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156-408: Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts , feelings , behavioral responses , and a degree of pleasure or displeasure . There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood , temperament , personality , disposition , or creativity . Research on emotion has increased over

312-556: A subjective , conscious experience characterized primarily by psychophysiological expressions , biological reactions , and mental states . A similar multi-componential description of emotion is found in sociology . For example, Peggy Thoits described emotions as involving physiological components, cultural or emotional labels (anger, surprise, etc.), expressive body actions, and the appraisal of situations and contexts. Cognitive processes, like reasoning and decision-making, are often regarded as separate from emotional processes, making

468-586: A 2004 study using the TAS-20, 85% of the adults with ASD fell into the "impaired" category and almost half fell into the "severely impaired" category; in contrast, among the adult control population only 17% were "impaired", none "severely impaired". Fitzgerald & Bellgrove pointed out that, "Like alexithymia, Asperger's syndrome is also characterised by core disturbances in speech and language and social relationships". Hill & Berthoz agreed with Fitzgerald & Bellgrove (2006) and in response stated that "there

624-446: A cluster of loosely related ideas. Mental states are usually contrasted with physical or material aspects. This contrast is commonly based on the idea that certain features of mental phenomena are not present in the material universe as described by the natural sciences and may even be incompatible with it. Epistemic approaches emphasize that the subject has privileged access to all or at least some of their mental states. It

780-417: A cognitive disturbance becomes apparent as patients tend to recount trivial, chronologically ordered actions, reactions, and events of daily life with monotonous detail. In general, these individuals can, but not always, seem oriented toward things and even treat themselves as robots. These problems seriously limit their responsiveness to psychoanalytic psychotherapy; psychosomatic illness or substance abuse

936-671: A community, and self-esteem is one's estimate of one's status. Somatic theories of emotion claim that bodily responses, rather than cognitive interpretations, are essential to emotions. The first modern version of such theories came from William James in the 1880s. The theory lost favor in the 20th century, but has regained popularity more recently due largely to theorists such as John T. Cacioppo , Antonio Damasio , Joseph E. LeDoux and Robert Zajonc who are able to appeal to neurological evidence. In his 1884 article William James argued that feelings and emotions were secondary to physiological phenomena. In his theory, James proposed that

1092-402: A comprehensive account of all forms of rationality but it is more common to find separate treatments of specific forms of rationality that leave the relation to other forms of rationality open. There are various competing definitions of what constitutes rationality but no universally accepted answer. Some accounts focus on the relation between mental states for determining whether a given state

1248-527: A conglomeration of mental representations and propositional attitudes. Several theories in philosophy and psychology try to determine the relationship between the agent's mental state and a proposition. Instead of looking into what a mental state is, in itself, clinical psychology and psychiatry determine a person's mental health through a mental status examination . Mental states also include attitudes towards propositions , of which there are at least two— factive and non-factive, both of which entail

1404-548: A continuum of intensity. Thus fear might range from mild concern to terror or shame might range from simple embarrassment to toxic shame. Emotions have been described as consisting of a coordinated set of responses, which may include verbal, physiological , behavioral, and neural mechanisms. Emotions have been categorized , with some relationships existing between emotions and some direct opposites existing. Graham differentiates emotions as functional or dysfunctional and argues all functional emotions have benefits. In some uses of

1560-543: A crucial role in emotions, but did not believe that physiological responses alone could explain subjective emotional experiences. He argued that physiological responses were too slow and often imperceptible and this could not account for the relatively rapid and intense subjective awareness of emotion. He also believed that the richness, variety, and temporal course of emotional experiences could not stem from physiological reactions, that reflected fairly undifferentiated fight or flight responses. An example of this theory in action

1716-446: A disturbance to the right hemisphere of the brain , which is largely responsible for processing emotions. In addition, another neuropsychological model suggests that alexithymia may be related to a dysfunction of the anterior cingulate cortex . These studies have some shortcomings, however, and the empirical evidence about the neural mechanisms behind alexithymia remains inconclusive. French psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall objected to

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1872-484: A division between "thinking" and "feeling". However, not all theories of emotion regard this separation as valid. Nowadays, most research into emotions in the clinical and well-being context focuses on emotion dynamics in daily life, predominantly the intensity of specific emotions and their variability, instability, inertia, and differentiation, as well as whether and how emotions augment or blunt each other over time and differences in these dynamics between people and along

2028-577: A feature which non-intentional states lack. A mental state is conscious if it belongs to a phenomenal experience. Unconscious mental states are also part of the mind but they lack this phenomenal dimension. Occurrent mental states are active or causally efficacious within the owner's mind while non-occurrent or standing states exist somewhere in the back of one's mind but do not currently play an active role in any mental processes . Certain mental states are rationally evaluable: they are either rational or irrational depending on whether they obey

2184-577: A judgment that this event happened together with a negative evaluation of it. Brentano's distinction between judgments, phenomena of love and hate, and presentations is closely related to the more recent idea of direction of fit between mental state and world, i.e. mind-to-world direction of fit for judgments, the world-to-mind direction of fit for phenomena of love and hate and null direction of fit for mere presentations. Brentano's tripartite system of classification has been modified in various ways by Brentano's students. Alexius Meinong , for example, divides

2340-423: A lack of spontaneous imagining ( daydreaming ; compare aphantasia ), when measured, do not statistically correlate with the other components of alexithymia. Such findings have led to ongoing debate in the field about whether IMP is indeed a component of alexithymia. For example, in 2017, Preece and colleagues introduced the attention-appraisal model of alexithymia, where they suggested that IMP be removed from

2496-443: A limited ability to experience positive emotions leading Krystal and Sifneos (1987) to describe many of these individuals as anhedonic . Alexisomia is a clinical concept that refers to the difficulty in the awareness and expression of somatic, or bodily, sensations. The concept was first proposed in 1979 by Yujiro Ikemi when he observed characteristics of both alexithymia and alexisomia in patients with psychosomatic diseases. It

2652-438: A mind-to-world direction of fit : they represent the world as being a certain way and aim at truth. They contrast with desires , which are conative propositional attitudes that have a world-to-mind direction of fit and aim to change the world by representing how it should be. Desires are closely related to agency : they motivate the agent and are thus involved in the formation of intentions . Intentions are plans to which

2808-439: A more global assessment of a person's mental health. Various competing theories have been proposed about what the essential features of all mental states are, sometimes referred to as the search for the "mark of the mental". These theories can roughly be divided into epistemic approaches , consciousness-based approaches , intentionality-based approaches and functionalism . These approaches disagree not just on how mentality

2964-426: A pattern of physiological response (increased heart rate, faster breathing, etc.), which is interpreted as a particular emotion (fear). This theory is supported by experiments in which by manipulating the bodily state induces a desired emotional state. Some people may believe that emotions give rise to emotion-specific actions, for example, "I'm crying because I'm sad", or "I ran away because I was scared". The issue with

