Emotional tone of sensations

The emotional tone of sensations is phylogenetically the most ancient emotional reaction. He is associated with experience of pleasure or displeasure in the process of feeling. Therefore, N. N. Lange attributed them to elementary physical senses. He wrote that “... the feeling of pleasure and pain is an indicator of only the correspondence between the impression and the demand of the organism that is present at the moment. It is a witness, not a prophet."(1996, pp. 268-269; emphasis mine. - E. I.). Therefore, as P. V. Simonov emphasizes, this contact type of emotional response. This is what distinguishes, in his opinion, the emotional tone of sensations from other emotional reactions. With disgust, suffering, pleasure, interaction always already takes place. It could not be prevented, so it can only be weakened, stopped or strengthened.

The emotional tone of sensations is characterized by a reaction to certain properties of objects or phenomena: a pleasant or unpleasant smell of chemicals or the taste of products; a pleasant or unpleasant sound, an annoying or pleasing combination of colors, etc.

The separation of the emotional tone of sensations from sensations at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was a significant step forward in the study of the emotional sphere of humans and animals. Indeed, at that time, the presence of an emotional tone (“feeling”) as a special type of mental phenomena (V. Bund, O. Kulpe) was disputed by many psychologists. The German psychologist T. Ziegen (1909) believed that "feeling" is one of the properties of sensation, along with quality and intensity. The Polish psychologist W. Witwicki (Witwicki, 1946) argued that the emotional tone is a special kind of mental sensation. N. N. Lange (1996) wrote that “ordinary speech and even insufficiently accurate psychological observation ... constantly confuse these two series of phenomena. Their distinction is especially difficult in the case of organic sensations and skin. If the feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness of a color or smell is relatively easily distinguished by us from the color or smell itself, then in skin pain, in tickling, and especially in the organic sensations of the digestive tract and in general physical well-being, the sensations closely merge for the observer with the corresponding feelings. Therefore, even some psychologists, such as K. Stumpf, speak in this case about feelings - sensations (Gefulsempfindung), and this leads them then to a sharp contrast between such lower feelings and higher ones, as being completely different from the first. But it is precisely this consequence that is for us an indicator of the unacceptability of mixing feelings with sensations. One who sees that the higher feelings are essentially similar to the physical (emotional tone of sensations. - E. I.), will therefore beware of identifying these latter with the corresponding sensations. If the physical senses were sensations, then the higher ones should be the same, which, however, is already clearly unacceptable. Obviously, therefore, even with organic sensations, one must draw a line between the actual sensations and the physical pleasure and pain caused by them, although this is not always easy ”(1996, pp. 267-268). In this regard, N. N. Lange conducted comparative analysis characteristics of sensations and emotional tone of sensations (Table 2.1).

The last two points of this table need to be corrected: at the level of experiences, the emotional tone of sensations is expressed in pleasure or displeasure (disgust).

Despite the breeding of sensations and the emotional tone of sensations, there are still echoes of old ideas. Thus, pain is included in the category of emotions, although it cannot even be attributed to the emotional tone of sensations. Pain is a sensation, and the emotional tone of sensations that arises under its influence is called suffering.

Table 2.1. Comparative characteristics sensations and emotional tone (According to N. N. Lange)

Functions of the emotional tone of sensations. The first function of the emotional tone of sensations, which is mainly pointed out by many authors, is indicative, which consists of a message to the body whether this or that effect is dangerous or not, whether it is desirable or whether it should be eliminated.“The feeling of pleasure entails an increase in vital activity and movements aimed at preserving and enhancing a pleasant impression, while displeasure and suffering, on the contrary, lower vital activity and cause movements of retraction, defense, self-defense,” wrote N. N. Lange (1996, p. 268). The presence of an emotional tone of sensations gives the organism, when encountering an unfamiliar object, the opportunity to immediately make, although preliminary, but a quick decision instead of comparing the new object with countless types of other known objects. As P. K. Anokhin writes, thanks to the emotional tone, “... the body turns out to be extremely favorably adapted to environmental conditions, since it, without even determining the form, type, mechanism and other parameters of certain influences, can respond to them with saving speed with the help of a certain quality of the emotional state, reducing them, so to speak, to a common biological denominator: whether this effect is beneficial or harmful to him” (1964, p. 341).

True, as P. V. Simonov (1966) notes, this adaptive value of the emotional tone cannot be exaggerated. The taste properties of some harmful substances can cause a feeling of pleasure, and a product that is unpleasant in appearance and taste can be beneficial to the body. But this is only an exception to the rule according to which the emotional tone accumulates in itself the most common and frequently occurring signs of beneficial and harmful factors that have been steadily preserved over millions of years of natural selection and have become, in the words of P. K. Anokhin (1964), “bearings” .

W. Witwicki showed that the most powerful experience of pleasant or unpleasant does not appear at the first, but at the second meeting with an emotional stimulus. Obviously, not every contact stimulus is capable of "on the move" to cause a distinct emotional tone of sensations that determines the usefulness or harmfulness of his body. The "maturing" of the emotional tone of sensations occurs gradually.

On the other hand, the same author discovered the phenomenon of adaptation to emotional stimuli. Prolonged action of a stimulus of a pleasant nature leads to a decrease, dulling of the sensation of pleasant. If the stimulus is replaced or temporarily interrupted, the sensation of pleasant arises with the same strength. There is an adaptation to an unpleasant tone of sensations, if it is not sharply expressed. The question, however, is whether this adaptation is really emotional, independent of the adaptation that takes place in relation to physical sensations, or whether it is a consequence of the latter, i.e., the perception of a long-acting stimulus of the same intensity as weaker.

The second function of the emotional tone of sensations is providing feedback, whose task is communicate to humans and animals that a biological need has been satisfied(And That where there is a positive ny emorational tone - pleasure) or not satisfied(and then there is a negative emotional tone - displeasure).

The third function of the emotional tone of sensations, which is usually not paid attention to and which follows from the second function, is connected with the need to exhibit certain types of behavior until the desired result is achieved by the body. Indeed, it is obviously not by chance, as P. V. Simonov (1966) notes, that a mechanism has been formed in evolution, according to which the eruption of the seed during sexual intercourse occurs not with a certain number of frictional movements or after a certain time after the onset of the act, but with orgasm, i.e., when a person receives maximum pleasure from sexual intercourse. And this causes the animal and man to seek orgasm to satisfy the need for a pleasant sensation. The same role is played by the feeling of satiety that appears during eating, a positive tone when the feeling of thirst disappears, etc.

The same thing happens when a certain behavior is inhibited, if it is undesirable and harmful to the organism at the moment; then there is a feeling of disgust towards the object that previously caused pleasure. To illustrate this, I will use an example given by P. V. Simonov. In the event of a disorder in the activity of the gastrointestinal tract, it is required to stop eating food for a while. To do this, pathological processes in the internal organs excite the nervous structures of the “center of disgust”. Now any irritation addressed to the food center, from direct contact with food to its appearance, smell, only increases disgust and thereby prevents food from entering the gastrointestinal tract, contributing to the flow of recovery processes. In this case, the animal or person is also forced to behave in a certain way until the aversion to food disappears and the body achieves the result it needs, that is, until recovery occurs.

Mechanisms of emergence of an emotional tone of sensations. As V. K. Vilyunas (1979) notes, “the fact of the subject’s emotional perception of unconditioned stimuli for a long time remained without due attention ... Meanwhile, there is reason to assert that it is not the pain-causing effect that prompts the subject to respond, but the pain itself, not food reinforcement, but its positive emotional perception, that is, not the stimulus itself, but emotional condition which he invokes” (p. 13). This emotional state, arising by the mechanism of an unconditioned reflex, is the emotional tone of sensations.

Animals and humans have “pleasure centers” and “displeasure centers” in the brain (there are especially many of both in the hypothalamic (hypothalamic) region, in the amygdala, septal zone), the excitation of which gives the corresponding experiences. Physiologists J. Olds and P. Milner (Olds, Milner, 1954) implanted an electrode into the brain of a rat, with which they irritated the nerve center of pleasure. Then they taught the rat to self-irritate this center, for which it had to press a lever with its paw, thus closing the electrical network. The pleasure experienced by the rat at the same time led to the fact that she pressed the lever several thousand times in a row. Experiments with self-irritation were then reproduced on other animals, including monkeys.

Similar phenomena were also observed in the clinic of nervous diseases, when medical indications sick people were implanted in the brain for a long time electrodes, stimulating certain parts of the brain through them. Excitation with a therapeutic purpose of a part of the brain that causes a feeling of pleasure led to the fact that after the session the patient went to the doctor and asked: “Doctor, irritate me some more” (from the story of V. M. Smirnov, employee of N. P. Bekhtereva).

There is evidence that "zones of pleasure" and "zones of displeasure" are located near the centers of organic needs. So, "pleasure centers" are often localized in the nervous structures associated with food and sexual activity, and "displeasure centers" coincide with the center of the defensive reflex, zones pain sensitivity, hunger and thirst.

The genesis of the emotional tone of sensations. Aristotle, Spinoza and others wrote about the expediency of having an emotional tone of sensations, or, more simply, pleasure or displeasure (disgust) received from sensations. evolution. Therefore, N. N. Lange writes that the appearance of a sensual tone of sensations is given to us by nature and does not depend on our will. According to P. V. Simonov (1970), the emotional tone of sensations in some cases is a kind of effect species memory. Thus, an unpleasant emotional tone of pain sensation and a pleasant emotional tone of sensations such as orgasm are hereditary. In his opinion, the emotional tone accumulates in itself the most common and frequently occurring signs of beneficial and harmful factors that have been steadily preserved over millions of years of natural selection. This, of course, can explain the effect on animals and humans of the smells of food, some of which are appetizing, while others cause vomiting.

However, a number of cases associated with the appearance of a positive emotional tone of sensations (in particular, when perceiving colors of different quality) are difficult to assess from the point of view of the usefulness or harmfulness of the acting stimulus. Leman also noted that yellow causes a cheerful mood (and N. N. Lange adds red and orange here), blue is pleasant, but cold, green is calming, and purple causes melancholy. N. N. Lange wrote that they like clean and bright colors, but they don’t like pale and “dirty” colors, that is, mixed and dark, and cause displeasure. So are sounds: high tones are cheerful, and low tones are serious and solemn. Besides, biological significance pleasure-displeasure in a person can be completely perverted. What is an extremely unpleasant sensation for a child (onion, mustard, pepper), for an adult is an object of pleasure, since he develops a need for sharp taste sensations.

Finally, the appearance of pleasure-displeasure is determined not only by the quality of the stimulus, but also by its strength. It is known that a stimulus that caused a pleasant sensation becomes unpleasant and even causes pain when it is strong. Consequently, nature had to provide for another parameter of stimuli - not only their quality, but also the optimal zone of their intensity. Very intense pleasure is called ecstasy, and very intense displeasure is called suffering. In this regard, it is impossible not to mention the principle of relativity of positive emotional assessments proposed by P. V. Simonov (1970). The author notes that the repeated repetition of "pleasant" influences leads to the neutralization of positive assessments, and often their transformation into negative ones. Therefore, there are no unambiguously and consistently “pleasant” incentives.

Hence, linking pleasure-displeasure to the usefulness or harmfulness of the stimulus for the body should take into account not only the quality of the stimulus, but also its intensity. In addition, displeasure arises in the absence of a stimulus.

The emotional tone of pleasure or displeasure, pleasure or disgust can accompany not only sensations, but also impressions of a person from the process of perception, representation, intellectual activity, communication, experienced emotions. Even Plato (cited by N. Ya. Grot, 1879-1880) spoke about mental pleasure, pleasure, which he attributed to the highest pleasures, which have nothing to do with the lower pleasures and sufferings. They are connected, Plato noted, with intellectual contemplation. The emergence of spiritual joys, he wrote, is associated with a conscious assessment of the absolute merits of things.

N. N. Lange wrote that in emotions there is a special elementary feeling of pleasure and suffering, which is irreducible to organic and kinesthetic sensations. Therefore, I believe that it is advisable to single out one more type of emotional tone - the emotional tone of impressions. If the emotional tone of sensations is physical pleasure-displeasure, then the emotional tone of impressions - aesthetic pleasure-unpleasure.

It is important to emphasize that, from Lange's point of view (quite rightly), the emotional tone of impressions is an integral part of emotions. It is this circumstance that gives reason to divide emotions into positive (associated with pleasure) and negative (associated with displeasure), i.e., mark them with a sign. Therefore, it can be said that the emotional tone of impressions is a sign of emotion.

Consequently, the emotional tone of impressions cannot be reduced to a specific emotion. For example, fear can cause not only negative experiences, but also positive ones: in a certain situation, a person can enjoy the experience of fear. You can also enjoy sadness. Thus, the emotion is one, but the emotional tone is different. Therefore, K. Izard's attribution of pleasure and disgust to emotions seems unjustified.

The emotional tone of impressions has the property of generalization. To demonstrate this property of emotional tone, I will go the opposite way and quote a culinary specialist who said: “I don’t understand what is tasteless. I understand concrete things: bitter, sour, sweet, burnt, overcooked, etc.” One can only feel sorry for such a culinary specialist, whose organoleptic perception of food occurs at the level of individual sensations, and not at the level of emotional perception - tasty or tasteless. One can also feel sorry for a person who perceives a picture in a museum not as a beautiful or ugly work of art, that is, at the level of aesthetic pleasure, but as a combination of individual colors.

The emotional tone of impressions, in contrast to the emotional tone of sensations, can be contactless, i.e., not related to the direct impact of a physical or chemical stimulus, but to be a consequence of the presentation (memories of a pleasant vacation, the victory of your favorite team, your successful performance, etc.).

Obviously, this emotional tone is also associated with the centers of "pleasure" and "displeasure", only their excitation does not go through afferent pathways, but in a more complex way - through the cortical sections associated with human mental activity: listening to music, reading a book, perceiving a picture. Therefore, we can say that the emotional tone of impressions has a socialized character. K. Izard writes about this: “In early infancy, the reaction of disgust can only be activated by a chemical irritant - bitter or spoiled food. However, as they grow up and socialize, a person learns to feel disgust for the most diverse objects of the world around him and even for himself. The concept of "disgusting" is used by us in a variety of situations and in relation to a variety of things. With its help, we can characterize the smell of spoiled food, the character and actions of a person, or an unpleasant event” (2000, p. 270). Indeed, teachers, for example, often tell students, "You're being disgusting." The important thing is not that they say it, but that at this moment they really feel disgust for the student.

The emotional tone of impressions can be accompanied by an emotional tone of sensations and, consequently, physiological changes in the human body (interoceptive and proprioceptive sensations are reflected). This is especially evident when people are riding roller coasters or skiing down a steep slope, when the heart stops, takes their breath away from fear, etc. Here, pleasure arises not only from the experience of fear and the consciousness of its safety, but also from physical sensations.

Feeling pleasure or displeasure about the perceived object, a person often cannot explain what exactly attracts or repels him in them. The most interesting thing is that such an analysis is not required, and sometimes it would only get in the way. I. M. Sechenov noted that “analysis kills pleasure”, and P. V. Simonov writes in this regard that “if a person behaved like a computer when choosing a life partner, he would never be able to marry” (1966 , p. 29).

So, the following can be noted.

Emotional tone of sensations - this is the lowest level of innate (unconditioned reflex) emotional response, which performs the function of a biological assessment of stimuli affecting the human and animal body through the occurrence of pleasure or displeasure. The emotional tone of sensations is a consequence of a physiological process (sensation) that has already arisen. Therefore, for the emergence of an emotional tone of sensations, physical contact with the stimulus is necessary.

Emotional tone of impressions is the next step in developing emotional response. It is associated with the socialization of a person in the process of his ontogenetic development and, therefore, with the conditioning mechanism, does not require direct physical contact with the stimulus for its occurrence, but retains the same functions as the emotional tone of sensations.

Emotional tone can give a certain coloring not only to emotions, but also to such socialized emotional phenomena as feelings. An example of this is the feeling of contempt, which is based on disgust.

Emphasis should be placed on the fact that the emotional tone of sensations and impressions is not only bipolar, but also has differentiated experiences within each pole. The negative pole of the emotional tone can be expressed through disgust, displeasure, suffering (physical and mental); the positive pole characterizes pleasure (enjoyment), bliss. These differentiated experiences of the emotional tone are in the evolutionary series, as it were, pre-emotions.

The emotional tone of sensations and impressions is more inert than the sensation itself or any image of perception. By directing attention to the impression, it intensifies, which creates an opportunity to savor the pleasure. Conversely, when attention is distracted, pleasure becomes imperceptible. A person can easily control the emotional tone of sensations. To do this, you only need to apply the appropriate irritation or cause a certain idea in yourself.

2.2. Emotion as a reaction to a situation and an event

Why did nature not limit itself to the emotional tone of sensations, but created more emotions, and even in such a variety? To get an answer to this question, you need to consider in detail what emotion is, and to identify its difference from the emotional tone of sensations.

As already mentioned, scientists give different answers to the question: “What is an emotion?” and, according to the physiologist P. V. Simonov (1981), abstract and descriptive. This is also noted by psychologists. So, B. I. Dodonov (1978) writes that “the terms denoting mental phenomena, usually called emotions, do not have a strict meaning, and there are still discussions among psychologists on the topic “what does that mean”” (p. 23) . The author himself decided not to join this discussion, preferring to use the concept of "emotion" in a broad sense, including feelings.

W. James believed that "emotion is the desire for feelings" (1991, p. 272). At the same time, he wrote that “as purely internal states of mind, emotions are completely beyond description. In addition, such a description would be superfluous, because emotions as purely mental states are already well known to the reader. We can only describe their relation to the objects that call them and the reactions that accompany them” (1991, p. 272).

P. K. Anokhin, defining emotion, writes: “Emotions are physiological states of the body that have a pronounced subjective coloring and cover all types of human feelings and experiences - from deeply traumatic suffering to high forms of joy and social life feeling” (1964, p. 339 ).

S. L. Rubinshtein (1946), in understanding the essence of emotions, proceeded from the fact that, unlike perception, which reflects the content of an object, emotions express the state of the subject and its relation to the object.

Many authors associate emotions with experiences. M. S. Lebedinsky and V. N. Myasishchev write about emotions as follows: “Emotions are one of the most important aspects of mental processes that characterize a person’s experience of reality. Emotions represent an integral expression of the altered tone of neuropsychic activity, which is reflected in all aspects of the human psyche and organism” (1966, p. 222). G. A. Fortunatov (1976) calls emotions only specific forms of emotional experience. P. A. Rudik (1976), defining emotions, identifies experience and attitude: “Emotions are mental processes, the content of which is experience, a person’s attitude to certain phenomena of the surrounding reality ...” (p. 75). According to R. S. Nemov, emotions are “elementary experiences that arise in a person under the influence of the general state of the body and the course of the process of meeting actual needs” (1994, p. 573). Despite different words used by psychologists in defining emotions, their essence is manifested either in one word - experience, or in two - experience of the relationship.

Thus, most often emotions are defined as a person's experience at the moment of his attitude towards something or someone (to a current or future situation, to other people, to himself, etc.).

