Are emotions acquired through experience, or are emotions instinct?

ThatDude30

Gold Member
Sep 29, 2017
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Pittsburgh, PA
I think that our experiences throughout life influence how we use our emotions. I think different environments also influence how we use our emotions for different situations. If our environment is more hostile, harsh, and the more you experience situations can effect our emotions.
Example: If your environment creates hostile, dramatic, experiences through out early years of life, would your emotions become numb, and not as expressive?
Example: If your environment creates caring, loving, and happy experiences through out early years of life, would your emotions become more vivid and more expressive?
Example: Do you think emotions are influenced by the people we are around through out early years of life?
If your parents are more expressive with their emotions, would that make you more expressive?
The different situations we experience through out early years of life, that cause different types of emotions, would we acquire the emotions that the people around us express during those situations?
Example: Your parents buy a puppy. Most would express the emotion happiness.
What if the environment you grew up in was hostile, dramatic, unpredictable, where happiness wasn't a common emotion. Would you still feel happiness?
Would we acquire the emotions from the people around us growing up or are emotions instinct and come naturally, and no matter the environment or people you are around growing up, that you will develop your own way of expressing emotion?
Or would we express the same emotions for the same types of situations we see while growing up?
Or will the way we express our emotions come naturally and develop our own way of expressing emotions for the same types of situations in our own way?
What do you think, emotions are acquired or are they instinct?
 
The manifestation of emotions is one thing, but the way we express them is quite another. Your title and your OP seem to go in two different directions.

I think the former is instuctual and the latter is learned behavior pattern, from the earliest models you have from infancy.
 

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