Essay Example on Emotions in Animals and Human Beings

As a part mental state that affects behavior responses, thoughts, degree of pleasure or excitement and feelings; emotions are intertwined with temperament, disposition, mood as well as motivation. Living things have different ways to showcase their emotions, which makes it essential to identify different behavioral responses. Human beings have different ways to express their emotions compared to animals due to three distinct components involved in emotions. The three main components of emotions are; the subjective experience, the physiological response as well as the behavioral response. Subjective experience entails perceptions developed in mind during the decision-making process. Subjective experience influences the emotional response leading to a shift of feeling from mild annoyance to blinding rage or even combine different emotions. For instance, people can pretend to be happy during occasions, but they might not want to be in the ceremony because they are angered by other attendants; thus, possessing anger and happiness emotional response at the same time.

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On the other hand, the physiological response emerges from involuntary body responses controlled by the autonomic nervous system and the fight or flight reaction caused by the charging of the body, which is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. Therefore, due to such autonomic responses; the body tends to experience physiological reactions such as stomach lurching due to anxiety or the heart palpating as a result of fear (Barrett, 2017). The behavior response entails actions and reaction of animal and people as they try to maintain a balance between internal and external body system.

Animals tend to be more violent in expressing their emotions because they use actions while human beings can be less violent when expressing their emotions since they can express it through words. This paper studies emotions in animals and human being and the similarities as well as differences in emotions formation and response in animals and humans.

Emotions are created from the brain, which later creates physical changes in the body such as increased heart rate. Physical changes trigger an individual to respond to each type of feelings either positively or negatively. Positive emotions such as happiness as well as pleasure are connected to the prefrontal cortex while negative emotions such as fear, anger, and anxiety among other are connected in the amygdala (Grecucci,Theuninck, Frederickson & Job 2015). Additionally, emotions depend on the physical change, which occurs in the body as well as an individual understanding of body changes after the occurrence of the emotional occasion. For instance, when an individual's experiences are a terrifying condition such as being hit by the car, the body sends chemical messengers such as adrenaline, which causes physical changes resulting in increased breathing and heartbeats.

Chemical messengers sent to the brain moves in two sections of the brain; that is the cortex and hypothalamus at the same time. When the chemical messengers arrive in the cortex emotions such as fear or happiness is created while hypothalamus controls the automatic body responses such as running, shaking and crying among others. According to Grecucci et al. (2015), the cortex plays a significant role in emotion development since it where physical changes together with conscious mental processing are controlled and developed. For that reason, whenever an individual experiences emotional event, the brain decides which emotion is appropriate to be expressed ranging from fear, anger among others depending on the mental processing of physical information in the cortex.

Barrett (2017) states that the brain directs an individual to engage in flight or fight behavioral response due to stimulations. The brain tends to guess what is happening in an individual surrounding based on the information by sensory organs such as the ears, eyes, nose among others. Stimulations assist the brain in comparing the experience with current activities to select import information surrounding an individual (Barrett, 2017). For instance in case of a bomb explosion the brain perceives the sound as harmful due to past encounter with the sound leading to the production of chemical messengers such as adrenaline to trigger a behavioral response.

Consequently, an individual that is fond of animals such as the bee and has had close contact with the animal; the brain prepares the body to move close to the animal while the heartbeat ,blood pressure and filling of the sweat glands decreases since the brain perceives the bee as friendly due to past encounter with the buzzing sound. As a result, the bee-related simulations tend to be found in the mental concept, which enables the autonomic nervous system to display positive emotions and negative emotions in case of an attack since the bees can also cause pain and sting. Hence, the brain gathers some information and separates others, which leads to physical limitation based on the incoming sensory inputs.

Apart from stimulation, concepts trigger emotions since it gives meaning for the chemicals to develop tastes as well as smells. Whenever an individual develops a negative concept on the specific type of food, the brain would trigger negative responses due to biological constraints. Differences in culture lead to the development of different concepts in an individual brain and perception. Therefore, some people develop anger whenever they visit communities that consume animals such as dogs. Thus, the concept that a dog should act as a guard and a companion to human leads to negative emotional responses in some communities. Besides, differences in the concept of food preparation and ingredients have led to different responses generated by the brain once an individual moves to a different culture (Grandin & Deesing 2013). Some people are not able to fit in foreign countries because their food concept is different; thus, forcing the brain to trigger a negative behavioral response.