3120-532: A personality trait that places affected individuals at risk for other medical and mental disorders, as well as reducing the likelihood that these individuals will respond to conventional treatments to these disorders. The DSM-5 and the ICD-11 classify alexithymia as neither a symptom nor a mental disorder. It is a dimensional personality trait that varies in intensity from person to person. An individual's alexithymia score can be measured with questionnaires such as

3276-402: A problem without representing it. But some theorists have argued that even these apparent counterexamples should be considered intentional when properly understood. Behaviorist definitions characterize mental states as dispositions to engage in certain publicly observable behavior as a reaction to particular external stimuli. On this view, to ascribe a belief to someone is to describe

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3432-592: A skills-based intervention is an effective method for treating alexithymia. Kennedy and Franklin's treatment plan involved giving the participants a series of questionnaires, psychodynamic therapies, cognitive-behavioral and skills-based therapies, and experiential therapies. After treatment, they found that participants were generally less ambivalent about expressing their emotion feelings and more attentive to their emotional states. In 2017, based on their attention-appraisal model of alexithymia, Preece and colleagues recommended that alexithymia treatment should try to improve

3588-577: A specific event or object. Imagination is even further removed from the actual world in that it represents things without aiming to show how they actually are. All the aforementioned states can leave traces in memory that make it possible to relive them at a later time in the form of episodic memory. An important distinction among mental states is between sensory and non-sensory states. Sensory states involve some form of sense impressions like visual perceptions, auditory impressions or bodily pains. Non-sensory states, like thought, rational intuition or

3744-549: A stable personality trait rather than just a consequence of psychological distress ". Typical deficiencies may include problems identifying, processing, describing, and working with one's own feelings , often marked by a lack of understanding of the feelings of others; difficulty distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal ; confusion of physical sensations often associated with emotions; few dreams or fantasies due to restricted imagination ; and concrete, realistic, logical thinking, often to

3900-432: A subject with ventromedial frontal lobe damage described in the book Descartes' Error , Damasio demonstrated how loss of physiological capacity for emotion resulted in the subject's lost capacity to make decisions despite having robust faculties for rationally assessing options. Research on physiological emotion has caused modern neuroscience to abandon the model of emotions and rationality as opposing forces. In contrast to

4056-504: A that-clause. So believing that it will rain today, for example, is a propositional attitude. It has been argued that the contrast between qualitative states and propositional attitudes is misleading since there is some form of subjective feel to certain propositional states like understanding a sentence or suddenly thinking of something. This would suggest that there are also non-sensory qualitative states and some propositional attitudes may be among them. Another problem with this contrast

4212-432: A theistic origin to humanity. God who created humans gave humans the ability to feel emotion and interact emotionally. Biblical content expresses that God is a person who feels and expresses emotion. Though a somatic view would place the locus of emotions in the physical body, Christian theory of emotions would view the body more as a platform for the sensing and expression of emotions. Therefore, emotions themselves arise from

4368-526: Is 'good' or 'bad'. Alternatively, there are 'good emotions' (like joy and caution) experienced by those that are wise, which come from correct appraisals of what is 'good' and 'bad'. Aristotle believed that emotions were an essential component of virtue . In the Aristotelian view all emotions (called passions) corresponded to appetites or capacities. During the Middle Ages , the Aristotelian view

4524-424: Is a felt tendency impelling people towards attractive objects and propelling them to move away from repulsive or harmful objects; a disposition to possess the object (greed), to destroy it (hatred), to flee from it (fear), to get obsessed or worried over it (anxiety), and so on. In Stoic theories, normal emotions (like delight and fear) are described as irrational impulses that come from incorrect appraisals of what

4680-585: Is a great variety of types of mental states, which can be classified according to various distinctions. These types include perception , belief , desire , intention , emotion and memory . Many of the proposed distinctions for these types have significant overlaps and some may even be identical. Sensory states involve sense impressions, which are absent in non-sensory states . Propositional attitudes are mental states that have propositional contents, in contrast to non-propositional states . Intentional states refer to or are about objects or states of affairs,

4836-441: Is a mental state to which the subject lacks the forms of privileged epistemic access mentioned. One way to respond to this worry is to ascribe a privileged status to conscious mental states. On such a consciousness-based approach , conscious mental states are non-derivative constituents of the mind while unconscious states somehow depend on their conscious counterparts for their existence. An influential example of this position

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4992-501: Is a possibility in explaining why some people with alexithymia are prone to discharge tension arising from unpleasant emotional states through impulsive acts or compulsive behaviors such as binge eating , substance abuse , perverse sexual behavior or anorexia nervosa. The failure to regulate emotions cognitively might result in prolonged elevations of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and neuroendocrine systems , which can lead to somatic diseases. People with alexithymia also show

5148-434: Is as follows: An emotion-evoking event (snake) triggers simultaneously both a physiological response and a conscious experience of an emotion. Phillip Bard contributed to the theory with his work on animals. Bard found that sensory, motor, and physiological information all had to pass through the diencephalon (particularly the thalamus ), before being subjected to any further processing. Therefore, Cannon also argued that it

5304-669: Is associated with difficulties in attachment and interpersonal relations . While there is no scientific consensus on its classification as a personality trait , medical symptom , or mental disorder , alexithymia is highly prevalent among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), ranging from 50% to 85% of prevalence. Alexithymia occurs in approximately 10% of the general population and often co-occurs with various mental disorders, particularly with neurodevelopmental disorders . Difficulty in recognizing and discussing emotions may manifest at subclinical levels in men who conform to specific cultural norms of masculinity , such as

5460-471: Is available for reasoning and guiding behavior, even if it is not associated with any subjective feel characterizing the concurrent phenomenal experience. Being an access-conscious state is similar but not identical to being an occurrent mental state, the topic of the next section. A mental state is occurrent if it is active or causally efficacious within the owner's mind. Non-occurrent states are called standing or dispositional states. They exist somewhere in

5616-470: Is avoided by functionalist approaches, which define mental states through their causal roles but allow both external and internal events in their causal network. On this view, the definition of pain-state may include aspects such as being in a state that "tends to be caused by bodily injury, to produce the belief that something is wrong with the body and ... to cause wincing or moaning". One important aspect of both behaviorist and functionalist approaches

5772-539: Is correlated with certain personality disorders , particularly schizoid , avoidant , dependent and schizotypal , substance use disorders, some anxiety disorders and sexual disorders as well as certain physical illnesses, such as hypertension , inflammatory bowel disease , diabetes and functional dyspepsia . Alexithymia is further linked with disorders such as migraine headaches, lower back pain, irritable bowel syndrome , asthma , nausea, allergies and fibromyalgia . An inability to modulate emotions

5928-418: Is due to John Searle , who holds that unconscious mental states have to be accessible to consciousness to count as "mental" at all. They can be understood as dispositions to bring about conscious states. This position denies that the so-called "deep unconscious", i.e. mental contents inaccessible to consciousness, exists. Another problem for consciousness-based approaches , besides the issue of accounting for

