Understand Your Emotions was an attempt to lend a biological understanding to emotional responses. Enthusiastic science teacher Mr. Brent performs experiments on his students in order to teach them about how emotions effect voluntary and involuntary behavior. He first tries out the old Jack-in-the-box trick on three of the students, and notes their reactions to the surprise. He then performs other experiments, including hooking up one student to a polygraph machine and then testing his uncomfortable reaction to words like âdrillâ and âprobe.â The film is often ridiculous, as is the premise since emotional response is hardly understood biologically even today. This film is a good example of the sorts of questionable material that was forced on young people in the 1950s.