However, L. M. Wecker (2000) believes that “the definition of the specificity of emotions as the experience of events and relationships, as opposed to cognitive processes, as knowledge of these events and relationships is not enough, if only because it describes emotions in terms of specific characteristics and does not include own ancestral trait. This definition is essentially tautological” (p. 372). Arguing with S. L. Rubinshtein (1946), Wecker writes that emotions, of course, express the subject's relations, but their definition by contrasting the expression of relations with their reflection is not enough. “... The objectification (expression) of the subject's relations here is essentially identified with their actual presence. More precisely, it would be necessary to say that emotions are rather a person’s subjective relations than they are their expression, since relations are expressed in facial expressions, pantomime, intonation, and, finally, in proper linguistic means ”(p. 373). It follows from this that for Wecker emotions are subjective relations and then, naturally, these relations (emotion) are expressed through expressive means. The relationship between subjective relations, emotions and expression, according to Wecker, should look like this:

subjective relations (emotions) -> expression

Of course, expression is a means of expressing, but not subjective relations, but emotions reflecting these relations. Subjective relations are expressed (or rather, manifested) through emotions. From my point of view, the relationship between subjective relations, emotions and expression looks different:

subjective relations -> emotions -> expression

There are other approaches to understanding emotions. P. Janet (Janet, 1928) speaks of emotions as behavior and believes that the function of emotions is to disorganize it. Following this author, P. Fress considers as emotions only such reactions that lead to a loss of control over one's behavior: “... pleasure is not an emotion ... the intensity of our experiences should not mislead us.

Joy can become an emotion when, due to its intensity, we lose control over our own reactions: excitement, incoherent speech, and even unrestrained laughter are evidence of this ”(1975, p. 132). Ya. Reikovsky (1975) defines emotion as an act of regulation and dissociates himself from understanding it as a subjective mental phenomenon. The subjective side of emotions, from his point of view, can only be revealed introspectively, that is, after the fact. Therefore, Reikovsky treats the emotional process as a theoretical construct, and not as an observable fact. A. N. Leontiev (1971) also notes the regulatory nature of emotions when he writes that emotional processes include a wide class of processes of internal regulation of activity and that they are able to regulate activity in accordance with anticipated circumstances. According to Leontiev, experience is only generated by emotion, but is not its only content. The simplest emotional processes are also expressed in organic, motor and secretory changes (innate reactions). (In connection with such ideas of A. N. Leontiev about emotions, it is strange that he defines affects as strong and relatively short-term emotional experiences).

The disadvantage of many definitions of emotions is that they are tied only to needs. For example, Virginia Queen (2000) gives the following definition: "Emotion is an expression of a person's attitude towards his needs, their satisfaction or dissatisfaction" (p. 548). P. V. Simonov takes a similar position: there is no need, there is no emotion either. But do emotions arise only about needs? Fear is a negative emotion, but it does not appear because there is a need for fear, and not because we do not know how to satisfy the need for self-preservation. This is an urgent unconditioned reflex genetically programmed emotional reaction aimed at organizing behavior in the event of the unexpected appearance of a “dangerous” stimulus, stimulus, or signal. There is no conscious assessment of the stimulus, and the need to respond to it in one way or another simply does not have time to form.

It should be noted that ideas about emotions as experiences or as an act of regulation, although legitimate, suffer from one-sidedness. Each of them taken separately is clearly not enough to show what the essence of emotions is.

In my opinion, K. Izard has a more realistic approach to understanding the essence of emotions. In his brief and preliminary definition of emotion, both its sensual and functional side are noted: “An emotion is something that is experienced as a feeling (feeling) that motivates, organizes and directs perception, thinking and action” (2000, p. 27). Only I would give the word feeling a more accurate translation in this context: not a feeling, but a feeling. Otherwise, confusion will begin again in understanding emotions and feelings. In addition, instead of "something" one could say "reaction".

Based on the foregoing, I consider emotion as a reflex psycho-vegetative reaction associated with the manifestation of a subjective biased attitude (in the form of experience) to the situation, its outcome (event) and contributing to the organization of expedient behavior in this situation.

In this definition, the emphasis is on the role of emotions in the organization of behavior that is expedient in a given situation, and not only on experiencing the attitude towards this situation, which is typical of traditional definitions of emotions. After all, emotions appeared in the evolutionary development of animals not to be experienced, but to help organize behavior. Experience is not the goal of a reaction, but only a specific way of reflecting a need situation in the mind. As W. James wrote, “do we show our anger, sadness or fear with movements for the sake of some pleasure?” (1911, p. 391). J.S. Mill also points to the secondary nature of emotional experiences in relation to behavior, according to which, in order to experience the emotion of pleasure, happiness, one must strive not to experience them, but to achieve the goals that give rise to these experiences.

The complexity of understanding emotions lies in the fact that, giving them definitions, the authors refer them either to any class of emotional reactions (emotional tone, mood, affect), or only to one, which they call emotions proper and is separated from other classes of emotional phenomena. Ya. Reikovsky, for example, divides all emotional phenomena into emotions, excitement, affect and feeling, A.N. Leontiev (1971) - into affects and passions, emotions and feelings proper, etc. Emotions themselves are said to be complex emotions - positive (joy, delight, etc.) and negative (anger, grief, fear, etc.), contrasting them with simple emotions - the emotional tone of sensations.

It is widely believed that emotions are characterized by:

1) clearly expressed intensity (a rather pronounced experience by a person of joy, grief, fear, etc.);

2) limited duration; emotion lasts relatively short time, its duration is limited by the time of the direct action of the cause or the time of remembering it;

3) good awareness of the cause of its occurrence;

4) connection with a specific object, circumstance; emotion does not have a diffuse character characteristic of moods; a person experiences pleasure, joy from listening to a particular piece of music, from reading a specific book, from meeting a specific (beloved) person, from acquiring a specific thing;

5) polarity; emotions that are opposite to each other in terms of the quality of experiences form pairs: joy and sadness, anger and fear, pleasure and disgust.

I must say that all these signs can be characteristic of the emotional tone of sensations. Do we not clearly feel pleasure and understand its cause? And isn't the time of obtaining pleasure limited by the time of the direct action of the cause that caused the pleasure? And this reason itself is connected with a specific object. Is it any wonder, therefore, that K. Izard attributes pleasure and aversion to emotions?

As for the limited duration of an emotion, this is also an unreliable criterion. A. A. Baranov (1999) showed, for example, that after the situation of a “planted explosive device”, a negative emotional state persisted in 25% of first-graders for two to three days.

Summing up what has been said, the following can be noted.

Emotion - it's much more high level emotional response than an emotional tone. Compared with the emotional tone, emotion has a number of advantages, therefore it plays an incomparably greater role in the life of animals and humans.

1. Emotions are reactions to the situation rather than a single stimulus. You can, of course, object - but isn’t the child happy about the fact that he eats candy, that is, he gets pleasant taste sensations? Of course, he rejoices, but joy arises in him earlier, when receiving candy, i.e. due to the assessment of the situation as satisfying his need, desire, and not about pleasant taste sensations that have not yet been. Pleasant taste sensations (emotional tone of sensations) only reinforce the emotion that has arisen, allow it to be prolonged. It can also be objected that an unpleasant emotional tone of sensations leads to emotion (severe pain - to fear, the incessant grinding of metal objects - to anger, etc.), that is, that emotion arises in response to a separate stimulus. However, here, too, emotion arises when assessing the situation (severe pain threatens with great trouble, the incessant grinding - the unknown: how much more you need to endure it), that is, it is associated with the forecast of the future, and not with what a person feels now. Thus, a person evaluates the situation created by this stimulus, and reacts with the emergence of emotion to this situation, and not to the stimulus itself.

2. Emotions are often advance reaction on the situation and its assessment. As a result, under the influence of emotion, a person reacts to a contact with an irritant that has not yet come. Thus, emotion acts as a mechanism significance for an animal and a person of a given situation.

3. Emotions are differentiated assessment different situations. In contrast to the emotional tone, which gives a generalized assessment (like - dislike, pleasant - unpleasant), emotions more subtly show the meaning of a particular situation.

4. Emotions are not only a way of assessing the upcoming situation, but also mechanism for advance and adequate preparation to it due to the mobilization of mental and physical energy. The emotional tone is obviously devoid of this mechanism.

5. Emotions, like emotional tone, are a mechanism for consolidating positive and negative experiences. Arising when a goal is achieved or not achieved, they are a positive or negative reinforcement of behavior and activity.

To better understand the difference between emotions and the emotional tone of sensations, let's compare their characteristics (Table 2.2).

form of expression of emotions. Emotions can be expressed actively and passively. Fear manifests itself actively (running away) and passively (freeze from fear), joy can be stormy and quiet, angry, a person can get excited, or can only frown, a person can rage in anger, or everything can boil in his chest, etc. d.

Affect

At the beginning of the 20th century, among the various "feelings", affects began to stand out as an independent group. Affects almost always arise in the form of a reaction in which there is a reaction of tension. According to V. Vitvitsky, an affect is a sensual state that "acquires a very significant force and becomes a general violent disturbance of mental life" (1946, p. 239). To affects, he attributed such emotional reactions as fear, horror, anger, etc. K. Stumpf, considering feelings a kind of sensations, singled out affects as a special kind of mental phenomena.

Table 2.2 Comparison of the characteristics of the emotional tone of sensations and emotions

Gradually, the idea of ​​a certain independence of affect as a type of emotional phenomena was established (Kutter, 1998), and when classifying these phenomena, it began to be distinguished along with emotional tone, mood, and emotions proper (which was reflected in many textbooks on psychology). A. N. Leontiev, sharing emotions and affects, writes that “the former are perceived by the subject as states of my “I”, the latter - as states occurring “in me”. This difference comes out clearly in cases where emotions arise as a reaction to an affect” (1984, p. 170), while it remains unclear how to distinguish between the state of one’s “I” and the state that occurs “in me”.

In addition to other well-known signs of affects, A. N. Leontiev, following E. Claparede, singles out one that, in his opinion, distinguishes them from emotions: affects arise in response to an already actually occurring situation and in this sense are, as it were, shifted to the end of an event, while emotions anticipate events that have not yet occurred. While agreeing with the last statement, it still seems to me that the separation of affect from "proper emotions" from the point of view of distinguishing types of emotional phenomena is not justified.

Emotions and affect are also shared by A. Sh. Tkhostov and I. G. Kolymba (1998). From their point of view, both of these emotional phenomena represent the extreme points of a certain continuum, “setting the main differences. Then the affect acts as an uncontrollable (involuntary), often pointless experience that forms the natural basis of emotion. In affect, phenomenological and vegetative manifestations are inaccessible to introspective dissection, do not form a temporary gap, are direct and uncontrollable. The opposite pole is a holistic mature emotion, accessible to indirect regulation, reflection, and always objective” (p. 43).

From this passage and from the content of this article, it seems that the authors understand emotional tone by affect. If this is so, then there will probably be no objection to the separation of such "affect" and emotions.

It seems to me that there is no reason to consider emotion and real affect as two different emotional reactions. An affect is nothing but a strongly expressed emotion. As A. G. Fortunatov (1976) writes, if emotion is emotional excitement, then affect is a storm. Any emotion can reach the level of affect if it is caused by a strong or especially significant stimulus for a person.

Affect as a kind of emotion is characterized by:

1) rapid onset;

2) a very high intensity of experience;

3) short duration;

4) violent expression (expression);

5) lack of accountability, that is, a decrease in conscious control over one's actions; in a state of passion, a person is not able to control himself. With affect, the consequences of what is being done are little thought out, as a result of which a person's behavior becomes impulsive. Such a person is said to be unconscious;

6) diffuseness; strong affects capture the entire personality, which is accompanied by a decrease in the ability to switch attention, a narrowing of the field of perception, control of attention focuses mainly on the object that caused the affect (“anger blinds the eyes”, “rage blinds”).

Affective manifestations of positive emotions are delight, enthusiasm, enthusiasm, an attack of unrestrained fun, laughter, and affective manifestations of negative emotions are rage, anger, horror, despair, often accompanied by stupor (freezing in a motionless pose). After an affect, there often comes a breakdown, indifference to everything around or remorse for what they have done, that is, the so-called affective shock.

The frequent manifestation of affect in a normal environment indicates either a person’s bad manners (a person allows himself to get into an affective state), or about a neuropsychiatric disease that he has.

However, this understanding of affect is not consistent with the use of the term "affect" to refer to any emotional reactions, which is typical of Western psychology. For example, in the book by F. Tyson and R. Tyson (1998), part four is called "Affect" and not "Emotions"; affect is defined by the authors, following A. Compton (Compton, 1980) and P. Knapp (Kparr, 1987), as a mental structure that includes motivational, somatic, expressive, communicative, emotional or sensory components, as well as an associated idea or cognitive component. They reserve the terms "feeling" and "emotion" for the experienced and behavioral aspects of affects, respectively. Thus, the understanding of affect by these authors is rather closer to my understanding of the emotional state.

Properties of emotions

Emotions (however, as well as emotional tone) have a number of properties (Fig. 2.1).

Versatility. This property of emotions was singled out by W. McDougall. It consists in the independence of emotions from the type of need and the specifics of the activity in which they arise. Hope, anxiety, joy, anger can arise when any need is satisfied.

This means that the mechanisms for the emergence of emotions are specific and independent of the mechanisms for the emergence of specific needs. The same can be said about the emotional tone. For example, pleasure can be experienced from various sensations, images of perception and representation.

The dynamism of emotions lies in the phase nature of their flow, i.e., in the increase in tension and its resolution. W. Wundt pointed out this property in his three-dimensional scheme for characterizing emotions. Emotional tension grows in a situation of expectation: the closer the upcoming event, the stronger the tension grows. The same is observed with the incessant action of an unpleasant stimulus on a person. The resolution of the resulting voltage occurs when the event occurs. It is experienced by a person as relief, appeasement or complete weakness.

T. Tomaszewski (Tomaszewski, 1946), using the example of the emotion of anger, singled out four phases of the development of emotion: the phase of cumulation (accumulation, summation), explosion, decrease in tension and extinction.

Dominance. Strong emotions have the ability to suppress emotions that are opposite to themselves, to prevent them from entering the human mind. In essence, A.F. Lazursky wrote about this property, discussing the property of mutual consistency of feelings: “A person whose action of individual feelings is sufficiently coordinated among themselves is completely captured by a certain mood or emotion. being in an upbeat, solemn mood, he will not want to listen to vulgarities" (1995, p. 154).

Summation and "strengthening". Vl. Vitvitsky (Witwicki, 1946) notes that a person usually experiences the most intense pleasure "or displeasure not at the first, but at subsequent presentations of an emotional stimulus. V. S. Deryabin points to another property of emotions - their ability to summation. Emotions associated with the same object are summed up during life, which leads to an increase in their intensity, strengthening of feelings, as a result of which their experience in the form of emotions becomes stronger. The presence of this property was confirmed in the study of fear: the reaction to a dangerous situation in people with a low level of courage when they got into it again was greater than the first time (Skryabin, 1972; Smirnov, Bregman, Kiselev , 1970) True, then adaptation to danger occurs, the level of fear decreases, so this property appears, obviously, only at the first presentation of an emotional stimulus.

Adaptation. Emotions, and the emotional tone of sensations in particular, are characterized by blunting, a decrease in the sharpness of their experiences with a long repetition of the same impressions. As N.N. Lange, “feeling fizzles out” Thus, prolonged action of a pleasant stimulus causes a weakening of the experience of pleasure, up to its complete disappearance. For example, repeatedly rewarding employees in the same way causes them to stop emotionally responding to those rewards. At the same time, a break in the action of the stimulus can again cause pleasure. According to Vl. Vitvitsky, negative emotions are also subject to adaptation, for example, displeasure of moderate intensity, but adaptation to pain does not occur;

Perhaps the effect of adaptation to fear is manifested in such a strange phenomenon at first glance: skydivers experience a jump from a parachute tower more strongly than a jump from an airplane. Probably, the proximity of the earth in the first case makes the perception of height more specific (“is the parachute in time to open if the earth is already so close?” - obviously, the subconscious tells them). Therefore, it is scary to jump, although reason speaks of complete safety.

bias (subjectivity). Depending on the personal (tastes, interests, "moral attitudes, experience) and temperamental characteristics of people, as well as on the situation in which they are, the same reason can cause them different emotions. Danger in some causes fear, in others - joyful, high spirits about which A. S. Pushkin wrote:

There is rapture in battle
And the dark abyss on the edge,
And in the angry ocean
Amid the stormy waves and stormy darkness,
And in the Arabian hurricane
And in the breath of the Plague!

Pushkin A. S. A feast during the plague // Collected works M, T 4 - S. 378.

Contagiousness. A person experiencing this or that emotion can involuntarily convey his mood, experience to other people communicating with him. As a result, both general fun and boredom or panic can arise. Social psychologists relate differently to this property of emotions. Some talk about the "de-intellectualization" of the crowd, its emotional lability (ups and downs of rage and tenderness), others see this property as the basis of a person's collectivist education. On this occasion, I will quote from the work of V. K. Vasiliev (1998): “The authors, not without disgust, describe the “contagiousness” of mass emotions. Moscovici quotes from Flaubert, in which the protagonist discovers the effect of mental infection in the crowd: "He trembled from the surging feeling of boundless love and all-encompassing, sublime tenderness, as if the heart of all mankind was beating in his chest." If we evaluate this phrase without prejudice, then it says that it is in the crowd (community, group) that a person learns to rise above petty personal interests, becomes able to do something for other people even despite his fear, greed, laziness. Only the feelings awakened in the group (group) limit the so-called animal individualism” (p. 8-9).

Plastic. The same emotion in terms of modality can be experienced with different shades and even as an emotion of a different sign (pleasant or unpleasant). For example, fear can be experienced not only negatively, under certain conditions people can enjoy it, experiencing "thrills".

Memory retention. Another property of emotions is their ability to be stored in memory for a long time. In this regard, a special type of memory is distinguished - emotional. The stability of emotional memory was well expressed by the Russian poet K. Batyushkov: “O memory of the heart, you are stronger than the mind of a sad memory!”

Irradiation. This property means the possibility of spreading the mood (emotional background) from the circumstances that originally caused it to everything that a person perceives. Happy "everything smiles", it seems pleasant and joyful. In the poem "Joy", K. Batyushkov describes his emotional state after the girl told him: "I love you!"

Everyone smiled at me!
And the spring sun
And curly groves,
And the waters are clear
And the Parnassian hills!

Batyushkov K. Soch - Arkhangelsk, 1979. - C 125

An angry person, like an annoyed one, is annoyed by everything and everything: the pleased face of another person, an innocent question (one teenager’s mother asked if he wanted to eat, to which he shouted: “What are you all climbing into my soul!”), etc. .

Transfer. Close to irradiation is the property of feelings to be transferred to other objects. In a lover, the ability to evoke sentimental emotions is possessed not only by the appearance of a loved one, but also by objects that have come into contact with him (a scarf of a loved one, her glove, a lock of hair, a letter, a note), with which a person can perform the same actions as with the object of love itself. (stroking, kissing). Since the positive feelings of childhood are associated with the "small motherland", they are transferred to fellow countrymen who met far from it.

On the other hand, a child who has a negative reaction to a rat begins to react in the same way to similar objects (a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat).

Ambivalence. This property is expressed in the fact that a person can simultaneously experience both a positive and a negative emotional state (in connection with which P. V. Simonov speaks of mixed emotions). A. N. Leontiev (1971) questions the existence of this property and notes that psychologists' ideas about this property arose as a result of a mismatch between feelings and emotions, a contradiction between them. And indeed: “love is never without sadness”, “I am sad because I love you” - this motif is constantly found in poetic lyrics, romances, songs. But it is obvious that the emotion of sadness arises against the background of a feeling of love. Is it possible in this case to speak of the true ambivalence of the emotion of sadness?

"Switchable". This property means that another emotion becomes the subject (object) of one emotion: I am ashamed of my joy; I enjoy fear; I revel in my sadness, etc.