Consequently, sensations within the body such as; from the heart, metabolism, changing temperature or from the lungs, do not illustrate any psychological meaning since they are physical sensation caused by chemical reactions among other factors inside the body (Barret 2017). However, when such sensations are within the specific concept, they tend to trigger different behavioral response since the brain develops a picture on causes of the sensation indicating negative emotions (Barret 2017).For example, once an individual has a stomach upset and he or she is near food, the brain would trigger negative emotion such as hunger. However, when an individual has stomach upset, and he or she is in a stinking surrounding caused by sewage or pollution, the brain indicator negative emotions such as nausea. Thus, such a difference in locations illustrates different concepts that result in different emotions.

Emotions in animals tend to be different from human beings due to the size of the brain and the complexity of the cortex as well as their environment. Some wild animals tend to have a high level of emotions leading to constant fear compared to domesticated animals. Wild animals tend to be fearful because they do not experience constant interactions with human beings compared to domestic animals. Based on Grandin and Deesing (2013) study, the wild red fox was domesticated despite their aggressive behavior response for 20 years. During the domestication of the red foxes, 30% of the foxes were extremely aggressive while 60% were fearfully aggressive and 10% were entire without fear and aggression. After 20 years of domestication, the wild red foxes become tamed and started sorting human being contact through whining their tails whenever human beings approached (Grandin & Deesing 2013).

Therefore, change in environment influences animals to change their emotion since animals follow the stimulus-response principle as well as operant conditioning. These two principles emphasize that animals emotions manifest as a result of the relation between stimulus as well as a response; thus, emotions cannot exist without external stimuli. When the wild fox was domesticated the first time, they had a bundle of jangled nerves, which displayed several symptoms similar to psychosis. The wild fox developed fear due to open space movement, white objects and human beings among other items that exhibited panic and anxiety leading to stimulus-response since it was restricted to free itself from the surrounding. However, if the same wild foxes were freed, they would not be aggressive or violent since they would not encounter strange features such as human beings (Grandin & Deesing 2013).

According to Grandin and Deesing (2013), the environmental change led to change of the wild fox hormone profile such as an increase in neurotransmitters serotonin, which inhibits different types of aggression. Therefore, the more time the wild fox was domesticated, the lesser they became aggressive and seized from fearing human beings since they were part of their current environment. Animals with smaller or without prefrontal cortex tend to possess innate behavior, which assists the animal to detect danger once it's exposed in a dangerous surrounding. Most insects lack prefrontal cortex since their brain size is smaller; hence, they rely on their instinctive behaviors to determine psychological response to emotions. Innate behaviors are found in domesticated and wild animals leads to negative emotions such as the killing of the prey, when the predator spots the prey before and has the capability of killing. Innate behaviors control the animal's emotions since the animal is forced with the flight or fight reaction.

Although animals have different brain size, their emotions tend to be the same since animals with smaller brain size have more neurons on their forebrain compared to mammals and human beings larger prefrontal cortex. Regardless of their small brain structure, birds have numerous neurons in their forebrain, which makes it possible for them to detect and respond to emotions and threats (Grandin & Deesing 2013). Hence, the increased number of neurons in the bird's brain assists in the quick transition of information to nerve cell and muscles as well as gland cell, making it easier to fight its predicator or escape. Hence, neurotransmitter helps to send information similarly to the chemicals messengers in the prefrontal cortex.

Apart from the detection of danger using the prefrontal cortex, animals can use innate behavior to detect danger and response immediate unlike humans begins that lack innate behavior (Grandin & Deesing 2013). Once, an individual is cortex is removed; the person is not able to develop an emotional response; thus, leading to attack. Due to psychological nature in emotional response human beings can have combined mixed reactions such as anger and anxiety; however, animals do not have combined emotions.

Emotions in animals and human beings are similar because they affect the conscious mental reaction, which is subjectively experiencing specific objects accompanied by physiological as well as behavioral changes in the body. Emotions for both human and animals are split into physiological, behavioral as well as psychological responses. Similar to humans, emotions assist animals in detecting danger as well as opportunity-laden in their surrounding; hence, guiding animals to make a choice (de Waal 2017). Additionally, both animals and humans experience emotional response such as increased heartbeat rate as well as the release of adrenaline hormones during dangerous events.