6084-471: Is engaged in her favorite computer game, she still believes that dogs have four legs and desires to get a pet dog on her next birthday. But these two states play no active role in her current state of mind. Another example comes from dreamless sleep when most or all of our mental states are standing states. Certain mental states, like beliefs and intentions , are rationally evaluable: they are either rational or irrational depending on whether they obey

6240-412: Is fearsome can occur with or without emotion, so judgment cannot be identified with emotion. One of the main proponents of this view was Richard Lazarus who argued that emotions must have some cognitive intentionality . The cognitive activity involved in the interpretation of an emotional context may be conscious or unconscious and may or may not take the form of conceptual processing. Lazarus' theory

6396-407: Is frequently exacerbated should these individuals enter psychotherapy. A common misconception about alexithymia is that affected individuals are totally unable to express emotions verbally and that they may even fail to acknowledge that they experience emotions. Even before coining the term, Sifneos (1967) noted patients often mentioned things like anxiety or depression . The distinguishing factor

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6552-415: Is generally disposed to feel irritation more easily or quickly than others do. Finally, some theorists place emotions within a more general category of "affective states" where affective states can also include emotion-related phenomena such as pleasure and pain , motivational states (for example, hunger or curiosity ), moods, dispositions and traits. For more than 40 years, Paul Ekman has supported

6708-509: Is given in virtue of the coherence among the different mental states of a subject. This involves an holistic outlook that is less concerned with the rationality of individual mental states and more with the rationality of the person as a whole. Other accounts focus not on the relation between two or several mental states but on responding correctly to external reasons. Reasons are usually understood as facts that count in favor or against something. On this account, Scarlet's aforementioned belief

6864-499: Is incapable of recognizing and distinguishing emotional expressions in the child, it can influence the child's capacity to understand emotional expressions. The attention-appraisal model of alexithymia by Preece and colleagues describes the mechanisms behind alexithymia within a cognitive-behavioral framework. Within this model, it is specified that alexithymia levels are due to the developmental level of people's emotion schemas (those cognitive structures used to process emotions) and/or

7020-437: Is known as "core-SELF" to be generating these affects. Psychologists have used methods such as factor analysis to attempt to map emotion-related responses onto a more limited number of dimensions. Such methods attempt to boil emotions down to underlying dimensions that capture the similarities and differences between experiences. Often, the first two dimensions uncovered by factor analysis are valence (how negative or positive

7176-430: Is no consensus on the definition of alexithymia, with debate between cognitive behavioral and psychoanalytic theorists. The cognitive behavioral model (i.e., the attention-appraisal model of alexithymia) defines alexithymia as having three components: The psychoanalytic model defines alexithymia as having four components: In empirical research , it is often observed that constricted imaginal processes, defined as

7332-759: Is no significant relationship between alexithymia and inattentiveness. There are many more psychiatric disorders that overlap with alexithymia. One study found that 41% of US veterans of the Vietnam War with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were alexithymic. Another study found higher levels of alexithymia among Holocaust survivors with PTSD compared to those without. Higher levels of alexithymia among mothers with interpersonal violence-related PTSD were found in one study to have proportionally less caregiving sensitivity. This latter study suggested that when treating adult PTSD patients who are parents, alexithymia should be assessed and addressed also with attention to

7488-415: Is no single, universally accepted evolutionary theory. The most prominent ideas suggest that emotions have evolved to serve various adaptive functions: A distinction can be made between emotional episodes and emotional dispositions. Emotional dispositions are also comparable to character traits, where someone may be said to be generally disposed to experience certain emotions. For example, an irritable person

7644-401: Is nonverbal facial expressions . The parent's emotional state is important for determining how any child might develop. Neglect or indifference to varying changes in a child's facial expressions without proper feedback can promote an invalidation of the facial expressions manifested by the child. The parent's ability to reflect self-awareness to the child is another important factor. If the adult

7800-462: Is not as clear as it seems. Paul D. MacLean claims that emotion competes with even more instinctive responses, on one hand, and the more abstract reasoning, on the other hand. The increased potential in neuroimaging has also allowed investigation into evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain. Important neurological advances were derived from these perspectives in the 1990s by Joseph E. LeDoux and Antonio Damasio . For example, in an extensive study of

7956-470: Is possible that alexithymia predisposes to anxiety. On the other hand, while the total alexithymia score as well as the difficulty in identifying feelings and externally oriented thinking factors are found to be significantly associated with ADHD , and while the total alexithymia score, the difficulty in identifying feelings, and the difficulty in describing feelings factors are also significantly associated with symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsivity, there

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8112-411: Is possible. Eliminativists may reject the existence of mental properties, or at least of those corresponding to folk psychological categories such as thought and memory. Mental states play an important role in various fields, including philosophy of mind , epistemology and cognitive science . In psychology , the term is used not just to refer to the individual mental states listed above but also to

8268-422: Is presented but in mode or how it is presented. The most basic kind is presentation , which is involved in every mental state. Pure presentations, as in imagination, just show their object without any additional information about the veridical or evaluative aspects of their object. A judgment , on the other hand, is an attitude directed at a presentation that asserts that its presentation is either true or false, as

8424-473: Is rational because it responds correctly to the external fact that it is raining, which constitutes a reason for holding this belief. An influential classification of mental states is due to Franz Brentano . He argues that there are three basic kinds: presentations , judgments , and phenomena of love and hate . All mental states either belong to one of these kinds or are constituted by combinations of them. These different types differ not in content or what

8580-482: Is rational. In one view, a state is rational if it is well-grounded in another state that acts as its source of justification. For example, Scarlet's belief that it is raining in Manchester is rational because it is grounded in her perceptual experience of the rain while the same belief would be irrational for Frank since he lacks such a perceptual ground. A different version of such an approach holds that rationality

8736-454: Is some form of overlap between alexithymia and ASDs". They also pointed to studies that revealed impaired theory of mind skill in alexithymia, neuroanatomical evidence pointing to a shared etiology , and similar social skills deficits. The exact nature of the overlap is uncertain. Alexithymic traits in AS may be linked to clinical depression or anxiety ; the mediating factors are unknown and it

8892-447: Is somehow derivative in relation to the intentionality of mental entities. For example, a map of Addis Ababa may be said to represent Addis Ababa not intrinsically but only extrinsically because people interpret it as a representation. Another difficulty is that not all mental states seem to be intentional. So while beliefs and desires are forms of representation, this seems not to be the case for pains and itches, which may indicate

9048-402: Is something it is like for a subject to be in these states. Opponents of consciousness-based approaches often point out that despite these attempts, it is still very unclear what the term "phenomenal consciousness" is supposed to mean. This is important because not much would be gained theoretically by defining one ill-understood term in terms of another. Another objection to this type of approach

9204-461: Is sometimes claimed that this access is direct , private and infallible . Direct access refers to non-inferential knowledge. When someone is in pain, for example, they know directly that they are in pain, they do not need to infer it from other indicators like a body part being swollen or their tendency to scream when it is touched. But we arguably also have non-inferential knowledge of external objects, like trees or cats, through perception, which

