After reading this essay you will learn about:- 1. Nature and Characteristics of Emotions 2. Theories of Emotions 3. Neural and Physiological Basis 4. Functions 5. Development 6. Judgement 7. Disruptive Role 8. Measurement.
Essay on Emotions
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Nature and Characteristics of Emotions
- Essay on the Theories of Emotions
- Essay on the Neural and Physiological Basis of Emotions
- Essay on the Functions of Emotions
- Essay on the Development of Emotions
- Essay on the Judgement of Emotions
- Essay on the Disruptive Role of Emotions
- Essay on the Measurement of Emotions
Essay # 1. Nature and Characteristics of Emotions:
Emotional experiences tend to show some characteristics.
Some of these are given below:
(a) To a considerable extent emotions are accompanied by activation or an aroused state in the organism.
(b) They are normally accompanied by bodily changes like gestures, muscular movements, changes in facial expressions, changes in physiological reactions like blood-pressure, pulse rate, heartbeat, respiration, etc.
(c) Whenever an organism is experiencing an emotion, a lot of energy is released. This is true of many emotions. But there are also some emotions like grief, where the energy and activity level are reduced.
(d) In the case of many emotional experiences, it is found that other activities like perception, learning, consciousness, memory, etc. are affected. In some cases, where the emotions are mild the influence may be positive and in other cases the influence may be disruptive.
(e) Along with the bodily changes one also finds certain psychological changes or alterations in the content and state of consciousness. Very often, there is a blurring or clouding of consciousness, blocking of memory, a confusion in perception, etc. Thus, emotions are complex experiences including a variety of bodily reactions and also psychological reactions.
William McDougall, a leading psychologist in the earlier part of the century, believed that most of our emotional experiences and reactions are innate and are tied-up with instincts. According to him, instincts are innate springs or roots of behaviour and result in action directed towards certain goals or ends. For example, the instinct of hunger, when aroused, makes the organism hunt for food until it is found and only then does it subside.
McDougall compiled a list of instincts and said that each instinct has a typical emotion as a component. For example, the instinct of self-preservation is accompanied by the emotion of fear. McDougall’s instinct theory, however, was soon discarded and along with this, the view that all emotions are inherited.
Essay # 2. Theories of Emotions:
For a long time, it was believed that an emotional experience basically depends on a change in awareness or the contents of one’s consciousness. Thus, it was believed that whenever an individual became aware of a threatening condition he experienced fear and a number of bodily changes resulted from this.
It was also believed that psychological and conscious experiences came first, followed by physiological and bodily changes. This view was held for a long time. But towards the beginning of this century the famous American psychologist, William James, and the Danish physiologist, Carl Lange, independently expressed their views which questioned the earlier theory.
According to these views which subsequently came to be known as James-Lange theory, the bodily changes were primary and the psychological experiences followed the bodily changes. Thus, the position was reversed. The earlier theory said, “I am afraid so I am running away.” But the James-Lange theory said, “I am running away so I am afraid.”
This controversy regarding the relative importance of the psychological and physiological components of emotional experiences raged for a long time. A number of experiments were undertaken. The James-Lange theory implied that the bodily changes are primary and most of the bodily changes in emotions depended on the activity of the autonomic nervous system, particularly its sympathetic division.
The James- Lange theory, therefore, laid less emphasis on the role of the central nervous system. This theory also came to be known as the peripheral theory of emotions.
Subsequent research by Cannon, Masserman, Sherrington and a number of others, however, showed that the explanation offered by James and Lange was too simple. Employing a very ingenious procedure involving the performance of surgical operations on the nervous system of cats and dogs, they showed that the central nervous system, particularly the hypothalamus and even the cerebral cortex, had an important role to play in emotional experiences.
They showed that it is not possible to make a distinction between bodily changes and psychological changes. On the contrary, emotions constitute complex experiences involving both and it is difficult to attribute primacy to either of them.
No attempt is now made to separate the roles of bodily and psychological changes. An important finding has been that attempts to find specific patterns of bodily changes correlated with different kinds of emotional experiences have largely ended in failure.
The same bodily changes occur in different kinds of emotional experiences. Some differences have no doubt been found between the bodily changes accompanying fear on the one hand, and anger, on the other. Further, the bodily changes occurring in emotions are very often too slow and appear only after the psychological experience of emotion.
Because of this Cannon and Bard advanced the view that emotions are functional processes directed towards energizing the organism to prepare for an emergency situation. According to this theory, psychological changes result from an activation of the cerebral cortex through the thalamus and the other bodily changes occur simultaneously.
