Emotions can usefully be defined as states elicited by rewards and punishments, including changes in rewards and punishments (see also Rolls 1986a; 1986b; 1990). A reward is anything for which an animal will work. A punishment is anything that an animal will work to escape or avoid. An example of an emotion might thus be happiness produced by being given a reward, such as a pleasant touch, praise, or winning a large sum of money. Another example of an emotion might be fear produced by the sound of a rapidly approaching bus, or the sight of an angry expression on someone's face. We will work to avoid such stimuli, which are punishing. Another example would be frustration, anger, or sadness produced by the omission of an expected reward such as a prize, or the termination of a reward such as the death of a loved one. Another example would be relief, produced by the omission or termination of a punishing stimulus such as the removal of a painful stimulus, or sailing out of danger. These examples indicate how emotions can be produced by the delivery, omission, or termination of rewarding or punishing stimuli, and go some way to indicate how different emotions could be produced and classified in terms of the rewards and punishments received, omitted, or terminated.

Emotion is such a difficult concept to define adequately that there are at least 90 different definitions of emotions in the scientific literature. A simple definition of emotion is that it is a response by a whole organism, involving (1) physical arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience. As you can see from this definition, emotions contain both physical and mental components, and require conscious awareness. I guess one can ask, "if a person is happy, but does not realize that he or she is happy, is that person really happy?"

"Feelings are a natural part of being human, living in a body. They come in response to our inner and outer experiences of the present moment, in response to memories of past experiences evoked by/in the present moment and, often, in response to our anticipation of moments yet to come

How is feeling not an emotion?

But what is feeling? There is a difference between feeling and emotion; they are not the same thing. You can feel an emotion but you can't emotion a feel. Feeling is detached observation. It's the ability to notice and witness a particular experience in a dispassionate way without intellectual or emotional involvement, attachment, or reaction. Feeling is a cooperative effort between your attention, consciousness, and awareness, and is sometimes associated with the realm of spirit. If matter is objective and mind is subjective then spirit must be collective, right? Think about it a little and you will see the connection.

http://www.astromind.com/articles/experience.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/2911/music.html

"Sadness, anger, physical or emotional attraction (often called love), jealousy, bubbling over with mirth -they are all emotions. They can be pleasant or unpleasant, but they all make us restless. Feelings, like spiritual love, compassion and joy, are different. They can exist in a peaceful mind."

THE ROLE OF INTERPRETATIONS

Often your feelings are related to your interpretations of events more than to the events themselves. While it is natural to think that you are responding only to the events of your life, in fact you make interpretations or judgments of these events, and these interpretations play a key role in your emotional responses. When you stop to think about it, each event could yield a variety of emotional responses; your interpretation of the event helps link a particular emotional response to that event.

Consider the following diagram (adapted from Ellis, 1962):

"All individuals are socialized in accordance with cultural norms. To be socialized means to acquire particular habits in the three areas of human functioning:

? habits of feeling (AFFECTIVE DOMAIN OF BEHAVIOR)

? habits of thinking (COGNITIVE DOMAIN OF BEHAVIOR)

? habits of acting (SENSORI-MOTOR DOMAIN OF BEHAVIOR)

Every individual has a threefold-self in which the three parts function together, yet each can be distinguished and isolated for observation and self-modification.

The threefold-self has two arenas to function in. One is the arena of "others" (or the world out there), and the second is the arena of "self." These two arenas--Others and Self--each require their own particular way of functioning. The arena of others is referred to as "the red zone" and the arena of self as "the blue zone." Every day individuals have to function in both zones since they have to deal with others (red zone) and with oneself (blue zone).

