he report of the correlation

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The report of the correlation

Between

Chocolate and emotion

WENDI SHEN

1st, Oct, 2008

Introduction: 

Nowadays we do care about ourselves, not only about our bodies, but also about our emotion. Emotion plays a significant role in our lives, and it was defined by Watson and Clark as distinct, integrated psycho-physiological response system. (Watson and Clark.1994, P. 89)  And in 1809 William James proposed that these changes occur as a response to some stimulating event,and our experience of these changes is what we called emotion. ( Banyard and Grayson. 1996. P103) This theory is referred to as the James-Lange theory, and this theory suggest that the recognition of emotion comes after the bodily response.

The most direct way to show our emotion is the facial expression, including happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, fear and disgust. Another approach to assessing emotions is self- report questionnaires, and it means we put some adjectives to describe emotions. But the problem of this approach is the scales used to measure various emotions are often associated with each other.

It is easy to find that our emotions could be changed by the things that around us, but it also could be changed by our diet. It has already been proved by psychologists that food can help people modulate emotions. We often see from the love films that when a person loses his or her lover, some of them would eat much than before. It does happen in our real lives. So it is a typical example that food has a great influence on our emotions.

There is no denying that chocolate is a kind of food, and a lot of people like it. Further more, some reports shows that chocolate is also a kind of medicine, because it is involved in caffeine which is a tranquilizer, and it can help people to keep calm. In some ways, chocolate does play a modulatory role in people’s everyday lives. Michael Macht and Dorothee Dettmer(psychology Department, University of Würzburg, Marcusstr) wrote the following words in the article Everyday mood and emotions after eating a chocolate bar (Michael Macht and Dorothee Dettmer. 2006.) 

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                                                           Emotional changes after eating chocolate were examined in everyday life. Thirty-seven healthy, normal-weight women ate a chocolate bar rated their subjective state 5, 30, 60 and 90 min after eating. Both chocolate and the apple reduced hunger, elevated mood and increased activation, but the effects of the chocolate were stronger. Eating chocolate was also followed by joy and, in some people, by guilt. Guilt responders experienced less intense positive emotions.’

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