Yet, another theory advanced by Donald Lindsley is known as the Activation Theory. According to this theory, emotional experiences depend on an arousal of the reticular system which includes a chain of special neurons in the brain system. The reticular system performs the function of general energizer, thus, contributing to the level of arousal and wakefulness. Lindsley’s theory stresses the condition of general excitement of the organism.
More recently, Schachter and Singer proposed what is known as the Cognitive Appraisal Theory. This theory explains emotions as a result of an individual’s attempt to interpret and understand the physiological changes that have been aroused in him.
An individual who is physiologically aroused and is not able to find a reason for this arousal attributes the physiological changes to some available cognitions or perceptions. The choice of these cognitions is determined by a number of factors like the situation, the cognition of others, etc. This theory, however, is yet to be substantiated.
Both peripheral approach (James-Lange) and the central approach (Camon-Bard) emphasise the process of awareness of bodily changes.
While the peripheral theories tended to lean on an explanation based on a direct awareness of bodily changes, not according a major role to the higher nerve centres- the cerebral cortex, the central theories emphasized the role of the brain and the cerebral cortex, in bringing about qualitative differences among emotional experiences. But neither of them succeeded in answering the question on “How does the interpretation take place?”
An attempt to answer this question was made by Schacter and Singer. This view while on the one hand agreed with the view of James and Lange that the feeling of emotions arouses from a feedback on the bodily changes, at the same time also agrees with the Cannon-Bard theory that such a simple feedback cannot explain subtle differences in emotional experiences.
According to Schacter and Singer, emotional experiences arise from two sources, feedback from bodily changes and at the same time a cognitive appraisal of the stimulating conditions that cause the particular emotional experiences. According to this view, cognitive interpretation comes into operation both when one perceives the stimulus situation that leads to bodily changes and also subsequently when these changes are interpreted.
This latter interpretation mainly at the level of brain is crucial. Thus the same pattern of feedback from bodily changes can be interpreted in many ways. For example, when we cry on hearing that someone close to us has met with a serious accident, and also when we cry when we meet a brother or sister or a close friend whom we have not met for a long time, on both these occasions, the bodily changes and their feedback are similar, but the experience of emotions are different.
Schacter and Singer are of the view that this process of interpreting and labelling depends on the act of what may be called attribution of these experiences to a particular stimulus control. There have been a number of studies which lend support to this view of Schacter and Singer.
First Shacter’s theory as well as that of James and Lange, hold that the intensity of emotions should be related to the amount of physiological changes. Hohman’s studies of individuals with spinal cord injuries proved this.
A second set of studies have shown that if the bodily changes are attributed to non-emotional causes, then the intensity of the emotions would be less. Thus, experiments have shown that when subjects were given a “placebo” injection and were told that it would produce increased blood pressure, heart beat and also increased tremors, these subjects reported less emotions, even when they were placed in a real emotion producing situation, compared to those who were put in a similar situation, but not put under placebo.
A third prediction that can arise from Schacter’s theory is that if bodily changes can be introduced through injection of a drug like adrenalin and the subject is put in a situation where these can be reasonably attributed to certain causes, then the resulting emotional experiences should be high.
Schacter’s studies confirmed these predictions also. But attempts by other investigators like Leventhal, Marshall, Zimbardo and others to replicate these experiments did not produce similar results.
A number of experiments have also shown that excitement can be carried out from one situation to another through a process known as ”transferred excitation”. Such transferred excitation can result either in the attribution of emotions to a new cause or intensification of some emotional reactions already existing.
In an interesting study carried out in British Columbia around a deep gorge with rearing rapids, the gorge could be crossed either by a rather risky and dangerous swinging bridge or by a safe wooden bridge across the river, at a safer place. A female experimenter asked people who have crossed over through either of the bridges, to fill out a questionnaire which aroused sexual imagery.
It was found that the subjects who had crossed the river through the swinging dangerous bridge had higher scores on sexual imagery than those who crossed the river using safe wooden bridge.
However, when the person collecting data with the questionnaire, was a male, no such difference was noticed. The inference drawn is that in the case of the men who crossed through the dangerous bridge, there was a greater transfer of excitement in the situation where the experimenter was a female.