9360-412: Is sometimes held that all sensory states lack intentionality. But such a view ignores that certain sensory states, like perceptions, can be intentional at the same time. It is usually accepted that all propositional attitudes are intentional. But while the paradigmatic cases of intentionality are all propositional as well, there may be some intentional attitudes that are non-propositional. This could be

9516-433: Is that minds represent the world around them, which is not the case for regular physical objects. So a person who believes that there is ice cream in the fridge represents the world as being a certain way. The ice cream can be represented but it does not itself represent the world. This is why a mind is ascribed to the person but not to the ice cream, according to the intentional approach. One advantage of it in comparison to

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9672-490: Is that some states are both sensory and propositional. This is the case for perception, for example, which involves sensory impressions that represent what the world is like. This representational aspect is usually understood as involving a propositional attitude. Closely related to these distinctions is the concept of intentionality . Intentionality is usually defined as the characteristic of mental states to refer to or be about objects or states of affairs. The belief that

9828-427: Is that, according to them, the mind is multiply realizable . This means that it does not depend on the exact constitution of an entity for whether it has a mind or not. Instead, only its behavioral dispositions or its role in the causal network matter. The entity in question may be a human, an animal, a silicon-based alien or a robot. Functionalists sometimes draw an analogy to the software-hardware distinction where

9984-429: Is the ability to understand the mental state of oneself or others that underlies overt behavior, and mentalisation-based treatment helps patients separate their own thoughts and feelings from those around them. This treatment is relational, and it focuses on gaining a better understanding and use of mentalising skills. The researchers found that all of the patients' symptoms including alexithymia significantly improved, and

10140-399: Is the case in regular perception. Phenomena of love and hate involve an evaluative attitude towards their presentation: they show how things ought to be, and the presented object is seen as either good or bad. This happens, for example, in desires. More complex types can be built up through combinations of these basic types. To be disappointed about an event, for example, can be construed as

10296-430: Is to be defined but also on which states count as mental. Mental states encompass a diverse group of aspects of an entity, like this entity's beliefs, desires, intentions, or pain experiences. The different approaches often result in a satisfactory characterization of only some of them. This has prompted some philosophers to doubt that there is a unifying mark of the mental and instead see the term "mental" as referring to

10452-435: Is to deny that the conscious mind has a privileged status in relation to the unconscious mind, for example, by insisting that the deep unconscious exists. Intentionality-based approaches see intentionality as the mark of the mental . The originator of this approach is Franz Brentano , who defined intentionality as the characteristic of mental states to refer to or be about objects. One central idea for this approach

10608-565: Is unclear what causes alexithymia, though several theories have been proposed. Early studies showed evidence that there may be an interhemispheric transfer deficit among people with alexithymia; that is, the emotional information from the right hemisphere of the brain is not being properly transferred to the language regions in the left hemisphere, as can be caused by a decreased corpus callosum , often present in psychiatric patients who have suffered severe childhood abuse. A neuropsychological study in 1997 indicated that alexithymia may be due to

10764-439: Is very influential; emotion is a disturbance that occurs in the following order: For example: Jenny sees a snake. Mental state Mental states are usually contrasted with physical or material aspects. For (non-eliminative) physicalists , they are a kind of high-level property that can be understood in terms of fine-grained neural activity. Property dualists , on the other hand, claim that no such reductive explanation

10920-684: Is why this criterion by itself is not sufficient. Another epistemic privilege often mentioned is that mental states are private in contrast to public external facts. For example, the fallen tree lying on a person's leg is directly open to perception by the bystanders while the victim's pain is private: only they know it directly while the bystanders have to infer it from their screams. It was traditionally often claimed that we have infallible knowledge of our own mental states, i.e. that we cannot be wrong about them when we have them. So when someone has an itching sensation, for example, they cannot be wrong about having this sensation. They can only be wrong about

11076-813: The 5-HT1A receptor , a receptor that binds serotonin , found higher levels of alexithymia among those with the G allele of the Rs6295 polymorphism within the HTR1A gene. Also, a study examining alexithymia in subjects with obsessive–compulsive disorder found higher alexithymia levels associated with the Val/Val allele of the Rs4680 polymorphism in the gene that encodes Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), an enzyme which degrades catecholamine neurotransmitters such as dopamine . These links are tentative, and further research will be needed to clarify how these genes relate to

11232-459: The Age of Enlightenment , Scottish thinker David Hume proposed a revolutionary argument that sought to explain the main motivators of human action and conduct. He proposed that actions are motivated by "fears, desires, and passions". As he wrote in his book A Treatise of Human Nature (1773): "Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will… it can never oppose passion in the direction of

11388-474: The James–Lange theory . As James wrote, "the perception of bodily changes, as they occur, is the emotion". James further claims that "we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and either we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be". An example of this theory in action would be as follows: An emotion-evoking stimulus (snake) triggers

11544-1024: The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ), the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ), the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), the Online Alexithymia Questionnaire (OAQ-G2), the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA), or the Observer Alexithymia Scale (OAS). It is distinct from the psychiatric personality disorders , such as antisocial personality disorder . However, there

11700-433: The epistemic approach is that it has no problems to account for unconscious mental states: they can be intentional just like conscious mental states and thereby qualify as constituents of the mind. But a problem for this approach is that there are also some non-mental entities that have intentionality, like maps or linguistic expressions. One response to this problem is to hold that the intentionality of non-mental entities

11856-539: The neuroscience of emotion, using tools like PET and fMRI scans to study the affective picture processes in the brain . From a mechanistic perspective, emotions can be defined as "a positive or negative experience that is associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity". Emotions are complex, involving multiple different components, such as subjective experience, cognitive processes , expressive behavior, psychophysiological changes, and instrumental behavior. At one time, academics attempted to identify

12012-466: The " wheel of emotions ", suggesting eight primary emotions grouped on a positive or negative basis: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation. Some basic emotions can be modified to form complex emotions. The complex emotions could arise from cultural conditioning or association combined with the basic emotions. Alternatively, similar to the way primary colors combine, primary emotions could blend to form

12168-454: The English language. "No one felt emotions before about 1830. Instead they felt other things – 'passions', 'accidents of the soul', 'moral sentiments' – and explained them very differently from how we understand emotions today." Some cross-cultural studies indicate that the categorization of "emotion" and classification of basic emotions such as "anger" and "sadness" are not universal and that

12324-556: The James-Lange theory of emotions. The James–Lange theory has remained influential. Its main contribution is the emphasis it places on the embodiment of emotions, especially the argument that changes in the bodily concomitants of emotions can alter their experienced intensity. Most contemporary neuroscientists would endorse a modified James–Lange view in which bodily feedback modulates the experience of emotion. (p. 583) Walter Bradford Cannon agreed that physiological responses played

12480-455: The James–Lange theory is that of causation (bodily states causing emotions and being a priori ), not that of the bodily influences on emotional experience (which can be argued and is still quite prevalent today in biofeedback studies and embodiment theory). Although mostly abandoned in its original form, Tim Dalgleish argues that most contemporary neuroscientists have embraced the components of

