Emotions: influence

Medial thalamus This area mediates deep pain that is poorly localized and emotionally influenced. 

Reflecting a trend across psychology as a whole, there has been a renewed and increased interest in how emotion influences perception and attention. This research investigates such questions as how emotion influences the focus and duration of attention, how quickly the emotional meaning of various stimuli can be processed, and whether individuals attend to positive and negative stimuli in different ways. Unlike most past research on perception this evolving area often researches socially meaningful perceptual stimuli, such as the perception of emotion in facial expressions and in vocal tones. 

Niedenthal, P.M., and S. Kitayama, eds. The Hearts Eye Emotional Influences in Perception and Attention. New York Academic Press, 1994. 

But where was the hut, the altar, the damp ground, and the sleeping people The candles had been extinguished, so I took a match from my pocket and lit it. Everything seemed to be in order. As I put my mind on the hut, it came into focus, but the vision of the dancers also remained. Somehow the two worlds intermingled. If I concentrated on the hut, it was predominate. But if I concentrated on the vision, the hut receded. I had control of my will and intellect. I was able to point my mind in any direction, though I felt I was in turn influenced by the emotional content of the visions, much as emotions influence the mind in normal circumstances. 

In general, such electrical activity and the associated impulse traffic to the motor functions are affected not only by the chemical environment of the neurons in the central respiratory centers but also by reflex influences and voluntary drives. The principal afferent activity arises from stretch receptors in the lungs and aortic and carotid chemo- and baro-receptors. Other afferent stimuli to the respiratory centers include the protective reflexes —e.g., coughing, sneezing, and other related actions— and reflexes from the joints, muscles, and tissues of the chest wall. Voluntary and emotional influences stem from neuronal activity in the cerebral hemispheres. 

Desmet P.M. A. and Schifferstein H.N.J. (2008a) Emotional influences on food choice Sensory, physiological and psychological pathways. Appetite 50 290-301. 

Figure 1.1 Goals of mentoring. = directive influence In = nondirective influence Ne = emotional need N = intellectual need.

One area of research related to abuse or neglect has to do with how well a person fits within his or her social environment. One researcher, Marsha Linehan (1993), has talked about how a poor fit with the social environment (viz., not fitting into the family, school life, or other important social networks) may cause psychiatric problems if the poorness of fit causes the person to feel like an outsider or to feel constandy invalidated or put down. Many of my clients have told me that they have not felt part of their families or that they did not fit well into society in general, or have described themselves as black sheep. Abuse and neglect lead to an invalidating environment, but so can mismatches of personalities within families or mismatches of behavioral patterns with social norms. Furthermore, there is evidence that the way emotion is expressed in families can be associated with a poorness of fit that can influence the course of drug problems. 

In addition to biological and environmental factors that influence the onset and course of drug-related problems, there also are many individual risk factors. These variables can include those related to a person s actions or behavior, those related to the way a person thinks, or those related to the experience of emotions. The next few sections will discuss in detail these personal variables that can be related to drug problems in some people. 

Sustained stressor exposures, both physical and psychological, have been shown to shift the cytokine profiles of the immune cells toward the promotion of inflammation and allergic response. Neural circuitry underlying stress and emotion can also regulate inflammation. Peripheral inflammatory mediators, in turn, influence mood and cognitive functions. Depressive symptomatology has been associated with the same proinflamma-tory cytokines that are released during an asthmatic attack or in other forms of severe stressor exposure. 

For a socially living individual it is of high relevance to be aware of the emotional state of one s conspecifics. It is a fairly well-known phenomenon that animals of different species react to odour emitted by another animal which is under stressful conditions. This led several researchers to the question of whether emotional state in humans can influence their body odour. This possibility was first tested by Chen and Haviland-Jones (2000), who asked their subjects to wear armpit pads while watching 13 min excerpts from a comedy or a fearful movie. Most of them watched both excerpts. Subsequently three and six choice tests were presented to raters who were instructed to pick the sample that smelled of people when they are happy or... 

The typical person is influenced by both an optimistic bias and an illusion of control (Frewer et al., 1994). When these are lost or compromised, panic can occur. While panic disorder can afflict an individual, panic also occurs as a collective phenomena. While it has been thought that emotional instability will lead some people to be more likely to panic, this is not always found. However, people who are emotionally unstable are more likely to attach importance to information provided during the crises than more emotionally stable individuals (Verbeke and Van Kenhove, 2002). Furthermore, some people are more likely to believe they are sick or affected than others. Feldman et al. (1999) examined the panic predisposition of people based on their classification by the big five personality factors. People were inoculated with a common cold virus, and those who were classified as neurotic were more likely to report unfounded illness and more symptoms than other groups. In contrast to this, openness to experience was associated with reporting unfounded symptoms in those with verifiable colds, whereas conscientiousness was associated with reporting unfounded illness in those who were not ill (Feldman et al, 1999). 

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