Intentionally influence emotions.

• Emotional experiences consist of thoughts, feelings, affective responses (e.g.,

sadness, anger, joy, determination), physiological responses (changes in internal bodily

functioning), cognitive responses (e.g., a conceptual representation of an event), and

behavioural responses (an outward expression such as flight or resistance).

There is considerable debate as to whether emotions and emotional experiences are

universal or culturally determined. One of the first modern attempts to classify emotions

was Adam Smith's study, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This book is based largely on

data from Western Europe. Some anthropologists have explored the relationship between

emotional disposition or expression and culture, most notably Ruth Benedict in her

ethnological study, Patterns of Culture; Jean Briggs in her ethnography Never in Anger,

Michelle Rosaldo in her ethnography Knowledge and Passion; Lila Abu-Lughod in her

ethnography Veiled Sentiments; and Katherin Lutz in her ethnography Unnatural Emotions.

Paul Ekman has found that some facial expressions of emotion appear to be culturally

independent, as described in his book Emotions Revealed.

In his book Descartes' Error, the neurologist Antonio Damasio has developed a

universal model for human emotions. Damasio defines "emotion" as: the combination of a

mental evaluative process, simple or complex, with dispositional responses to that process,

mostly toward the body proper, resulting in an emotional body state, but also toward the

brain itself (neurotransmitter nuclei in the brain stem), resulting from additional mental

changes. Damasio distinguishes emotions from feelings, which he takes to be a more

inclusive category. Damasio also distinguishes between "primary emotions", which he

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takes to be innate, and "secondary emotions," in which feelings allow people to form

"systematic connections between categories of objects and situations, on the one hand, and

primary emotions, on the other."

Daniel Goleman and other investigators have researched what is entailed in the

abilities to manage one's own and other people's emotions.

Apart from the common western views as described above, also traditional systems

such as Buddhist psychology survived for thousands of years with treasuries of experiential

knowledge, but are often disregarded because of their subjective approach. However,

exactly the aspect of introspection is extremely valuable for psychology - as long as we

have no machines which can actually show us thoughts and thought processes, a certain

level of subjectiveness is unavoidable.

Text 3. Destiny

Destiny concerns the fixed natural order of the universe. It is the invincible necessity

to which even the gods must accede, as the Sibyl of Delphi confessed. Destiny is fate,

personified in Greek culture by the three Moirae (called the Parcae by the Romans), with a

Nordic counterpart in the three Norns. The "doom of the powers" in Norse mythology is

Ragnarok the battle which even Odin must inevitably face, at the end of the world.

Destiny is the irresistible power or agency that is conceived of as determining the

future, whether in general or of an individual. The remorseless goddess Nemesis for early

Greeks like Homer personified the pitiless distribution of fortune, neither good nor bad,

simply in due proportion to each according to his deserts. In the time of the Hellenistic

monarchies, after the death of Alexander the Great, the image of Tyche, crowned with a

mural crown of city walls, embodied the fortunes of a city, which struggled to keep afloat in

the chaotic violence among the Successors, as Alexander's heirs were called.

On an individual or even a national level, destiny is a predetermined state or condition

foreordained by the Divine or by human will (for example, in Manifest Destiny). Destiny is

the human lot in life. It has taken the function of its Old English counterpart "doom", as in

the Domesday Book that took a census of England for the Normans in 1086, "doom" having

taken on foreboding ominous connotations of the universal cataclysm at the end of time.

Destiny is a source of irony in Greek tragedy, as it is in the Schiller play that Verdi

transformed into La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny") or Thornton Wilder's The

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Bridge of San Luis Rey, or MacBeth's knowledge of his own destiny does not preclude a

horrible fate. The common theme is: try as the protagonists might to change the patterns,

they cannot escape a destiny if your fate has been sealed.

A sense of destiny in its oldest human sense is in the soldier's fatalistic image of the

"bullet that has your name on it" or the moment when your number "comes up." The human

sense that there must be a hidden purpose in the random lottery governs the selection of

Theseus to be among the youths to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Many Greek legends and

tales teach the futility of trying to outmaneuver an inexorable fate that has been correctly

predicted. Reading the inscrutable Will of Destiny is the job of the shaman, the prophet, the

sibyl and the seer.

Text 4. Psychological views of happiness

Martin Selig man in his book Authentic Happiness gives the Positive Psychology

definition of happiness as consisting of both positive emotions (like comfort) and positive

activities (like absorption). He presents three categories of positive emotions:

• past: feelings of satisfaction, contentment, pride, and serenity.

• present (examples): enjoying the taste of food, glee at listening to music, absorption