12636-413: The absence of an actual emotion-evoking stimulus, the patients were unable to interpret their physiological arousal as an experienced emotion. Schachter did agree that physiological reactions played a big role in emotions. He suggested that physiological reactions contributed to emotional experience by facilitating a focused cognitive appraisal of a given physiologically arousing event and that this appraisal

12792-403: The agent is committed and which may guide actions. Intention-formation is sometimes preceded by deliberation and decision , in which the advantages and disadvantages of different courses of action are considered before committing oneself to one course. It is commonly held that pleasure plays a central role in these considerations. "Pleasure" refers to experience that feels good, that involves

12948-460: The agent's behavior while remaining unconscious, which would be an example of an unconscious occurring mental state. The distinction between occurrent and standing is especially relevant for beliefs and desires . At any moment, there seems to be a great number of things we believe or things we want that are not relevant to our current situation. These states remain inactive in the back of one's head even though one has them. For example, while Ann

13104-427: The alexithymia construct manifests similarly across different cultural groups, and those of different ages (i.e., has the same structure and components). Psychologist R. Michael Bagby and psychiatrist Graeme J. Taylor have argued that the alexithymia construct is inversely related to the concepts of psychological mindedness and emotional intelligence and there is "strong empirical support for alexithymia being

13260-570: The alexithymia spectrum also report less distress at seeing others in pain and behave less altruistically toward others. Some individuals working for organizations in which control of emotions is the norm might show alexithymic-like behavior but not be alexithymic. However, over time the lack of self-expressions can become routine and they may find it harder to identify with others. Generally speaking, approaches to treating alexithymia are still in their infancy, with not many proven treatment options available. In 2002, Kennedy and Franklin found that

13416-494: The ancient Greek ideal of dispassionate reason, the neuroscience of emotion shows that emotion is necessarily integrated with intellect. Research on social emotion also focuses on the physical displays of emotion including body language of animals and humans (see affect display ). For example, spite seems to work against the individual but it can establish an individual's reputation as someone to be feared. Shame and pride can motivate behaviors that help one maintain one's standing in

13572-437: The attention-appraisal model (presently the most widely used cognitive-behavioral model of alexithymia) excludes IMP from the construct. In practice, since the constricted imaginal processes items were removed from earlier versions of the TAS-20 in the 1990s, the most used alexithymia assessment tools (and consequently most alexithymia research studies) have only assessed the construct in terms of DIF, DDF, and EOT. In terms of

13728-478: The back of one's mind but currently play no active role in any mental processes. This distinction is sometimes identified with the distinction between phenomenally conscious and unconscious mental states. It seems to be the case that the two distinctions overlap but do not fully match despite the fact that all conscious states are occurrent. This is the case because unconscious states may become causally active while remaining unconscious. A repressed desire may affect

13884-682: The belief that sadness is a feminine emotion. This condition, known as normative male alexithymia , can be present in both sexes. The term alexithymia was introduced by psychotherapists John Case Nemiah and Peter Sifneos in 1973 to describe a particular psychological phenomenon. Its etymology comes from Ancient Greek . The word is formed by combining the words ἀλέξω ( alexo , denoting 'repel', 'ward off', 'defend') and θῡμός ( thȳmós , denoting 'emotion,' 'sentiment,' 'feeling,' or 'rage'). The term can be likened to "dyslexia" in its structure. In its literal sense, alexithymia signifies "impermeable to emotions". This label reflects

14040-482: The belief that the moon is closer to the earth than to the sun. When considered, this belief becomes conscious, but it is unconscious most of the time otherwise. The relation between conscious and unconscious states is a controversial topic. It is often held that conscious states are in some sense more basic with unconscious mental states depending on them. One such approach states that unconscious states have to be accessible to consciousness, that they are dispositions of

14196-559: The boundaries and domains of these concepts are categorized differently by all cultures. However, others argue that there are some universal bases of emotions (see Section 6.1). In psychiatry and psychology, an inability to express or perceive emotion is sometimes referred to as alexithymia . Human nature and the accompanying bodily sensations have always been part of the interests of thinkers and philosophers. Far more extensively, this has also been of great interest to both Western and Eastern societies. Emotional states have been associated with

14352-459: The brain and other parts of the physical body. The Lexico definition of emotion is "A strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others". Emotions are responses to significant internal and external events. Emotions can be occurrences (e.g., panic ) or dispositions (e.g., hostility), and short-lived (e.g., anger) or long-lived (e.g., grief). Psychotherapist Michael C. Graham describes all emotions as existing on

14508-474: The case when an intentional attitude is directed only at an object. In this view, Elsie's fear of snakes is a non-propositional intentional attitude while Joseph's fear that he will be bitten by snakes is a propositional intentional attitude. A mental state is conscious if it belongs to phenomenal experience . The subject is aware of the conscious mental states it is in: there is some subjective feeling to having them. Unconscious mental states are also part of

14664-439: The category of phenomena of love and hate into two distinct categories: feelings and desires. Uriah Kriegel is a contemporary defender of Brentano's approach to the classification of mental phenomena. Discussions about mental states can be found in many areas of study. In cognitive psychology and the philosophy of mind , a mental state is a kind of hypothetical state that corresponds to thinking and feeling, and consists of

14820-739: The combination of the appraisal of the situation (cognitive) and the participants' reception of adrenalin or a placebo together determined the response. This experiment has been criticized in Jesse Prinz's (2004) Gut Reactions . With the two-factor theory now incorporating cognition, several theories began to argue that cognitive activity in the form of judgments, evaluations, or thoughts were entirely necessary for an emotion to occur. Cognitive theories of emotion emphasize that emotions are shaped by how individuals interpret and appraise situations. These theories highlight: These theories acknowledge that emotions are not automatic reactions but result from

14976-461: The definition and that alexithymia be conceptually composed only of DIF, DDF, and EOT, as each of these three are specific to deficits in emotion processing. These core differences in the definition of alexithymia, regarding the inclusion or exclusion of IMP, correspond to differences between psychoanalytic and cognitive-behavioral conceptualizations of alexithymia; whereby psychoanalytic formulations tend to continue to place importance on IMP, whereas

15132-427: The developmental level of people's emotion schemas and reduce people's use of experiential avoidance of emotions as an emotion regulation strategy (i.e., the mechanisms hypothesized to underlie alexithymia difficulties in the attention-appraisal model of alexithymia). In 2018, Löf, Clinton, Kaldo, and Rydén found that mentalisation-based treatment is also an effective method for treating alexithymia. Mentalisation

15288-406: The difficulty experienced by individuals with this condition in recognizing, expressing, and articulating their emotional experiences. Nonmedical terminology, such as "emotionless" and " impassive ", has also been employed to describe similar states. Those who exhibit alexithymic traits or characteristics are commonly referred to as alexithymics or alexithymiacs . Alexithymia is considered to be

15444-441: The distinct facial expressions. Ekman's facial-expression research examined six basic emotions: anger , disgust , fear , happiness , sadness and surprise . Later in his career, Ekman theorized that other universal emotions may exist beyond these six. In light of this, recent cross-cultural studies led by Daniel Cordaro and Dacher Keltner , both former students of Ekman, extended the list of universal emotions. In addition to

