to recognize the quality and severity of emotions in the voice) is higher if the signals are given to the left ear (i.e., they predominantly come to the right hemisphere) . Incorrect evaluations of emotional stimuli in a cruder form are observed when stimuli are applied to the right ear.
It has been shown that with right-hemisphere focal lesions in patients, there is a depletion of emotional expressiveness of behavior: poverty of facial expressions and gestures, slowing down and intonational impoverishment of speech: the emotional expressiveness of the voice disappears, speech becomes monotonous (Babenkova, Bely, 1975; Gubina, 1964; Dobrokhotova, 1974; Lebedinsky , 1948; Khoroshko, 1935; Borodetal, 1981). There is a discrepancy between the patient's facial expressions and his statements, often violent, inadequate laughter, a mask-like face. Emotional reactions of patients with left-hemispheric lesions are more adequate to the situation (Morots, 1975).
In healthy adults and children, it was shown that when they experience emotions, interhemispheric EEG asymmetry increases due to greater activation of the right hemisphere (Ayrapetyants, 1977; Denisova, 1978; Davidson et al, 1979).
The second group of scientists is more representative, and her opinion more realistically reflects the current situation with the localization of the centers of emotions. Clinicians have long noted that focal lesions of different hemispheres entail various changes in the emotional sphere. In patients with damage to the right hemisphere (and, consequently, with the release of its control of the left hemisphere), mild excitability predominates against the background of positive emotions, often with euphoria and playfulness. Patients with damage to the left hemisphere (and release from its control of the right hemisphere) often have depressive reactions (Babenkova; Dobrokhotova; Lebedinsky; Olshansky, 1978; and others).
In the experiments of X. Terzian and C. Zecotto (Terzian, Zecotto, 1964) using the Wada test (inhibition of the function of one hemisphere by injection of sodium amytal into the right or left carotid artery), it was shown that after inhibition of the dominant (left) hemisphere, depressive reaction, and after the oppression of the right hemisphere - euphoric. Similar data using other methods were obtained by V. L. Deglin (1970), L. Ya. Balonov and V. L. Deglin (1976), G. Gianotti (Gianotti, 1969); G. Rossi and G. Rosadini (Rossi, Rosadini, 1976).
In an experiment by R. Davidson et al., healthy individuals (right-handed) were shown television films with simultaneous EEG recording. It was revealed that when experiencing positive emotions, the activation of the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere increased, and when experiencing negative emotions, an increase in activation was observed in the frontal lobe of the right hemisphere. VV Suvorova also revealed differences in the activation of the hemispheres in healthy individuals with a predominance of positive or negative emotions.
S. Diamond (Dimond, 1976) found that the content of a watched film is evaluated differently when it is presented to the right and left hemispheres: the right hemisphere is associated with a predominant assessment of "unpleasant and terrible", and the left - "pleasant and funny". In another experiment, it was found that the heart rate significantly increases when the left hemisphere "perceives" a funny movie, and the right - a "scary" movie. If the right hemisphere "perceived" a funny movie, the heart rate did not increase significantly (Dimond and Farrington, 1977). According to P. Ren-ter-Lorenz and R. Davidson (Renter-Lorenz, Davidson, 1981), the time to recognize a mimic expression of joy turned out to be shorter when a slide was presented in the right visual field (i.e., in the left hemisphere) than in the left . When recognizing “sadness”, the ratio was reversed. M. Natale and R. Gur (Natale, Gur, 1981) showed that the right-hemispheric assessments of neutral persons are more negative than the left-hemispheric ones. G. Ahern and G. Schwarz (Ahern, Schwarz, 1979) found that emotionally positive questions cause predominant activation of the left hemisphere compared to negative ones.
Words with different emotional meanings are also “perceived” differently by the right and left hemispheres: for negative words, there is a preference for the right hemisphere (Gravis et al., 1981; Shapkin, 2000).
