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February 12, 2020February 24, 2020

Emotions are cognitive, not innate, researchers conclude

Declaration: this post content is not created by The Origin Within, please see below for the source.

Article source: New York University. (2017, February 15). Emotions are cognitive, not innate, researchers conclude. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 13, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170215121100.htm

Emotions are not innately programmed into our brains, but, in fact, are cognitive states resulting from the gathering of information, New York University Professor Joseph LeDoux and Richard Brown, a professor at the City University of New York, conclude in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain,” explains LeDoux, a professor in New York University’s Center for Neural Science. “Specifically, the differences between emotional and non-emotional states are the kinds of inputs that are processed by a general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences.”

As a result, LeDoux and Brown observe, “the brain mechanisms that give rise to conscious emotional feelings are not fundamentally different from those that give rise to perceptual conscious experiences.”

Their paper — “A Higher-Order Theory of Emotional Consciousness” — addresses a notable gap in neuroscience theory. While emotions, or feelings, are the most significant events in our lives, there has been relatively little integration of theories of emotion and emerging theories of consciousness in cognitive science.

Existing work posits that emotions are innately programmed in the brain’s subcortical circuits. As a result, emotions are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. In other words, emotions aren’t a response to what our brain takes in from our observations, but, rather, are intrinsic to our makeup.

However, after taking into account existing scholarship on both cognition and emotion, LeDoux and Brown see a quite different architecture for emotions — one more centered on process than on composition. They conclude that emotions are “higher-order states” embedded in cortical circuits. Therefore, unlike present theories, they see emotional states as similar to other states of consciousness.

LeDoux, the founder of the Emotional Brain Institute who also has an appointment in NYU’s Department of Psychology, has worked on emotion and memory in the brain for more than 20 years. He is also a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center. Brown is a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York’s LaGuardia College.

Journal Reference:

Joseph E. LeDoux, Richard Brown. A higher-order theory of emotional consciousness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017; 201619316 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1619316114

February 11, 2020February 24, 2020

The Development of DiSC® Personality System

The DiSC Model of Behavior was first proposed by William Moulton Marston, a physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard. His 1928 book, Emotions of Normal People, explains his theory on how normal human emotions lead to behavioral differences among groups of people, and how a person’s behavior might change over time. His work focused on directly observable and measurable psychological phenomena. He was interested in using practical explanations to help people understand and manage their experiences and relationships.

Marston theorized that the behavioral expression of emotions could be categorized into four primary types, stemming from the person’s perceptions of self in relationship to his or her environment. These four types were labeled by Marston as Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S), and Compliance (C).

Dominance – direct, strong-willed and forceful
Influence – sociable, talkative and lively
Steadiness – gentle, accommodating and soft-hearted
Conscientiousness – private, analytical and logical

Walter V. Clarke, an industrial psychologist, was the first person to build an assessment instrument (personality profile test) using Marston’s theories, even though that was not initially his intent. In 1956 he published the Activity Vector Analysis, a checklist of adjectives on which he asked people to mark descriptors they identified as true of themselves. The tool, used by Clarke since 1948, was intended for personnel selection by businesses. The four factors in his data (aggressive, sociable, stable, and avoidant) were based on Marston’s model.

About 10 years later, Walter Clarke Associates developed a new version of this instrument for John Cleaver for business use. It was called Self Discription. Instead of using a checklist, this test forced respondents to make a choice between two or more terms. Factor analysis of this assessment added to the support of a DISC-based instrument.

Personality assessments in psychology

Psychologists have been measuring personality traits since the 1930s. Since that time they have strived to better understand personality and to create a way of measuring it. They have become more aware of the complexity of interactive forces that are responsible for any one behavior.

DiSC assessments differ in method and purpose from instruments used in clinical settings to determine the emotional health of individuals. DiSC is used only to help people understand themselves and others in the range of normal human behavior.

Most personality psychologists believe that traits and situations are interactive. This is one reason why DiSC can be so helpful — you can learn to adapt your own responses depending on the DiSC style of the person you’re speaking with or your situation. For example, as a manager, you might choose not to use the behavior you’re most comfortable with, but instead use one you know will be more effective with your entire team.