15600-507: The divine and with the enlightenment of the human mind and body. The ever-changing actions of individuals and their mood variations have been of great importance to most of the Western philosophers (including Aristotle , Plato , Descartes , Aquinas , and Hobbes ), leading them to propose extensive theories—often competing theories—that sought to explain emotion and the accompanying motivators of human action, as well as its consequences. In

15756-432: The emotion with one of the components: William James with a subjective experience, behaviorists with instrumental behavior, psychophysiologists with physiological changes, and so on. More recently, emotion has been said to consist of all the components. The different components of emotion are categorized somewhat differently depending on the academic discipline. In psychology and philosophy , emotion typically includes

15912-468: The enjoyment of something. The topic of emotions is closely intertwined with that of agency and pleasure. Emotions are evaluative responses to external or internal stimuli that are associated with a feeling of pleasure or displeasure and motivate various behavioral reactions. Emotions are quite similar to moods , some differences being that moods tend to arise for longer durations at a time and that moods are usually not clearly triggered by or directed at

16068-626: The entire field of behavior genetics to be controversial. Those scholars raise concerns about the "equal environments assumption". Traumatic brain injury is also implicated in the development of alexithymia, and those with traumatic brain injury are six times more likely to exhibit alexithymia. Alexithymia is also associated with newborn circumcision trauma. Alexithymia can create interpersonal problems because these individuals tend to avoid emotionally close relationships, or if they do form relationships with others they usually position themselves as either dependent, dominant, or impersonal, "such that

16224-833: The exclusion of emotional responses to problems. Those who have alexithymia also report very logical and realistic dreams, such as going to the store or eating a meal. Clinical experience suggests it is the structural features of dreams more than the ability to recall them that best characterizes alexithymia. Some alexithymic individuals may appear to contradict the above-mentioned characteristics because they can experience chronic dysphoria or manifest outbursts of crying or rage. However, questioning usually reveals that they are quite incapable of describing their feelings or appear confused by questions inquiring about specifics of feelings. According to Henry Krystal, individuals exhibiting alexithymia think in an operative way and may appear to be superadjusted to reality. In psychotherapy , however,

16380-858: The experience feels) and arousal (how energized or enervated the experience feels). These two dimensions can be depicted on a 2D coordinate map. This two-dimensional map has been theorized to capture one important component of emotion called core affect . Core affect is not theorized to be the only component to emotion, but to give the emotion its hedonic and felt energy. Using statistical methods to analyze emotional states elicited by short videos, Cowen and Keltner identified 27 varieties of emotional experience: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, and surprise. In Hinduism, Bharata Muni enunciated

16536-415: The extent to which people are avoiding their emotions as an emotion regulation strategy. There is a large body of evidence currently supporting the specifications of this model. Molecular genetic research into alexithymia remains minimal, but promising candidates have been identified from studies examining connections between certain genes and alexithymia among those with psychiatric conditions as well as

16692-488: The feeling of familiarity, lack sensory contents. Sensory states are sometimes equated with qualitative states and contrasted with propositional attitude states . Qualitative states involve qualia , which constitute the subjective feeling of having the state in question or what it is like to be in it. Propositional attitudes, on the other hand, are relations a subject has to a proposition. They are usually expressed by verbs like believe , desire , fear or hope together with

16848-435: The following: Śṛṅgāraḥ (शृङ्गारः): Romance / Love / attractiveness, Hāsyam (हास्यं): Laughter / mirth / comedy, Raudram (रौद्रं): Fury / Anger, Kāruṇyam (कारुण्यं): Compassion / mercy, Bībhatsam (बीभत्सं): Disgust / aversion, Bhayānakam (भयानकं): Horror / terror, Veeram (वीरं): Pride / Heroism, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Surprise / wonder. In Buddhism , emotions occur when an object is considered attractive or repulsive. There

17004-472: The full spectrum of human emotional experience. For example, interpersonal anger and disgust could blend to form contempt . Relationships exist between basic emotions, resulting in positive or negative influences. Jaak Panksepp carved out seven biologically inherited primary affective systems called SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy). He proposed what

17160-538: The general population. A study recruiting a test population of Japanese males found higher scores on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale among those with the 5-HTTLPR homozygous long (L) allele . The 5-HTTLPR region on the serotonin transporter gene influences the transcription of the serotonin transporter that removes serotonin from the synaptic cleft , and is well studied for its association with numerous psychiatric disorders. Another study examining

17316-487: The inclusion of cognitive appraisal as one of the elements is slightly controversial, since some theorists make the assumption that emotion and cognition are separate but interacting systems, the CPM provides a sequence of events that effectively describes the coordination involved during an emotional episode. Emotion can be differentiated from a number of similar constructs within the field of affective neuroscience : There

17472-446: The influence of emotions on health and behaviors, suggesting the need to manage emotions. Early modern views on emotion are developed in the works of philosophers such as René Descartes , Niccolò Machiavelli , Baruch Spinoza , Thomas Hobbes and David Hume . In the 19th century emotions were considered adaptive and were studied more frequently from an empiricist psychiatric perspective. Christian perspective on emotion presupposes

17628-445: The inherent difficulties identifying and describing emotional states in self and others, alexithymia also negatively affects relationship satisfaction between couples. In a 2008 study alexithymia was found to be correlated with impaired understanding and demonstration of relational affection, and that this impairment contributes to poorer mental health, poorer relational well-being, and lowered relationship quality. Individuals high on

17784-477: The interplay of cognitive interpretations, physiological responses, and the social context. A prominent philosophical exponent is Robert C. Solomon (for example, The Passions, Emotions and the Meaning of Life , 1993). Solomon claims that emotions are judgments. He has put forward a more nuanced view which responds to what he has called the 'standard objection' to cognitivism, the idea that a judgment that something

17940-454: The lifespan. The word "emotion" dates back to 1579, when it was adapted from the French word émouvoir , which means "to stir up". The term emotion was introduced into academic discussion as a catch-all term to passions , sentiments and affections . The word "emotion" was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown and it is around the 1830s that the modern concept of emotion first emerged for

18096-550: The mental state of acquaintance. To be acquainted with a proposition is to understand its meaning and be able to entertain it. The proposition can be true or false, and acquaintance requires no specific attitude towards that truth or falsity. Factive attitudes include those mental states that are attached to the truth of the proposition—i.e. the proposition entails truth. Some factive mental states include "perceiving that", "remembering that", "regretting that", and (more controversially) "knowing that". Non-factive attitudes do not entail

18252-523: The methods of phenomenology . McDougall has also noted that all infants are born unable to identify, organize, and speak about their emotional experiences (the word infans is from the Latin "not speaking"), and are "by reason of their immaturity inevitably alexithymic". Based on this fact McDougall proposed in 1985 that the alexithymic part of an adult personality could be "an extremely arrested and infantile psychic structure". The first language of an infant

