COMS 200 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Paul Ekman, Music Therapy, The Emotions

• School: McGill University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMS 200
• Professor: Christopher Gutierrez

Document Summary

We often use feeling and affect to mean the same thing but when doing this we must not confuse feelings with emotions because affect is not a personal feeling. Feelings are personal sensations: they are biographical. An emotion is the projection or display of a feeling: emotions can be genuine or feigned, this is explained by experiment conducted by paul ekman who videotaped american and japanese subjects watching a film about facial surgery. The emotions of infants are direct expressions of affect. An affect is a non-conscious experience of intensity: affect is abstract because it isn"t fully realized in language, it is prior to and/or outside of consciousness. As we age we learn how control our displays of emotion but affects are out of our control. For an infant affect is emotion but for an adult affect makes feelings feel it determines the intensity (quantity) of a feeling (quality)