In psychology, emotions are complex evaluative (positive or negative) reactions of the nervous system in response to external or internal stimuli (e.g., fear, sadness, anger, happiness, surprise, ambivalence, and others). Different types of emotions are associated with relatively distinct patterns of subjective (internal) experience, overt behavior (e.g., crying or laughter), motivational states (e.g., approach or avoidance), physiological arousal, learning, and activity in the nervous system. Emotions are evolutionary adaptations, as they enhance an organism's ability to experience and evaluate its environment and thus increase its likelihood to survive and reproduce. In addition, emotions serve important functions in animal communication (between or within species). Despite that in many cultures emotions (passion) are contrasted with cognition (reason) as a source of motivation and decision making, modern psychological science recognizes that, in healthy animals and human

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