According to R. Davidson, about half of the self-assessments of the state of "happiness" are determined by the dominance of activity in the frontal regions of the left hemisphere. In 10-month-old infants, the perception of a person's face with a happy expression was associated with greater EEG activation in the left hemisphere (Davidson and Fox, 1982). At the same time, in patients with depression, the focus of activation is in the frontal and central lobes of the right hemisphere. In another study, newborns were given a sweet syrup and a citric acid solution to taste. Swallowing the syrup elicited EEG activation in the left hemisphere, and a disgusted grimace when tasting acid was accompanied by EEG activity in the right hemisphere.
A study by N. Fox and R. Davidson (Fox, Davidson, 1987) showed that babies experience joy at the sight of their mother striving towards them with open arms, which is reflected in an increase in EEG activity in the left hemisphere. At the same time, the threat of separation from the mother caused increased activity in the right hemisphere.
R. Davidson and V. Geller believe that the sign of emotion depends on the ratio of the activity of the left (LFK) and right (PFC) frontal cortex. W. Heller (Heller, 1993) presented this in the form of two inequalities:
Exercise therapy > PFC = positive emotions
PFC > LFK = negative emotions
According to third group some , both hemispheres are involved in the implementation of a single emotional reaction, with the main role assigned to the left hemisphere (Balonov, Deglin, 1976; Balonov, Deglin, Nikolaenko, 1976; Deglin, Nikolaenko, 1975). These authors believe that activation of the left hemisphere is a prerequisite for improving mood, and inactivation of this hemisphere is a prerequisite for worsening mood. However, D. Harman and W. Ray (Harman, Ray, 1977) received the opposite direction in changing the activation of the left hemisphere during positive and negative emotions. E. Strauss (Straus, 1983) showed that both emotionally positive and emotionally negative words are recognized more accurately by the left hemisphere, and not by the right. M. N. Rusalova (19876) found that the assessment of the emotional background by facial expressions depends on the degree of activation of the left hemisphere: with an increase in the level of activation, positive emotions predominate, with a decrease, negative ones.
Explaining such conflicting data, I. A. Pereverzeva rightly points out that different authors have different indicators of emotional reactions, different causes of brain damage, different experimental techniques used on healthy people, which could not but cause a difference in the observed facts and the conclusions drawn. . We must agree with Pereverzeva that the most promising way to study this issue is to isolate the elements of an emotional act and study their attachment to various parts of the brain. When just emotion, just emotionality, just expression, just positive or negative experiences are studied, such approaches, although they allow you to create some idea of the role of the hemispheres in emotional response, are only the beginning of the path in studying this issue.
Concluding the discussion of the question of the role of the right and left hemispheres in emotional reactions, I will cite interesting data obtained by R. Sperry et al. corpus callosum that connects both hemispheres. This made it possible to study the functions of each hemisphere in isolation from the other. It was found that the right hemisphere cannot provide naming perceived objects, including emotional ones. So, if a man was presented with an image of a naked woman in the left visual field and, consequently, in the visual centers of the right hemisphere, he was not able to tell what kind of object he was shown, although he gave an emotional reaction to what he saw.
Anatomical and physiological theory of emotions by J. Gray.
G. Eysenck's student J. Gray identifies three brain systems that determine the appearance of three main groups of emotions: anxiety, joy-happiness and horror-anger. The system of brain structures that generates anxiety is called the Behavior Inhibition System, or B/5, by the author of the theory. This system responds to conditioned signals of punishment or withdrawal of positive reinforcement, as well as to stimuli containing "novelty". Its activity is blocked by anti-anxiety substances (barbiturates, alcohol, benzodiazepines).
The second system is fight and flight system- associated with emotions of rage and horror. She reacts to unconditioned aversive stimuli. Its activity is blocked by analgesics (morphines), and it does not respond to anti-anxiety substances.
Third system - approach behavior system(Behavior Approach System, or BAS). Adequate stimuli for her are conditioned reward signals (food, water, etc.). Emotions that arise when BAS is activated are associated with pleasant foresight, hope, an experience of uplift, happiness.
According to J. Gray, the individual characteristics of a person's emotionality depend on the balance of these emotional systems. Increased individual BIS activation predetermines a person's tendency to high anxiety. The dominance of the fight/flight system reflects a propensity for aggression or active defensive behavior. The tendency to display positive emotions and optimism depends on the prevalence of BAS.