Essay # 3. Neural and Physiological Basis of Emotions:
The role of the nervous system and other physiological processes in emotions has been a dominating question in the study of emotions. For a long time, while it was believed that the autonomic nervous system plays an important role, the role of the central nervous system was not very clearly understood. We may, therefore, begin with the consideration of the autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system with its two divisions, the sympathetic and parasympathetic, plays a crucial role. The sympathetic division is responsible for activation of the various physiological processes like heartbeat, respiration, and blood-pressure and thereby creates additional expenditure of energy.
The parasympathetic system, on the other hand, is concerned with the conservation of energy. The sympathetic system, under conditions of emergency, activates the organism and thereby draws on the energy stored up in the organism. The autonomic nervous system is also closely connected with the functioning of the endocrine glands.
The Role of the Brain in Emotions:
The brain consists of two broad divisions, the cerebral cortex and the subcortical centres. Both of these are involved in emotional experiences. Experiments have shown that direct stimulation of the brain by electrical sources can result in emotional experiences even without any outside sensory stimulation.
This is particularly true when areas in the temporal lobe and the limbic structures are stimulated. The hypothalamus which is a subcortical centre is actively involved in emotional experiences as it is responsible for the control of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems.
The hypothalamus, when stimulated, can create a wide variety of emotional experiences. Another subcortical centre, the thalamus, performs the function of relaying messages of the impulses to the cerebral cortex. Thus, the thalamus, the hypothalamus and the limbic structures play a major role in arousing emotional experiences.
The Cerebral Cortex:
It is the highest centre of the brain and plays a role somewhat contradictory to the roles of the other centres. The cortex, by and large, performs an inhibitory function. It checks emotional over activity.
If the inhibitory influence of the cortex is eliminated through injury on the store-house of memory experiences, the activation of these memory experiences also helps people to decide whether and to what degree a particular situation warrants emotional response. Thus, it may be seen that the whole nervous system is involved in emotional experiences.
The cortical and sub-cortical centres play what appears to be contradictory, but in reality play complementary roles. Apart from the nervous system, the endocrine glands particularly the adrenal glands and its secretion, adrenalin, also play a very important role.
The endocrine glands, because they secrete various hormones directly into the blood, significantly influence the different types of activity. Under emergency conditions our bodily activities are very much affected. The activation of the endocrine glands stimulates these activities for emergency functions, and at the same time interferes with the normal adaptive functions.
Thus, frequent occurrences of intense emotional experiences can cause interruption of vegetative activities thereby resulting in a number of abnormalities including psycho-physiological disturbances like diabetes, hypertension, asthma, etc.
In addition to the involvement of the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine glands as emergency functions, one also finds that emotional experiences are accompanied by altered functioning of the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, the muscular system, the circulatory system, etc.
However, the extent of involvement of these various systems and changes, differ from one type of emotion to another type of emotion and also the particular stimulus situations. It also happens that some individuals, because of repeated over-reactions to emotional experiences, tend to acquire a consistently over-active way of dealing with emotions.
Thus, these people get excited even under mild emotion-provoking situations. Such persons are sometimes referred to as anxious reactive persons. It may, therefore, be seen that both physiological processes and nervous activities are involved in emotional experiences.
It has been shown that physiological over activity in emotional situations can be injurious to health. Thus, while physiological changes are necessary correlates of emotions, efforts should be made to keep them in check. This can be done in a number of ways like regular relaxation, yogic exercises, meditation, bio-feedback and a number of other ways.
It should be possible through training to establish voluntary control over the intensity of emotional experiences. This will result in preventing wastage of energy and a diversion of the same towards positive growth functions.
Essay # 4. Functions of Emotions:
The emotions are essentially adaptive reactions to specific situations. They are primarily emergency functions for the mobilisation of energy. This is, of course, a purely biological function. In addition, however, emotions also perform certain social functions, including communication.
Facial expressions and the general activity level during emotions influence our interaction with others. For example, if a boy finds his father upset or in an emotional state he accordingly responds with behaviour suited to the occasion.
If he had any idea of asking permission to go to a movie he refrains from doing so. On the other hand, if he finds his father happy or in a light-hearted mood, he makes use of the opportunity to secure many promises and concessions. This can be seen in the behaviour of the domestic dog also. This example illustrates that emotions perform a communicative function.
In addition, emotions also have a stimulating function. For example, a person who is in a happy state of mind invariably makes others also happy and sees happiness all around him. On the other hand, a person who is sad makes those around him also sad. Similarly, a person who is angry makes others angry. Thus, emotions influence the atmosphere.
