Adrenaline
Physiological effects
Every emotional response has a behavioral component, an autonomic component, and a hormonal component. The hormonal component includes the release of adrenaline, an adrenomedullary response that occurs in response to stress and that is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. The major emotion studied in relation to adrenaline is fear. In an experiment, subjects who were injected with adrenaline expressed more negative and fewer positive facial expressions to fear films compared to a control group. These subjects also reported a more intense fear from the films and greater mean intensity of negative memories than control subjects. The findings from this study demonstrate that there are learned associations between negative feelings and levels of adrenaline. Overall, the greater amount of adrenaline is positively correlated with an arousal state of negative feelings. These findings can be an effect in part that adrenaline elicits physiological sympathetic responses including an increased heart rate and knee shaking, which can be attributed to the feeling of fear regardless of the actual level of fear elicited from the video. Although studies have found a definite relation between adrenaline and fear, other emotions have not had such results. In the same study, subjects did not express a greater amusement to an amusement film nor greater anger to an anger film. Similar findings were also supported in a study that involved rodent subjects that either were able or unable to produce adrenaline. Findings support the idea that adrenaline does have a role in facilitating the encoding of emotionally arousing events, contributing to higher levels of arousal due to fear.
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