(1) What comes to mind when you think of emotions? It’s probably happiness, sadness, or fear. Emotions such as happiness, anger, sadness, and fear are important emotions, but human emotional experience is vast which means that people are capable of experiencing a wide variety of feelings. (2) Let’s consider what emotions do and when emotions happen. According to functionalist theories of emotion, emotions help people manage important tasks. Fear, for example, prepares the body to fight or flee; happiness rewards achieving goals and builds attachments to other people, but what causes emotions to happen in the first place? Although it usually feels like something in the world causes an emotion, such as a good hug, emotion theories argue that emotions most likely come from how we think about what is happening in the world, not what is really happening. After all, if things in the world directly caused emotions, everyone would always have the same emotion in response to something. Interest, for example, may motivate a person to learn something new, whereas it may not create a response in someone else. (3) For instance, appraisal theories propose that each emotion is caused by a group of appraisals, which are evaluations and judgments of what events in the world mean for our goals and well-being. We ask ourselves, is this relevant to me? Does it further or obstruct my goals? Can I deal with it or do something about it? Did someone do it on purpose? Different emotions come from different answers to these appraisal questions. (4) In general, emotions play important roles in everyday challenges such as responding to threats and building relationships. But emotions also help in other, more intellectual challenges for humans. Compared with other animals, we are born with little knowledge but have the potential for enormous intelligence. Emotions such as surprise, interest, and confusion first signal that something out of the ordinary has happened that deserves our attention. They then motivate us to engage with the new things that strain our understanding of the world and how it works. Emotions surely help us to fight or flee, but I believe that more importantly, they aid in learning, exploring, and reflecting. What can we understand from Paragraph (2) about a good hug?
Which of the following is the writer’s opinion?