Generation of one emotion by another. The non-separation of emotions and feelings led, from my point of view, to the creation of a myth about another property of emotions, namely, that some emotions can give rise to others. So, V. K. Vilyunas (1984) writes: “In the complex of emotional experiences that combine into more complex formations, one can sometimes find elements connected by cause-and-effect relationships. This ability of emotions to generate and condition each other is another and, perhaps, the most interesting aspect that characterizes their dynamics” (p. 24). Further, he writes that B. Spinoza made the greatest contribution to the proof of this idea. The material presented, from the point of view of Vilyunas, shows that emotional relations that develop under different circumstances from some initial emotion can in some cases be very complex and varied. Thus, the subject, embraced by love, empathizes with the affects of the one he loves. If love is not mutual, then it breeds displeasure.

However, the feeling of love is not an emotion, but an attitude that, depending on whether the object of love falls into a particular situation, gives rise to certain emotions in the lover (see section 12.5). Therefore, it is not an emotion that gives rise to other emotions, but a feeling. And we should not even talk about the generation of emotions, but about the manifestation of feelings through various emotions.

Of all the emotional phenomena, mood is the most vague, hazy, almost mystical. For example, in ordinary consciousness it is often understood as a good or bad "disposition of the spirit," as attitude(presence or lack of desire) of a person at the moment to communicate, do something, agree or disagree, etc. (it is not for nothing that subordinates, going to see their boss, try to find out what mood he is in). This is exactly how S. I. Ozhegov (1975) defines mood: as an internal state of mind, as a direction of thoughts, feelings, and as a tendency to do something. Considers the mood as a mood and L. V. Kulikov (1997).

In most psychology textbooks, mood is described as an independent emotional phenomenon, distinct from emotions. For example, N. N. Danilova (2000) writes that the same phenomenon simultaneously can evoke both emotion and mood, which can coexist, influencing each other.

What do psychologists mean by mood? V. Knowlis (Nowlis, 1965), A. Wesman and J. Ricks (Wessman, Ricks, 1966) give a very vague understanding of mood: this is an emotional trait that is closely related to feelings and behavior and is a basic function of the general conditions of an individual's life. According to S. L. Rubinshtein, “Mood is not a special experience dedicated to some particular event, but spilled general state. The mood is somewhat more complex and, most importantly, more iridescent and diverse and for the most part vague, richer in subtle shades than a clearly defined feeling” (1989, p. 176). Rubinstein emphasizes that mood, unlike other emotional experiences, personally.

N. D. Levitov (1964) believes that the mood is not only personal, but also situational. In some cases it is objective (caused by specific circumstances), in others it is pointless; in some cases it is more personal, in others it is less personal. Levitov understands mood as a general emotional state, which for a certain time colors the experiences and activities of a person. L. V. Kulikov (1997), on the contrary, does not consider mood to be a special mental (emotional) state. He writes: “Sometimes mood is considered as a kind of mental state. In most cases, this occurs when trying to characterize a state by highlighting mood features. In my opinion, it is a mistake to consider mood as an independent kind of state - mood is only a part of the mental state. In addition to it, the state also includes physiological, psychophysiological, socio-psychological and other components” (p. 73).

According to A. Isen, mood is a flow or flow of hedonically oriented ideas, thoughts and images retrieved from memory. They share a common positive or negative hedonic tone.

K. Pribram considers mood as a kind of monitoring of surrounding life circumstances.

According to L. M. Wecker (2000), mood is the mental well-being that a person experiences along with physical well-being.

Some authors prefer not to talk about mood at all, instead using the term “emotional background” (emotional state), which reflects the general global attitude of a person to the environment and to himself (Khomskaya, 1987).

As you can see from this short list, which could be continued, it is impossible to arrive at some unambiguous definition of mood. Therefore, it is necessary to consider various characteristics of mood.

In contrast to the emotional tone of sensations and emotions, mood in most Russian textbooks on psychology is characterized by:

1) low intensity;

2) significant duration; a mood can last for hours or even days;

3) sometimes the ambiguity of its cause; experiencing this or that mood, a person, as a rule, is poorly aware of the reasons that caused it, does not associate it with certain people, phenomena or events (if a person is in a bad mood after sleep, they say that he got up on the wrong foot today);

4) influence on human activity; constantly present in a person as an emotional background, it increases or decreases his activity in communication or work.

Let us consider how these signs of mood correspond to reality and how they differ from the characteristics of emotions.

Weak intensity and the associated poor awareness is not a characteristic of mood alone. Weakly expressed experiences can accompany both emotional tone and emotions. At the same time, as N. D. Levitov rightly notes, mood can be perceived not only as an undifferentiated general emotional background, but also as a clearly identifiable experience (boredom, melancholy, sadness, joy). Thus, the mood can be perceived both clearly and not very clearly. Levitov notes that a person often does not notice his mood for a long time because there are no reasons and reasons for deviating from the usual mood. The same idea, in essence, is also expressed by N. N. Danilova. Speaking about the fact that the mood is both conscious and unconscious, she writes that in order for the latter to pass into the former, it must reach a certain threshold, attract our attention. Getting into the focus of attention makes it possible not only to realize the presence of a particular mood, but also to understand the reason for its appearance. The author believes that this can serve as an impetus for the transformation of mood into emotion. Thus, the mood as an emotional response is always present, but we may not notice it. Therefore, we do not experience it.

The understanding of mood in the book “Man - Production - Management” (1982) also corresponds to the view of N. D. Levitov, where it is said that the sphere of mood extends from the undivided experience of a person’s vitality to such clearly perceived emotions as boredom, sadness, grief, melancholy ^ joy, jubilation, etc. It is also emphasized that the mood is associated with all the experiences of the individual and is defined as a combination of individual mental states, one of which, as a rule, dominates and gives a certain coloring to a person's mental activity (hence, it itself cannot be a separate class of experiences and emotional response).

This understanding of mood seems to me the most realistic. It means that both emotion and emotional tone are also moods. When a person is happy, everyone sees that he is in a good mood, when he is upset - that he is in a bad mood. But this means that the mood and emotion manifested in a given period of time are one and the same. Therefore, there is no reason to separate emotions and moods, as is done in most psychology textbooks.

Influence on human activity. This characteristic is also not specific to mood. Any emotional state affects the behavior and activities of a person. At the same time, there is no specificity in this influence of mood in comparison with emotions and emotional tone. So, from the point of view of K. Pribram, the function of mood is to inform about the general condition and needs of a person. Mood, evaluating the state, stimulates a person to such behavior that would improve his hedonic tone. But the emotional tone of sensations does the same. As N. N. Danilova aptly put it, the mood acts as context, implicitly transforming our reactions to events.

The second and third characteristics of the mood seem to be more solid: the long duration and the ambiguity of its cause. Therefore, the question of how specific they are should be considered in more detail.

Mood duration. A. G. Maklakov (2000) considers mood as a “chronic” emotional state that colors all human behavior. However, chronic mood occurs only in pathological conditions, for example, as a pathological depressive state. If we are talking about the norm, then this is rather an emotional personality trait - optimism or pessimism.

Understanding the cause of the mood. N. D. Levitov wrote that the cause of the mood is not always realized, therefore, the mood is often experienced as “unaccountable” (unaccountable sadness, causeless joy). According to A. G. Maklakov, mood reflects an unconscious generalized assessment of how circumstances are currently developing.

It should be noted that there is some confusion about the awareness of the cause of mood in the opinions of some psychologists. For example, in the book “General Psychology. Course of lectures "(1998), the author of the chapter on emotions writes that mood is unconscious assessment by the individual of how favorable circumstances are for her; right there, the author writes that the reasons for this or that mood are not always clear (and therefore not conscious), but they always exist and can be determined. “All this makes it possible to note a different degree of awareness of mood,” the author writes (p. 367).

As for the ambiguity in many cases of the cause of the mood, this may be due, in my opinion, to the fact that they often take for mood track an experienced, often fleeting emotion (for example, as a certain state arising as a result of automatically occurring cognitive processes accompanied by fleeting associations of memories). That is, the mood can be trace emotional state(hence the presence of the first two signs attributed only to him). On this occasion, P. B. Ganushkin writes: “... the mood does not change for no reason, but the reasons for its changes are usually so insignificant that from the outside these changes seem completely unreasonable: emotively labile people can be affected by both bad weather and harshly spoken words. word, and the recollection of some sad event, and the thought of an upcoming unpleasant meeting, and, in a word, such a mass of completely unaccounted for trifles that sometimes even (a person) himself is not able to understand why he became sad and what trouble made him retire from the cheerful society in which he had just laughed carelessly” (1998, p. 513). It is no coincidence that K. Izard (2000) believes that mood is a prolonged emotion. “Somatic responses to a moderate emotion,” he writes, “are not as intense as a violent reaction to a vivid experience, but the duration of exposure to a subliminal emotion can be very long. What we call “mood” is usually formed under the influence of just such emotions” (2000, p. 36).

As clinical studies show, this trace remains, most likely, due to biochemical and hormonal changes in the body caused by the excitation of emotion centers (for example, good mood is associated with endorphins).

Mood structure. L. V. Kulikov (1997), who devoted a special monograph to moods, develops his own approach to their consideration. He identifies five components in the mood: relative (evaluative), emotional, cognitive, motivational and physical well-being.

Relative Component(from English. relation - attitude) is associated with the attitude of a person to what is happening with him and around him. It includes a number of elements of the structure of personality relationships: features of self-esteem and self-acceptance, satisfaction with relationships with the world of nature, objects, people. In this component, a special role is played by the correspondence or discrepancy between the perceived and the desired.

Emotional Component characterizes the dominant emotion (sensual tone, according to V. N. Myasishchev). In the formation of an actual and relatively stable state, as Kulikov writes, various feelings and experiences with different influences on the sensual tone are combined. There is an emotional dominant, i.e., the emotional component of mood. It also includes experiences of bodily well-being - physical comfort or discomfort. The latter are more closely related to the actual mood than to the dominant one. Thus, it turns out that the emotional component of mood is an integral characteristic of emotions experienced by a person over a certain time period, both positive and negative.

cognitive component moods form interpretations of the current life situation, the completeness of its understanding, the forecast of the prospects for the development of the situation, the interpretation and assessment of one's bodily and spiritual health, the forecast of its dynamics. The cognitive component includes self-image.

Motivational component Mood is considered by Kulikov due to the fact that the process of motivation, its intensity and the nature of the flow largely determine the intensity of emotional processes, the severity of reactions to the situation and the development of events. Speaking about the motivational component of mood, the author seeks “only to emphasize that the motivational sphere, as one of the most important regulators, is constantly represented in an integrative form by some component in moods, and through it in mental states” (p. 80).

Component of physical well-being reflects, as S. L. Rubinshtein said, organic well-being, the tone of the body's vital activity and those diffuse, poorly localized organic sensations that come from the internal organs.

Kulikov considers mood as an integral indicator of feelings and emotions experienced at the moment, and not as a special type of emotional experience, along with emotions and affects. It also highlights the dominant (stable) moods and actual (current).

These representations of Kulikov raise a number of questions. The first of them: does the author take the factors that determine it as components of mood? It is no coincidence that, speaking about the terms of the cognitive component, the author writes: “All these are significant factors that determine the formation of mood” (p. 79). These factors include the process of motivation and the assessment of the perceived and desired, which make up the relative component.

The second question: how do the structures of the mental state and mood correlate, if the reaction of the whole personality has essentially entered into the mood?

The third question: if mood is an integrative characteristic of emotions and feelings experienced by a person in a certain period of time, then what about the author's statement that mood is characterized by a dominant emotion?

It also seems to me that mood and mood should not be identified, although the former is a consequence of the latter. Mood reflects the desire, readiness of a person to show this or that activity. It is associated with arbitrary regulation of the mental state. The mood is passive in its genesis.

Types of moods. Allocated types of moods only emphasize their identity with emotions. The mood can be good (sthenic) and bad (asthenic). In the first case, with its stable manifestation, one speaks of hyperthymia, i.e. high spirits. It is characterized by elation, cheerfulness, cheerfulness with bursts of cheerfulness, optimism, happiness. The constant manifestation of hyperthymia is characterized as hyperthymia. This is an emotional stereotype of behavior, which, when severely expressed, can lead to an uncritical manifestation of activity: a person claims to do more than he can and can do; he strives to take on everything, teach everyone, tries to attract attention to himself at any cost. Such a person is often "carried away".

The second manifestation of good mood is euphoria. It is characterized by carelessness, carelessness, serenity, complacency and at the same time an indifferent attitude to the serious aspects and phenomena of life. The euphoric state has narcotic properties - it activates the psyche, and a person gets used to it. To call it, a person needs alcohol, drugs, and an artist or athlete needs spectators.

In everyday speech they say: “to be in the mood”, “he (she) is not in the mood”, and in one popular science book it is written: “you can’t always be in the mood even when everything goes right” (Capponi, Novak , 1994, p. 113). In this case, the mood is understood as a positive experience, and "not in the mood" - as a negative one.

Often they take their well-being, vitality as a mood, so they talk about cheerful mood. The mood understood in this way is essentially not connected with the emotional sphere of a person at all, but characterizes the energy potential of a person.

They also talk about public mood as a public consciousness that reflects the prevailing feelings and moods of the collective, social group, community, people (decadent moods among the Russian intelligentsia in the 80-90s of the XIX century, the emotional upsurge (enthusiasm) of the people during the years of the revolution).

Mood as an emotional background. A common point of view is that a person has a mood at every moment of time (for example, Levitov, 1964; Mikhalchik, 1982). So, N. D. Levitov writes: “The mood never leaves a person; only, like any mental state, it is noticed only in those cases when it stands out in a positive or negative direction” (p. 145). Moreover, K. Izard (2000) titled one of the paragraphs in his book "Emotions are always with us." “There are three common misconceptions,” he writes, “that prevent many people from believing that emotion is constantly present in the mind, constantly affecting perception and behavior. The first of these misconceptions owes its origin to the work of the first physiologists, who mainly investigated episodes of pronounced, intense negative emotions ... However, it is obvious that emotions organize and direct our behavior not only in extreme situations. Thus, the emotion of interest urges us to learn... the emotion of joy, moderate and mild, serves as a kind of reward for those small achievements that mark our daily life...

The second misconception that prevents many people from recognizing the constant presence of emotion in consciousness is associated with the idea that then a person should constantly be able to name this emotion, to talk about it. It is enough to turn to everyday experience to understand the fallacy of this idea. Surely every person can remember such moments when he knew for sure that he was experiencing a certain emotion, but was not able to identify or describe it. Freud's early work and subsequent research convinced many clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as personality theorists, of the unconsciousness of many motives for human behavior. It seems that these unconscious motives can be interpreted either as emotional experiences that a person is not able to put into words, or as very weak experiences that have not fallen into the focus of attention.

The third misconception that does not allow people to agree that emotion constantly affects our consciousness is associated with a fairly common idea of ​​emotion as an experience that is necessarily short-term and intense ... The very fact of the short duration of human expressive reactions (which last on average from 0.5 up to 4-5 s) contributes to the perception of emotion as a short-term and transient phenomenon. However, an expressive response is only part of an emotion; the duration of an emotional experience is incomparable with the duration of an emotional manifestation. So, a person can be oppressed, depressed for a very long time, but at the same time not show his depression in any way” (p. 95).

Izard further writes: “Theoretical evidence for the persistent presence of affect in the ordinary state of consciousness is supported by experimental data obtained in studies using various scales of affect and mood (Nowlis, 1965; Wessman, Ricks, 1966). In one of the studies, several large groups of students filled out a scale of differential emotions, marking in it the emotions and feelings experienced at the time of the study. All participants in the experiment indicated the presence of one or more emotions, and the emotion of interest was the predominant among them (Izard, Dougherty, Bloxom, Kotsch, 1974) ”(pp. 104-105).

Despite many correct propositions expressed by K. Izard in the above passage from his book, the weaknesses of his proofs are also obvious. The first weakness is connected with the verbalization of one's experience. The main thing is not whether a person can verbalize his experience or not, but whether at every moment of his life there is this experience. The second weakness of Izard's position is that he does not share emotions and emotional tone, does not talk about mood. One gets the impression that for him such differentiation is of no fundamental importance. In fact, the question should be discussed not about the constant presence of emotions in a person (emotions, as an emotional response to a significant situation, really cannot be in a person every second, since significant situations do not arise all the time), but about the constant presence of a mood in a person , emotional background.

I would like to point out that if we along with with emotional tone, emotions, affect, we consider mood an independent emotional phenomenon, we thereby force ourselves to understand it as an emotional response that must be manifested all the time, because the mood is present in a waking person all the time.

However, they also talk about a neutral mood, that is, neither good nor bad. And here we find ourselves in a dilemma: emotional response cannot be neutral; if the reaction is neutral, impartial, then it is not emotional. Therefore, either the mood can be characterized by the absence of emotional coloring(but then why is it classified as a type of emotional response?), or there are such time periods when we do not have any mood as an emotional response to something.

I see a way out of this contradiction in the fact that the mood should be considered not as a special kind of emotional response, but emotional background(continuum), in which the intensity of emotional experiences can be in the range from zero (complete calmness, indifference, i.e., lack of emotional response) to the maximum value of emotional response (affect).

A person faces emotional reactions every day, but rarely thinks about them. Nevertheless, they greatly facilitate his life. What gives an emotional release to a person? It helps keep the nerves in order. For this reason, those persons who hide the manifestation of their emotions are more likely to suffer from heart failure and nervous diseases.

Definition

What is an emotional response? This is a process that is expressed in actions, words or a state. It occurs in response to mental or external irritation. For example, someone scared you, and you start to worry. Or someone made a surprise for you, and you were delighted. The emotional reaction to the same situation in two people can be different. Everything will depend on how this or that person looks at the current situation. Each person is the author of their emotions, for this reason people can not only sincerely rejoice at something, but also fake their emotions. And sometimes the limits of decency make a person restrain his feelings. But still, the real emotion and its simulated prototype will not escape the gaze of an attentive viewer.

Kinds

What are the types of emotional reactions? Conventionally, they can be divided into two groups. In the first, emotions are divided according to their positive coloring.

• Positive. There are fewer positive emotions than negative ones. Is it due to the fact that there is not much pleasant in life? Not really. Historically, it so happened that a person felt good where he was calm. And the calm course of life does not cause any vivid emotions.
• Negative. There are more negative emotions than positive ones. Perhaps this is due to the fact that our ancestors spent a lot of time hunting and protecting themselves and their families. For this reason, they had many emotions associated with fear and irritation.

What other types can emotional reactions be divided into?

• Congenital. Man does not know what anger is from birth. This emotion is acquired. But even a baby knows what fear is.
• Learned. Developing, the child learns the world and learns to express their emotions. Parents teach their child. They make sure that the child can respond in accordance with generally accepted norms to a particular situation.

Examples

What emotional reactions do you know? Below are the 6 main ones.

• Anger. This reaction occurs in the human soul when the expectation does not coincide with reality. The mood of a person deteriorates, and he begins to get annoyed. So that the nerves do not give up, he splashes everything out, most often on the interlocutor or on the one who turned out to be the closest.
• Joy. When a person is happy with something, he smiles and laughs. Such a reaction occurs to positive events.
• Yearning. A sad state of mind is common to everyone from time to time. Thanks to longing, a person can feel joy more sharply.
• Fear. This is an innate feeling that a person involuntarily experiences whenever he is in potential danger. The survival instinct is triggered, which warns of impending disaster.
• Astonishment. This emotional reaction can be both positive and negative. Everything will depend on the circumstances in which the person is faced with surprise.
• Disgust. In a similar way, a person reacts to what is unpleasant for him. This emotion is acquired and formed under the influence of education.

