DECISIONS AND EMOTIONSthinking and feeling. The man’s smiling face on hearing about his child’s
birth signals to others the pleasure and pride that he is experiencing.
Watch the widening of eyes and sharing of smiles at airport arrivals, and
you’ll see how emotional communication begins long before words are
uttered. When in danger, the survival value of these behaviours is clear. A
look of terror warns companions, a shrill scream can startle the enemy.
AN EMOTIONAL DEBATE
Do the bodily changes associated with a given emotion provoke the
feeling of that emotion, or instead, is it experiencing an emotion that
triggers the bodily changes? Put another way, do we feel scared and
then our heart races or does our heart race thus making us feel scared?
Writing in the late nineteenth century, the pioneering American
psychologist William James (see p.9) argued the latter. By his account, a
situation, such as the sight of a bear, causes physiological changes, and it
is the feeling of those physiological changes – the act of running and the
racing heart – that gives rise to the emotion, in this case fear. Similarly,
Charles Darwin’s “facial-feedback hypothesis” proposed that physi-
ological changes can give rise to emotions, rather than merely being a
product of them.
As we’ve seen, contemporary psychologists see the different aspects
of emotion – the feelings, the physiological changes, the appraisal of
the situation – as affecting each other mutually in an unfolding process.
And, in particular, so-called “appraisal theorists” highlight the role of
our thoughts in emotional experience. According to their view, physi-
ological changes alone can’t dictate emotions, because the way the body
reacts depends on how we construe a situation (as in the two scenarios
in which the man heard the news of his newborn child). So whether a
physical sensation, such as a racing heart, is felt as fear or excitement will
depend on the context.
But this is not to say that James and Darwin were completely wrong.
In fact, research conducted in the last decade has lent support to their
theories, suggesting that emotions affect our bodies and our bodies
affect our emotions. In a 2003 study, for example, Simone Schnall at
Plymouth University and James Laird at Clark University showed that,
for some people at least, thirty minutes spent pulling a smiling face
led them to feel happier afterwards, while pulling a sad face led them
to feel more sad (see box on p.102). More recent research has taken this
even further, asking specifically whether it is the neural commands