Emotional responsiveness affects personality characteristics and social development of an individual as well as intelligence level. The person who is distressed much of the time will be less inclined to explore and manipulate the environment than the person who has a low threshold for interest and enjoyment. The emotion of interest is essential to the enhancement of intellectual development.⁵²...Experiments with rats have repeatedly shown greater intellectual development when they have been raised in an enriched state, which has stimulated their interest, rather than in an impoverished one.

The emotions play a vital role within each organism as part of its overall intelligence system. They have an established role in processing memory, impacting perception, promoting the instinct for survival and motivating behavior.

Anyone who accepts the premise that nature displays purposiveness would be likely to see the emotions system as an attempt on the part of intelligence to provide motivation to each organism, both for its own enhancement and for the group or society that it lives within. Our emotions system seems to be designed in such a fashion that, when working properly, it promotes organismic behavior which is balanced between the welfare needs of the individual and those of its society.

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