Degrees

Emotional reactions of a person develop in three directions. Conventionally, they can be characterized by three degrees.

• Rapidity. Each emotional reaction comes with lightning speed, but how long it will last, a person does not know. It all depends on how much the person is affected by this or that circumstance.
• Depth. Even if something pissed off a person, resentment can quickly pass, as well as joy. But how strongly an emotion will hit a person will be determined by the depth of feelings of a particular person towards the person or object that caused the emotional reaction.
• Intensity. Some emotions are remembered for a long time, while others pass quickly. This is called the intensity of the reaction.

Types

Emotions are different, and human reactions to it too. What a person is not interested in passes quietly and does not touch the thin strings of the soul. What is important to a person leaves a strong imprint. What are the types of emotional reactions?

• Emotional response. Such a reaction is considered the most standard and running. Something upset or delighted you, you laugh or cry, respectively. Emotional reactions of the child should be developed by parents. If they do not do this, it means that their child will grow up as an insensitive egoist.
• Emotional outburst. Something that does not fall under the definition of “response” can safely be called a flash. This is a short strong reaction that leaves an imprint on the human soul. If you suddenly and strongly scare a friend, you can see a vivid example of an emotional outburst.
• Emotional explosion. Such a reaction, unlike a flash, is not lightning fast. It can occur due to a series of circumstances that alternately caused first an emotional response, and then an outbreak.

Functions

Why do people need emotional reactions and states?

• Regulatory. In order for the nervous system to function normally, it needs to be discharged from time to time. Due to the outburst of emotions, tension is relieved and nerves return to normal.
• Estimated. It is not necessary for a person to test something on their own experience in order to understand whether it is good or bad. A person can assume emotions and reactions to them that he will experience in a given situation.
• Incentive. Some emotional reactions make a person do something. If we take into account the veracity of the saying that movement is life, then it is thanks to the receipt of specific emotions that a person can continue to move.
• Communicative. With the help of body language, a person can convey even more information than he can verbally do with the help of words.

First reaction

A person can hide a lot from strangers, but not his feelings. Strong emotional disturbances are always transmitted through emotional reactions. An example of such behavior can be artificial smiles, which today it is customary to “put on” in society. If your friend keeps a gloomy face on the way to you, but his face changes when the person has already come close, this means that the person is not very good-natured. on the face it is possible, but to an experienced eye insincerity is immediately visible. As well as obvious joy, which betrays the sympathy of one person for another. If, when a person appears in a company of three, one of them begins to smile broadly, then this is a clear sign of an indifferent attitude. So if you want to know how a person feels about you, look at how he behaves when you appear.

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RUSSIAN FEDERATION

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education

"TYUMEN STATE UNIVERSITY"

INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY

CENTER FOR ADDITIONAL EDUCATION

TEST

on the topic: "Emotional reactions"

Tyumen - 2016

Introduction

1. The concept of emotions

2. Classification of emotions

3. The role of emotions

4. Emotional states

6. Managing emotions

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Psychology is the science of the patterns of development and functioning of the psyche.

Emotions (from the Latin "emotion" - excitement) are various mental phenomena that express in the form of direct experiences the significance for the individual of certain objects and situations and are an important factor in the regulation of his life. Emotions are a direct biased experience of the meaning of life, phenomena and situations.

Thanks to emotions, we better understand others, we can, without using speech, judge each other's states and better tune in to joint activities and communication. People belonging to different cultures are able to accurately perceive and evaluate the expressions of a human face, to determine from it such emotional states as joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise.

In this paper, the following issues will be considered: the concept of emotions, the role of emotions in human life, the classification of emotions, emotional state, emotional reactions.

Thus, the purpose of the work is to consider the role of emotions in human life.

1. The concept of emotions

Emotions are a kind personal attitude man to the environment and to himself.

Emotions do not exist outside of human cognition and activity. They reflect the personal significance of external and internal stimuli, situations, events for a person, that is, what worries him, and are expressed in the form of experiences.

The concept of "emotion" is also used in a broad sense, when it means a holistic emotional reaction of a person, including not only a mental component - experience, but also specific physiological changes in the body that accompany this experience. Animals also have emotions, but in humans they acquire a special depth, have many shades and combinations.

Emotions arose in phylogeny as a signal about the biological state of the organism after certain influences on it and are now a form of species experience that allows individual individuals to perform, focusing on them, the necessary actions, the expediency of which is unclear to him. But these actions ensure the satisfaction of vital needs. Thus, the negative emotions that accompany the feeling of hunger make us look for ways to satisfy this need, which, in turn, is aimed at maintaining the normal functioning of the body.

IN depending on the personal (tastes, interests, moral attitudes, experience) and temperamental characteristics of people, as well as on the situation in which they are, the same reason can cause them different emotions.

Emotions differ in intensity and duration, as well as in the degree of awareness of the reason for their occurrence. In this regard, moods, emotions and affects are distinguished.

Under the mood understand the emotional well-being of a person that affects his behavior, thoughts and experiences for a more or less long time. The mood changes depending on the circumstances.

In critical conditions, when the subject is unable to find a quick and reasonable way out of a dangerous situation, a special kind of emotional processes arises - affect. During an affect, a person often loses self-control and performs actions, in which he later bitterly repents. Affects seldom lead to the desired end, because they are done without thought.

2. Classification of emotions

1. The simplest existing classification of emotions proposes to divide them into two types: experienced by the individual as negative and experienced by the individual as positive.

2. The German philosopher I. Kant divided emotions into sthenic (activating a person, increasing his readiness for activity) and asthenic (relaxing, tiring a person, causing lethargy).

3. The classification proposed by W. Wundt suggests characterizing emotions in three areas:

Pleasure-displeasure;

Voltage-discharge;

Excitation-inhibition.

4. American psychologist K. Izard identifies the following fundamental emotions:

interest-excitement;

· joy;

· astonishment;

grief-suffering;

disgust;

contempt;

All other emotional reactions of individuals, according to Izard, are derivative and complex, i.e. arise on the basis of several fundamental.

5. Domestic psychologist B. Dodonov offers an even more complex classification of emotions:

altruistic emotions (desire to help other people);

Communicative emotions (arising during communication);

Gloric emotions (associated with the need for self-affirmation);

praxic emotions (associated with the success of the activity);

pugnic emotions (associated with situations of danger, with the need to take risks);

Romantic emotions (desire for the extraordinary, new);

Gnostic emotions (arising in cognition);

Aesthetic emotions (associated with the perception of works of art);

hedonistic emotions (associated with the need for pleasure, convenience);

Akizitive emotions (associated with interest in accumulation, collecting).

3. The role of emotions

Emotions are a special form of reflection outside world or the internal state of a person, associated with the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of his organic or social needs, with the implementation or loss of his life goals. Emotions in human life perform the following roles: reflective-evaluative, protective function, control, mobilizing function, compensatory function, signal, disorganizing.

Reflective-evaluative role of emotions. Emotions give subjective coloring to what is happening around us and in ourselves. This means that different people can react emotionally to the same event in completely different ways. For example, for fans, the loss of their favorite team will cause disappointment, grief, while for fans of the opposing team, joy. And a certain work of art can cause opposite emotions in different people. No wonder the people say: "There is no comrade for the taste and color."

Emotions help to evaluate not only past or current actions and events, but also future ones, being included in the process of probabilistic forecasting (anticipation of pleasure when a person goes to the theater, or expectation of unpleasant experiences after an exam, when the student did not have time to properly prepare for it).

The governing role of emotions. In addition to reflecting the reality surrounding a person and his attitude to a particular object or event, emotions are also important for controlling human behavior, being one of the psychophysiological mechanisms of this control. After all, the emergence of one or another attitude to an object affects motivation, the process of making a decision about an action or deed, and the physiological changes accompanying emotions affect the quality of activity, a person’s performance. Playing a role that controls human behavior and activities, emotions perform a variety of positive functions: protective, mobilizing, sanctioning (switching), compensatory, signaling, reinforcing (stabilizing), which are often combined with each other.

The protective function of emotions is associated with the emergence of fear. It warns a person about a real or imaginary danger, thereby contributing to a better thinking through the situation that has arisen, a more thorough determination of the likelihood of success or failure. Thus, fear protects a person from unpleasant consequences for him, and possibly from death.

The mobilizing function of emotions is manifested, for example, in the fact that fear can contribute to the mobilization of human reserves due to the release of an additional amount of adrenaline into the blood, for example, in its active-defensive form (flight). Promotes the mobilization of the body's forces and inspiration, joy.

The compensatory function of emotions is to compensate for information that is missing for making a decision or making a judgment about something. The emotion arising from a collision with an unfamiliar object will give this object an appropriate color (a bad person met or a good one) due to its similarity with previously encountered objects. Although with the help of emotion a person makes a generalized and not always justified assessment of the object and situation, it still helps him get out of the impasse when he does not know what to do in this situation.

The presence of reflective-evaluative and compensatory functions in emotions makes it possible to manifest the sanctioning function of emotions (to make contact with the object or not).

The signal function of emotions is associated with the impact of a person or animal on another living object. Emotion, as a rule, has an external expression (expression), with the help of which a person or animal informs another about his condition. This helps mutual understanding in communication, the prevention of aggression on the part of another person or animal, the recognition of the needs and conditions that the other subject currently has. The signaling function of emotions is often combined with its protective function: a frightening appearance in a moment of danger helps to intimidate another person or animal.

Academician P.K. Anokhin emphasized that emotions are important for fixing and stabilizing the rational behavior of animals and humans. Positive emotions that arise when a goal is achieved are remembered and, in the appropriate situation, can be retrieved from memory to obtain the same useful result. Negative emotions retrieved from memory, on the contrary, warn against repeating mistakes. From Anokhin's point of view, emotional experiences have become entrenched in evolution as a mechanism that keeps life processes within optimal limits and prevents the destructive nature of a lack or excess of vital factors.

Disorganizing role of emotions. Fear can disrupt a person's behavior associated with the achievement of a goal, causing him to have a passive-defensive reaction (stupor with strong fear, refusal to complete the task). The disorganizing role of emotions is also visible in anger, when a person strives to achieve a goal at all costs, stupidly repeating the same actions that do not lead to success.

The positive role of emotions is not directly associated with positive emotions, and the negative role is not associated with negative ones. The latter can serve as an incentive for a person's self-improvement, while the former can be a reason for self-complacency, complacency. Much depends on the purposefulness of a person, on the conditions of his upbringing.

4. Emotional states

The simplest and oldest form of experiencing emotions is the emotional tone of sensations. Any signal perceived by our analyzers causes a certain emotional reaction - positive or negative. At every moment of time, we are affected by a huge number of stimuli, and each of them is emotionally experienced by us.

If the total number of stimuli that cause a positive emotional reaction is greater, then we feel good at the moment - calm, relaxed, satisfied. If, on the contrary, there are more negatively affecting stimuli, then we feel "out of our element", "uncomfortable", tense, restless. Especially important for the formation of the general emotional tone of sensations are odor stimuli. The sense of smell is the oldest of analyzers. Through the autonomic nervous system, it is closely connected with the activity of the endocrine glands and significantly affects the general condition of the body - including the general emotional tone.

Mood is an emotional state that for a long time colors the entire mental life of a person. There are two types of moods:

Emotional undifferentiated background (elevated or depressed);

a clearly identifiable state (boredom, sadness, joy).

The factors that cause a certain mood can be very different: from physiological to highly spiritual. So, for example, indigestion, a feeling of guilt for an unseemly act or thought, a conflict situation in the family, dissatisfaction with the level of work done contribute to the formation of a bad mood, and, say, a feeling of well-being of the body after a ski trip or good sleep, a job well done, a meeting with a dear man, good book evoke a good mood. The specificity of this emotional state is that a person, being in a certain mood, perceives all signals from the environment colored in the same emotional tones, even if rationally he is able to adequately evaluate them. emotion experience mood feeling

Frustration is a state of acute experience of an unsatisfied need, the realization of the impossibility of achieving any significant goal.

The factors that cause this state are called frustrators, and the situations in which this state occurs are called frustration situations. Frustrators can be a wide range of factors: physiological (deprivation of sleep, food, cold, thirst, unmet sexual needs, etc.), psychological (lack of communication, lack of information, ethical internal conflicts, etc.)

A person in a state of frustration experiences a whole range of negative emotional experiences: irritation, guilt, disappointment, despair.

Stress is a reaction to changing living conditions, the process of adapting to a new situation, "a non-specific response of the body to any requirement made to it"

Depending on the type of stressors, they are divided into:

Physiological stress (change in work schedule, heavy physical labor, excessive cold or heat, lack of oxygen, painful stimuli);

psychological stress (significant change in living conditions, loss of loved ones, information overload, resentment, etc.).

Affect is a strong and relatively short-term emotional state associated with a sharp change in life conditions that are important for the individual. The reason for the emergence of affect is the experience by a person of an internal conflict between his inclinations, aspirations and desires, or a contradiction between the requirements imposed on him by others (or by himself) and the ability to fulfill these requirements. Affect develops in critical, unexpected, often dangerous situations when a person cannot find a way out of them.

Signs of affect:

narrowing of consciousness, its focus on the irritant and the inability to adequately assess the situation and one's actions;

pronounced motor activity associated with the need to throw out the strongest mental stress generated by the situation;

partial or complete loss of memory about the events that preceded the affect and their actions during it;

severe mental exhaustion, physical weakness after an affective reaction;

The presence of "post-affective traces or complexes", which, in the event of a subsequent similar situation, impose the same method of resolving it, which was undertaken by the subject for the first time.

Depression is an emotional state characterized by a negative emotional background, a general decrease in vital activity, weakness of volitional processes, weakening of memory, thought processes, and an inability to concentrate. A person in a state of depression experiences painful experiences, despair, longing. Characteristic are thoughts about one's own worthlessness, about the impossibility of preventing the onset of some terrible events, fear of the future, feelings of guilt for past events. Prolonged severe depression can lead to suicide attempts. Depression in healthy people can be the result of chronic stress, prolonged overstrain, mental trauma.

Feelings are one of the main forms of a person's experience of his attitude to objects, events and other people. In ontogenesis, feelings appear later than situational emotions; they represent the personal level of a person's experience of his attitude to the world and depend on the culture of the society in which the person was brought up, the degree of his development. In other words, the stimuli that cause negative or positive emotions have the same effect on a person of primitive culture and on a modern highly educated Englishman, but the factors that cause a feeling of shame or indignation will be completely different. An important difference between feelings and emotions is that feelings are relatively stable and constant, while emotions are situational in nature, i.e. are a response to a particular situation. At the same time, feelings and emotions are closely related, because every feeling is experienced and found precisely in concrete emotions. Moreover, if in the first years of life it is emotions that are the basis for the formation of feelings, then as the personality develops, feelings begin to determine the content of situational emotions.

Passion is a strong, persistent, all-encompassing feeling that dominates other human motives and leads to the focus on the subject of passion of all his aspirations and forces. The reasons for the formation of passions are almost exclusively associated with unconscious complexes that require realization in the sphere of consciousness. Like any unconscious drives, these complexes cannot be realized in their present form and therefore are subject to change, sublimation in order to overcome the censorship of the ego. the greatest tension and concentration of forces, which would be impossible under other conditions of personality formation.

5. External expression of emotions, emotional reactions

Emotions play an important role in a person's life and affect his activity in various ways.

Considering the activity of the brain, we paid attention to the fact that from each perceived irritation two streams of impulses come to the cerebral cortex. One goes directly to the cortical part of the corresponding analyzer, where it turns out what we feel and perceive; the second, passing through the reticular formation and the limbic system of nuclei old bark, finds out the significance of this irritation for the body. This general assessment underlies the emergence of various emotional experiences. Emotions by the mechanisms of occurrence are reflex. This was also pointed out by I.M. Sechenov. He called emotions reflexes with an amplified end.

A person who thinks or decides to act needs time, and the answer needs a certain delay. Another thing is emotions. Depending on the character, they either cause violent movements, or, on the contrary, depress them. In both cases, they enhance the final third of the reflex.

An analysis of the facial and pantomimic reactions that accompany different emotions showed that each emotion is characterized by specific movements of the facial muscles, a special expression of the eyes, a certain posture and characteristic movements of the limbs. The beginnings of these mimic and pantomimic movements can be observed in the animal kingdom. In man, they, as well as all other mental processes, have changed in the process of social history and under the influence of culture.

The actions described above are usually referred to as emotional reactions. Emotional reactions - smiling, laughing, crying, excited speech, impulsive actions or complete immobility - are usually characterized by a clear connection with the events that caused them.

Emotional reactions in many cases help to determine the attitude to what is happening, to restore justice, to more fully experience successes and failures in labor and sports competition. They promote contact between people.

A number of professions require a person to be able to manage his emotions and adequately determine the expressive movements of the people around him. Understanding the reactions of other people and the correct response to them in a collaborative environment is an integral part of success in many professions. Failure to agree, understand another person, enter into his position can lead to complete professional incompetence. The ability to understand the numerous nuances of emotional manifestations and reproduce them is necessary for people who have devoted themselves to art (actors, artists, writers). Understanding and ability to reproduce is the most important stage in teaching actors the art of intonation, facial expressions, and gestures.

The modern practice of psychological preparation of people for various types of activities, their social training allows developing the skills of competence in communication, the most important component of which is the perception and understanding of each other by people.

6. Managing emotions

What helps people manage their emotions and is it easy for everyone?

Observations show that, depending on the individual characteristics of a person, both the rise and fall of feelings can lead to different results.

For some people, failure or loss gives up, while for others, failure stimulates the will to win and mobilizes physical and spiritual forces to achieve the goal.

Some people can get dizzy from success, and under the influence of success they stop working properly and are critical of their work. For others, on the contrary, luck, which gives a mood of confidence and cheerfulness, causes a desire to work even better.

Like all mental processes, emotions are controlled by consciousness. In the experience of each feeling, there is consciousness, which barks an assessment of what is happening and influences the course of the feeling itself. It can suppress the manifestation of feelings, if necessary, or, on the contrary, give full scope for their expression, in other words, control them.

Only in certain pathological conditions, when the inhibitory function of the cortex weakens, do the affects, as an excessive manifestation of our emotions, get out of the control of consciousness. Such, for example, are hysterical reactions - alternating laughter with violent crying and seizures.

A normal person does not remain at the mercy of his feelings and moods, but seeks to control them, does not boast of victories and does not lose heart in case of failures, but tries to maintain an even mood and a sober attitude to reality.

To relieve emotional stress contribute to:

focusing on the technical details of the task, tactics, and not on the significance of the result;

Decreasing the importance of the upcoming activity, giving the event less value, or generally reassessing the significance of the situation according to the type of "I didn't really want to";

Obtaining additional information that removes the uncertainty of the situation;

· development of a fallback strategy for achieving the goal in case of failure (for example, "if I don't go to this institute, I'll go to another one");

Postponing for a while the achievement of the goal in case of realizing the impossibility of doing this with available knowledge, means, etc.;

Physical relaxation (as I.P. Pavlov said, you need to "drive passion into the muscles"); for this you need to take a long walk, do some useful physical work, etc. Sometimes such a discharge occurs in a person as if by itself: with extreme excitement, he rushes around the room, sorts out things, tears something, etc. Tick ​​(involuntary contraction of facial muscles), which occurs in many at the time of excitement, is also a reflex form of motor discharge of emotional stress;

writing a letter, writing in a diary outlining the situation and the reasons that caused emotional stress; this method is more suitable for people who are closed and secretive;

listening to music Music therapy has been practiced by physicians since Ancient Greece(Hippocrates);

image on the face of a smile in case of negative experiences; holding a smile improves mood (according to the James-Lange theory);

Activation of a sense of humor, as laughter reduces anxiety;

Muscle relaxation (relaxation), which is an element of autogenic training and is recommended for anxiety relief.

