PSYC 2500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: School Refusal, Heredity, Twin

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2500
• Professor: Monique Senechal

Document Summary

According to the functional approach, emotions are useful because they help people adapt to their environment. Ex: fear, most of us would rather not be afraid, but there are situations in which feeling fearful is very adaptive. Imagine you are alone walking at night, you get scared and are particularly attentive to sounds that might signal the presence of threat. You hurry to your end location fear is adaptive because it organizes your behaviour around an important goal avoiding danger. Ex: happiness is adaptive in contributing to a stronger interpersonal relationship. When someone is happy with another person, they smile and it causes the other person to feel happy too. Ex: disgust is adaptive in keeping people away from substances that might make them ill. When we find milk in a glass that is sour, we experience disgust and push it away.