Ch. 11 Emotional (Hemispheric Differences)

inhibition

a specialized neural mechanism where the left and right hemispheres use the corpus callosum to regulate each other, with the right hemisphere often dominant in global inhibition and top-down cognitive control.

behavioral activation system (BAS)

Activity of the left hemisphere, especially its frontal and temporal lobes marked by low to moderate autonomic arousal and a tendency to approach, which could characterize happiness or anger.

Activity of right hemisphere (frontal and temporal lobes):

associated with the behavioral inhibition system (BIS).

Greater activity in the frontal cortex of the left hemisphere:

People tend to be happier and more extraverted.

greater right-hemisphere activity:

People tend to be more socially withdrawn, cautious, and prone to unpleasant emotions

the right hemisphere is more active in:

Perceiving emotions, especially negative emotions such as fear

Support for the idea of basic emotions:

relied on consistency of facial expressions. In countries throughout the world, people have similar facial expressions for similar situations, such as weddings, fireworks, or sports competitions

People who are blind since birth:

exhibit expressions of happiness, sadness, fear, pride, and shame that resemble those of sighted people

It is agreed that some emotional expressions are partly built-in, though capable of learned modification.

The controversial issue is whether those expressions fall into a small number of discrete categories.

People recognize expressions:

their own culture better than those from other cultures

Cross-cultural ability to recognize the expression for happiness:

at better than 50 percent accuracy

Cross-cultural ability to recognize the expression for anger:

low accuracy on many other expressions

People with psychopathic tendencies:

worse than average to identify complex emotions

Successful identification of emotions:

correlated strongly with axons connecting the frontal cortex to the anterior temporal cortex

The alternative to basic emotions:

Describe emotional experiences along one or more dimensions, such as pleasure to displeasure, and degree of arousal. One model is that what we label as emotions are cognitive elaborations (that is, our attributions) for feelings of pleasure or displeasure

Why does the usual way of testing recognition of emotions overestimate accuracy?

The usual procedure is to ask people to match six faces to six labels. After you identify one or more for sure, you improve your chance of guessing other ones correctly.

What biological factor influences the ability to recognize people’s emotional expressions?

Connections between the frontal cortex and the anterior temporal cortex