Evaluate the extent to which cognitive and biological factors interact in

emotions
Emotions are most commonly defined as feeling state which involves thoughts,physiological
changes and results in outward expression.Psychologists that expertise in different
areas,cognitive or biological,argue for the preference of factors from their area leading to
development of many theories,that will later on conclude that emotions represent
combination of biological and cognitive factors.
Explanation of biological factors in emotions would relate to the statement that emotions are
used only for evaluation of a certain situation,which does not include the conscious
processing,thus it refers to function of the brain.LeDoux (1999) proposed that there are two
different pathways of emotions in brain-that is short route in which emotions go from sensory
thalamus to amygdala,and long route in which emotions pass through sensory cortex and
hippocampus before emotional response.This theory is based on consideration of amygdala to
play crucial role in occuring of emotions,since it performs function of transforming sensory
information into emotional signals,controling response systems such as fight or
fligh.Thalamus processes emotional stimuli,after what signal is sent to amygdala.If potential
danger is perceived,brain is enabled to sent signals to the rest of the body to prepare it for
action.This happens when person does not have enough time to evaluate situation,therefore
the impact of emotions is stronger.At the same time,if stimulus is more evaluated,information
is sent from thalamus to cortex and hippocampus with indirect pathway,sending result of this
to amygdala.This indicates that emotions are result of pure biological brain processing which
does are non-conscious.LeDoux argues that short route is more useful in case of danger and
long route allows more detailed evaluation of situation.
Lazarus (1975) proposed terms of appraisals which are analyses of whether situations will
affect indivdual positively or negatively.He stated that,since these appraisals are crucial for
emotions and that emotional experiences are not only the result of physiological
changes,people most likely do not only respond to what is happening around them,but
according to their evaluations.Lazarus and Folkman (1984) found that there are factors such
as appraisal of threat and resources for dealing with stress that affect experience of
individual.In 1988,they found that there are two different ways people deal with stressful
situations-problem-focused coping which more concentrates on changing the stressful
situation and emotion-focused coping that is more concerned with dealing with emotions
rather than changing the stressful situation that caused emotional response(control of
emotions expression,attempt of providing postive reappraisal).Example of the study that
supported Lazarus' theory that appraisals of situation have important impact on the strategy
which people use when coping with emotional arousal is one conducted by Speisman et al.
(1964).In this classical experiment in which participants were shown a video of initiation
ceremony which involved unpleasant genital surgery,aim was to examine whether emotional
response of participants to the video can be manipulated.Participants were divided into four
groups,so the video was presented with three different soundtracks and one group was control
group which was shown the video with no sound.In trauma condition,soundtrack which
emphasized pain and mutilation was involved,denial condition included soundtrack that

presented people as happy and willing and intellectualization condition contained the
soundtrack that implied anthropological interpretation of ceremony.Researchers found that
participants who experienced trauma condition reacted most emotionally to the video and that
people who experienced denial and intellectualization condition reacted less emotionally to
video than control group,which indicates that the findings from the study support Lazarus's
theory.However,there are some considerations about this experiment.First,it was a highly
controlled laboratory experiment which raises the issue of artificiality and lack of ecological
validity.Even though there was no gender dominance so that it could influence the outcome of
the study,all participants were students and students cannot be considered to be
representatives of larger population.This experiment also lacks cross-cultural validity,since it
was done only in US.Therefore there was internationality issue as well.This experiment also
raises certain ethical considerations,since showing the disturbing video of genital surgery
might cause psychological harm to participants.Findings from this study can be applied in
reducing the severity of negative emotional responses linked to traumatic
experiences.Furthermore,even though this study supports Lazarus's theory,it supports
LeDoux's model of two biological pathways of emotions in the brain as well.
Providing the indication of prevailing factors,biological or cognitive,is impossible therefore it
is implied that emotions do represent combination of physiological arrousal and cognition.