Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
beneficial health effects of more positive emotions. Finally, we will review some of the most
important human motivations, including the behaviors of eating and sex. The importance of this
chapter is not only in helping you gain an understanding the principles of affect but also in
helping you discover the important roles that affect plays in our everyday lives, and particularly
in our mental and physical health. The study of the interface between affect and physical
health—that principle that “everything that is physiological is also psychological”—is a key
focus of the branch of psychology known as health psychology. The importance of this topic has
made health psychology one of the fastest growing fields in psychology.
[1] Levin, A. (2009, June 9). Experience averts tragedy in Hudson landing. USA Today. Retrieved
from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-08-hudson_N.htm; National Transportation Safety Board. (2009, June 9).
Excerpts of Flight 1549 cockpit communications. USA Today. Retrieved fromhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-09-
hudson-cockpit-transcript_N.htm
[2] Morsella, E., Bargh, J. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2009). Oxford handbook of human action. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press.
[3] Lawrence, J. W., Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2002). Velocity toward goal attainment in immediate experience as a
determinant of affect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 788–802.
[4] Freud, S. (1922). The unconscious. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 56(3), 291; Hassin, R. R., Bargh, J. A., &
Zimerman, S. (2009). Automatic and flexible: The case of nonconscious goal pursuit. Social Cognition, 27(1), 20–36; Williams, L.
E., Bargh, J. A., Nocera, C. C., & Gray, J. R. (2009). The unconscious regulation of emotion: Nonconscious reappraisal goals
modulate emotional reactivity. Emotion, 9(6), 847–854.
10.1 The Experience of Emotion
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Explain the biological experience of emotion.
- Summarize the psychological theories of emotion.
- Give examples of the ways that emotion is communicated.
The most fundamental emotions, known as the basic emotions, are those ofanger, disgust, fear,
happiness, sadness, and surprise. The basic emotions have a long history in human evolution,
and they have developed in large part to help us make rapid judgments about stimuli and to