Antonio Damasio and the Psychology of Emotions

Antonio Damasio and the Psychology of Emotions

Human behavior is one of the peculiar areas of research and study in human life. People have different behaviors that are dictated by the environment in which they live in and the exposure to situations and experiences. It has also been noted that there are various factors that affect the way decisions are made by human beings in their lives. This has prompted researchers to carry out studies to examine how these factors influence the lives of human beings in terms of rationality in making certain decisions. This essay is therefore a reaction to Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, in relation to psychology of emotions.

According to Damásio (1994), there is a relationship between emotions and reason in human beings (p.45). This author reiterates that there is no way of separating reason from emotion and any form of separation may lead to a total incapacitation of the person involved in regard to making rational decisions. Therefore, the state of one’s emotions is very important and determines to a large extend the kind of decisions that are made by the person. In reference to Phineas Gage’s situation to support arguments, Damásio (1994) asserts that the emotional part of the brain that was damaged in Gage’s brain affected the way he reasoned and made decisions (p.48). On the other hand, there are arguments that reason feelings and emotions have a common genesis and thus cannot be separated. On the other hand, separating the two is a recipe of irrational decision making process in a human being.

There are many arguments that have been put forward either to support the position held by Damásio in his work or to discredits his arguments as null and void and thus irrelevant in the lives of human beings. According to Oatley, Keltner & Jenkins (2006), there are several stages of evolution of emotions that takes place in a person and thus determine the personality of a person in his later life, depending on how they are regulated (p.322). For example, young children have different emotional status as compared to adults. On the other hand, these emotions vary in boys and in girls. Boys have a mentality that violence and anger boosts one’s esteem. These stages of evolution of emotions are the biggest determinants of the way people reason in the modern society. Oatley, Keltner & Jenkins (2006) asserts that there are several perspectives that can be used to look at evolution of the human emotions (p.34). First, there are the selection pressures. This is whereby threats or opportunities to human life exists thus forming a basis of survival or extinction of human life in certain kinds of environments. On the other hand, the human capacity to collaborate with each other remains to be among the greatest determinants of whether they survive or not.

The second part of emotional evolution in human beings involves the adaptation to certain environments. This encompasses the way human beings align their emotions to respond positively to certain situations within their environment. For example, human beings are emotionally attached to their offspring and will take the risk of protecting them from any harm from the external environment (Oatley, Keltner & Jenkins, 2006, p.36). Consequently, human emotions play a key role in the overall survival of human race within a particular environment.

It has also been noted that there is a relationship between bodily changes and emotions. Changes in the body have been found to have an effect on people’s emotions. The nervous system of human beings is wired in such a way that when there is a bodily change in a person, this change affects the way a person behaves emotionally, and consequently the decisions that one makes thereafter (Oatley, Keltner & Jenkins, 2006, p.116). For example, when one is afraid, he may sweat, frown and do other awkward things that are not expected of him when he is emotionally happy. In this regard, one may opt to take off and run for his dear life or scream for help, depending on the situation that is making him afraid. This concurs with Damásio argument that there is a relationship between the way people behave emotionally and their reasoning capacity.

Similarly, the functioning of the brain can also affect someone’s emotional status thus affecting the reasoning ability and response of such a person. According to Oatley, Keltner & Jenkins (2006), various parts of the brains play a vital role in determining the way people reacted to situations around them in an emotional way (p.143). For example, since children have a poorly developed cortex leading to an uncontrolled reaction towards situations in their midst. Therefore, it was found out that, every emotion in a person is controlled by various parts of the brain, failure to which a person will not be in a position to develop well emotionally. As a result of this, a person that has a poorly developed brain has a high probability of showing inconsistencies in his emotional behavior, a factor that affects his decision making process in the society.

There are different emotional theories that have been developed by researchers to further explain how people’s emotions are formed and where they originate from. For example, Charles Darwin developed a theory that human beings have their originality in animals and that while human beings could be termed as animals, they had a higher level of emotional expressivity within a particular environment. His main interest was the origin of these emotions and how these emotions are expressed in animals and in human beings. On the other hand, William James was another 19^th century theorist who was concerned with emotional experience in human beings. James reiterated that emotional experience was the result of changes in the autonomic nervous system (Oatley, Keltner & Jenkins, 2006, p.8). On the other hand, his arguments stood on the fact that emotions add life to people’s experiences and thus are necessary for an enjoyable human life. Finally, Sigmund Freud argued that certain events in life could affect the life of a person, especially the emotional and psychological part of him negatively for the rest of his life. As a result, it is important to check what one is exposed to as this has the ability to affect a person for the rest of his life (p.10).

In conclusion, it can be said that emotions plays a very important part in the lives of human beings. On the contrary, without emotions, one is bound to become a person with no benefit to the society. Instead, such a person can be so destructive in the society since he is unable to make rational decisions in his life. Such are the people that have been diagnosed with psychological disorders in the society as they are unable to channel their emotions to the right reasoning.