Emotion

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An emotion is a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Emotions are subjective experiences, or experienced from an individual point of view. Emotion is often associated with mood, temperament, personality, and disposition. The English word 'emotion' is derived from the French word émouvoir. This is based on the Latin emovere, where e- (variant of ex-) means 'out' and movere means 'move'. The related term "motivation" is also derived from movere.

No definitive taxonomy of emotions exists, though numerous taxonomies have been proposed. Some categorizations include:

A related distinction is between the emotion and the results of the emotion, principally behaviors and emotional expressions. People often behave in certain ways as a direct result of their emotional state, such as crying, fighting or fleeing. Yet again, if one can have the emotion without the corresponding behaviour then we may consider the behavior not to be essential to the emotion. The James-Lange theory posits that emotional experience is largely due to the experience of bodily changes. The functionalist approach to emotions (e.g. Nico Frijda) holds that emotions have evolved for a particular function, such as to keep the subject safe.

For more information about Emotion, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.


News tagged with emotional

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Why musicians make us weep and computers don't

Medicine & Health / Research

created Jul 09, 2008 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (28) | comments 0

Music can soothe the savage breast much better if played by musicians rather than clever computers, according to a new University of Sussex-led study published in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE.


A child sleeping (Sleep)

Dreams may have an important physiological function

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Nov 12, 2009 | popularity 3.9 / 5 (27) | comments 12

(PhysOrg.com) -- Dreams have long been assumed to have psychological functions such as consolidating emotional memories and processing experiences or problems, but according to a Harvard psychiatrist and sleep ...


Easily grossed out? You're more likely a conservative

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Jun 03, 2009 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (23) | comments 24

(PhysOrg.com) -- Are you someone who squirms when confronted with slime, shudders at stickiness or gets grossed out by gore? Do crawly insects make you cringe or dead bodies make you blanch?


Why you may lose that loving feeling after tying the knot

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Apr 22, 2009 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (13) | comments 7

Dating couples whose dreams include marriage would do well to step back and reflect upon the type of support they'll need from their partners when they cross the threshold, a new Northwestern University study suggests.


Mystery solved: Tiny protein-activator responsible for brain cell damage in Huntington disease

Medicine & Health / Research

created Jun 04, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (10) | comments 0

Johns Hopkins brain scientists have figured out why a faulty protein accumulates in cells everywhere in the bodies of people with Huntington's disease (HD), but only kills cells in the part of the brain that controls movement, ...


Rough day at work? You won't feel like exercising

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Sep 24, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (11) | comments 7

Have you ever sat down to work on a crossword puzzle only to find that afterwards you haven't the energy to exercise? Or have you come home from a rough day at the office with no energy to go for a run?


Consciousness is the brain's Wi-Fi, resolving competing requests, study suggests

Consciousness is the brain's Wi-Fi, resolving competing requests, study suggests

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Sep 30, 2009 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (12) | comments 9

Your fingers start to burn after picking up a hot plate. Should you drop the plate or save your meal? New research suggests that it is your consciousness that resolves these dilemmas by serving as the brain's ...


Music and speech based on human biology (w/ Video)

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Dec 03, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (10) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A pair of studies by Duke University neuroscientists shows powerful new evidence of a deep biological link between human music and speech.


How cigarettes calm you down

Medicine & Health / Research

created Apr 24, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (9) | comments 0

The calming neurological effects of nicotine have been demonstrated in a group of non-smokers during anger provocation. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions suggest that n ...


It's All Relative: UCSD's Einstein Robot Has 'Emotional Intelligence' (Video)

It's All Relative: UCSD's Einstein Robot Has 'Emotional Intelligence' (Video)

Electronics / Robotics

created Feb 13, 2009 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (10) | comments 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- Albert Einstein may have written his last scientific theory more than half a century ago, but he's still honing his emotional intelligence in a laboratory at the University of California, ...


While adolescents may reason as well as adults, their emotional maturity lags, says new research

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Oct 07, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (7) | comments 4

A 16-year-old might be quite capable of making an informed decision about whether to end a pregnancy - a decision likely to be made after due consideration and consultation with an adult - but this same adolescent may not ...


Future angst? Brain scans show uncertainty fuels anxiety

Future angst? Brain scans show uncertainty fuels anxiety

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Aug 17, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- Anyone who has spent a sleepless night anguishing over a possible job loss has experienced the central finding of a new brain scan study: Uncertainty makes a bad event feel even worse.


Internet search process affects cognition, emotion

Internet search process affects cognition, emotion

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Nov 04, 2009 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (8) | comments 0

Nearly 73 percent of all American adults use the Internet on a daily basis, according to a 2009 Pew Internet and American Life Project survey. Half of these adults use the Web to find information via search ...


Light at night linked to symptoms of depression in mice

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Oct 21, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (7) | comments 2

Too much light at night can lead to symptoms of depression, according to a new study in mice. Researchers found that mice housed in a lighted room 24 hours a day exhibited more depressive symptoms than did similar mice that ...


Monkeys get a groove on, but only to monkey music

Monkeys get a groove on, but only to monkey music (w/ Audio)

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Sep 01, 2009 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (7) | comments 5

(PhysOrg.com) -- Music is one of the surest ways to influence human emotions; most people unconsciously recognize and respond to music that is happy, sad, fearful or mellow. But psychologists who have tried ...