Emotions play a crucial role in creative and artistic activities. An actor who can stimulate an emotional experience does a better job of his acting. Emotions also make one sensitive to the problems of others. Thus, one may see that emotions have a contagious influence.
It has been found that our ability to understand and interpret the emotional states of others is very important in our social life. To a large extent, our culture and social conditions help us to acquire this ability. Facial expressions often tell us about the emotional states of others. This is very helpful in our social adjustment.
Similarly, our ability to experience joy and happiness enriches our life and makes it pleasant. Thus, a poet who derives pleasure and happiness even from the ordinary things in life enjoys a very rich quality of life and by conveying these emotions enriches the lives of others. Emotions play a very important role in determining the overall quality our lives.
Emotions constitute a basic part of human living, and perhaps as fundamental as blood circulation or heartbeat. Emotions are found to be part of not only human behaviour but also animal behaviour. In view of this, it goes without saying that they have certain basic biological and psychological functions. The general common sense of idea of emotions has had two sides.
On the one hand emotions have been extolled as the foundations of the noblest of human behaviour valour, sacrifice, altruism and creativity, particularly artistic creativity. On the other hand, emotions have been condemned as the villains behind savage and barbaric behaviour, violence, crime, cruelty and atrocity.
The real answer to this question seems to be that there is some truth in both the views. Whether emotions are angels or villains depends on the nature of the particular emotion, its intensity, the cognitive control in the person and many other factors. In view of this, we may now briefly examine the functions of emotions or the role of emotions under two categories, constructive and disruptive.
On the constructive side, there is a general acceptance of the view held by Darwin that the emotional expressions of a person give us a clue about how he or she is feeling and what he or she is likely to do. Thus emotions help us to understand and to some extent even anticipate or predict the behaviour of people.
Thus if a young child finds her father with a frown on his face, she understands that her father is disturbed or angry and decides to postpone her request for a new dress as in her assessment, her request at that time is likely to be rejected. Another positive function that has been emphasised is the role of emotions in communication.
This function is referred to as “social referencing”. In a situation, where we are uncertain or where we have just entered as in the case of a meeting, rather late, we often look to the emotional expressions on the faces of others and get an idea of how they are, whether there is anything disturbed or exciting before deciding our own course of action.
Similarly, the behaviour of infants in the presence of a stranger, is very much guided by the facial expressions on the faces of mothers emotional expressions serve as effective forms of communication, influencing our own course of action. Robert Zajonses says that facial expressions of emotions do serve certain biological functions.
It has been suggested that when facial muscles contract, the flow of blood to the different regions is redistributed. It has been suggested that laughing is helpful because it constricts some arteries and veins enabling the supply of more blood to the brain and thus providing more oxygen.
In addition, emotions also help us to be better prepared for emergency behaviour. They energies us and also make us cognitively and behaviourally more alert, if they are within limits. They certainly energies our activity.
Norman Cousins, whose book the “Anatomy of Illness” has become extremely popular strongly advocates the view that positive emotions like joy or happiness contribute to health and even healing of serious physical disorders.
In fact. Cousins treated himself with laughter therapy. Positive emotion has been found to be helpful in reducing stress. Similarly strong emotions help us to remember certain events and also certain experiences better.
On the disruptive side, emotions certainly, if they are extreme and uncontrolled, very often disturb our cognitive functions and thinking process and lead to impulsive actions resulting in undesirable consequences both to others and to ourselves.
Often in mob situations or in situations which are very exciting, people lose control of themselves and indulge in actions which are destructive and harmful and which subsequently they regret.
Excess of emotions can also result in creating bodily disturbances. When disturbances continue, there can be accumulation of tension resulting in what is known as psychophysiological disorder. Thus one may see that emotions have both positive and negative functions.
Essay # 5. Development of Emotions:
It was found that in addition to genetic and environmental influences, factors such as maturation and growth or epigenetic factors also play an important role in the appearance or non-appearance of particular patterns of behaviour.
Every aspect of human behaviour passes through a pattern of development resulting in changes as the individual grows from childhood to adulthood. Such changes are of different types. They can be quantitative or qualitative in nature.
Further, it was seen that while the basic developmental process is common in a general way for all individuals, at the same time this pattern is greatly influenced by social, cultural and experiential factors. This statement holds true for emotions also.