Conclusion

Emotions are mental phenomena that reflect personal significance and assessment of external and internal situations for human life in the form of experiences. Emotions serve to reflect the subjective attitude of a person to himself and to the world around him.

Emotions play an important role in a person's life and affect his activity in various ways.

Emotions are essential for human survival and well-being. Without emotions, that is, without being able to experience joy and sadness, anger and guilt, we would not be fully human. .

An emotion is something that is experienced as a feeling that motivates, organizes, and directs perception, thinking, and action.

Emotion motivates. It mobilizes energy, and this energy is in some cases felt by the subject as a tendency to act. Almost any person, growing up, learns to manage innate emotionality, to one degree or another transform it.

Most scientists, like ordinary people, divide emotions into: positive and negative. But, it would be more correct to consider that there are emotions that contribute to an increase in psychological entropy, and emotions that, on the contrary, facilitate constructive behavior. Such an approach makes it possible to attribute this or that emotion to the category of positive or negative, depending on what effect it has on intrapersonal processes and the processes of interaction of the individual with the immediate social environment. Emotions affect the body and mind of a person, they affect almost all aspects of his existence. An angry or frightened person's pulse may be 40 to 60 beats per minute higher than normal. This indicates that almost all neurophysiological and somatic systems of the body are involved in the process of experiencing emotions. Emotion activates the autonomic nervous system, which in turn affects the endocrine and neurohumoral systems. Mind and body require action.

Bibliography

1. Voronin L.G. Physiology of higher nervous activity and psychology: Tutorial. / Ed. L.G. Voronin, V.N. Kolbanovsky, R.D. Mash. - 3rd ed., revised. - M.: Enlightenment, 1984. - 207 p.

2. Nemov R.S. Psychology: Proc. for stud. higher ped. textbook institutions: In 2 books. - Book 1. General foundations of psychology. - M.: Humanit. ed. center VLADOS, 2000. - 688 p.

3. General psychology. Textbook for students ped. in-comrade / Under. ed. V.V. Bogoslovsky and others - M .: Education, 1973. - 351s.

4. Psychology. Textbook. / Edited by A.A. Krylov. - M.: "Prospect", 2000. - 584 p.

5. Psychology. Tutorial for technical universities. / Under the total. ed. V.N. Druzhinin. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2000. - 608 p.

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This is the first of the symptoms described by the doctors of ancient Greece and Rome - signs of inflammatory damage. Pain is what signals us about some kind of trouble that occurs inside the body or about the action of some destructive and irritating factor from the outside.

Pain, according to the well-known Russian physiologist P. Anokhin, is designed to mobilize various functional systems of the body to protect it from the effects of harmful factors. Pain includes such components as sensation, somatic (bodily), vegetative and behavioral reactions, consciousness, memory, emotions and motivations. Thus, pain is a unifying integrative function of an integral living organism. In this case, the human body. For living organisms, even without signs of higher nervous activity, can experience pain.

There are facts of changes in electrical potentials in plants, which were recorded when their parts were damaged, as well as the same electrical reactions when researchers inflicted injury on neighboring plants. Thus, the plants responded to damage caused to them or to neighboring plants. Only pain has such a peculiar equivalent. Here is such an interesting, one might say, universal property of all biological organisms.

Types of pain - physiological (acute) and pathological (chronic).

Pain happens physiological (acute) And pathological (chronic).

acute pain

According to the figurative expression of Academician I.P. Pavlov, is the most important evolutionary acquisition, and is required to protect against the effects of destructive factors. The meaning of physiological pain is to reject everything that threatens the life process, disrupts the balance of the body with the internal and external environment.

chronic pain

This phenomenon is somewhat more complex, which is formed as a result of pathological processes existing in the body for a long time. These processes can be both congenital and acquired during life. Acquired pathological processes include the following - the long existence of foci of inflammation that have various causes, all kinds of neoplasms (benign and malignant), traumatic injuries, surgical interventions, outcomes of inflammatory processes (for example, the formation of adhesions between organs, changes in the properties of the tissues that make up their composition) . Congenital pathological processes include the following - various anomalies in the location of internal organs (for example, the location of the heart outside the chest), congenital developmental anomalies (for example, congenital intestinal diverticulum and others). Thus, a long-term focus of damage leads to permanent and minor damage to body structures, which also constantly creates pain impulses about damage to these body structures affected by a chronic pathological process.

Since these injuries are minimal, the pain impulses are rather weak, and the pain becomes constant, chronic and accompanies a person everywhere and almost around the clock. The pain becomes habitual, but does not disappear anywhere and remains a source of long-term irritating effects. A pain syndrome that exists in a person for six or more months leads to significant changes in the human body. There is a violation of the leading mechanisms of regulation of the most important functions of the human body, disorganization of behavior and the psyche. The social, family and personal adaptation of this particular individual suffers.

How common is chronic pain?
According to research by the World Health Organization (WHO), every fifth inhabitant of the planet suffers from chronic pain caused by various pathological conditions associated with diseases of various organs and body systems. This means that at least 20% of people suffer from chronic pain of varying severity, intensity and duration.

What is pain and how does it occur? Department of the nervous system responsible for the transmission of pain sensitivity, substances that cause and maintain pain.

The sensation of pain is a complex physiological process, including peripheral and central mechanisms, and having an emotional, mental, and often vegetative coloring. The mechanisms of the pain phenomenon have not been fully disclosed to date, despite numerous Scientific research that continue up to the present day. However, let us consider the main stages and mechanisms of pain perception.

Nerve cells that transmit pain signal, types of nerve fibers.

The very first stage of pain perception is the impact on pain receptors ( nociceptors). These pain receptors are located in all internal organs, bones, ligaments, in the skin, on the mucous membranes of various organs in contact with the external environment (for example, on the intestinal mucosa, nose, throat, etc.).

To date, there are two main types of pain receptors: the first are free nerve endings, the irritation of which causes a feeling of dull, diffuse pain, and the second are complex pain receptors, the excitation of which causes a feeling of acute and localized pain. That is, the nature of pain sensations directly depends on which pain receptors perceived the irritating effect. Regarding specific agents that can irritate pain receptors, it can be said that they include various biologically active substances (BAS) formed in pathological foci (the so-called algogenic substances). These substances include various chemical compounds - these are biogenic amines, and products of inflammation and cell decay, and products of local immune reactions. All these substances, completely different in chemical structure, are capable of irritating pain receptors of various localization.

Prostaglandins are substances that support the body's inflammatory response.

However, there are a number of chemical compounds involved in biochemical reactions, which themselves cannot directly affect pain receptors, but enhance the effects of substances that cause inflammation. The class of these substances, for example, includes prostaglandins. Prostaglandins are formed from special substances - phospholipids that form the basis of the cell membrane. This process proceeds as follows: a certain pathological agent (for example, enzymes form prostaglandins and leukotrienes. Prostaglandins and leukotrienes are generally called eicosanoids and play an important role in the development of the inflammatory response. The role of prostaglandins in the formation of pain in endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome, as well as painful menstruation syndrome (algodysmenorrhea) has been proven.

So, we have considered the first stage of the formation of pain - the impact on special pain receptors. Consider what happens next, how a person feels pain of a certain localization and nature. To understand this process, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the pathways.

How does the pain signal get to the brain? Pain receptor, peripheral nerve, spinal cord, thalamus - more about them.

The bioelectric pain signal formed in the pain receptor is directed to spinal nerve ganglia (knots) located next to the spinal cord. These nerve ganglia accompany each vertebra from the cervical to some of the lumbar. Thus, a chain of nerve ganglia is formed, running to the right and left along the spinal column. Each nerve ganglion is connected to the corresponding area (segment) of the spinal cord. The further path of the pain impulse from the spinal nerve ganglia is sent to the spinal cord, which is directly connected to the nerve fibers.

In fact, the dorsal could - this is a heterogeneous structure - white and gray matter is isolated in it (as in the brain). If the spinal cord is examined in cross section, then the gray matter will look like the wings of a butterfly, and the white will surround it from all sides, forming the rounded outlines of the boundaries of the spinal cord. Now, the back of these butterfly wings is called the posterior horns of the spinal cord. They carry nerve impulses to the brain. The front horns, logically, should be located in front of the wings - this is how it happens. It is the anterior horns that conduct the nerve impulse from the brain to the peripheral nerves. Also in the spinal cord in its central part there are structures that directly connect the nerve cells of the anterior and posterior horns of the spinal cord - thanks to this, it is possible to form the so-called "mild reflex arc", when some movements occur unconsciously - that is, without the participation of the brain. An example of the work of a short reflex arc is pulling the hand away from a hot object.

Since the spinal cord has a segmental structure, therefore, each segment of the spinal cord includes nerve conductors from its area of ​​responsibility. In the presence of an acute stimulus from the cells of the posterior horns of the spinal cord, excitation can abruptly switch to the cells of the anterior horns of the spinal segment, which causes a lightning-fast motor reaction. They touched a hot object with their hand - they immediately pulled their hand back. At the same time, pain impulses still reach the cerebral cortex, and we realize that we have touched a hot object, although the hand has already reflexively withdrawn. Similar neuroreflex arcs for individual segments of the spinal cord and sensitive peripheral areas may differ in the construction of the levels of participation of the central nervous system.

How does a nerve impulse reach the brain?

Further, from the posterior horns of the spinal cord, the path of pain sensitivity is directed to the overlying parts of the central nervous system along two paths - along the so-called "old" and "new" spinothalamic (path of the nerve impulse: spinal cord - thalamus) paths. The names "old" and "new" are conditional and speak only about the time of the appearance of these pathways in the historical period of the evolution of the nervous system. However, we will not go into the intermediate stages of a rather complex neural pathway, we will limit ourselves to stating the fact that both of these paths of pain sensitivity end in areas of the sensitive cerebral cortex. Both the “old” and “new” spinothalamic pathways pass through the thalamus (a special part of the brain), and the “old” spinothalamic pathway also passes through a complex of structures of the limbic system of the brain. The structures of the limbic system of the brain are largely involved in the formation of emotions and the formation of behavioral responses.

It is assumed that the first, more evolutionarily young system (the “new” spinothalamic pathway) of pain sensitivity conduction draws a more defined and localized pain, while the second, evolutionarily older (“old” spinothalamic pathway) serves to conduct impulses that give a feeling of viscous, poorly localized pain. pain. In addition to this, the specified "old" spinothalamic system provides emotional coloring of pain sensation, and also participates in the formation of behavioral and motivational components of emotional experiences associated with pain.

Before reaching the sensitive areas of the cerebral cortex, pain impulses undergo a so-called preliminary processing in certain parts of the central nervous system. These are the already mentioned thalamus (visual tubercle), hypothalamus, reticular (reticular) formation, sections of the middle and medulla oblongata. The first, and perhaps one of the most important filters on the path of pain sensitivity is the thalamus. All sensations from external environment, from the receptors of the internal organs - everything passes through the thalamus. An unimaginable amount of sensitive and painful impulses passes every second, day and night, through this part of the brain. We do not feel the friction of the heart valves, the movement of the abdominal organs, various articular surfaces against each other - and all this is due to the thalamus.

In the event of a malfunction of the so-called anti-pain system (for example, in the absence of the production of internal, own morphine-like substances that arose due to the use of narcotic drugs), the aforementioned flurry of all kinds of pain and other sensitivity simply overwhelms the brain, leading to terrifying in duration, strength and severity emotional pain. This is the reason, in a somewhat simplified form, of the so-called “withdrawal” with a deficit in the intake of morphine-like substances from the outside against the background of long-term use of narcotic drugs.

How is the pain impulse processed in the brain?

The posterior nuclei of the thalamus provide information about the localization of the source of pain, and its median nuclei - about the duration of exposure to the irritating agent. The hypothalamus, as the most important regulatory center of the autonomic nervous system, is involved in the formation of the autonomic component of the pain reaction indirectly, through the involvement of centers that regulate metabolism, the work of the respiratory, cardiovascular and other body systems. The reticular formation coordinates already partially processed information. The role of the reticular formation in the formation of the sensation of pain as a kind of special integrated state of the body, with the inclusion of various biochemical, vegetative, somatic components, is especially emphasized. The limbic system of the brain provides a negative emotional coloring. The process of understanding pain as such, determining the localization of the pain source (meaning a specific area of ​​\u200b\u200bone's own body), together with the most complex and diverse reactions to pain impulses, occurs without fail with the participation of the cerebral cortex.

Sensory areas of the cerebral cortex are the highest modulators of pain sensitivity and play the role of the so-called cortical analyzer of information about the fact, duration and localization of the pain impulse. It is at the level of the cortex that integration of information from various types of conductors of pain sensitivity occurs, which means the full-fledged design of pain as a multifaceted and diverse sensation. pain impulses. Like a kind of transformer substation on power lines.

We even have to talk about the so-called generators of pathologically enhanced excitation. So, from the modern point of view, these generators are considered as the pathophysiological basis of pain syndromes. The mentioned theory of system generator mechanisms makes it possible to explain why, with a slight irritation, the pain response is quite significant in terms of sensations, why after the cessation of the stimulus, the sensation of pain continues to persist, and also helps to explain the appearance of pain in response to stimulation of skin projection zones (reflexogenic zones) in the pathology of various internal organs.

Chronic pain of any origin leads to increased irritability, reduced efficiency, loss of interest in life, sleep disturbance, changes in the emotional-volitional sphere, often leading to the development of hypochondria and depression. All these consequences in themselves increase the pathological pain reaction. The emergence of such a situation is interpreted as the formation of vicious circles: pain stimulus - psycho-emotional disorders - behavioral and motivational disorders, manifested in the form of social, family and personal maladaptation - pain.

Anti-pain system (antinociceptive) - role in the human body. Threshold of pain sensitivity

Along with the existence of a pain system in the human body ( nociceptive), there is also an anti-pain system ( antinociceptive). What does the anti-pain system do? First of all, each organism has its own genetically programmed threshold for the perception of pain sensitivity. This threshold allows us to explain why different people react differently to stimuli of the same strength, duration and nature. The concept of sensitivity threshold is a universal property of all receptor systems of the body, including pain. Just like the pain sensitivity system, the anti-pain system has a complex multilevel structure, starting from the level of the spinal cord and ending with the cerebral cortex.

How is the activity of the anti-pain system regulated?

The complex activity of the anti-pain system is provided by a chain of complex neurochemical and neurophysiological mechanisms. The main role in this system belongs to several classes of chemicals - brain neuropeptides. They also include morphine-like compounds - endogenous opiates(beta-endorphin, dynorphin, various enkephalins). These substances can be considered so-called endogenous analgesics. These chemicals have a depressing effect on the neurons of the pain system, activate anti-pain neurons, and modulate the activity of higher nerve centers of pain sensitivity. The content of these anti-pain substances in the central nervous system decreases with the development of pain syndromes. Apparently, this explains the decrease in the threshold of pain sensitivity up to the appearance of independent pain sensations against the background of the absence of a painful stimulus.

It should also be noted that in the anti-pain system, along with morphine-like opiate endogenous analgesics, well-known brain mediators such as serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), as well as hormones and hormone-like substances - vasopressin (antidiuretic hormone), neurotensin. Interestingly, the action of brain mediators is possible both at the level of the spinal cord and the brain. Summarizing the above, we can conclude that the inclusion of the anti-pain system makes it possible to weaken the flow of pain impulses and reduce pain sensations. If there are any inaccuracies in the operation of this system, any pain can be perceived as intense.

Thus, all pain sensations are regulated by the joint interaction of the nociceptive and antinociceptive systems. Only their coordinated work and subtle interaction allows you to adequately perceive pain and its intensity, depending on the strength and duration of exposure to the irritating factor.

Emotions arise under the influence of external influences or processes occurring in the body itself. Factors causing the emotional process can be divided into three classes:

1) factors that can cause emotion due to the innate sensitivity of the body to them; we will call them natural (unconditioned) emotional stimuli;

2) factors that have acquired the ability to evoke emotion due to the fact that they have become signals of important events for the subject;

3) factors that have acquired the ability to evoke emotion due to the fact that they correspond or contradict the cognitive structures acquired in experience; these factors were called by Berlyne "collative" (collative variables), or "comparative" (Berlyne, 1967, p. 19).

Let's consider these factors.

Natural (unconditioned) emotional stimuli

A natural stimulus of emotions is any physical impact on the body that causes excitation of receptors and certain changes in the biological balance of the body (homeostatic changes). Apparently, emotional processes can also be caused by some specific configurations of stimuli, including certain situations. However, virtually nothing is known about these factors, at least when it comes to humans, and the assumptions that can be made about this are based on extrapolations from animal studies and very anecdotal observations in humans.

Emotional meaning of sensory stimuli. As you know, a person's contact with the outside world begins with the impact on the receptors of sensory stimuli. These stimuli provide information about the properties of objects and events and at the same time cause affective changes. Both the magnitude and the sign of these changes depend to a certain extent on the sensory modality, that is, on the type of analyzer that received the signal. In some modalities, the emotional component is of secondary importance, in others it plays a dominant role. The French psychologist A. Pieron expressed this dependence in a special table, in which he arbitrarily determined the cognitive and affective coefficients for certain types of sensory influences (Pieron, 1950). However, the figures given by Pieron are not based on any real measurements and represent only an abbreviated form of description intuitive assessment.

The affective component depends not only on the sensory modality, but also on the kind of influence within that modality. Thus, as Titchener noted, achromatic colors (white and black) can rarely be pleasant or unpleasant, as well as sound noises and tones. Chromatic colors usually have a more pronounced affective meaning. As Heinrich writes, “red, especially strongly saturated, is the color of strength and energy. With weaker saturation, its emotional tone decreases and acquires the character of seriousness and dignity. Purple has this character to an even greater extent, forming a transition to the calm mood of purple and blue flowers. Violet has a sullen seriousness” (Heinrich, 1907).

It is possible to cite experimental data confirming such observations. Thus, it has been established that the red color causes stronger excitation than the blue color of the same brightness, and this is reflected, in particular, in an increase in systolic blood pressure, a decrease in the conductivity of the skin of the palm, a change in the rhythm of breathing, depression of the alpha rhythm in the EEG, and also in the reports of subjects obtained using a standardized methodology for the study of emotions.

When discussing the issue of the emotionality of sensory stimuli, it is necessary to pay special attention to vestibular and kinesthetic influences. Kinesthetic stimuli can have significant emotional overtones. Thus, in studies conducted by Kagan and Berkan, it was found that the possibility of movement can serve as a positive reinforcement for animals; moreover, the effectiveness of this reinforcement depends on the degree of deprivation caused by keeping animals indoors.

Emotions caused by sensory stimuli can be both positive and negative. The sign of emotion depends primarily on the quality of the stimuli. P. Young found that people different ages react very similarly to certain odors. Thus, the correlation between the assessments of 14 different odors made by subjects of three age groups (7–9 years old, 10–13 and 18–24 years old) ranged from 0.91 to 0.96, which indicates that the sign of emotions, caused by the presented substances, does not change significantly with increasing age (Young, 1967). It has also been established that the affective value of pure sound tones (that is, the ability to evoke emotions of a certain sign and intensity) depends on their height and strength. These dependencies can be expressed graphically. Such curves were introduced by Guilford (based on Young's data) and were called "isohedons"; thus, isohedons are lines representing the properties of stimuli that have identical affective meaning.

