WoK 4: Emotion - Jason

In response to the 'nature-nurture' question. I believe that our emotions are both innate and learnt through experience. We'll take an example, a new born baby. When babies are first delivered from their mother's womb, they will usually be crying because they are uncomfortable (sadness). From the fact that they were just delivered from their mother's womb, there were no nurturing in the process. This suggests that some emotion such as sadness is innate(rationalism).

New born babies cry when they are hungry or uncomfortable. My brother showed happiness, sadness and joy in his first few years. He cried when he was hungry or uncomfortable. As he grew up, I notice that he began to show other emotions such as anger and fear and learned how to use those emotions that he showed from his early age. Now, he does not cry when he is hungry or when he feels uncomfort. With nurturing from the day he was born, he was able to learn how to use emotions. This suggests that emotions are also learnt through experience(empiricism).

Immanuel Kant once said, "Intuitions without concepts are blind, concepts without intuitions are empty".This basically means that you cannot grasp the truth without using both experience and intuition. How this quote can help support my view is that without nurture, you would not be able to learn how to use your innate abilities; and without innate abilities, experience itself alone would be nothing.

Emotion

I think that we are born with emotion and its not something you can actually control for example outbursts, they just happen you cant "learn to have an outburst", that just sounds ridiculous. I do agree that our emotions are deep within us and our life experiences bring them out of us all differently maybe even depending on the people around us. I also think emotion is very vital for us to have because without it life would be pretty blunt and boring and I also believe certain people only fit in with certain other people because of simularities in their emotional personalities and types.

Alyssa

Norbert - WoK Emotion

To expression our emotions, i.e. whether we are happy or sad, we look at others, and ‘copy’ how they express their emotions. It is scientifically proven that people often copy what others do, then act the way others do appropriately. However, how we feel (our emotions) are felt deep within us, and that is affected by our upbringing and experience. This is why parents are very important to a child’s upbringing. Parents guide them on how the child should think, and how to FILTER the physical raw data we are given everyday. It could also be innate. When you see a situation, everyone reacts differently, regardless of your upbringing and experience, and has different feelings and emotions. This could be different depending on your genetic layout.

WoK3: Emotion

In our first lesson, we operationalised a working definition of emotion -- i.e "reactions or responses related to sense perceptions, internal states, thoughts, or beliefs about things or people, real or imagined" (Dombrowski et al., 2007: 50) -- by

• responding to the viewing of Aerosmith ('Sweet Emotion') and MadTV (Tickle me Elmo/Emo); and
• exploring the physical sensations we experienced in response to 'core' or 'basic' emotions identified by behavioural psychologists Paul Ekman and Robert Plutchik: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, curiosity, acceptance and joy.

Alchin (2006: 102) notes that emotions can be:

• either instinctive (e.g. anger, love)
• or social (e.g. guilt, shame); and

• either inward-looking (e.g. fear) -- i.e. 'drawn into ourselves'
• or outward-looking (e.g. wonder) -- i.e. drawn 'out of ourselves'.

Problematising our initial responses and explorations, we then used a BBC article (Generosity 'may be in the genes') to consider the 'nurture-nature' guiding question: Are emotions learned (i.e. acquired through interactions with the environment and others) or innate (i.e. genetic and pre-programmed into us at/from birth)?

Building on this first lesson's classwork, you are now to blog a one-paragraph:

• post that responds to the 'nurture-nature' guiding question -- Do you believe that emotions are learned or in us from birth? What evidence can you offer to support your claims? Be sure to craft your paragraph so that it includes a connected series of statements intended to establish your position... convince us through evidence and inductive/deductive reasoning; and
• comment to someone else's post that either supports or challenges their claims/conclusions (and, of course, explains why or why not).

Please post your response by Monday, 17 December; your comment to someone else's post by Wednesday, 19 December; and use your first name in your post's title.

If you so feel inspired and want to learn more about your own 'emotional intelligence', then consider completing the on-line EQ test and reflecting on the results. It's free to do and receive the abridged results.

References

Alchin, N. (2006). Theory of knowledge (2nd ed.). London: Hodder Murray.

Dombrowski, E., Rotenberg, L. & M. Bick (2007). Theory of knowledge: Course companion. Oxford: OUP.