18408-660: The mid-late 19th century with Charles Darwin 's 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals . Darwin argued that emotions served no evolved purpose for humans, neither in communication, nor in aiding survival. Darwin largely argued that emotions evolved via the inheritance of acquired characters. He pioneered various methods for studying non-verbal expressions, from which he concluded that some expressions had cross-cultural universality. Darwin also detailed homologous expressions of emotions that occur in animals . This led

18564-428: The mind but they lack this phenomenal dimension. So it is possible for a subject to be in an unconscious mental state, like a repressed desire, without knowing about it. It is usually held that some types of mental states, like sensations or pains, can only occur as conscious mental states. But there are also other types, like beliefs and desires, that can be both conscious and unconscious. For example, many people share

18720-436: The mind emphasized by consciousness-based approaches . It may be true that pains are caused by bodily injuries and themselves produce certain beliefs and moaning behavior. But the causal profile of pain remains silent on the intrinsic unpleasantness of the painful experience itself. Some states that are not painful to the subject at all may even fit these characterizations. Theories under the umbrella of externalism emphasize

18876-415: The mind is likened to a certain type of software that can be installed on different forms of hardware. Closely linked to this analogy is the thesis of computationalism , which defines the mind as an information processing system that is physically implemented by the neural activity of the brain. One problem for all of these views is that they seem to be unable to account for the phenomenal consciousness of

19032-555: The mind's dependency on the environment. According to this view, mental states and their contents are at least partially determined by external circumstances. For example, some forms of content externalism hold that it can depend on external circumstances whether a belief refers to one object or another. The extended mind thesis states that external circumstances not only affect the mind but are part of it. The closely related view of enactivism holds that mental processes involve an interaction between organism and environment. There

19188-546: The moon has a circumference of 10921 km, for example, is a mental state that is intentional in virtue of being about the moon and its circumference. It is sometimes held that all mental states are intentional, i.e. that intentionality is the "mark of the mental". This thesis is known as intentionalism . But this view has various opponents, who distinguish between intentional and non-intentional states. Putative examples of non-intentional states include various bodily experiences like pains and itches. Because of this association, it

19344-417: The neurological anomalies found in the brains of people with alexithymia. Although there is evidence for the role of environmental and neurological factors, the role and influence of genetic factors for developing alexithymia is still unclear. A single large scale Danish study suggested that genetic factors contributed noticeably to the development of alexithymia. However, some scholars find twin studies and

19500-451: The nine rasas (emotions) in the Nātyasāstra , an ancient Sanskrit text of dramatic theory and other performance arts, written between 200 BC and 200 AD. The theory of rasas still forms the aesthetic underpinning of all Indian classical dance and theatre, such as Bharatanatyam , kathak , Kuchipudi , Odissi , Manipuri , Kudiyattam , Kathakali and others. Bharata Muni established

19656-442: The non-mental causes, e.g. whether it is the consequence of bug bites or of a fungal infection. But various counterexamples have been presented to claims of infallibility, which is why this criterion is usually not accepted in contemporary philosophy. One problem for all epistemic approaches to the mark of the mental is that they focus mainly on conscious states but exclude unconscious states. A repressed desire , for example,

19812-473: The norms of rationality. But other states, like urges, experiences of dizziness or hunger, are arational: they are outside the domain of rationality and can be neither rational nor irrational. An important distinction within rationality concerns the difference between theoretical and practical rationality . Theoretical rationality covers beliefs and their degrees while practical rationality focuses on desires, intentions and actions. Some theorists aim to provide

19968-636: The norms of rationality. But other states are arational : they are outside the domain of rationality. A well-known classification is due to Franz Brentano, who distinguishes three basic categories of mental states: presentations , judgments , and phenomena of love and hate . There is a great variety of types of mental states including perception , bodily awareness , thought , belief , desire , motivation , intention , deliberation , decision , pleasure , emotion , mood , imagination and memory . Some of these types are precisely contrasted with each other while other types may overlap. Perception involves

20124-442: The original six, these studies provided evidence for amusement , awe , contentment , desire , embarrassment , pain , relief , and sympathy in both facial and vocal expressions. They also found evidence for boredom , confusion , interest , pride , and shame facial expressions, as well as contempt , relief, and triumph vocal expressions. Robert Plutchik agreed with Ekman's biologically driven perspective but developed

20280-474: The parent-child relationship and the child's social-emotional development. Single study prevalence findings for other disorders include 63% in anorexia nervosa , 56% in bulimia , 45% to 50% in major depressive disorder , 34% in panic disorder , 28% in social phobia, and 50% in substance abusers . Alexithymia is also exhibited by a large proportion of individuals with acquired brain injuries such as stroke or traumatic brain injury . Alexithymia

20436-435: The past two decades, with many fields contributing, including psychology , medicine , history , sociology of emotions , computer science and philosophy . The numerous attempts to explain the origin, function , and other aspects of emotions have fostered intense research on this topic. Theorizing about the evolutionary origin and possible purpose of emotion dates back to Charles Darwin . Current areas of research include

20592-539: The perceiver. Perception is usually considered to be reliable but our perceptual experiences may present false information at times and can thereby mislead us. The information received in perception is often further considered in thought , in which information is mentally represented and processed. Both perceptions and thoughts often result in the formation of new or the change of existing beliefs . Beliefs may amount to knowledge if they are justified and true. They are non-sensory cognitive propositional attitudes that have

20748-446: The perception of what he called an "exciting fact" directly led to a physiological response, known as "emotion". To account for different types of emotional experiences, James proposed that stimuli trigger activity in the autonomic nervous system , which in turn produces an emotional experience in the brain. The Danish psychologist Carl Lange also proposed a similar theory at around the same time, and therefore this theory became known as

20904-533: The person, or that which is "imago-dei" or Image of God in humans. In Christian thought, emotions have the potential to be controlled through reasoned reflection. That reasoned reflection also mimics God who made mind. The purpose of emotions in human life is therefore summarized in God's call to enjoy Him and creation, humans are to enjoy emotions and benefit from them and use them to energize behavior. Perspectives on emotions from evolutionary theory were initiated during

21060-419: The pounding heart as being the result of fearing the bear. With his student, Jerome Singer , Schachter demonstrated that subjects can have different emotional reactions despite being placed into the same physiological state with an injection of epinephrine. Subjects were observed to express either anger or amusement depending on whether another person in the situation (a confederate) displayed that emotion. Hence,

21216-452: The presumed truth of the proposition (whether or not it is so), making it and other non-factive attitudes different from a mere acquaintance. Alexithymia Alexithymia ( / ə ˌ l ɛ k s ɪ ˈ θ aɪ m i ə / ə- LEK -sih- THY -mee-ə ), also called emotional blindness , is a neuropsychological phenomenon characterized by significant challenges in recognizing, expressing, sourcing, and describing one's emotions . It

21372-464: The prevalence rate of high alexithymia is less than 10% of the population. A less common finding suggests that there may be a higher prevalence of alexithymia amongst males than females, which may be accounted for by difficulties some males have with "describing feelings", but not by difficulties in "identifying feelings", in which males and females show similar abilities. Work with the PAQ has suggested that

