Emotion-+a+help+or+a+hinderance?


 * Emotion- a help or a hindrance? **

Dennis Bergkamp, a famous Dutch footballer, has the nickname Non-Flying Dutchman due to his fear of flying. This severely limited his ability to play in away matches in European competition and to travel with the Dutch national side. In some cases he'd travel overland by car or train, however the logistics of this often resulted in him missing the games before or after the tie so he'd frequently just miss the game altogether. Fear, is of course, an emotion but, as in the case above, it can often lead to irrational behavior. This is an example of **reason** being negatively affected by our emotions. You may have a complete understanding of the physics involved with keeping an aircraft in the air and you may be fully aware of the statistics that claim that you are more likely to be killed in a car crash than plane crash but that //FEAR// keeps you from boarding an aircraft. Our perception of things can be coloured by strong emotions. For example, you may have a distaste for a particular smell because you associate it with a time or place which you disliked. When we feel a strong emotion such as love it can manipulate what we see (or at least what we choose to see) with those who we love.

Finally, emotion can also influence the **language** that we use and that we hear. Prejudiced opinions can lead to the use emotive language. For example, you may hear from members of other tribes that members of the Chagga tribe in Tanzania are ‘greedy’ and will try to ‘rip you off’ with any transaction. Or emotion can enhance and strengthen the message being conveyed in language.

Have a look at the lyrics and the meaning behind them for this song by British band, Elbow.



Elbow- Great expectations (video) Audio only: media type="file" key="10 Great Expectations.m4a" width="300" height="50"

**TASK**:
 * 1) Your group will be given a poster with one of the following titles on it: ‘Emotion & Reason’, Emotion & Perception’ or ‘Emotion & Language’.
 * 2) In your group provide a concrete example of how emotion can hinder understanding in the other WoK in the title- write this example on the poster.
 * 3) Rotate the poster between each group until there are three examples for each poster.
 * 4) Now the tricky part- repeat steps 1 to 3 above only this time provide an example of how emotion assists understanding in the WoK in each title.