Difference between revisions of "ABC Theory of Emotion"

Revision as of 14:40, November 3, 2013

The ABC Theory of Emotion represents a widely-accepted model of how one's feelings and behavioral patterns are created. It asserts that the emotions we experience such as, for example, frustration or anxiety, and resulting behavior, do not come directly from the events in our lives, but from the interpretations we make of those events, i.e. from conscious or subconscious beliefs we bring to that situation.^[1] Its roots stem from a Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) developed initially by Albert Ellis in 1955.^[2] According to him, over 200 research articles confirm this theory.^[1] The traditional viewpoints and approaches about human behavior fail especially when it comes to understanding and dealing with so called disturbed character. The current research indicates that the cognitive-behavioral therapy consisting in confronting erroneous thinking patterns and reinforcing a person's willingness to change them together with their resulting behavior patterns is the treatment of choice in such case.^[3]

The Basic model

The model's fundamental principle can be outlines as follows^[2]:

• A...stands for Activating events in people's lives; these events represent what happens.
• B...stands for people's conscious or subconscious Beliefs about these events and their meaning.
• C...stands for emotional and behavioural Consequences or Concomitants of their beliefs; they represent the feelings and behavioural patterns these people have as a result.

After identifying these elements the central proposition of the theory is that the emotional and behavioural consequence (C) is not caused by the Activating event (A) directly, but by interpretation or belief (B) one has of the meaning of the activating event.

The Extended model

According to practitioners of RET, there is also extension of ABC theory for corrective approach consisting in learning how to dispute with our previous beliefs and replace them with new ones:

• D...stands for Disputive belief or statement representing more accurate self-talk as result of effort to bring our emotional responses and behaviours under the control by learning to identify what we are saying to ourselves. This would then likely lead to:
• E...stands for the new Emotional consequence, feeling of relief and/or functional behavior.

Examples

Homosexual Lifestyle

• • A: Activating event: Christopher Yuan explains in his book 'Out of A Far Country'^[4], co-authored with his mother, that what happened to him, when he was just 9 years old, was that he was exposed to pornography in a friend's house.^[5] That gave him a distorted view of what sexuality is and awoke feelings of being attracted by images of both men and women.^{[6][note 1]}
  • B: Belief about the activation event and its meaning: Little by little, he interpreted the activation event in line with popular unscientific misbelief that such feelings of sexual attraction can only be the result of being 'born gay'.^{[4][note 2]}
  • C: Behavioural consequences of the belief: His belief about the activation event produced his later behavioural patterns including sexual experimentation, visiting gay clubs and bars, and promiscuous sexual encounters with other men.^[6] This homosexual lifestyle was not caused directly by activation event itself, but by his interpretation of its meaning. Later, after being diagnosed as HIV positive, he realized that his justification for homosexuality was wrong and he mistakenly allowed his feelings and sexual passions to dictate who he was.^[4] When passions are confused with same-sex attractions, people still have to choose to act on those feelings and their personal beliefs play the key role in this respect.^[11] Slovak homosexual Jožko who previously had six relations with men quit his homosexual lifestyle and in 2012 married Julia after he changed the interpretation of his same-sex attractions. He compares them to birds that "one cannot prevent from flying all over your head but what one can do is to prevent them to make a nest upon it."^{[12][13][note 3]} How we think, what we believe, and the attitudes we've developed largely determine how we will act.^[3]

Notes

1. ↑ cf.
   • Feeling distant from her unsympathetic mother, Anne Frank, a teenage girl, writes of her confusing sexual attraction for females in a diary addressed to imaginary friend: "I remember that once when I slept with a girlfriend, I had a strong desire to kiss her and that I did so. I could not help being terribly inquisitive over her body, for she had always kept it hidden from me. ... I go into ecstasies every time I see the naked figure of a woman. ... It strikes me as so wonderful and exquisite that I have difficulty in stopping the tears rolling down my cheeks. If only I had a girlfriend." Anne Frank's disclosure is a vivid example of the kinds of thoughts within many young people who occasionally experience this type of attraction. They are both alarmed and excited in the fleeting moments or dreams when their bodies are sexually drawn to the same sex. Same-sex attraction are not unusual among teenagers. Some say that these attractions qualify a person as "homosexual". But this isn't true. The attractions exist, in part, for reasons outside of a person and do not mean they are abnormal. The existence of such feelings, however, signals a deep hunger and profound confusion.^[7]
   • The first Slovak documentary film on the gay community Crying of Angels (2005-2008) by Zuza Piussi captures the activating event for entering the homosexual lifestyle by one of the film’s major young protagonists in the following way:
   "This is the first man in my life to whom I feel so incredibly attached, when I’m falling asleep, I’m thinking of him, my first morning thought belongs to him, when I'm doing whatsoever, I’m thinking of him. Can you imagine how it feels when somebody tells you how he desperately likes you, how he wants you, how he adores every simple bit of your body - I have never experienced anything like that before." Yet, after some time, the very same protagonist exhibits signs of replacing his old beliefs with new ones and adopting more accurate self-talk as result of effort to bring his emotional response and behaviour under the control after the lesson learnt how important it is to identify what we are saying to ourselves: "We broke up ... What if ... I became straight. What if I try to attract these chicks, there seem to be passing some right now. Now, after the last break-up, I feel like having an aversion to all guys, I don’t even meet with other males at the moment, nothing, nada, it does not matter whether they are straight or gay ... I just feel such inner aversion to all penises ... It's brutal how something broke that radically within me, for the first time I started thinking much differently -what if I have my own child, and this kid would not be with a man, what if I have it with wife and live with a woman. Perhaps it would be like passing to some sort of higher level."^[8]
2. ↑ cf.:
   • External Link: Are brains "gay"?^[9]
   • "Worse yet: when people lament their homosexual tendencies, you have just told them, “You’re gay. You were born that way. Accept it.” Of course what you do not realize is that homosexuality is a learned response, a teachable response, and a recruitable response. Such recruitment took place in ancient Greece, and again in medieval Rome. And recent evidence suggests it is taking place again."^[10]
3. ↑ cf. Homosexuality is a persistent preoccupation with erotic encounters involving members of the same sex, which may or may not be acted out with another person. Put another way, it is making deliberate plans to entertain and cooperate in sexual fantasies or behaviors with someone of the same sex. Although having the same-sex attractions is not something for which we are morally responsible, it is when we begin planning to entertain these attractions in fantasy or behavior that we cross the line. If the attractions turn into a preoccupation, the temptation to embrace homosexual behavior is great.^[7]

References