Prevención social

The literature reviewed for this thesis encompasses a number of different basic theories of what emotions are, and it is important for this thesis to be clear from the start on theoretical underpinnings. The concept of “emotion” has been studied from a large number of perspectives, including evolutionary, behaviourist, componential, socio-cultural and neuro- scientific (Feidakis, Daradoumis, & Caballe, 2011). Similarly, emotions have been conceptualized as “multi-component, coordinated processes of psychological subsystems

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including affective, cognitive, motivational, expressive, and peripheral physiological processes” (Pekrun, 2006, p.316) and as “holistic episodes that include physiological, psychological, and behavioral aspects” (Schutz, Hong, Cross, & Osbon, 2006, p.345).

Clearly, it is not possible to do justice to all of these areas in this review, but it is possible to pull out the major themes identified in the e-learning literature, to come to an understanding of the existing knowledge-base on what impact emotions have in the e-learning context. There are longstanding difficulties in reconciling emotional and cognitive processes. O’Regan notes that:

“learning theories, particularly those concerned with learning at higher levels of education, have largely treated emotion and cognition as occupying separate realms, cognitive processes having prime (or even sole) place in the educational scheme of things.”

(O’Regan, 2003, p.78) Indeed, if we accept the distinction between emotion and cognition, and wish to go beyond the experiencing of emotions to describing, defining or theorizing about them (as we are doing here), then a (cognitive) process of intellectualising does need to take place. But cognitive processes do not emerge via an emotion-less process, any more than emotions can be evoked or experienced without cognitive action. Some theorists have done this, and proposed definitions of emotion. For example, Gerrig and Zimbardo define emotion as “a complex pattern of changes, including physiological arousal, feelings, cognitive processes, and behavioural reactions, made in response to a situation perceived to be personally significant” (Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2002, p. 394).

But others speak of the impossibility of the task:

“One of the reasons for the continuing separation of emotion and cognition is the difficulty in defining just what it is we are talking about when we speak of emotion, there being many perspectives and a multitude of definitions.”

(O’Regan, 2003, p.78)

Given this difficulty, also noted by others e.g. Ortony & Turner (1990), and the unlikelihood of finding a definition which will be satisfactory from all theoretical perspectives, it might be advisable to adopt a more pragmatic, open attitude to their definition. Writing about “The flavour of emotions”, Tantam comments:

“What is obviously at issue is what an emotion is. If we choose it to be only an experience associated with a feeling, then we experience emotions in distinct episodes. These are likely to be less frequent mental occurrences than thoughts, and the number of happenings that cause emotions are quite limited. If we choose to consider that emotions enter into the processing of any new or changed happening, then it is likely that there is a constant undercurrent of emotion in our minds and that these emotions do not supplant thought, but

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complement it. We can also associate emotions particularly with feelings that occur at times of mental conflict when they may be disruptive, or we can associate them with gut feelings or heart promptings which show us a direction when our thoughts cannot. It seems likely that all of these differing views of emotion are right: that emotions can function in all of these ways, and more, just as thought may be the means to philosophize or to deceive oneself.”

(Tantam, 2003, p.26) As well as the variety of approaches to theories of emotion, various taxonomies of emotion have been proposed (see Appendix V). Zembylas comments that:

“while both the psychological and the sociological perspectives offer important insights, claiming that emotions are simply a matter of the individual or the group does not sufficiently address the complex role of emotions. Rather, a more useful approach locates emotions in the liminal space between individual and social constructivist approaches, challenging the divisions between individual vs. social, private vs. public, and emphasizing that emotion operates as a constitutively reciprocal component in the interaction/transaction of the individual and the social (Leavitt, 1996)”.

(Zembylas, 2008a, p.73) Given this multiplicity of perspectives, perhaps what an emotion does, or makes possible, is more important than what an emotion is. By this reasoning, a definition of emotion should, in fact, be a description of its action, and what it makes possible, rather than what it appears to

be. Perhaps as well as reasoning, it is permitted here to employ feeling or sensing, and if so,

an aspect of theory of emotion which feels important is that emotions are not simply things which happen to us, they are “intimately bound up with judgements we make, and they represent strategies for living these judgements within the world” (Dirkx, 2008). Dirkx cites Solomon who says “We live our lives through emotions, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning” (Solomon, 2007). This accords with the idea of emotions as processes, and ones that contribute to our life’s narrative.

Nevertheless, it is important - if only for this thesis - to settle on a workable definition of emotion. How can we hope to consider the role of emotions if we have no conception of what emotions are? Schutz et al provide a useful conceptualisation of emotion as:

“… socially constructed, personally enacted ways of being that emerge from conscious and/or unconscious judgments regarding perceived successes at attaining goals or maintaining standards or beliefs during transactions as part of social-historical contexts.”

(Schutz et al., 2006, p.344)

By “socially constructed, personally enacted”, the authors contend that emotions are “relational”, i.e. particular emotional experiences are brought into being by the interactions of individual and environment rather than existing as “exclusive features of a person or of an

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environment” (Schutz et al., 2006, p.344). By “social-historical contexts”, they mean that the emotional experience of, for example, anger “is dependent upon the particular social- historical context in which the transaction occurred”, and “what may result in anger in one social-historical context may not result in anger in another context” (Schutz et al., 2006, p.347). Whilst this definition of emotion does not adequately encompass aesthetics, spirituality, pleasures, and pains, or the biological basis of emotional experiences, and nor does it explain those emotions that are themselves goals, the emphasis on social-historical contexts does reinforce the idea that emotions are experiences which are afforded to an individual by a particular environment, where each affordance has its own context in historical time and geographical place. The concept of affordances was developed initially as a concept in the study of visual perception (Gibson, 1977). Salomon provides a more general conceptualization, with affordances as “the perceived and actual properties of a thing, primarily those functional properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used” (Salomon, 1993, p.51). We will return to affordances in section 2.2.4.