Emotionality

William James preferred to focus on the physiological aspects of emotional response, although he did not disregard the perceptual or cognitive components.

Solomon[clarification needed] identified that in the Romantic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reason and emotion were discovered to be opposites.

Many researchers have attempted to find a connection between specific emotions and a corresponding pattern of physiological responses, but the results have been inconclusive.

[6] Lastly, cognitive theories reason that thoughts and other mental activity have a vital role in the stimulation of emotions.

[7] Common sense suggests that people first become consciously aware of their emotions and that the physiological responses follow shortly after.

For example, this theory suggests that if someone is driving down the road and sees the headlights of another car heading toward them in their lane, their heart begins to race (a physiological response) and then they become afraid (fear being the emotion).

[8] The Cannon-Bard theory, which was conceptualized by Walter Cannon and Phillip Bard, suggests that emotions and their corresponding physiological responses are experienced simultaneously.

Using the previous example, when someone sees the car coming toward them in their lane, their heart starts to race and they feel afraid at the same time.

Men may feel that if they engage in this perceived weakness, it may contradict their attempts to show strength and other traits of the male gender role.

[12] Ekman's theories were early challenged by James A. Russell, and have since been tested by a variety of researchers, with ambiguous results.

[14] Current thinking favors a mix of underlying universality combined with significant cultural differences in the articulation and expression of emotion.

In a study of a sample of 1,655 youth (54% girls; 7– 16 years), it found that the higher their positive emotionality was, the lower their depression would be.

The youth's temperament, adaptive emotion regulation (ER) strategies, and depressive symptoms were determined through a questionnaire.

[17] A study by Charles T. Taylor et al. linked being exposed to positive emotions before a surgery to less anxiety and a decrease in having symptoms after treatment.