Page 94 - Biblical Counseling II-Textbook

Study Section 13: Emotion: A Mind-Body Experience

13.1 Connect
Imagine this experiment designed to measure the body’s response to different
emotions. “In each of [three] rooms, you have someone watching a movie. In the
first, the person is viewing a horror movie. In the second, the viewer watches an
anger-provoking film. [In the third,] the person is viewing an utterly boring movie.
From the control center, you are tracking each person’s physical responses,
measuring perspiration, breathing, and heart rate. Do you think you could tell who
is frightened? Who is angry? Who is bored?” (Myers, p. 255, 2012). Bored would probably be the easiest
to recognize. What about the bodily differences between fear and anger? Many emotions do not have
significantly different biological responses. Let’s read more about emotion.

13.2 Objectives

1. Students should be able to summarize how autonomic nervous system (ANS) connects to
emotional arousal.

2. Students should be able to explain how all emotions fit on two dimensions.

3. Students should be able to describe Christian happiness.

13.3 Emotion

“Whether you are falling in love or grieving a loved one’s death, you need little convincing
that emotions involve the body. Feeling without a body is like breathing without lungs. Some
physical responses are easy to notice, others happen without your awareness. Indeed many
take place at the level of your brain’s neurons” (Myers, p. 254, 2012).

Imagine a father is in a store with his young son. He turns to look at an item on a shelf, looks
down at where his son was and his son is gone. Think of how emotions, thoughts and physical responses
would all seem to happen at once:

Emotions are a mix of 1) physiological arousal (heart pounding), 2) expressive behaviors (quickened
pace), and 3) consciously experienced thoughts (“Did someone kidnap my son?”) and 4) feelings (a
sense of fear, and later joy when the boy is found.) The puzzle for psychologists has been figuring out
how these three pieces fit together.

Researchers on emotions have debated three questions:

1. Does physiological arousal always precede emotional experience?
2. Are different emotions marked by distinct physiological responses?
3. What is the connection between what we think and how we feel?

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