Seneca's Philosophy compared to Lazarus Theory

Lazarus Theory states that a thought comes before every emotions or physiological arousal. His theory basically says that first you have to think about the event and just then experience the emotion. For example, when somebody announces that something sad happened, first you think about it and just then you experience the emotion of sadness and an physiological arousal such as crying.
                                          EVENT ---> THOUGHT ---> EMOTION
                                                                                   ---> AROUSAL

He expects the computer would work
 properly but it doesn't
 so he gets angry

Seneca's Philosophy on Anger says that anger is a philosophical problem and can be treated philosophically. He believes that the anger is caused by our high expectations because when the things don't go the way we want them to go, we get angry. Whereas when we have lower expectations we don't get angry because we do not really expect that it will go that well either. Seneca also says that poor people are less angry than rich people because they have less expectations on life and they got used to the hardships of life. On the other side, rich people have really high expectations and get angry whenever something doesn't go as they want it to go. Seneca also thinks that we should just accept some things that we cannot change. He compared us to a dog tied to a moving chariot because in order to maximize the its happiness, the dog has to follow the chariot. This relates to humans because if we want to be happy we should sometimes just follow and accept something that we are not able to change. If we were going to resist to follow, it would just bring hassles if we would resist to follow something that we cannot change.
Seneca's Philosophy relates to Lazarus Theory because both of them are about how thought can bring an emotion. In Seneca's Philosophy, the thought about how good it should have been brings the emotion of anger. If we did not have high expectations for something we would not get upset when it goes the other way we want it to go. In Lazarus Theory, the thought is involved in the process of feeling emotion because it says that first you have to think about the situation that happened and just then you  can experience the emotion. 

Facial Expressions Of Emotion Are Innate, Not Learned

The article in the ScienceDaily  claims that according to a new study, facial expressions of emotion are 'hardwared' into our genes which means that instead of learning how to express the emotion, we are already born with the ability to do so. The study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that sighted and blind individuals use the same facial expressions, producing the same facial muscle movements in response to specific emotional stimuli. Matsumoto compared the facial expressions of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. He found out that both the blinded and the sighted athletes manage their expressions of emotion in the same way according to social context. For example, both the blinded and the sighted athletes that lost showed the same emotion. This shows that the facial expressions are innate because the blinded athletes did not have a chance to observe and learn to express the emotions and still showed the same facial expression as the sighted athletes did. 

I chose this article over the others because I think that it is really interesting that the facial expressions of emotion are innate. To be honest, I have always thought that you learn how to express the emotions from the others but this study clearly shows that I was mistaken. 

I think that this article relates to one of the evolutionary theories which suggests that the emotions are natural and innate. One of the main reasons why are they innate is because they are meant to help us survive and back then they could even save our lives. 

How Do Culture and Gender Affect Expressing Emotions?

All of us have emotions. However, there have been conducted studies that show that Gender and Culture play a big role in expressing the emotions. For example, in some cultures they consider smiling as a sign of weakness so the people from these cultures do not smile that often because they have learned that they should eliminate smiling to be considered to be strong characters. There are also some differences between males' and females' form of expressing the emotions.

Gender Differences

Men are able to control their
emotions

The modern psychological researches show that males and females possess different skills of sending and receiving the emotions. Generally, women are more emotionally expressive (Miller, 1976), whereas men are able to conceal or control their displaying of emotions (Buck, Miller,& Caul, 1972). Moreover, women tend to express emotions through facial expression and interpersonal communication, whereas men generally express emotions through actions such as engaging aggressive, dangerous, or distracting behavior.

Women are very emotionally
expressive 

There has been also some studies that were investigating smiling of men and women. Over 90% of the studies showed more females than males smiling, and over 50% found this difference to be statistically significant. It was also found that the smiling difference was greatly reduced in less social situations for females. Furthermore, research has uncovered fairly reliable sex differences in the experience and expression of sadness. Substantial evidence shows that women are more likely to be sad and engage in more interpersonal communication about their problems.
Cultural Differences

One of the biggest differences between cultures in expressing emotions are the cultural display rules. These rules say what emotions expressions are appropriate and which are not. Every culture has slightly different rules than the other cultures. One useful distinction in these rules is made between cultures which are considered generally 'collectivist' such as the Japanese and cultures considered 'individualist' such as Americans. Collectivist cultures tend to cherish 'fitting in' and homogeneity and getting along with others, while individualist cultures tend to emphasize the importance of individual autonomy and power.

 Studies have found that those from collectivist cultures are more likely to mask negative emotions with smiles - but only do this when in the presence of others, not when they are alone which means that they are just showing off to 'fit in'. There are also big differences in controlling emotions among different cultures. There have been conducted a study where they found that it is Russians who most tightly control the display of their emotions, closely followed by the Japanese and South Koreans. On the other side, Americans displayed the least control over their facial expressions (Matsumoto, 2006).