FQ: to what extent does cognitive and biological interact with emotions?
The cognitive level of analysis and biological factor of the two when dealing with a specific component of the brain known as emotion. What the cognitive level of analysis aims to study the inner processes of the mind and how cognitive process guides behavior. Within the level of analysis, emotion has been investigated in terms of the biological and cognitive influences. A biological factor would be physiology; it is the internal, biological mechanisms. To have a clear understanding of what emotion is, a specific focus needs to be studied such as the theories and the studies that go with them. A biological factor of emotion would be …show more content…
The aim was to demonstrate the influence of appraisal on an emotional experience, the method was that the participants were shown a ‘stressful’ film about ‘unpleasant’ genital surgery showing a circumcision with soundtracks, in which investigators manipulated the ‘appraisal’ of the surgery by showing the film with three condition and with one control group. The conditions were the trauma- where the pain was emphasized, denial- anticipation of the males, meaning excitement and the pain was less emphasized, and intellectualization- where the soundtrack was ignored and the emotional aspects of the situation was emphasised. The findings were that the participants reacted more emotionally to the soundtrack that was more traumatic in comparison to the intellectualization condition. A limit to this would be that it has issues in its method, it’s possible that the participants’ reactions were affected by the soundtrack rather than the video itself. A strength is that it shows valid cognitive factors. It can be concluded that the appraisal of the situation did have an affect on the emotions, it shows the cognitive factor of how we appraise certain situations that influence our emotional responses.
A theory within the interactive of both biological and cognitive would be Schacter and Singer 's Two Factor Theory. The two factors interact with one another to produce specific emotions; being the physiological and emotion interpretation. The way that the TFT would be the perception of the stimulus may lead to bodily physiological arousal, and that physiological arousal is necessary for emotional experience, but needs to be labelled or interpreted by cognitive appraisal of the situation. The cognitive appraisal results in labelling of the arousal as an emotional