We may, mention to McDougall’s concept of emotions as being parts of an instinctual process. According to this view, instincts and emotions were both innate patterns. The James-Lange theory also, to some extent, supported this view as it implied that there is a specific pattern of bodily reactions for each emotion and that this formed the core of emotional experience. Thus, for a long time, it was widely believed that emotional behaviour was essentially inherited.
John Watson, the leader of behaviourism, examined this belief and concluded that there are three basic emotional patterns which are found even in infants; and therefore, can justifiably be regarded as being inherited.
Watson identified fear, anger and love as the three basic emotions. Fear could be aroused by a loud noise or loss of bodily support; rage by the restriction of bodily movements; and love by the stimulation of certain sensitive zones of the body.
This view was again put to test by M.C. Jones and the Shermans. All of them found that young infants did really show a general pattern of excitement irrespective of the stimulus and this generalized pattern of excitement later got differentiated into different forms of familiar emotional behaviour.
This differentiation continues until the adult level when the individual develops the capacity to manifest clearly distinguishable emotional behaviour in various situations. Here, one can notice two distinct tendencies. On the one hand, the general pattern of excitement found in infants gradually gives place to differentiated patterns as the individual grows.
At the same time, the exact number of patterns that emerge appear to depend on environmental influences. Thus, it has been found that in certain cultural groups people are capable of a large number of emotional experiences while in other societies the number of different emotional experiences is smaller.
An indication of this is given by the number of words available in different languages which are employed to describe emotional experiences. It has been estimated by Davids that the English language has at least four hundred words to describe emotional experiences.
A classic attempt in the study of the development of emotions was made by Katherine Bridges who observed children with reference to their emotional behaviour. Bridges came to the conclusion that the newborn child exhibits a general pattern of excitement which, within the first three months, gets differentiated into distress and delight. The former appears under unpleasant conditions and the latter under pleasant conditions.
As the child grows and develops, these two patterns are further differentiated into different kinds of pleasant and unpleasant emotions. By the time the child is two-years-old, it is found to be capable of experiencing and expressing a large number of pleasant and unpleasant emotions which are distinct and clearly distinguishable.
Perhaps, even today we cannot clearly and conclusively state the exact number of emotions which can be experienced by an adult. Different investigators have given different lists.
Woodworth, in 1938, proposed the following list of emotions: love (mirth and happiness), surprise, fear, anger and disgust (contempt). Frijda in 1968 proposed the following list: happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust, calm, bitterness, pride, irony, insecurity and scepticism.
It can, therefore, be seen that there is little agreement regarding the exact number of emotions.
Essay # 6. Judgement of Emotions:
A very important component of our social life, particularly direct interpersonal interaction is our ability to judge the emotions of others. Social life will be absolutely impossible without such an ability to judge others emotions and respond accordingly. The young infant, very soon in his or her life learns to read the emotions of the mother and later that of other significant others.
The errant husband who returns home late, first concentrates on judging the emotions of his wife. A contrived silence, non-responsiveness on her part very eloquently communicates a strong anger and disapproval. So, does a clever domestic helper wait for the moment, when he judges the master of the house to be found in a happy and relaxed mood, to moot the idea of an increase in his salary.
The facial expressions of the person, his posture, whether he is sitting quietly or pacing up and down, all these are external indicators of an internal emotional condition. Such external actions serve to communicate the emotions of the individual to others and similarly help others to read the emotions of those experiencing theirs.
In fact such expressions are seen even among lower animals. But while it is true that body movements do convey emotions, nevertheless as observed by Golemen attempts to establish a fixed one to one correspondence between certain body movements and specific underlying emotions have rarely been very successful. As of today, facial expressions offer the best cues, in judging the expressions of emotions.
In view of this there has been a fair amount of research on judgement of emotions of facial expressions. Ruckmick actually designed and standardised a set of pictures to study people’s ability to judge emotions from facial expressions. The pictures have been widely used.
It has been estimated that the human face can generate about six to seven hundred different expressions, the actual number varying from culture to culture and individual to individual. At the same time there is evidence to show that some patterns of expressions are natural and innate. Thus, the expression of a smile has been found to be similar across many cultures.
Similarly, a common pattern of expression of sadness has also been found to be fairly widespread with a’ long face and a reduced muscle tone. Aversion or disgust, is another emotion which has been found to be accompanied by a fairly common and similar type of facial expressions.
Emotional expressions in infants who are normal and those who are blind have been found to be very similar. These facts suggest that there are some innate patterns of expression of certain emotions. At the same time, however, there are specific expressions which are not unusual, and also cannot be regarded as innate.
