Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [334]
—Other research, related to Damasio’s, compared the startle responses of patients with damage to the amygdala (as mentioned earlier, a small area of the medial temporal lobe involved in emotional processing) with those of normal people. People in both groups were startled by a sudden loud noise, but when the noise occurred in the context of a dark, empty street, the control subjects showed a much stronger startle response and the amygdala-damaged patients did not. Yet, most curiously, the patients were able to say that the dark street stimulus was the far more arousing one; they knew it was arousing—but were unaroused.87
—A number of researchers have been interested in the effects of emotions on perception and memory. In one very recent study, participants saw a key word flashed for 4/10 of a second, and then two words, one of which was the same one they had so briefly seen. If that key word was related to either a positive or negative emotion, they were more likely to identify it correctly than if it was emotionally neutral; evidently, we see more clearly if what we see has some emotional impact. As for memory, various studies found that participants could more easily recall events or information when they happened to be in the same mood as when they first had the experience or learned the information. In a good mood, one can recall more pleasant or positive events in one’s life than when in a bad mood.88
—For the past dozen years the subject of “emotional intelligence”(EI) has been the focus of a good deal of research and theorizing. What EI is depends on who’s talking about it. From one point of view, it is the ability to understand and regulate our emotions; from another point of view, it is the reliance on emotions to aid us in making judgments as to how to behave. Psychologist Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence says that people can be smart in a way that has nothing to do with IQ scores but with self-awareness, impulse control, zeal and motivation, empathy and social deftness; our emotions, in short, are often very smart—but, he admits, can also be very stupid. As for the research evidence: In a study employing personality tests and a special scale that rates EI, students who scored high in EI were more likely to report positive relationships with others, including greater perceived support from their parents and fewer negative interactions with their close friends, than those who scored low. In a study of people with careers in insurance, employees with higher EI scores were rated by their supervisors as more tolerant of stress, more sociable, and having greater potential for leadership than employees with lower EI scores. Higher scores were also related to higher salary and more promotions.89
These few examples illustrate the extent to which the old field of emotion and motivation is showing new vigor. Can the resulting mass of findings of the past eighty-odd years be pieced together into a unifying coherent theory?
A few psychologists believe they can, although no single overall scheme seems dominant. But the general view, to judge from a sampling of top textbooks, is that the three major theories—the James-Lange, the Cannon-Bard, and the cognitive appraisal (Schachter, Lazarus, and others)—all have grains of truth. But so do a number of the variants and developments of them that we have seen.90 Not a simple answer, to be sure.
To hark back to the question asked at the beginning of this chapter— Why do we do what we do?—at this time there is no one integrated theory, no overall design, to what has become a theoretical patchwork quilt. Those who must have a simple, easily understood answer will not find it in psychology. At least, not yet.
SIXTEEN
The
Cognitivists
Revolution
In 1960, George A. Miller, though youthful and somewhat pixieish in appearance at forty, was a professor of psychology at Harvard and assured of his prestigious post and comfortable style of living for the rest of his career. Yet that year he felt compelled,