Lesson 2

 Powerful emotions often direct and dictate our motivations. When we face challenges, emotion focuses our attention and energizes our actions.

 1. Bodily arousal  2. Expressive behaviors  3. Conscious experience

 Our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli  “We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike” ◦ Think losing control of your car, skidding, & then feeling the wave of fear while you realize your heart rate is up

 An emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers: ◦ 1. physiological responses ◦ 2. the subjective experience of emotion  Heart rate, perspiration & body temperature are too similar to cause different emotions – they change too slowly to trigger sudden emotions

 The alternative 3 rd theory of Stanley Schachter & Jerome Singer  They asserted that our physical reaction and our thoughts create emotion ◦ Requires a conscious interpretation of the arousal ◦ Arousal fuels emotion, cognition channels it.

 For energy, the liver offers extra sugar to the bloodstream  To burn sugar, your breathing increases to get more oxygen  Digestion slows to direct more blood from internal organs to muscles  Perspiration occurs to cool the body while running

 Complex = ‘high road’ by way of the thalamus to the brains cortex then after being analyzed would be sent out via the amygdala  Simple = ‘short cut’ which is a neural shortcut that bypasses the cortex (thalamus straight to amygdala lightning fast! )