21528-686: The relationship remains superficial". Inadequate "differentiation" between self and others by alexithymic individuals has also been observed. Their difficulty in processing interpersonal connections often develops where the person lacks a romantic partner. In a study, a large group of alexithymic individuals completed the 64-item Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP-64) which found that "two interpersonal problems are significantly and stably related to alexithymia: cold/distant and non-assertive social functioning. All other IIP-64 subscales were not significantly related to alexithymia." Chaotic interpersonal relations have also been observed by Sifneos. Due to

21684-693: The relevance of alexithymic deficits for the processing of negative (e.g., sadness) or positive (e.g., happiness) emotions, the PAQ is presently the only alexithymia measure that enables valence-specific assessments of alexithymia across both negative and positive emotions; recent work with the PAQ has highlighted that alexithymic deficits in emotion processing do often extend across both negative and positive emotions, although people typically report more difficulties for negative emotions. Such findings of valence-specific effects in alexithymia are also supported by brain imaging studies. Studies (using measures of alexithymia assessing DIF, DDF, and EOT) have reported that

21840-427: The result of a cognitive and conscious process which occurs in response to a body system response to a trigger. According to Scherer 's Component Process Model (CPM) of emotion, there are five crucial elements of emotion. From the component process perspective, emotional experience requires that all of these processes become coordinated and synchronized for a short period of time, driven by appraisal processes. Although

21996-578: The strong focus by clinicians on neurophysiological explanations at the expense of psychological ones for the genesis and operation of alexithymia, and introduced the alternative term " disaffectation " to stand for psychogenic alexithymia. For McDougall, the disaffected individual had at some point "experienced overwhelming emotion that threatened to attack their sense of integrity and identity", to which they applied psychological defenses to pulverize and eject all emotional representations from consciousness. A similar line of interpretation has been taken up using

22152-403: The subject to enter their corresponding conscious counterparts. On this position there can be no "deep unconscious", i.e. unconscious mental states that can not become conscious. The term "consciousness" is sometimes used not in the sense of phenomenal consciousness , as above, but in the sense of access consciousness . A mental state is conscious in this sense if the information it carries

22308-404: The tendency of this person to behave in certain ways. Such an ascription does not involve any claims about the internal states of this person, it only talks about behavioral tendencies. A strong motivation for such a position comes from empiricist considerations stressing the importance of observation and the lack thereof in the case of private internal mental states. This is sometimes combined with

22464-405: The thesis that we could not even learn how to use mental terms without reference to the behavior associated with them. One problem for behaviorism is that the same entity often behaves differently despite being in the same situation as before. This suggests that explanation needs to make reference to the internal states of the entity that mediate the link between stimulus and response. This problem

22620-732: The treatment promoted affect tolerance and the ability to think flexibly while expressing intense affect rather than impulsive behavior. A significant issue impacting alexithymia treatment is that alexithymia has comorbidity with other disorders. Mendelson's 1982 study showed that alexithymia frequently presented in people with undiagnosed chronic pain . Participants in Kennedy and Franklin's study all had anxiety disorders in conjunction with alexithymia, while those in Löf et al. were diagnosed with both alexithymia and borderline personality disorder . All these comorbidity issues complicate treatment because it

22776-442: The truth of the propositions to which they are attached. That is, one can be in one of these mental states and the proposition can be false. An example of a non-factive attitude is believing—people can believe a false proposition and people can believe a true proposition. Since there is the possibility of both, such mental states do not entail truth, and therefore, are not factive. However, belief does entail an attitude of assent toward

22932-411: The unconscious mind, is to elucidate the nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness-based approaches are usually interested in phenomenal consciousness , i.e. in qualitative experience, rather than access consciousness , which refers to information being available for reasoning and guiding behavior. Conscious mental states are normally characterized as qualitative and subjective, i.e. that there

23088-449: The use of senses, like sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste, to acquire information about material objects and events in the external world. It contrasts with bodily awareness in this sense, which is about the internal ongoings in our body and which does not present its contents as independent objects. The objects given in perception, on the other hand, are directly (i.e. non-inferentially) presented as existing out there independently of

23244-521: The view that emotions are discrete, measurable, and physiologically distinct. Ekman's most influential work revolved around the finding that certain emotions appeared to be universally recognized, even in cultures that were preliterate and could not have learned associations for facial expressions through media. Another classic study found that when participants contorted their facial muscles into distinct facial expressions (for example, disgust), they reported subjective and physiological experiences that matched

23400-451: The way for animal research on emotions and the eventual determination of the neural underpinnings of emotion. More contemporary views along the evolutionary psychology spectrum posit that both basic emotions and social emotions evolved to motivate (social) behaviors that were adaptive in the ancestral environment. Emotion is an essential part of any human decision-making and planning, and the famous distinction made between reason and emotion

23556-522: The will… The reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them". With these lines, Hume attempted to explain that reason and further action would be subject to the desires and experience of the self. Later thinkers would propose that actions and emotions are deeply interrelated with social, political, historical, and cultural aspects of reality that would also come to be associated with sophisticated neurological and physiological research on

23712-485: The word, emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. On the other hand, emotion can be used to refer to states that are mild (as in annoyed or content) and to states that are not directed at anything (as in anxiety and depression). One line of research looks at the meaning of the word emotion in everyday language and finds that this usage is rather different from that in academic discourse. In practical terms, Joseph LeDoux has defined emotions as

23868-402: Was adopted and further developed by scholasticism and Thomas Aquinas in particular. In Chinese antiquity, excessive emotion was believed to cause damage to qi , which in turn, damages the vital organs. The four humors theory made popular by Hippocrates contributed to the study of emotion in the same way that it did for medicine . In the early 11th century, Avicenna theorized about

24024-488: Was not anatomically possible for sensory events to trigger a physiological response prior to triggering conscious awareness and emotional stimuli had to trigger both physiological and experiential aspects of emotion simultaneously. Stanley Schachter formulated his theory on the earlier work of a Spanish physician, Gregorio Marañón , who injected patients with epinephrine and subsequently asked them how they felt. Marañón found that most of these patients felt something but in

24180-675: Was their inability to elaborate beyond a few limited adjectives such as "happy" or "unhappy" when describing these feelings. The core issue is that people with alexithymia have poorly differentiated emotions, limiting their ability to distinguish and describe them to others. This contributes to the sense of emotional detachment from themselves and difficulty connecting with others, making alexithymia negatively associated with life satisfaction even when depression and other confounding factors are controlled for. Alexithymia frequently co-occurs with other disorders. Research indicates that alexithymia overlaps with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In

24336-412: Was what defined the subjective emotional experience. Emotions were thus a result of two-stage process: general physiological arousal, and experience of emotion. For example, the physiological arousal, heart pounding, in a response to an evoking stimulus, the sight of a bear in the kitchen. The brain then quickly scans the area, to explain the pounding, and notices the bear. Consequently, the brain interprets

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