Page 98 - Advanced Biblical Counseling Student 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?” 155 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.” 156

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?

155 Myers, p. 255, 2012
156 Ibid., p . 224.

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