Physiological and Social Influences on Emotions

I felt the combination of physiological and social influences on emotions make most sense to me because I am able to relate to both of these influences on emotions. For example, according to the text, "physiological influences are when we experience emotion when external stimuli cause physiological changes in us" (Wood, 2010, p.176). The example in the text is when we get a test back and we receive a low grade, we tend to get that knot in our stomach because that is our bodily reaction to psychologically feeling bad. Or when we like that cute girl or guy and we run into them and we completely blow it with them on a conversation, we have that feeling inside that we know we messed up and wish we got a second chance to do it over. Social influences on emotions mentioned in our text are the "groups we identify with emotional communities because they teach us how to understand and express emotions" (p.176). This leads into the interactive view of emotions which "proposes that social rules and understandings shape what people feel and how they do or don't express their feelings" (p.176).

I feel I can relate to physiological and social influences on emotions because they both have are what influence how I feel about people and situations I go through on a daily basis. For example, I experienced both last night when I was with a few members from my organization where we were at a mocktails event on alcohol awareness at a fraternity house. There were about 70 students there and I have spoken in front of that many people before however, never had to say as much as I was supposed to last night. When it came for my turn to speak which I only really had four minutes to get my point across, after I concluded my part, my team lead and I noticed I have forgotten to mention a few things. I felt during the whole fifteen minute presentation I thought all the students just couldn’t wait for us to leave, so I tried to get my information across in a timely manner, and I kind of froze when I started talking and didn’t get to mention everything I was planning on saying. Afterwards I felt bad (physiological influence) on the inside as I had not accomplished what I was hoping for. However, based on what my team lead had mentioned and showed how she felt, that also made me feel as I had let her down. However, ultimately the three of us each missed what we were supposed to completely say, however since we didn't have much time to begin with, the person who asked us to come was pleased with our presentation (at least it looked like she was, I hope). I believe these two influences on emotions I am able to relate to more because with perceptual influences on emotions, "which is also called appraisal theory, mentions that subjective perceptions shape what external phenomena mean to us" (p.174). I don't think I can relate to this influence as much as I do with the other two influences. They are all good to be aware of though.