Emotion can be defined and explained in many different ways. Some believe that emotion is born with you while others see emotion growing and developing along with the person that wields them. In my opinion, I believe that both of these theories are correct. One is born and brought up with some form of understanding of emotions and how to respond to the people around them. However, as that person meets others and ventures past the area they were raised in, they will immediately realize that their understanding is not always true for other people.
In the movie “Inside Out” every one of the different emotions has their own quirks and personalities relating to their specific emotion. One of them is overly happy about the situations they come across while another is always viewing the negative side and how it all can go wrong. But, even though they are polar opposites, they all use each other’s opinions to understand any situation they are put through just like our emotions. When I see a dog with no collar on the street, I immediately feel anger for the owners. But after I realize that the dog is all alone and has a very good chance of being put in a kennel, my sadness makes the anger for the owners disappear and only makes me think of finding the dog a happy home. My emotions that I have developed through my own experiences worked with each other to help me decide what I thought was the right thing to do.
In the episode “Man Of The People”, Deanna Troi has an almost tragic encounter with the negative emotions of Ambassador Ves Alkar after the death of his mother. Alkar’s people are able to read the emotions of one another but not of other species and he uses this to trick Deanna into taking all of his negative emotions. This completely contradicts everything we’ve learned about emotion by placing artificial and non-original emotions into another person’s mind. What I found very interesting about this is that the negative emotions send Deanna Troi into a spiral of rapid-aging, almost leading to her death. One example of negative emotions rapidly aging people in real life would be former president of the United States Barack Obama along with many other presidents. In only 4 to 8 years of them being in office, their difference in facial structure, hair color, and overall physique before and after becoming president is frightening. Stress and anger tend to always have a negative aspect on people both mentally and physically without the release of emotions like joy.
2 thoughts on “Analysis Blog #4”
Hi Jeremy,
You start this post with the question about whether emotions are innate (something we are born with) or learned. You conclude that they are both. Can you say a bit more about this? How do you see emotions as both learned and innate?
I really liked your observation that your emotions help you to determine what the right thing to do is. This is a really key idea, and an essential part of understanding how our emotions work as part of our cognitive system. We don’t make decisions in a purely rational manner—because there is no such thing about being purely rational. Our emotions always play a role in the decisions we make. For example, you might think about how Riley’s emotions—sadness, disgust, and angry—were part of her decision to run away from home.
And yes, emotions are definitely linked to our mental and physical well-being. As we’ve seen throughout this course, mind and body are linked, so it makes sense that emotions—whether positive or negative—would have an effect on our bodies. How does this view of emotions—as something that happens to you and your body—relate to what you learned about in this week’s voicethread? What does it suggest if we think about our emotions as something that happens to us to age us?
Jessica Hautsch
Great observation about how our emotional reactions to situations are influenced by our emotions kind of working together like the emotions in the movie. Another interesting observation you made was that emotions affect how we age. Like what the professor commented, emotions, good and bad, can have affects on the physical body.
mkrulder