Emotional Underpinnings (Week 2)

Tessa Noonan-Jan. 29, 2008

Perhaps the most fascinating component of this week's reading (a difficult task to be sure) was in LeDoux's review of Nisbett & Wilson's work, and his subsequent work with Michael Gazzaniga. These experiments examined the deep emotional content that is experienced and then labeled and qualified. However, such research began to evidence that much of this labeling was often wrong, a type of guess at explaining the stimuli and the response. This was particularly evident in patients with split brains, who had no ability to communicate right brain function, but could somehow still experience the emotional content of their experiences (an amazing phenomenon in itself). After providing the right side with a stimulus, LeDoux states that "time after time, the left hemisphere made up explanations as if it knew why the response was performed" (p. 32). The almost subliminal quality of these pervasive emotions, as well as the left brains reaction to justify such an action go far to interpret the brain's emotional content. 

Along these lines, I found the biological connects that Darwin asserted and Ekman, Sorenson, and Freisen supported to be very interesting. The fact that there are ways in which the entire human species experiences and interprets emotion similarly is quite amazing. However, I think that some of this research, particularly the article on cultural displays of emotion, minimizes the extent to which the interpretation of emotional forces plays a part in the experience and conceptions of emotions as a whole.