The role of the intensity of stimuli. The intensity of the stimulus is one of the essential factors that determine its emotional significance. Schnirla formulated general position, which determines the nature of the reaction of the body. According to this author, “in the early stages of ontogenetic development, stimulation low intensity shows a tendency to cause approaching reactions, and stimulation of high intensity - reactions of removal from the source of influence" (Schneirla, 1959). To illustrate this thesis, the author gives many examples of the behavior of animals at different levels of phylogenetic development. A similar dependence can be established in humans.

The relationship between the strength of the stimulus and the emotional reaction caused by it was also noted by psychologists of the past. Wundt believed that a barely perceptible sensation has an extremely small sensory coloring; as the intensity of the sensation increases, its positive sensory coloring grows, but, having reached a certain intensity, this positive coloring begins to decrease and, passing through the zero point, becomes negative.

The curve presented by Wundt corresponds to the accumulated experimental data. Back in 1928, Engel studied the evaluation of sour, salty and bitter solutions of various concentrations and obtained a curve similar to the Wundt curve; in 1960, Pfafmann obtained similar results by studying taste preferences in rats.

When discussing the intensity of a stimulus, one should also recall the influence of the suddenness of its appearance. Objects that appear unexpectedly and move quickly cause a negative reaction. Schnirla believes that this can explain, in particular, the well-known effect described by Tinbergen, which consists in the fact that the same perceptual form can either cause or not cause a strong emotional reaction (runaway) in young birds, depending on whether where it is being moved.

This effect can be explained by the fact that the shape of the figure when moving from left to right causes a more significant and faster change in excitation in the retina than when moving from right to left, and this leads to a rapid increase in internal excitation, causing a fear reaction.

The influence of the strength of irritation and the rate of its increase was also observed by E. Franus. In studies of fear reactions in young children, he found that such reactions are easily elicited by relatively large, rapidly approaching, and loudly making animals (Franus, 1963).

The Role of Repetitions and Internal States

The role of repetition. The change in the emotional coloring of stimuli under the influence of their repetition has been the subject of many studies. Tolman, one of the first to study this problem, found that rats receiving food at both ends of the T-shaped maze spontaneously change the direction of the search when repeating successive trials. So, if the last time they turned left, then in the next trial they turn right, in the next - to the left, etc.

In further experiments, an attempt was made to establish whether this tendency to alternate is due to the processes that are responsible for receiving stimuli, or the processes that are responsible for performing reactions, in other words, whether this is due to "bored stimulation" or "bored actions." The data obtained indicate the dominant influence of the processes occurring in the sphere of perception. Experiments on rats have shown that under changing stimuli, animals do not tend to change their response (Glanzer, 1953).

The phenomenon of alternation is also inherent in people. This was shown by Wingfield with a very simple experiment. He asked the subjects (students) to repeatedly light one of the two bulbs in front of them (without specifying which one). Under such conditions, the subjects lit alternately one or the other light bulb. If the bulbs differed in color, the tendency to alternate was more pronounced. Karsten investigated the phenomenon of satiety by asking subjects to draw lines for as long as they could, for example. As it was repeated, signs appeared that indicated resistance to further work, and the tendency to modify the shape of the lines (introduction of stimulus variability) increased. This tendency noticeably decreased when the principle of line grouping changed (the stimulus changed). All these data suggest that the repetition of stimuli leads not only to an increase in the threshold of sensitivity (adaptation), but also to a change (decrease) in the attractiveness of the stimulus.

The repetition of sensory stimuli does not always lead to such consequences. When the subject is still learning to perceive this kind of stimuli, repetition for some time leads to an increase in their attractiveness. This may explain the great attraction that simple sensory stimuli have for young children, and which, as is well known, decreases with age. It is likely that the emotional significance of negative stimuli also changes to some extent: under the influence of repetitions, it also decreases.

Repetitions may not affect the attractiveness of stimuli if they are separated by more or less significant intervals. So, in experimental animals, the effect of alternation was not observed if the samples in the experiment did not follow directly one after another. In persons who have been isolated for a long time (in the chamber of silence), there is an increase in sensitivity to color - it seems more saturated. This indicates a weakening of the effect of satiety, which manifests itself in people in normal conditions(many people remember that as a child, colors seemed more vibrant and attractive to them).

Repeated repetition of the same irritants for several days makes him emotionally neutral. This is indirectly evidenced by the experiments carried out by Soltysik and his collaborators, in which they studied the effect of a simple sound stimulus on cardiac activity in dogs. Changes in the activity of the heart can be considered as a vegetative component of the emotional reaction. These experiments showed that as the auditory stimulus is repeated, a systematic decrease in the heart rate occurs - a cumulation of the extinction effect is observed (Soltysik et al., 1961). In adults, the emotional reaction to simple sounds is completely extinguished and therefore does not cause changes in the activity of the heart.

The described dependence explains, in particular, why attractive for small child the irritant is not such for an adult (for example, a brightly colored object, the sound of objects thrown on the floor, etc.). However, an adult can be captured by unusual color phenomena if they are observed rarely or for the first time (such as, for example, the aurora borealis).

The change in the emotional significance of sensory stimuli can be not only temporary, but - under the influence of experience - and longer. At the first application, sensory stimuli cause a non-specific reaction of the whole organism in the form of increased activation (arousal), and its degree depends on the intensity of the stimuli. Under the influence of repetition, anticipatory schemes are formed in the body, “expectations, neural models of experienced events” (Pribram, 1967, p. 831). These models, which provide the possibility of a differentiated reflection of the surrounding phenomena, are the standards with which the incoming impacts are “compared”. Acting stimuli evoke an emotional response until their representation in neural models becomes sufficiently strong. If the incoming stimuli fully correspond to internal standards - anticipatory schemes, or, as we will call them, attitudes - addiction sets in and, as a result, the emotional reaction is suppressed. If the properties of stimuli change, an emotional reaction occurs again. New properties, in turn, are included in the structure of schemes, and after a series of repetitions, the new stimulus again loses its ability to evoke emotion.

As a result of such processes, there is a gradual inhibition of emotional sensitivity to most simple sensory stimuli. To elicit a response, these stimuli must either have unusual properties or appear in new configurations. These configurations, in turn, must become more and more complex, and the differences between their elements more and more subtle. In this way, in particular, aesthetic taste is formed.

The above analysis suggests that the source of stimulation that affects the emotional state of the individual is the physical environment; the simpler, more familiar and less differentiated this environment is, the less will be its ability to evoke emotions.

It should be added that some stimuli retain their emotional significance despite repetition, in any case, susceptibility to them disappears much more slowly than to other stimuli; this applies primarily to those irritants that have a direct effect on the physical state of the body: for example, strong thermal effects (burn, cold), mechanical damage to tissues, a number of chemical irritants (some odors). This also applies to those stimuli that in the phylogenetic development were associated with phenomena important for the individual or species (some taste stimuli, sexual stimuli).

Sensitivity to these stimuli, as, indeed, to all others, varies depending on the state of the organism and, above all, on the state of needs.

The role of internal states. The emotional significance of the stimulus may change under the influence of somatic factors. This is indicated, in particular, by observations of animals; for example, in animals surgically deprived of the adrenal glands, while maintaining the threshold of physiological sensitivity to salt, the threshold for salt preference is significantly reduced, in other words, “interest” in salt increases. In experiments conducted by Young, it was found that food preference depends on the diet and the needs of the body (Young, 1961).

pain sensitivity

Given the above data, we can confidently assert that each sensory stimulus has a certain emotional significance. In other words, it causes a state of pleasure or displeasure, changes in the level of activation and in the activity of internal organs; if it is strong enough, it can also cause organized activity in the form of, for example, grasping, running away, attacking, etc. The emotional significance of the stimulus depends on its intensity, as well as on which receptors it is perceived - irritation of some receptors usually causes positive reactions, others - negative; a sharp, sudden, strong irritation of any receptor causes a negative reaction (most often in the form of fear or rage). Moderate impacts usually evoke positive emotions. The emotional significance of a sensory stimulus changes under the influence of experience, and also depending on organic conditions; repetition leads to a decrease in the emotional significance of the stimulus (that is, addiction).

These statements are of a very generalized nature, since they refer to various sensory stimuli, and above all to those in which the cognitive (informational) component predominates. A more detailed characterization of the emotional characteristics of these stimuli would require a special discussion of individual modalities, which is beyond the scope of this work. However, given the importance of pain as a source of emotion, we will consider here only this modality as an example.

Pain. Painful stimuli are one of the primary sources of the emotional process. Pain occurs when some internal or external factor causes irritation of specialized nerve fibers, the so-called type C fibers. These fibers are among the thinnest, and nerve impulses travel through them more slowly than other fibers. This explains the fact that pain usually occurs somewhat later than other sensations.

The process caused by painful irritation is very complex; it contains several points. First of all, it is known that the reaction to pain stimulation, as it were, consists of two independent components: cognitive and emotional. The latter manifests itself in the form of a negative emotion of suffering. In some cases, these components can be separated, as evidenced, in particular, by the following observation. There are patients who experience very severe chronic pain that is not relieved by medication. In such cases, to eliminate pain, sometimes they resort to surgery, which consists in cutting the nerve pathways in the front of the brain (called a leucotomy). As a result of such an operation, one can sometimes observe an amazing effect. The person claims that he still knows that he is in pain, but now this knowledge does not bother him and he does not experience any suffering. In other words, the sensory (or cognitive) component of pain is preserved, but its emotional component disappears. The cognitive component informs about what is damaged (although not very clearly), while the emotional component prompts the individual to avoid or eliminate the factor causing the damage.

People who lose sensitivity to pain due to illness are doomed to many injuries. So, children suffering from such a disease are constantly injured or burned, because the loss of pain sensitivity deprives them of sufficient caution.

Different people have different emotional responses to pain. It is possible that this is due to the unequal sensitivity of the receptors.

Sensitivity to pain depends to some extent on the experience of the first days of life. This is evidenced by observations and experiments conducted on animals. So, in one experiment, cardboard tubes were put on the lower and upper limbs of a newborn chimpanzee (named Rob). This excluded any irritation of these parts of the body, but did not interfere with movement. When the characteristics of sensory responses were studied in this chimpanzee at the age of two and a half years, it turned out that they differed from the reactions of chimpanzees who grew up under normal conditions. In particular, surprising changes have taken place in the field of pain sensitivity. While the common chimpanzee reacted violently to a pin prick and immediately sought to remove the piercing object, Rob did not show a negative reaction, but rather tried to examine the instrument of influence.

The same was observed in dogs that were kept for some time after birth in complete isolation (in a small darkened and isolated from sounds cage). As adults, these dogs exhibited unusual responses to painful stimuli. So, a burn or a prick with a pin made no impression on them; at the sight of a lighted match, they approached and sniffed it. These actions were repeated several times. It should be emphasized that a normal dog that has never seen a fire behaves this way only once and then starts to avoid it (Hebb, 1955, 1958).

Such observations show that the reaction to pain, in addition to the moment of negative emotion, or suffering, contains one more moment associated with it - the element of fear acquired in experience. The individual often finds himself in a situation in which a little pain portends a greater one. Mild pain as a result of damage can subsequently become significant due to a tumor, pain in the abdomen can develop into a severe pain attack, etc. Such an experience leads most people to perceive pain not only as an actual irritation, but also as a signal of something even worse, as an indicator, the emotional component of which is summed up with a purely painful factor.

It has been established that the reaction to pain can be noticeably weakened if the fear factor is eliminated. This, in particular, is directed to prenatal psychotherapy. According to reports from clinics different countries, such psychotherapy significantly weakens the intensity of pain in women in labor.

As a result of the application of an appropriate procedure, the reaction to pain can be reduced or even completely eliminated. This procedure consists in turning a painful stimulus into a signal that portends something useful for the body. This was first established in experiments conducted by M. N. Erofeeva in the laboratory of I. P. Pavlov.

The dog, placed in a special rack, received irritations with an electric current, which at first caused a violent defensive reaction. Each stimulus was followed by food reinforcement. Repeated repetition of this combination of stimuli gradually turned the pain effect into a signal to receive food. As a result, signs of a defensive reaction in the dog began to disappear; irritation with the current began to cause a food reaction (saliva, turning the head to the side where the food was supplied, etc.). Ultimately, even a strong electric current, which led to damage to the skin of the animal, did not cause a pain reaction, but only caused signs of interest in food. However, very strong pain caused by direct irritation of the nerve endings located in the periosteum excludes the possibility of such a rearrangement of reactions, remaining a strong negative stimulus.

Changes in responses to pain have not only been observed in animal experiments. It has been established, for example, that appropriate training can reduce the reaction to pain from an injection in children. preschool age; it is even possible to achieve that the child will willingly agree to an injection. The researchers who obtained this result used a method similar to that used by M. N. Erofeeva in the Pavlovsk laboratory. The experience was as follows. First of all, the children were told that they would receive the toy they were interested in, provided they agreed to the injection. At the same time, the researchers tried to ensure that the promised object was really very attractive for the child and, in addition, that the desire to receive a toy arose before the fear of being stabbed. Thus, the attention of the child was concentrated on a pleasant event awaiting him. Under these conditions, the injection was perceived as a stage of approaching pleasure and received a completely different meaning: it became a signal of something positive and thus acquired the character of a positive impact.

Thus, although pain usually causes negative emotional processes, under the influence of life experience, the characteristics of these processes can undergo significant transformations.

Irritations that are generated by the processes occurring in the body itself also have a strong emotional effect. These irritations are caused by 1) natural fluctuations in biological balance due to the very process of vital activity, 2) the activity of internal organs and muscles, 3) pathological changes occurring in the body, and 4) functional changes associated with the introduction of certain substances into the body. Let's look at each of these factors separately.

Factors that cause a strong emotional reaction. Changes in homeostatic balance

Changes in homeostatic balance. Fluctuations in biological balance are the source of states, traditionally called drives. Their mention in the discussion of emotions is due to two reasons: firstly, in higher animals, homeostatic changes acquire the character of motives (that is, determine the direction of actions) only at later stages of development (under the influence of experience and exercise), while at earlier stages they have almost exclusively emotional character; secondly, each impulse contains a distinct emotional component, which at certain stages of the action of the impulse (for example, at the stage of satisfaction) becomes dominant.

The main sources of emotions include changes in homeostatic balance associated with:

• with a deficiency of certain nutrients, which is signaled by chemical changes in the blood and contractions of the stomach, although the latter component is not required;
• with changes in osmotic pressure in the tissues, which creates a state called "thirst";
• with change partial pressure oxygen and carbon dioxide content in the blood, expressed in a feeling of suffocation;
• with the course of the menstrual cycle and the process of secretion of sex hormones, leading to a change in sexual arousal;
• with bowel or bladder fullness perceived as an urge to defecate or urinate, or vague pain in the abdomen.

Emotions associated with these factors in the initial period of life are non-specific; they are not represented in the consciousness of the subject (which is still in its infancy) and cause almost no specific changes in behavior yet. The main effect of any excitation during this period is reduced to a general increase in activation with a negative sign (undifferentiated displeasure). As learning occurs, certain types of excitation are associated with certain schemes of actions, which leads to their separation into a separate motivation mechanism. Thus, from the indefinite experience of restlessness and excitement, more and more specific feelings of hunger and thirst gradually emerge. In a later period, sexual emotion is highlighted and detailed.

Homeostatic changes occur, as a rule, cyclically: detection of deficiency - achievement of satisfaction. The first link of this cycle usually causes emotions negative character and an increase in activation (and later also a specific state of arousal), the second is a decrease in activation and positive emotions.

The action of internal stimuli associated with homeostatic changes causes a state of readiness, which is expressed in an increase in general emotional sensitivity. If in environment there are no objects that could be used to eliminate the violation of homeostatic equilibrium (satisfy the impulse), as well as signals indicating exactly where to look for such objects, and a specialized reaction of impulse does not arise. In this case, there is a significant increase in activation - there is a general excitation or a state of tension; such states are usually described as "vague desire", "inexplicable anguish" or "strange restlessness", etc. In these cases, the tendency to negative reactions increases: irritability, nervousness, tension, etc.

Certain urges (such as hunger or sex) give rise to strong, aggressive emotions. From animal observations it is known that male sex hormones contribute to the appearance of aggressive reactions. The effect of hunger on the occurrence of negative emotions may be due to the fact that biochemical changes in the blood cause a breakdown in the normal activity of cellular ensembles, thereby contributing to the disorganization of cortical processes, which can cause negative emotions. It is quite possible that this influence is associated with the action of not only biochemical, but also nervous factors - a strong excitation of food centers can cause changes in the nonspecific (reticular) activating system, which in turn leads to a disruption in the activity of the cortex.

Emotional shifts caused by a lack of food became the subject of a special study in a well-known experiment with a group of volunteer subjects who were starving for several months. They were observed, in particular, depression, irritability, loss of sexual interests. And in everyday life, often a hungry person shows increased aggressiveness and a tendency to anger; sexual deprivation can also be the reason for the increase in aggressive tendencies.

Some impulses are cyclical. So, with a certain regularity, hunger manifests itself. In this regard, distinct cyclic mood changes can occur, which is especially noticeable in children.

According to some data, the strength of sexual desire in women is also cyclical, and this, apparently, is associated with the menstrual cycle. However, this opinion is not shared by all researchers. Some of them believe that fluctuations in sexual excitability are associated not so much with fluctuations of a biological nature, but with fluctuations in the fear of a possible pregnancy, depending on the phases of the monthly cycle. However, it is undeniable that, depending on the monthly cycle, more general changes in mood and activation level occur.

Muscle and nerve activity. As is known, nervous activity leads to an increase in fatigue: this condition is characterized by both changes in the activity of internal organs and a number of mental changes, for example, a weakening of interests (motivation), increased irritability, etc.

The emergence of emotions is also associated with muscle activity. The performance of hard, overwork is a source of strong negative emotions, while the performance of work that corresponds to the capabilities of the body causes positive experiences. Each significant effort requires a harmonious coordination of the various functions of the body: blood circulation, respiration, the release of certain substances, the intensity of metabolism must be adapted to the actions performed. If the corresponding systems function normally, a person has a feeling of strength, vivacity, cheerfulness, otherwise there is poor health, depressed mood, discontent, etc.

This dependence explains the often observed differences in the mood of young and old people. Young healthy body in itself is a source of causeless joy, a surge of strength, etc., while the dysfunction of an aging organism can be the cause of dissatisfaction, bad mood, grouchiness, etc.

Factors that cause a strong emotional reaction. Pathological changes and the action of pharmacological agents

pathological changes. Pathological processes arising in the body usually cause a deterioration in mood (due to a general violation of the normal functions of the body), as well as a feeling of pain (when they are sufficiently localized). Deterioration of mood is one of the first signs of an incipient disease. In such cases, there is an increase in irritability, poor health, anxiety, loss of interest. Sometimes emotion acts as a specific sign of the disease that it accompanies. These diseases include diseases of the heart and coronary vessels. One of the typical manifestations of angina pectoris is paroxysmal anxiety. It seems to the patient that something terrible will happen soon, he experiences overwhelming fear. Anxiety sometimes reaches very great strength. There is an opinion that the impulses that excite the centers of fear are caused by an insufficient supply of oxygen to the heart muscle. This opinion, however, is not shared by everyone. In any case, very often the appearance of severe unreasonable anxiety (sometimes occurring in a dream) can indicate the onset of heart disease.

Anxiety is also one of the most characteristic signs of hyperthyroidism.

However, pathological processes cause not only negative emotions. So, for unknown reasons, with oxygen starvation, an elevated mood occurs immediately before the loss of consciousness. This is a serious danger, in particular for climbers and pilots, since good health and the absence of anxiety do not at all contribute to the adoption of appropriate preventive measures.

