185. What is irradiation of feeling?
§ [20]. Emotions
Our preceding discussion shows that an exhaustive description of all our complicated feelings is an enormous task. We cannot enter upon it here. But certain classes of feelings may be described in more detail; namely, emotions and moods.
Those feelings which are based on associated ideas, and which rise at once to great intensity, are called emotions. This definition is somewhat deficient in so far as it is difficult to draw the line which exactly separates great from small intensity and a quick from a slow rise of intensity. Nevertheless, the stormy character of certain feelings not directly attached to sensory stimulation is so conspicuous that a special name is desirable. Anger, fright, distress, and hilarity are such feelings: hilarity distinctly pleasant, fright and distress equally unpleasant; anger also unpleasant, yet mixed sometimes with a certain amount of pleasure. The feeling and the consciousness of its cause are usually so intense in an emotion that there is little room for coherent thought. The judgment of a person in a state of emotion is narrow; his actions may be called shortsighted.
Those feelings which become separated from their original perceptual or ideational substratum and attach themselves to any other kind of perception or ideation—no matter what feelings properly belong to these—are called moods. They are usually, probably because of the separation mentioned, of small intensity. But their duration is often very extended. As typical examples may be mentioned grudge, worry, dejection, and cheerfulness.
Like all feelings, emotions and moods are in some way related to motor activity. Of particular interest here are not the purposive movements, which are by no means absent, but a large number of muscular activities seemingly of little or no usefulness, resulting from inherited nervous connections. In so far as these muscular activities become outwardly noticeable they are called the expressions of the emotions or moods. The angry man instinctively clinches his fist, the hilarious fellow dances about. Laughing, weeping, wrinkling of the forehead, and blushing are further expressions of this class. Contraction of the muscle fibers in the skin causes goose flesh, or the hair to stand on end. Breathing undergoes changes, becoming quicker or slower than normal. The blood vessels expand or diminish in size through the activity of the muscle fibers in their walls, causing the subject to look red or pale, to feel warm or cold, and in the latter case to shiver. Secretion of saliva, perspiration, and secretion of the lachrymal glands may result from the changes in the circulation of the blood. Fatigue, nausea, lack of appetite, and other symptoms of internal processes may occur.
These phenomena were almost entirely neglected by the older psychology, although their significance was understood by physicians. More recently their psychological import has been recognized and even overestimated. It has been said that these phenomena not only occur in emotions, but are the emotions; that the emotions consist in the organic sensations resulting from these reflex muscular activities (theory of James and Lange). We do not weep because we are sorry, but we are sorry because we weep. We do not tremble because we fear a pistol held up before us, but we are frightened because we tremble. Two arguments favor this view. Let all bodily symptoms be gone, and the strongest emotion is gone too. Anger without clinching the hand is no anger. While I am sitting calmly on a chair, smiling, I cannot be angry. And further, when the bodily symptoms are exactly imitated or produced by drugs or by nervous disease, the emotion is there. Alcohol makes a person hilarious and courageous without any perception of the kind which usually produces this effect. Certain poisons or mania cause rage very much like that produced by an insult.
However, these facts do not prove that an emotion contains nothing else than organic sensations. It is obvious that, according to the laws of association, the contents of an emotion must be reproduced by those organic sensations which were present innumerable times when that emotion was present. The organic sensations resulting from poisons or mania perhaps call up an idea of an insult, and the complete emotion of anger naturally follows. Because of the firmly established associations, it is also to be expected that the voluntary substitution of a different set of organic sensations interferes with a present emotion. Introspection makes it clear that an emotion contains much more than a mere group of organic sensations.
The instinctive motor activities characteristic of the various emotions may be classified under two headings: excitation and depression. The difference is especially noticeable in unpleasant emotions: anger is an emotion of excitement; fear, as a rule, of depression. But this distinction is not entirely absent in pleasant emotions. The joy of a grateful memory is characterized, not indeed by depression, but by a restfulness very distinct from the excited joy of expectation or the delight at a present experience, although the pleasantness felt may be of exactly the same degree of intensity. A careful analysis of these motor activities must distinguish, not only excitement and depression, but also their occurrence in either the skeletal or the involuntary muscles, the muscles of the vascular system. Thus one may distinguish four classes of emotions, as characterized chiefly by heightened activity of the skeletal or of the vascular muscles, or by weakened activity of the skeletal or of the vascular muscles. Symptoms resulting from abnormal contraction or relaxation of the vascular muscles are, for example, a person’s growing pallid, or blushing, and the corresponding sensations of cold and warmth.
Two other concepts relating to the emotional life deserve to be mentioned, temperament and passion. Temperaments are inherited tendencies of the life of feeling in special directions. Since ancient times four have been distinguished: the sanguine, bilious (choleric), melancholic (atrabilious), phlegmatic (lymphatic). The ancients held that temperament is conditioned on the predominance of one of the four humors, the blood, lymph, yellow bile, and black bile. This is of course pure speculation of a prescientific period. But the distinction of the four classes agrees well with common observation, although mixed forms of temperament are more common than the pure types. People are either optimistically or pessimistically inclined. The sanguine and the phlegmatic are the optimists, the bilious and the melancholic the pessimists. On the other hand, some people are excitable, impetuous, others are not easily aroused. The sanguine and the bilious are quickly excited, the melancholic and the phlegmatic are calm and sluggish.