A major principle of Traffic Psychology is the Three Domains of Driving Behavior. The three following domains envelop driving behavior: the Affective, the Cognitive, and the Sensorimotor. The Affective domain pertains to an individual's feelings and motivations. I think this is the most important domain. Your brain and it's thinking process control every thing that you do, including your behaviors during driving. Learning to maintain the motive of avoiding driving errors is an important Affective driving skill. When a person does not think of this, he will become a sloppy driver, and possibly cause an accident. Someone's feelings of wanting to be cautious and law abiding are weakened by the feeling of urge to hurry and not be too late. The more things on ones mind, the more difficult it is to focus. The Cognitive domain involves the judgement or thoughts that an individual has. This domain stems from the affective. The driver processes information by common sense logic. For example, in a certain driving situations, a person needs to make important decisions on what to do, the cognitive process controls this (whether or not it will be the right decision). The Sensorimotor domain is comprised of the individual's sensory inputs (vison, sounds) and motor output (actions). From turning the wheel to breathing, this domain is in charge of monitoring any physical action that is caused by the other two domains. These Three Domains of Driving Behavior need to be attended to individually in order to achieve a behavior modification.

Affective: His attitude was surprisingly positive and he let me know that he would cooperate as much as possible. I can definitely say he told the truth because every time I corrected him, he complied passively. I do think that a large part of his pleasant feelings arose from the way I set up day 2. This put him in a positive frame of mind and I also asked him to think ahead of time about what he could do during rough periods, especially since I already knew we had serious construction to deal with. Cognitive: This trip was not really the time for him to express his thoughts, it was my turn and he found it a little amusing to listen to my thought processing, for example: "I think it would be better if you followed the car in front of us with two car lengths between us, rather than half of a foot". He believed I was right and did so without any hesitation. Sensorimotor: He continued to be courteous when allowing other people to merge in front of him with hand gestures and waves to those that did the same for him. I had put on some relaxing classical music, and I think this also helped because he did not seem to be as tense as the day before. Again I credit my preparations for this day. Which allows me to conclude that there was bias to this experiment and maybe it would weaken if I repeated the "pleasant" driving instructions everyday.

" Slay Your Driving Dragon" Here, Dr. Driving tells us how we can determine if we have a dragon within ourselves. For instance, here are some of the examples he mentioned. You have a dragon if: **You enjoy calling other drivers obscenities. **You 'like' to take on the responsibility of teaching other drivers how to 'really' drive. Show them all how to drive, since you think you're such an expert. An expert at getting into accidents, getting tickets, getting scratches on you car, etc..... Dr. Driving says that if you have a dragon, it must be killed. To have a dragon is bad, not to have a dragon is good. Although some of us enjoy being an aggressive type driver, it's wise and much more safer to be a passive-type drive. To kill the dragon, is to save the lives of other drivers. Personally, I like being an aggressive type driver. However, I admit, I've been in some close calls. Where in my mind I ask the other driver, "Where'd you get your license from, 'Cracker Jacks'!" Hump, but I guess Dr. Driving is right.

Kari is normally outgoing and bubbly, but behind closed doors she explodes in rages so intense they sometimes last two or three days. She's even told her husband - a firefighter - that she hopes he dies in a fire. Like Shirley's husband, Kari's husband says her episodes of fury are driving him to divorce court.

Controlling the Uncontrollable
Dr. Phil believes uncontrollable rages like that experienced by Shirley and Kari (pictured at left) are only uncontrollable once they're set into motion. Otherwise, anger like theirs is "a disorder of choice." Stress is no excuse either. Dr. Phil says, "If you don't have stress, you're not alive." In short, Dr. Phil believes, "When people rage, it's because they don't have the courage to give their true emotions a voice." Those true emotions are fear, frustration, hurt and sadness. Which fuel your anger? For more information on managing your anger, visit the page for Dr. Phil's last appearance

We psychologists have long thought about why people become obsessed. There are a variety of theories on the topic. One common denominator is the idea that people become preoccupied with a thing, person, or activity because it satisfies a NEED. Humans are complex beings, and so the needs that fuel their behavior are complex and many. In the 1960s, Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, charted the wide variety of human needs according to a hierarchy ranging from very fundamental, biological needs to higher order ones of an aesthetic and self-actualizing nature. When a person is able to satisfy needs at one level, she is then prepared to move upward to the next. Perhaps, to answer the riddle posed by the Palace substitution script, we should take a similar path. By starting at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy and working our way up, we can attempt to place some words around and onto that PalaceThing that can be so captivating, consuming, and delightful (BTW, I should add that some of these explanations apply to MANY chat, newsgroup, and MOO environments on the net).