Another example is the euphoric mood in patients suffering from organic brain damage. As Bilikevich writes: “Painfully, he is not preoccupied with anything, his thoughts are serene; he is satisfied and happy” (Bilikiewicz, 1960). These phenomena are observed in such severe diseases as progressive paralysis, epilepsy, chorea, multiple sclerosis.

The action of pharmacological agents. Emotional processes can also occur under the influence of the introduction of certain substances into the body. In medical practice, for example, the so-called LSD-25 was used - a drug that causes psychotic symptoms in healthy people. In experiments, it was found that under its influence numerous changes of an emotional nature may appear.

Some people develop euphoria, uncontrollable laughter, etc. This mood may later turn into a state of intense anxiety. It is not entirely clear, however, whether these reactions are a direct consequence of the use of a pharmacological agent; the fact is that LSD also causes significant changes in perceptual processes (of the hallucinatory type). This perceptual experience can influence the experience of emotion. However, the strength and nature of the flow of emotional reactions in these cases indicate that this drug also leads, apparently, to a direct excitation of the centers of emotions.

The introduction into the body of substances that cause emotional processes (and not only for research purposes) is not an invention of our time. So, in the early Middle Ages, some northern tribes had a custom called “walking with naked skin” (that is, without a shell - Berserk). This expression meant great, reckless courage, a fierce battle with the enemy. In the old Norwegian sagas, it is said that giants once lived, who were called so - Berserk. These people from time to time fell into a terrible frenzy, which doubled their strength, made them insensitive to pain, but deprived them of their mind: at such moments they behaved like wild animals. Such a state began with trembling, baring of teeth, convulsions, a rush of blood to the face and turned into a rage. With a terrible animal roar, they pounced on the enemy, gnawed and destroyed everything that came across them on the way.

The described behavior is reminiscent of the behavior of animals in which the center of rage in experiments is irritated. diencephalon. Apparently, this behavior of people was caused by the action of some substance of plant origin. Many historical studies of customs, religious rites, etc. indicate that such a remedy was, most likely, mushrooms from the genus of fly agaric. It is also known that the custom of intoxication with the help of such mushrooms is widespread among the Siberian peoples.

Influencing emotions by introducing certain substances is widely used in our time, with the only difference being that drugs are used instead of poisonous mushrooms, and most often alcohol.

general characteristics natural emotional stimuli. Natural emotional stimuli are of great importance in the initial period of an individual's life. On their basis, primary mechanisms of regulation, primary motives and so-called emotional needs are formed. The formation of impulses occurs due to the fact that the excitation that occurs as a result of a violation of the biological balance in the body is associated with the images of objects with which this excitation can be weakened, the program of actions that ensure the achievement of these objects, as well as with the image of the conditions that are necessary for the implementation these actions. Due to this, there is a separation of functional units - motives. So, for example, the induction of hunger can be considered as a connection formed in ontogenesis between excitations coming from the internal organs (primarily under the influence of stomach contractions and changes in the chemical composition of the blood), food images, memorized motor schemes for reaching food, as well as a whole system of associations related to information about where and when food can be found, what signals its presence and what - its absence. The basis of the qualitative differences between drives is the differences in the operations through which they can be reduced.

The formation of emotional needs is associated with the action of exteroceptive emotional stimuli. The latter cause states of strong excitement, a positive or negative sign, which the individual learns to avoid or achieve. So, for example, pain or other harmful effects lead to the establishment of a connection between fear and certain factors that can cause or eliminate this fear (or pain). Emotionally positive influences, such as something warm, soft, are, as Harlow's experiments show, a very important prerequisite for motivation to establish contact with other individuals. It is quite possible that any kind of sensory influences entails emotional reactions that influence the formation of more complex regulatory mechanisms. However, so far we have very scarce information about these mechanisms.

It is not entirely clear whether relatively simple sensory stimuli alone are unconditional emotiogenic factors, or whether certain configurations of stimuli can also be them. In favor of the fact that certain configurations of stimuli may have the ability to excite emotions is evidenced, for example, by experiments in which young chimpanzees, from birth brought up in isolation from other individuals, were subjected to various stimulations. It turned out that a slide showing the face of an angry male chimpanzee evoked a fear response in the animals. It is possible that other configurations of sensory stimuli are capable of evoking emotions just as naturally. It is necessary, for example, to take into account the fact that such a complex system of stimuli as signals about the position of an individual in a group can have an emotional impact. Reactions to such situational factors are observed in higher herd animals (for example, in dogs, monkeys), and it is possible that they also manifest themselves in some form in humans. Of course, this applies only to the most elementary relations, such as "domination - submission", which are signaled by certain mimic configurations and expressive movements.

Turning neutral stimuli into emotional ones

Neutral stimuli can turn into emotiogenic if they acquire the function of signaling important events for the subject. This occurs as a result of the formation of conditioned emotional reflexes, as a result of generalization, and also as a result of higher mental processes, thanks to which a person evaluates the significance of situations. Before considering each of these processes in more detail, it should be emphasized that, using the concept of "neutral stimulus", one can have in mind three kinds of phenomena.

First, each sensory stimulus will be neutral, in which, as a result of repetition, the ability to evoke emotion has disappeared or is extremely weakened.

Secondly, a neutral stimulus can be any configuration of sensory stimuli due to objects and situations.

Thirdly, sensory stimuli or their configurations can be neutral only with respect to one specific emotional process. In other words, a factor capable of evoking a certain emotion (for example, food) can be completely neutral in relation to the emotion of fear and only as a result of the corresponding process acquire the ability to evoke this emotion as well.

Emotion conditioning (learning). Tadeusz Zakrzewski in his book cites the case of a pilot who, during the Second World War, was shot down over the English Channel while flying a sortie in a bomber. He managed to escape and return to his unit, but from that moment on, flying over the strait, he each time experienced severe anxiety, accompanied by pronounced somatic manifestations (sweating, trembling). After he crossed the strait, these manifestations disappeared (Zakrzewski, 1967, p. 49).

It is obvious that the basis of such phenomena is the process of formation of conditioned reflexes (learning).

For the first time, the importance of this process for the emergence of emotional reactions was revealed about fifty years ago in an experiment conducted by Watson and which has become a classic. The study was conducted on an eleven-month-old boy named Albert. The basis of the study was the observation that in children, the fear response is easily elicited with a loud sound. The experiment went as follows.

The boy was shown a white rat, with which he repeatedly played. When he extended his hand to take the rat, the experimenter struck a gong located behind the boy. resounded strong sound The child shuddered and screamed in fright. Soon he received the dice, calmed down and began to play. He was shown the rat again. This time the reaction of the child followed with some delay, he no longer so quickly and impatiently extended his hand and only carefully touched the animal. At that moment, the gong sounded again, which again caused a violent reaction of fear. After a few minutes, the child calmed down and took up the cubes again. When the rat was brought in for the third time, the reaction of the child was completely different. He showed all the signs of fear at the mere sight of this animal. There was no longer any need to strike the gong. The child turned away from the rat and began to cry.

When Albert was shown the white rat again a month later, the fear reaction did not change. There are reasons to believe that it has become sustainable. According to the author, she could have survived even until the end of her life. Moreover, it was noticed that this reaction arose not only at the sight of a white rat. And other, at least somewhat similar objects, such as a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a guinea pig, a fur coat, and even a Santa Claus mask, caused a reaction of fear.

In this experiment, two very important processes are observed that explain why people begin to react emotionally to initially neutral objects.

The first process is the formation of conditioned emotional reactions: neutral stimuli that precede or accompany the appearance of emotiogenic stimuli acquire the ability to evoke emotions themselves.

It cannot be said that in the experiment described (as well as in the Jones experiment considered below), the neutral stimulus acquired a conditional value, since the stimuli used already had some emotional significance. In this case, the process of the so-called alteration of the stimulus took place, which, as studies of the Konorsky school show, proceeds somewhat differently than the conditioning of a truly neutral stimulus.

The second process is the generalization of emotional stimuli: indifferent stimuli, similar to stimuli that evoke emotions, also acquire the ability to evoke emotions.

Studies of the formation of conditioned emotional reactions are carried out not only for scientific, but also for medicinal purposes. Thus, this process is widely used as a psychotherapeutic tool.

One of these psychotherapeutic procedures is to develop a conditioned reaction of disgust. For example, a patient for whom handbags and prams were sexual fetishes (which brought him into constant conflict with the law) was shown these objects and photographs of them just before he began to vomit violently from an earlier injection of apomorphine. The author of this method, Raymond, ensured that these objects acquired the ability to cause a strong feeling of disgust (Bandura, 1961). A similar procedure is used in the treatment of alcoholism.

Attempts have also been made to give positive emotional meaning to negative stimuli. One of the first such attempts is the experiment of M. Jones, conceived as a continuation of Watson's experiment and conducted under his leadership, Jones tried to eliminate the strong fear that arose in the child she was studying at the sight of a rabbit (Jones, 1924).

The procedure for developing a positive conditioned reflex in this case consisted in the fact that the stimulus that caused fear (rabbit) was shown and gradually brought closer in situations where the child experienced positive emotions, namely at the moment of playing with other children who were not afraid of the rabbit, and later when getting your favorite treats. As a result of the application of such a procedure, tolerance towards the rabbit gradually increased, which was subsequently replaced by a positive reaction.

It should be emphasized that imitation played a significant role in this experiment. Persons that are of emotional value to other people cause a tendency to imitate (Bandura, Huston, 1961) and thus contribute to the formation of new emotional relationships.

In the experiments of Peters and Jenkins, the positive reinforcement procedure was applied to patients suffering from chronic schizophrenia. Considering limited opportunity social influence on such patients, a procedure based on primary reinforcement was applied to them (Bandura, 1961, p. 149). Patients in whom acute hunger was aroused by means of subcomatose injections performed various tasks, receiving food as a reward. After some time, the behavior of the experimenter directed at them acquired a reinforcing value for the patients. Thus, through food reinforcement, certain actions of other people acquired positive emotional significance.

These and many other (mostly animal) experiments show that, due to the formation of conditioned responses, initially neutral stimuli can become "attractive" (positive) and "repulsive" (negative). The main condition for emotional learning is the connection in time between the neutral stimulus and the reinforcing agent that evokes the emotion.

Is this a sufficient condition? Some authors consider this doubtful. For example, Valentine failed to obtain the result described by Watson when he used binoculars instead of a rat as a neutral stimulus. At the moment when a strong whistle was heard, the girl he studied did not react with fear, but only began to look in the direction from which the sound came. But she did not become afraid of binoculars after that. However, she found a completely different behavior in relation to the caterpillar. Seeing her, the girl turned away and refused to touch her. When a strong whistle sounded at the sight of the caterpillar, the child became frightened and cried loudly (Valentine, 1956, pp. 132-133).

Referring to other similar studies, Valentine expresses the opinion that as a result of the formation of a conditioned connection, only such an irritant can become emotiogenic, which from the very beginning itself is capable of causing some degree of emotional arousal. A perfectly neutral stimulus cannot become a conditioned emotional stimulus.

It is impossible to fully agree with such an opinion. First of all, the empirical argument to which Valentine refers is not entirely clear. As follows from his description, the reinforcing stimulus (whistle) used did not cause a pronounced fear reaction, that is, it did not actually perform the function of reinforcement. Therefore, it is not surprising that in these conditions it was not possible to develop fear in relation to binoculars. On the other hand, the caterpillar, for reasons that will be discussed later, immediately caused a negative (though not very strong) emotional reaction.

Nevertheless, the data cited by Valentine is noteworthy, as it points to two important facts.

The first is the fact of facilitating the emotional reaction. Some stimuli, for one reason or another, become emotiogenic faster than others: a caterpillar caused fear more easily than binoculars. Conversely, some stimuli are difficult to become conditioned. Thus, in the Jones experiment, the rabbit very slowly acquired the features of a positive emotional stimulus; apparently, the initial emotional reaction (fear) prevented the development of a new one. This suggests that stimuli that already have some emotional significance acquire the features of an emotiogenic stimulus more easily if they are reinforced by a related emotion.

Secondly, the phenomenon of the summation of emotions deserves attention. In the case described, the caterpillar and the whistle, when applied simultaneously, evoked an emotional reaction that each of these stimuli separately could not evoke.

Conditioned emotional reactions have a number of features that distinguish them from other conditioned reactions.

One difference concerns the effect of reinforcement. As Maurer points out, punishment affects motor and emotional responses differently. If the punished movement shows a tendency to inhibition, then the punishment of the fear reaction only strengthens it (Mowrer, 1960, pp. 416-419). Thus, punishment can act as a reinforcing factor in emotional responses.

However, Maurer's statement applies only to negative reactions. Positive emotional reactions obey the patterns inherent in motor reactions: they are developed and consolidated under the influence of reward and disappear under the influence of punishment.

The second difference concerns the way in which emotional reactions occur. If new motor reactions (skills) are developed when they serve certain goals, that is, they lead to receiving a reward or avoiding punishment, new emotional reactions arise as a result of coincidence in time alone - when a neutral stimulus precedes an emotional one or acts simultaneously with it (there same).

Another feature of emotional reactions is their resistance to extinction. Even with a small number of combinations, they can be very stable. These data were obtained, in particular, in studies in which motor and vegetative reactions to a conditioned stimulus were simultaneously recorded (vegetative reactions can be considered as an indicator of emotion). Thus, a group of Polish researchers found that in the process of extinction of a motor conditioned response to sound, movement disappears much earlier than the reaction of the heart. Vegetative reactions associated with emotional processes are developed faster and fade more slowly.

Emotional reactions are also difficult to differentiate. Therefore, they are rarely responses to some specific stimulus that portends something useful or harmful, on the contrary, they are often caused by a whole complex of stimuli that do not benefit the individual and do not threaten him in any way. This explains the peculiar irrationality of emotions that can sometimes be observed in everyday life.

The irrationality of emotions is also associated with the phenomenon of generalization. As a result of generalization, the individual emotionally reacts to objects and situations that have never brought him anything bad or good, but which are somewhat similar to those with which some of his emotional experiences were already associated in the past.

Generalization of emotions

The scope of manifestation of an emotional reaction depends on how wide the generalization was. From the studies of Pavlov's school, it is known that at the initial stages of acquiring experience, generalization has a very wide range - in the first phase of the development of a conditioned reflex, many phenomena, even slightly resembling a conditioned stimulus, are capable of causing a conditioned reaction. Pavlov called this phenomenon "primary generalization". Later, under the influence of new experience, the limits of generalization narrow.

Something similar is observed in the study of the process of generalization of emotions. Thus, in the experiments of Watson and Jones mentioned above, after the development of emotional reactions in children to certain animals (rat and rabbit), the same reactions began to be evoked by many other objects that somehow resembled the original object of the reaction: other animals, soft, fur objects, etc.

Generalization extends not only to similar objects, but also to those objects that appeared simultaneously with the source of emotion. In other words, emotions are associated with the entire situation as a whole.

The ease of formation of "conditioned emotional reflexes", a clear tendency of emotions to establish connections with different elements situations, as well as difficulties in developing differentiated reactions, explain the fact that a person's emotional reactions are extremely indefinite, "diffuse" in nature. Emotions “color” any situation in which a person finds himself. Due to the similarity of situations, their emotional significance is “mixed”, partially changing, as a result of which new, special forms of emotions arise. Any new situation already has a certain emotional “tone” for a person, depending on what emotions he experienced in similar conditions.

At the initial stages of human development, the generalization of emotional reactions occurs on the basis of the physical similarity of stimuli and their contiguity in time. Later, as it develops, a new basis for generalization arises - semantic similarity.

The idea that generalization occurs on the basis of semantic similarity has long been expressed, although using a different terminology, by researchers of psychoanalytic orientation. They argued that the emotional attitude to a particular object is transferred to other objects that are similar in meaning. One of Freud's fundamental propositions, the proposition about the "primary choice of the object", is based on this kind of premise.

According to Freud, objects or persons that for the first time in childhood satisfied the libidinal desire of the child become, as it were, models to which the adult later orients himself. So, the mother, for example, becomes the standard of the desired woman. Freud meant by this physical properties; rather, he emphasized the similarity of influences, relations, that is, the similarity in content. Therefore, an adult is looking for in a woman not so much the color of his mother's eyes or hair, but a certain attitude towards himself.

Whether this statement is true or not (and it undoubtedly needs many qualifications), it is indisputable that the generalization of emotions can occur not only on the basis of physical similarity. An illustration of this can be the experiment conducted by Loysi, Smith and Green (Lacey, Smith, Green, 1964).

The subject sat comfortably in a chair. On his left hand, in the place where the nerve passes close to the surface of the body, an electrode was attached, with the help of which the subject could be applied electrical stimulation of a small force, causing, in addition to sensations of burning and pinching, a sharp involuntary spasm of the forearm muscle. The subject, who was informed that the peculiarities of the coordination of intellectual and motor activity were being studied, performed the following task: in response to each word given through the loudspeaker, he had to find and say aloud as many words as possible (a chain of associations). At the same time, he had to press the telegraph key at the most regular pace. After the stop signal, he had to stop both activities and wait until the next word was presented. From time to time, immediately after the completion of the chain of associations, the subject received an electric shock. The experimenter (the subject did not know about this) used a list of words in which two words: “paper” and “cow” were repeated six times. One group of subjects received an electric shock each time after completing the associations to the word "paper", the other - to the word "cow". At the same time, two vegetative reactions were recorded: vasodilation of the fingers and galvanic skin reaction.

What are the results of this experiment? First of all, it was found that people who received an electric shock after a chain of associations to the word "paper" soon began to experience a galvanic skin reaction to this word. This group of subjects did not have this reaction to the word "cow". The opposite effect was found in those who received an electric shock after associating with the word "cow": they had no reaction to the word "paper" and had a distinct reaction to the word "cow".

For those for whom significant word was “cow”, there was an emotional reaction to 8 other words, which were united by the fact that their meanings were somehow connected with the village (“plow”, “bread”, “chicken”, “rake”, “sheep”, tractor» , "peasant"). It should be emphasized that these words do not have a sound similarity with the word "cow" (in English language where the study was conducted). It was also found that 22 out of 31 subjects could not indicate when they received an electric shock and when they experienced signs of anxiety. In other words, the reaction was unconscious. The subject did not know what he was afraid of; True, he knew that he was afraid of the current, but did not know that fear arises in him at the presentation of certain words, including those that were not for him a signal of an electric shock.

Similar data were also obtained in many other experiments.

The question arises: what determines the breadth of generalization, in other words, what will and what will not cause an emotional reaction?

One of the most important factors determining the limits of generalization is the strength of the applied stimulus: the greater it is, the stronger the generalization. So, it was found that when applying a stronger electric shock, a wider generalization occurs than with a weaker one.

The limits of generalization also depend on susceptibility to certain kinds of emotional stimuli. Such susceptibility is determined by various factors, among which one of the main ones is the spatial or temporal distance from an event significant for the subject. The dependence in question can be illustrated by the study of Epstein (Epstein, 1962). This author studied a group of 16 skydivers, whose data were compared with a control group of 16 people who were not involved in skydiving. With skydivers, the experiment was carried out two weeks before the jumps (or two weeks after them), as well as on the day of the jumps. The control group was studied according to the same scheme - twice with a two-week interval between tests. Both groups were offered an associative test containing words that cause anxiety, as well as words, the meaning of which, to one degree or another, was associated with the situation of jumping. During the experiment, a galvanic skin reaction was recorded. The words that caused anxiety were, for example, such words: “dead”, “wounded”, “fear”, etc. As an example of the four degrees of proximity of the meanings of words to the situation of jumps, we will name the following: “music” (I), “sky” (II), “fall” (III), “parachute line” (IV).

