Core Emotions And Defenses

Posted on: February 15, 2018

Katherine E. Watkins is a Santa Monica psychiatrist and senior natural scientist at the RAND Corporation. The overall goal of her research is to improve the quality of care for individuals with behavioral health disorders, by developing, implementing, and evaluating innovative treatments and treatment models of health care delivery.

What is a core emotion? Core emotions are biologically determined emotional responses whose expression and recognition is fundamentally the same for all individuals, regardless of ethnicity or culture. They are largely composed of physical sensations that we come to recognize and name as a particular emotion. Core emotions are hard wired and are not subject to conscious control. Triggered by the environment, each core emotion is pre-wired to set off a host of physiological reactions that prime us to respond to the environmental stimuli. For example, fear is experienced by the fight or flight physical response. Researchers disagree about (more…)

Posted in: Fundamentals