What is emotional experience?

Emotional responses used to be thought of as an exclusively cultural- psychologlcal response to some event in the environment.

Evolutionary psychologists have now demonstrated that many animals exhibit emotional responses (besides humans) and that emotions may be a deeply old evolutionary response that really grabs our attention at critical times.

For example, fear evolved to keep us alive in dangerous situations - we would either flee, fight or freeze as a response.

Jealousy of our mates "wandering behaviours" may be linked to our ability to help our children survive into adulthood (for females) and to ensure that if we help raise offspring its our own genes that get passed (for males).

Anger may be a response to a critical social situation that requires us to send a strong disapproving signal to others who are behaving badly.

Many emotional responses seem to be controlled through the amgdala part of our brains.