Emotion: Yixia Gu

Emotion, I believe is something that a human is equipped with, and can be expressed from birth. Take a neonate for example: it greets the unfamiliar and quite intimidating world with a cry- an obvious emotion which also functions as a biological check to see if the vocal chords are is working properly. The baby had already knows how to cry without the influence of the environment. Many emotions also involve the brain triggering a response, as in the response to anger or sadness. In addition, certain parts of the limbic structure such as the Amygdala is responsible for production of negative, fear emotions, whilst the Insula is important in producing feelings of disgust, which contribute the notion that emotions are innate and biological.

Nevertheless, as we grow and learn from others around us, we begin to imitate different emotions and thus are shaped by the surrounding environment. According to the Social learning theory, we are incipient of the emotions modeled by people we come in contact with so we reproduce them, and this is also the time when we ‘acquire’ new emotions such as anxiety in precarious situations, and embarrassment when we do something out of the social norm.

Thus, the emotions we have are through a mixture of what our body is programmed with and also through the way were nurtured and other environmental factors.