00:17 Emotional Arousal and Evolution
03:44 Survival Instincts
08:30 Love and Fear
11:30 The Six Basic Emotions

In general, we feel some kind of emotion twenty-four hours a day. We may even be aware when we’re feeling emotions, at least in a physiological sense: our hearts flutter, our stomachs sink, our hands tingle. Humans are emotional beings—it’s part of life. But it’s criminally easy for that arousal to extend into a second phase that’s uncontrollable and risky. That’s when extreme emotional arousal sets off our psychological triggers.

Survival Instincts

Emotional arousal, when described this way, can seem like a bit of a design flaw in human beings. To the contrary, our emotions are a part of our evolutionary biology and fundamental to our survival instincts. Our instincts, including and most especially our “fight or flight response,” evolved over time to keep us safe. This is our in-built biological response to threat or danger in the environment—and our emotions are a part of it. These are powerful forces, and they can absolutely influence us to behave in certain ways.In 1976 Paul Ekman, a highly influential psychologist from the University of California at San Francisco, developed a list of six universal emotions (along with the specific facial expressions that display them). One emotion is positive, four are negative, and one can be either:

• Happiness • Sadness • Anger • Disgust • Fear • Surprise

Various other studies have yielded different numbers of emotions, ranging from four to seven, but for our purposes, six is sufficient. You may have even been surprised to see surprise and disgust categorized as emotions. Remember that emotions are normal and healthy, but overarousal can lead to regrettable behavior and decisions

.#Arousal #BBC #Evolution #Happiness #Sadness #Anger #Disgust #Fear #Surprise #NewcastleUniversity #OCD #PaulEkman #SanFrancisco #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #PeterHollins #TheScienceofSelf #PsychologicalTriggers

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Categories: Voice over Work