Am I in a mood? Or being emotional?
Who am I to even attempt at putting a theory of emotion together, there are many! All I know is, if the great minds of our past and present can not align their concepts then all I can give is my subjective opinion.
We need a world with emotions, emotions help us deal with the world, imagine what a strange place it would be without them. But what a lot of us don’t think about is how do emotions work? Where do they come from and how do we even explain them?
None of us experience emotions the same way, its an assessment of the moment, everything that we have experienced throughout our lives lead up to how we now see that moment. Our social interactions, so the bond between dog and human for example. All of this effects what we become emotional about and how we respond and this is exactly the same for dogs and humans.
All emotions serve a purpose. We have emotional responses for our own individual reasons.
Unlike moods emotions are temporarily , they can be positive or negative in valence, the intensity of them can vary greatly, they are also involuntary and rapidly fast, they can happen without conscious awareness and in terms of survival this is vital.
Positive experiences increase activity in our left hemisphere of our brain while negative emotions show more activity in the right. Each hemisphere is in charge of the opposite side of the body, so for example your right brain controls your left hand. In terms of dog a tail wagging to the right is coming from the left hemisphere.
What moods do is prime our dogs for certain emotions. So if your dog is frustrated and something bad happens your dog may end up having a really strong negative emotion. If your dog is happy and something bad happens they may react less strongly. Moods create bias and can decrease flexibility. Looking at body language can help you learn what mood your dog is in, it gives you the ability to help improve your dogs overall mood.
What are emotions?
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What are emotions? 〰️
Emotions are made up of series of subjective, physiological, behavioural responses to a stimulus.
Physiological response is when the heart beats faster, respiratory rate is increased or decreased, pupils dilate or constrict, tension in the muscle groups. Every emotion produces different physiological responses in the body which involve changes of brain activation, neurotransmitter production and autonomic nervous system activity.
Behavioural response means vocalisation, body language, facial expressions.
Subjective experience means happiness, anger, sadness, fear, a negative or positive valance occurs here and influences these emotions. This part carries the valence of positive or negative. Now there is scientific distinction between the word feelings and emotions, feelings refer to subjective experience and this one aspect alone.
Cognitive appraisal from a experience could be a another component, this is where we have a conversation in our mind about what’s happening which is another thing to impact our emotional response. We know humans do this but we do not know if animals do.
Human emotions are easily recognisable, Paul Ekmon has found there are 6 universal emotions, these are emotions that are recognised world wide, no matter what culture.
Happiness
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Fear
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Anger
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Sadness
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Surprise
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Disgust
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Happiness 〰️ Fear 〰️ Anger 〰️ Sadness 〰️ Surprise 〰️ Disgust 〰️
As most of you know I love a little neuroscience.
I feel its important to give you an overview of The limbic system as this area of the brain has a set of structures that deal with emotions and memory.
It regulates autonomic or endocrine function in response to emotional stimuli and also is involved in reinforcing behavior
The Autonomic Nervous System lives inside the Hypothalamus and is divided into two, the Sympathetic division which keeps your body prepared for behaviour and the Parasympathetic division which helps your body rest and digest. The endocrine hormones help control mood such as adrenaline (epinephrine) and noradrenaline (norepinephrine) , growth and development, the way our organs work, metabolism , and reproduction.
The limbic system is composed of four main parts
The roles of these four main parts defined by Physiopedia are:
The amygdala is involved in evaluating the emotional valence of situations (e.g., happy, sad, scary). It helps the brain recognize potential threats and helps prepare the body for fight-or-flight reactions by increasing heart and breathing rate. The amygdala is also responsible for learning on the basis of reward or punishment.
The Hippocampus Found deep in the temporal lobe, and is shaped like a seahorse. It consists of two horns curving back from the amygdala. Psychologists and neuroscientists dispute the precise role of the hippocampus, but generally agree that it plays an essential role in the formation of new memories about past experiences.
The Thalamus and Hypothalamus Both associated with changes in emotional reactivity. The thalamus (sensory “way-station” for the rest of the brain) is primarily important due to its connections with other limbic-system structures. The hypothalamus is a small part of the brain located just below the thalamus on both sides of the third ventricle. Lesions of the hypothalamus interfere with several unconscious functions (such as respiration and metabolism) and some so-called motivated behaviors like sexuality, combativeness, and hunger. The lateral parts of the hypothalamus seem to be involved with pleasure and rage, while the medial part is linked to aversion, displeasure, and a tendency for uncontrollable and loud laughter.
https://www.physio-pedia.com/Limbic_System#:~:text=There%20are%20several%20important%20structures,%2C%20amphibians%2C%20reptiles%20and%20mammals.
Naturalist Charles Darwin proposed that emotions evolved because they were adaptive and allowed humans and animals to survive and reproduce.
According to the evolutionary theory of emotion, (and I love this) our emotions exist because they serve an adaptive role. Emotions motivate people to respond quickly to stimuli in the environment. so, they can assess it and respond in a way which helps improve the chances of success and survival.
There was a model developed by Davidson in 1998 called The Three Rs of Emotional Responding this is important to understand how individual animals respond emotionally to unidentified stimulus. I feel this is important for us to know.
Reactivity = peak response
Regulation - Time to reach peak response
Recovery - Time to recover from stimuli
Dogs that are more emotionally reactive can be receiving input with more intensity then others depending on learnt history, environment and even genetics. This will impact individual behaviour. they can become more tuned into threatening stimuli which can continue throughout their lifetime. Donaldson suggests there is a emotional timeline in responding that’s very individual. Each dog will vary in how long it takes them to reach peak response in arousal how high the response will be and how long it will take a dog to recover. All of these factors will impact the dogs behaviour.
When we are in a negative state, so having a bad day we may experience an event more negativity this is an automatic response and vice versa. We can also seek regulation in a controlled way to , approaching stimuli or turning away from it. Or dogs who seek to regulate their emotions when in an environment they are unsure of may jump on their human to get that pressure and contact to help them regulate themselves.
There is also a set of cognitive processes referred to Executive function these involves in planning, focus, impulse control that individuals can have different skill levels.
If your dog is Stressed or maybe lives in a stressful environment or the relationship between dog and owner has broken down or the dog has suffered trauma this will make it a lot more challenging for dogs to regulate their emotions.
Recovery means how long it takes our animals to retune to baseline. When your dog is being exposed to a negative stimulus, the amygdala is being activated, the longer its activated for the higher the anxiety levels and the longer the animal takes to return to baseline.
Why do you as a owner even need to be aware of your dogs emotions? Because you need to know how dogs perceive their environment so we can understand hows these negative moments are influencing our dogs behaviour, why is our dog affected by a certain stimuli and what we can do to help our dog through it.