Such expressions are required through learning mostly by imitation and other forms of social learning. Thus when an Indian is happy, this is expressed through loud vocal expressions, a variety of body movements, hugging and a variety of other signs of exuberance which is not true of an occidental.
Along with this learning of culturally familiar and common expression, gradually there is also an increasing element of individuality. If two adults are displeased with one of your actions, they show it differently. The mechanism of shaping discussed under conditioning plays an important role in this.
While facial expressions of typical emotions are acquired, at the same time people also learn to control such expressions. Thus, in modern society, a cultured or learned individual is expected to be restrained and control open expression of emotions. On the other hand, actors are able to express emotions, under constrained conditions.
Our expressions of emotions are controlled by different parts of the brain. Thus voluntary expression, which is acquired or which we see in the case of actors is controlled by the pyramidal motor system in the cerebral cortex, while involuntary and innate expressions are controlled by the extra pyramidal system in the cortex.
Damages to these areas have been shown to affect the ability for expression of emotions. Other studies have shown that the two hemispheres of the cortex-right and left, play slightly different roles.
Thus individuals in whom there has been some damage to the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere being intact, show an exaggerated expression of negative emotions like crying and may find it difficult to enjoy jokes and humour even though they understand these.
On the other hand those with a damaged right hemisphere without any injury to the left tend to show uncontrollable laughter suggesting that the right hemisphere may have a greater role in the case of positive emotions. Thus there is some evidence that there appears to be a difference between the right and left hemisphere in their roles in the expression of emotions.
On the whole, the right hemisphere plays a more dominant role in the expression of emotions. Studies have shown that the right hemisphere is more efficient than the left in perceiving and expressing emotions and recognising facial expressions while the left has been found to be more efficient in recognising words.
Essay # 7. The Disruptive Role of Emotions:
Emotions have very often been considered as disruptive in nature. It has been said that they affect the physical and mental health of the individual and make him less efficient and socially unpleasant. This is not true of all emotions. One can make a distinction between positive emotions and negative emotions.
Emotions like anger, fear and jealousy are disruptive and energy-consuming if they are aroused very frequently and in intense forms. It has been shown that in some cases they can lead to psychosomatic disorders or psycho-physiological disorders like diabetes, hypertension, peptic-ulcer, etc.
There is no doubt that if one becomes a victim of heightened emotionality and reacts with violent emotions, it will have an adverse effect on one’s mental and physical health. On the other hand, in milder forms emotions can be personally and socially useful. For example, healthy fear and righteous anger are often necessary.
It is healthy fear and righteous anger that have been behind many good things in life including progress of science and the growth of civilizations. Positive emotions like joy contribute to physical and mental health by stimulating the parasympathetic functions.
In addition, they also contribute to the happiness of others and, thus, create pleasantness all around. It is, therefore, necessary that people should develop the ability to derive joy and happiness from life. People should cultivate a love for nature, art and the other good things of life.
This will help us to divert our attention and preoccupation from situations, which are otherwise stressful. The habit of reacting excessively to situations should also be avoided. This is known as the ability to control emotions. The ability to exercise voluntary control on one’s emotions goes a long way in ensuring mental and physical health.
Essay # 8. The Measurement of Emotions:
As psychology developed into a science, attempts were being continuously made to develop techniques of measuring and quantifying different aspects of behaviour. As a part of this process, attempts have also been made to measure emotional behaviour. When it comes to a question of measurement of emotions one can see two dimensions to the problem.
First, there is the activity dimension or the physiological dimension, which includes all the muscular, glandular and energy changes.
Second, there is the psychological dimension or the experiential dimension. While it has been relatively easy to measure the former, the latter poses difficulties.
Bodily activities or changes in emotions are measured with the help of instruments like the Pneumograph (respiratory rate). Sphygmomanometer (blood pressure) and other common instruments. The Polygraph is a composite instrument, which gives us records of a variety of bodily changes in emotions.
The reader might have heard of the ‘Lie Detector’ used by investigative agencies to detect whether a person is speaking the truth or not. The lie detector essentially involves the use of a polygraph. The fluctuations, especially sudden variations in bodily activities give an indication regarding the possibilities of lying.
An important component in the polygraph is the measurement of the G.S.R. or the Galvanic Skin Response. This refers to changes in the electrical resistance of the skin. Under emotional conditions there are changes in the electrical discharge and the pattern of these changes indicate underlying emotional disturbances though this by itself cannot be said to be an infallible indicator.