• Question: why do we have emotions

    Asked by thingtwo to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 29 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by whharryandyaseer.
    • Photo: Michael Cook

      Michael Cook answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Emotions are very complicated! I certainly don’t know the full answer to this one, but I know that some emotions help look after us by motivating us to do certain things.

      For instance, feeling fear when we are in danger can encourage us to run away from things that might hurt or kill us. That’s really useful in keeping us safe!

    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      I don’t know the full answer either but feelings of love and caring help bond us together with other people. This would have been particularly important in the kind of ‘cave man’ days when bonding with each other would have helped the early humans work together as a group.

      The emotions themselves can be caused by the interaction of various hormones (so a famous one is adrenaline – it is released in times of stress and makes us either want to run away or to fight whatever is scaring us)

    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      I wonder whether this links to the question that somebody else asked about artificial intelligence here: /niobiumj12-zone/2012/06/22/do-you-think-ai-will-ever-take-over-the-world-or-become-influential-to-society-such-as-become-prime-minister-or/ because I think that currently AI (robots) don’t/can’t show emotion, but if they possibly might in future, they might become a bit more human like. But who knows…

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