We simply do not put high value on relaxation. We evaluate ourselves more on measurable things such as personal achievements and financial worth -- not emotional wellness. We often tend to feel guilty if we aren't constantly being productive. This sense of guilt usually arises from our parents' pre-adolescent brainwashing. They taught us to achieve and perform; to continuously strive to become Superman. I know what you're thinking: "Yeah well, I do sometimes have problems unwinding, but it's not going to kill me."

Two noteworthy individuals, Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, studied the moral development of children. Piaget looked at how children develop moral reasoning. He found that young children have a much more primitive understanding of right and wrong behavior than do older children. "Who's Naughtier?" Piaget determined that younger children judge bad behavior by the amount of damage caused by a person's behavior. He would tell children a story with a moral dilemma. He would ask them to tell him "who is naughtier:" a boy who accidentally broke fifteen cups or a boy who breaks one cup trying to reach a jam jar when his mother is not around. Younger children attributed the "naughty" behavior to the boy who broke the most cups regardless of the other child's intent. This type of moral reasoning was called Objective Morality or Moral Realism. Older children attributed bad behavior to the boy who broke only one cup because his motives where bad. This, more advanced form of moral reasoning was called Subjective Morality or Autonomous Morality. Piaget did not feel that children fully achieved this stage of moral development before the ages of twelve or thirteen. "What's Right?" Kohlberg carried Piaget's work into adolescence and adulthood. He also told children moral dilemma stories, but he would ask them to tell him what they thought would be the right thing to do. Their answers led him to the discovery of three levels of moral development with two stages each: The first level is called Preconventional. During this level children are concerned with avoiding punishment (Stage 1: Punishment-Obedience) and getting one's own needs met (Stage 2: Individualism). This level and its stages fit into the framework of young children, up to the age of ten years. The second level is called Conventional. During this level children are more concerned with living up to the expectations of others (Stage 3: Interpersonal Conformity) and want to do the right thing because it is good for the group, family, or institution (Stage 4: Social System and Conscience). This level and its stages fit children over the age of ten years and on to adulthood. The third level is called Postconventional. During this level individuals govern their behavior by the relative values and opinions of the groups they live and interact with. Right behavior is based on a "social contract" (Stage 5: Social Contract and Individual Rights) with others and in the validity of universal moral principles (Stage 6: Universal/Ethical Principles) which may or may not agree with societies laws. Laws that agree with universal moral principles are obeyed but when those laws violate these principles, the individual follows the principles instead.

In order for a story to be effective in the long run, though, it must be "embodied." The individual or institution that bears the narrative must behave consistently with it. Because if you tell one story but you live another -- if you don't walk the talk, to use the vernacular -- then the story doesn't have appeal.

If you're a very good embodier, though, you don't have to be such a good storyteller because your symbolic behavior really conveys the point. That's interesting in the corporate sense because the more you're trying to create a new business, or change a business radically, the more important is the story you tell. But for an organization that's very well launched, where the story is quite set and you don't need to change it -- as in the Army or the Catholic Church -- it is only important that you embody the story.

Many people really don't think traffic psychology is important however if we look at the past you will see that traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of deaths and injuries. The cost of car insurance has gone up because of traffic accidents, this has become an economic worry for many Americans. Looking at all of this depressing information, we have to realize that traffic psychology is important.

My opinion is that traffic psychology is important, and not just because of the economic costs, and accidents, but also for the sake of our own mental well being. Driving can be very stressful if you let it get to you. Who knows what we are capable of doing? A good example is the tragic death of an off duty officer in October. According to the newspaper an alleged traffic confrontation between the off duty officer and a 17 year old man led to the death of the officer. According to witnesses the two men pulled over on the freeway to argue and, the 17 year old man with no prior history of arrests pushed the officer off a freeway viaduct. Unfortunately the officer did not survive the fall and the young man was arrested, and is now waiting for trial. We can all learn from this as well as many other types of similar incidents that traffic psychology is important. I think traffic psychology should be included in drivers education in high schools as well as drivers education in the judicial system.