It turned out that the emotional reaction of skydivers, measured in units of skin conductivity (microsiemens), was the greater, the closer the connection of the test word with the situation of parachute jumps. The situation was different with the subjects of the control group. They reacted emotionally to the words that caused anxiety, but the words associated with the jumping situation did not evoke an emotional reaction in them.

It should be emphasized that on the day of the jumps, the paratroopers' anxiety increased significantly. Words that did not cause anxiety when the day of jumping was still far away, called her on the day of the jumps. average value reaction (in microsiemens) was as follows:

*) Average results of both studies are given.

This study indicates that a person in an emotional situation exhibits an increased susceptibility to emotional stimuli. This finds its expression in the fact that even those stimuli begin to evoke an emotional reaction, the meaning of which bears a very distant resemblance to the emotional factor.

This basically banal fact allows us to come to very important conclusions. In particular, it indicates that the occurrence of strong reactions to weak emotional stimuli can be considered as a symptom that the current situation is emotional for a given person.

One more point should be emphasized: the process of generalization is a very variable phenomenon, depending on the strength of emotions. This means that stimuli that are neutral in some situations are capable of evoking emotional reactions in other situations. This, apparently, can explain the fact that an angry, or, as they usually say, "wound up", a person is quickly aroused under the influence of even weak stimuli, for example, under the influence of words containing a very remote hint of possible criticism or disapproval. For the same reasons, with an increased level of sexual arousal, a person perceives as sexually attractive even those who, under other circumstances, would seem to him not deserving of any attention. The same can be said about other emotions.

Excessive strength of emotional arousal, and above all anxiety, can lead to pathological disorders. A person begins to experience fears of taking appropriate precautions in situations that objectively do not require it. A number of authors believe that these mechanisms can explain the symptoms of some mental illnesses.

The dependence of generalization on the strength of emotions can be used to determine the strength of latent emotions. The wider the range of stimuli that cause a certain emotion, the greater the power of the corresponding latent emotion. This dependence was confirmed, in particular, in the studies of I. Obukhovskaya, who showed that children with a high level of anxiety about failure refuse to complete tasks at those stages when there is not yet sufficient information about success or failure. The reaction of refusal in this case is due to the generalization of the fear of failure, which arises at the very beginning of activity when confronted with signals that are still very weakly associated with failure (see Obuchowska, 1965).

Assessing the meaning of situations

Emotional reactions of a person in new or complex situations in which there are no strong natural or conditioned emotional stimuli depend on how this situation is evaluated or what value is attached to it. According to Lazarus, two main types of appraisal of the situation (appraisal) can be distinguished: assessment of it as threatening or favorable (Lazarus, 1968, p. 191). Evaluation of the situation causes a tendency to perform appropriate adaptive actions (namely, a tendency, since these actions are not always carried out). In principle, adaptive actions can be carried out on the basis of exclusively cognitive mechanisms, without the participation of emotional processes. Emotions arise only when some additional circumstances appear. So, negative emotions arise when an individual assesses the situation as dangerous, but does not have ready and, in his opinion, sufficiently reliable ways to resolve it, that is, when these ways have yet to be found and there is some uncertainty about such a possibility.

Therefore, the threat itself does not yet evoke emotion; crossing, for example, a street with heavy traffic, we usually do not experience fear, although objectively it is quite dangerous. We do not feel fear because we know how to behave on the roadway and how to avoid danger. Similarly, people who are accustomed to working in dangerous environments and who have mastered the means of eliminating the threat do not experience anxiety.

When a threat situation evokes emotion, it can find expression in three main forms: in the form of fear, anger and sadness (feelings of depression). The nature of the resulting emotion depends on the assessment of the person's capabilities: if we believe that the situation is not too dangerous, or if it is perceived as an obstacle to the satisfaction of needs, the tendency to anger and attack is likely to arise. If the danger appears to be great, the tendency to fear and avoidance prevails. Finally, if neither attack nor avoidance is possible, there may be a feeling of overwhelm and a refusal to take action.

The emotional response to a favorable situation takes the form of joy, satisfaction, hope, and so on. However, the presence of a favorable situation in itself is not enough for the emergence of positive emotions. Some additional conditions are needed, but they are not yet well known. It is quite possible that positive emotions arise, in particular, when a favorable situation develops unexpectedly or after a period of uncertainty, or when there is an abrupt transition from a state of threat to a state of safety within a short period of time, etc.

The process of the emergence of negative and positive emotions, depending on a person's assessment of the situation, was quite fully studied at different phases of parachute training, when some autonomic and muscle indicators were used as objective correlates of emotional reactions. As an example, let us cite the data of the study of Soviet cosmonauts; The following reactions were recorded in these studies:

1. on the eve of the day on which the jumps were scheduled, if it was necessary to wait for the start of actions, there was an increase in emotional activation (anxiety, doubts) with accompanying vegetative manifestations (increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased muscle tension, difficulty falling asleep);

2. before the jump ( critical moment) - increased heart rate up to 140 beats per minute, dry mouth, increased arm strength (according to dynamometry);

3. after opening the parachute (disappearance of the main source of danger) - a joyful rise in mood;

4. after landing (achieving the goal) - for some time, an increase in activation (pulse up to 190), then its decline: a decrease in arm strength, a slowdown in pulse, etc. (Gorbov, 1962; Khlebnikov and Lebedev, 1964).

Language plays an important role in assessing the situation. A person categorizes the emerging situations and thereby classifies them. The names themselves, which a person uses in this case, are associated with certain emotional mechanisms and, when a certain situation is assigned to a certain class, evoke certain emotions. In many cases, when a person is faced with unfamiliar situations, he can take advantage of other people's assessments. Thus, information about the opinions of others can lead to the formation of one's own assessments.

The emotions that arise under the influence of such information may change when confronted directly with the situation. This can be illustrated by the results of another part of the experiment by Lacy and his collaborators.

These authors, using the methodology already described, conducted an experiment with another group of subjects, who, before the experiment, were given additional information about which words would be reinforced by the current. This information markedly changed the reaction of the subjects. At the first presentation of a critical word (for some subjects, this word was the word "cow", for others - "paper"), the warned subjects had a very strong reaction, which was not in the first group.

This is explained by the fact that the words “you will get an electric shock” for most of the subjects were already associated with the experience of pain in the past and therefore caused fear in themselves. Through the establishment of a connection between these words and the word "paper" (or "cow"), it also acquired the ability to cause fear. For this, a single comparison of it with an emotionally significant phrase was enough.

Characteristically, as the presentation of the test word was repeated in combination with an electric shock, the warned subjects experienced a gradual fading of emotional reactions to this word. On the contrary, those subjects who were not warned and learned from experience became more and more afraid of him. This can be explained by the fact that the reaction to a verbal signal can be disproportionately large compared to the event foreshadowed by it. It is known that the emotions caused by the assessment of the situation are often stronger than the emotions that arise during real contact with this situation. So, the Soviet researcher N. N. Malkova found that the expectation of a painful injection causes a more significant increase in blood pressure than the injection itself.

We often encounter this phenomenon in everyday life. Thus, children who have committed their first offense in their lives are much more afraid of the police than children who have several drives.

A similar pattern was also established in the study of the emotional reactions of soldiers to different types combat means of the enemy in the real conditions of front-line life. At first, the strength of the emotional reaction was determined by the secondary properties of the weapon (for example, noise, suddenness of appearance) and the ordinary ideas associated with them. Later, with the accumulation of experience, the fear of one or another type of weapon began to depend on the actual danger posed by this weapon. So, at first, enemy planes caused a strong fear. Later, this reaction became weaker, as experience showed that the effectiveness of an aircraft attack on dug-in soldiers was relatively low. But the fear of mortar fire has increased significantly.

Change in the importance of an emotiogenic stimulus

The factor that has acquired the value of an emotiogenic stimulus does not remain unchanged. Some changes may occur spontaneously over time. Others are the result of repetition of experiences associated with this factor.

Over time, emotional reactions can either increase or decrease. The spontaneous increase in emotional response is called the "incubation effect".

The phenomenon of incubation was first systematically observed in experiments carried out over 50 years ago by Diven. This author investigated the process of developing emotional conditioned responses to verbal stimuli using a technique later used by Lacy and his co-workers and established the fact of semantic generalization. In his experiments, another noteworthy fact was also obtained, which was revealed by repeating the experiments. So, with some subjects, the second experiment was carried out immediately after the first, with the rest it was carried out in a day or two. It turned out that the strength of the emotional reaction (in terms of galvanic skin reaction) to the conditioned stimulus (the word "ovin") is greater the next day than immediately after the first experiment. In other words, over time, the emotional response to the verbal stimulus increased. Similar facts were obtained by Gaitt in experiments on animals; he established that experimentally induced behavioral disturbances in dogs not only did not disappear, but often deepened and expanded over the course of many months after the completion of the experiment.

As you can see, time is not always the "best healer"; over time, negative emotion can not only not weaken, but even intensify.

The phenomenon of incubation was also discovered in a study by Martha Mednick. Her experiment did not differ significantly from Dyven's. It turned out that the subjects, 24 hours after the completion of the process of formation of conditioned emotional reactions, had a higher level of GSR than directly ate the experiment. Mednick also found that after 24 hours, the decay process also occurs faster (Mcdnick, 1957).

In everyday life, the phenomenon of incubation takes the form of "disappointment" in what caused pain, suffering, caused fear, etc. This attitude not only persists, but even intensifies over time. To prevent this, after a negative event, you should repeat it again as soon as possible, this time ensuring a successful outcome. However, there is another danger associated with repetition. If the repetition is performed under conditions of coercion, an emotional conflict may arise, causing an even greater increase in the negative emotional reaction.

The causes and mechanisms of the phenomenon of incubation are still unknown. It is possible that a process similar to the “fatigue-rest” cycle takes place here: the repetition of a reinforced conditioned stimulus leads, due to fatigue, to a weakening of its action (the phenomenon of the so-called consolation with reinforcement). After a break due to the removal of fatigue, the reaction occurs with renewed vigor. A similar phenomenon is observed in the process of intensive learning of a skill; after a break, the action is performed better than at the end of the skill development process. This assumption is supported, in particular, by the fact that in Mednik's experiment, at the last presentation of the stimulus, the conductivity of the skin was lower than at the previous ones, that is, fatigue was observed.

The phenomenon of incubation resembles the phenomenon of reminiscence. Perhaps they are based on a similar mechanism.

Along with an increase in the strength of the emotional reaction, that is, along with the effect of incubation, a weakening of the strength of the reaction is often observed over time. The question arises: does the stimulus spontaneously lose its emotional meaning if we do not encounter it for a long time? This seems unlikely; there is evidence that the loss of emotional Meaning by the stimulus occurs as a result of extinction. Probably, the connection between the neutral stimulus S and the emotional reaction E does not disappear spontaneously over time, but for its disappearance it is necessary that both S and E appear independently of each other. If S does not appear separately, its connection with E may not disappear.

The problem discussed here is a special case of a more general and not yet solved problem of erasing traces of memory. At first glance, this seems self-evident: material that is not repeated is forgotten. However, it is not known why exactly it is forgotten: either because it was “not used”, or because the elements of the learned structure later became components of other functional systems and, as a result, fell out of the original structure. In other words, forgetting can occur not so much because the connection between A and B was not repeated, but because during this time the connections A-C and B-D were formed, which led to the exit of elements A and B from the primary functional formation. Thus, as Jenkins and Dallenbach argued, forgetting is a consequence of retroactive inhibition.

The hypothesis that forgetting is based on retroactive inhibition suggests some conclusions regarding the stability of the S–E bonds. If E is a strong negative emotion, then, apparently, there should be a tendency to counteract the reproduction of elements associated with this emotion. Therefore, the individual will resist remembering S, will avoid everything that can be connected with S, and therefore S will not be able to form other connections than the original one; as a result, the S–E bond can persist indefinitely.

Such phenomena are actually observed. Strong traumatic experiences rarely go away; most often they are isolated from other elements of experience and, forced out of consciousness, continue to exist for many years; events or situations containing S (or similar associations) can lead to renewal and actualization of the entire strong emotional reaction associated with them.

A traumatic emotional connection shows a tendency to "encapsulate", to protect with a "thick armor" from a possible renewal. Such a fence is provided by the formation of the ability to avoid everything that can have even the most remote connection with the experienced.

Extinguishing emotions

One can only add that the formation of such "encapsulated" foci affects the entire subsequent life and activity of the individual. Their disorganizing effect on the human psyche becomes especially evident if such a focus is very extensive and concerns moments important for regulating relations between a person and his environment. This disorganizing effect is associated primarily with the emergence of a number of behavioral patterns that make it possible to avoid the actualization of the "painful focus"; there is rationalization, the formation of opposition, denial, etc., in other words, the processes that Freud and the psychoanalytic school described as the consequences of emotional conflict and repression.

Thus, in one of the patients studied, the first sexual experience ended in a feeling of complete failure and humiliation, after which a strong tendency arose to "suppress" this experience. The patient did manage to forget about him, to remove him from his "conscious self", but this did not remain without consequences in his sexual sphere. Each sexual contact was accompanied by severe anxiety (due to the generalization of the traumatic experience), which caused him a functional disorder and general disorganization in the sphere of sexual life, and subsequently in other areas, one way or another connected with self-esteem.

If the emotion is not overly strong, the barrier it creates will not be insurmountable, and as a result, the individual components of the experience will be able to gradually form new connections, which will contribute to the disintegration of the original negative association.

Thus, in the light of our hypothesis, the main condition for the loss of the value of an emotional stimulus by some factor is the process of extinction, that is, the manifestation of this factor without an emotion associated with it. This hypothesis allows us to explain this process with the help of extinction laws.

As is known, extinction usually occurs gradually, and its effects are most pronounced at the beginning of the process.

However, this process is not sustainable. If it is interrupted for some time, then during the next test, an increase in the ability of the stimulus to cause a reaction can be detected - the phenomenon of the so-called spontaneous disinhibition. True, it does not lead to a complete restoration of the reaction force, although it can be quite large.

Let us give as an example the gradual weakening of a person's enthusiasm for some other person. This process occurs mainly according to the laws of extinction: as a person analyzes his contacts with a given person, he notes a weakening of his emotional reaction to him. But after a break - when he did not touch on this topic for some time - there is again an increase in emotional involvement (although usually this reaction is no longer so strong). This is due to the phenomenon of spontaneous recovery.

It should be noted that the subject may erroneously interpret such an unexpected increase in enthusiasm as a sign that the former feelings were “real”, that this person “can never be erased from memory”, that “evil rock is weighing over the feeling”, etc. If in such a mental state there is a renewal of contact, that is, a repeated reinforcement, the extinction effect may completely disappear and everything will be repeated all over again. If a person can overcome the crisis and does not do anything that would cause a reinforcement of the emotional reaction, then soon there will be a further, even greater weakening of it.

The extinction process depends on the way the emotion is reinforced. If reinforcement occurs without disruption, extinction is more "painful" but quicker. If reinforcement was irregular, extinction is slower and less effective.

Emotions can persist for a particularly long time, reach an exceptionally great strength - clearly disproportionate to the value of the stimulus - and lead to pathological symptoms when a person is exposed to opposite influences for a long time, if hope, then fear, then love, then humiliation are aroused in him. Such antagonistic "forces" have a reinforcing effect on emotional processes.

This explains, in part, how difficult it is sometimes to break certain unfortunate emotional ties in human relationships. People who do not suit each other and whose life together brings only conflicts and disappointments, nevertheless cannot part, even in the absence of objective reasons connecting them (children, economic dependence, etc.), since the essence of their relationship is hitherto accounted for the irregular receipt of positive reinforcements. Therefore, the hope for improvement disappears extremely slowly, and even after the most difficult trials, these people still expect something from each other.

avoidance reaction

As a result of systematic studies, other factors on which the quenching process depends were also clarified. One is the strength of the reinforcing stimulus, in this case the strength of the emotion. The stronger the emotion, the harder it is for the reaction to fade.

Some emotional reactions are especially difficult to extinguish. Such reactions include, in particular, anxiety, which contributes to the emergence of an avoidance reaction (avoidance reaction is a reaction that occurs in an individual in response to a danger signal and which is designed to eliminate this danger, that is, to eliminate the effect of a negative stimulus). This is evidenced by some animal studies. In one of them, a dog was trained to jump over a barrier at the sound of a bell in order to avoid the electric shock that the bell was signaling. Solomon, Keimin, and Wynn, the authors of this experiment, determined that the dog performed this action 800 times without any sign of extinction.

How can we explain such an amazing persistence of the avoidance reaction? According to N. Miller (1960), it is connected with the fact that the avoidance reaction is constantly reinforced, as it reduces fear. The call causes fear, the jump reduces it. Fear reduction, acting as a reinforcer, strengthens the connection. This assumption could, in some cases, explain the robustness of the association between calling and jumping. However, it is still necessary to explain the connection between the sound signal and the emotion of fear. To elucidate the latter, two facts should be remembered: the inertness of emotional reactions (their lesser susceptibility to the extinction process compared to motor reactions), as well as Soltysik's analysis of recurrent inhibitory stimuli.

According to Soltysik, extinction does not occur when a so-called conditioned brake is added to the conditioned stimulus. Pavlov called a conditioned brake such an irritant that signals that there will be no reinforcement. If such a stimulus was presented in combination with a conditioned stimulus, the conditioned response did not occur (hence the name "brake").

As a result of the avoidance reaction, stimuli appear that acquire the features of a conditioned brake (since they carry information that there will be no reinforcement, in this case, punishment), and the action of stimuli signaling punishment ceases. Therefore, if an individual, having received a signal of danger, flees and really avoids this danger, the stimuli associated with the avoidance reaction become a conditioned brake. Since the conditioned inhibitor has been found to preclude extinction, the inhibitory avoidance response prevents danger signaling stimuli from losing their original meaning. The mentioned authors present some experimental data confirming this idea. Thus, it is impossible to stop being afraid if every time you run away at a signal of danger.

Will the fear response disappear otherwise? Clinical observations suggest that this does not always happen. Thus, the anxiety that arises among pilots in connection with the performance of certain tasks (for example, during high-altitude, night flights) sometimes continues to persist very stubbornly, despite the repeated repetition of this activity without any negative reinforcement; sometimes, as the repetition increases, the anxiety even intensifies. With regard to such cases, the explanation proposed by Soltysik is apparently unacceptable.

It can be assumed that the strong emotion of fear itself is so unpleasant that it serves as a reinforcement for the avoidance reaction. The elimination of this reaction would be possible if the conditioned signal appeared in a situation that excludes the occurrence of emotional reactions (for example, as a result of the use of pharmacological agents or special procedures that lead to relaxation and elimination of anxiety). Known cases practical application such procedures that led to successful results (Bandura, 1967, Eysenck, 1965).

It should be added that the persistence of the avoidance reaction observed in the experiments of Solomon and his co-workers mentioned above can be explained in a completely different way, without recourse to the mediating role of anxiety. Some authors believe that as a result of repetitions, a strong associative connection is established between the signal and the corresponding actions, which persists even after the anxiety disappears. The latter occurs only when the avoidance reaction becomes impossible. In such a case, the avoidance response would be an adaptive action devoid of an emotional component. In favor of such an interpretation, in particular, the fact that a dog that has learned to effectively avoid electric shock disappears any signs of fear.

Thus, the stability of some reactions may be associated not so much with the difficulties of the process of extinguishing emotions, but with the firm consolidation of certain skills that arose in the past under the influence of emotions and subsequently lost their emotional character.