PSYC18H3 Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Document Summary
It has often been thought that anger is destructive to the self and to social relations: the most early theorists of emotions, the epicureans and stoics thought that emotions are irrational and damaging. In darwin"s eyes, emotions link us to our past, both the past of our species and to our own infancy: he helped provide descriptions of facial expressions; he argued for universality of expressions. He basically said that if we fancy some strong emotion and then we take away from consciousness all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we have nothing left behind. Without these effects of emotion everything would be pale. 3 thinkers who influence important currents in the contemporary study of emotions: Like aristotle, descartes believed that emotions depend on how we evaluate events: he was also one of the first to suggest that emotions serve important functions. Eliot"s answer is that our emotions guide us acting like a compass.