Cognition and Emotion

are emotions consistent across cultures/ are they a natural kind? (Power & Dalgelish, 2008)

cross cultural research on facial expressions suggests that emotions are consistent and discrete, suggesting that emotions are a natural kind (a collection where all things in one category are the same as the other)

emotions as not a natural kind (Barrett, 2012 and James-Lang Theory (1890)

emotions are socially constructed responses to physical responses to the environment

→ interpretation of the same facial expression can change based on the situational context

bridge of love experiment (Dutton & Aron, 1974)

heightened sexual attraction (more called the phone number the lady gave them) when standing on a fear inducing bridge than on flat ground

→ misattribution of arousal

adrenaline experiment (Schacter & Singer, 1962)

participants injected with either adrenaline or placebo, those injected with adrenaline displayed emotion consistent with physiological state of those around them (angry or jittery)

Strack et al.,1988 pen experiment and Coles et al., 2022 facial mimicry task

holding pen in lips in a way that creates a smile found cartoons funnier than participants who held pen in lips to create a frown

→ FAILED TO REPLICATE, but Coles et al. (2022) found that facial mimicry and voluntary facial action did improve mood

dimensions of emotion (Watson & Tellegen, 1985; Barrett & Russell, 1998)

Watson & Tellegen: emotions lie on two dimensions of positive and negative affect, varying in terms of strength

Barrett & Russell: two dimensions of affect (pleasure and misery) and arousal (aroused and sleep) +

cognitive strategies to regulate emotion

• cognitive appraisal

• distraction (attentional deployment)

Lazarus (1966) 3 stages of appraisal

1. primary appraisal: initial response to a situation

2. secondary appraisal: seeing the resources you have to cope with the situation

3. reappraisal: stimulus situation and coping mechanisms will be monitored, other appraisals can be modified

appraisal processes (4)

• accountability: blaming others = more anger

• personal control: more control over bad situations = more guilt

• intellectualization: looking at the situation from an objective detached standpoint to reduce feelings of anxiety

• priming: using positive and negative words to influence emotional state

reappraisal + mechanism (Oschner & Gross, 2005)

reinterpreting the meaning of stimuli to change one’s emotional response to it

→ uses the central executive or higher level cognitive processes

attentional deployment (Van Dillen et al., 2009)

reducing the impact of a negative situation by distracting yourself (diverting cognitive resources)

Van Dillen et al., 2009: negative images had a weaker effect on mood when participants did an attentionally challenging math task

→ increased dlPFC activation reduces amygdala activation

Bower’s semantic network theory (1981)

• emotions form nodes in a semantic network, thoughts occur via the activation of these nodes, activated nodes activate other related nodes

Bower’s network theory: mood-state dependent memory

memory is best when mood at retrieval matches the mood of encoding

nuances of mood-state dependent theory (Kenealy, 1997; Ucros, 1999)

Kenealy, 1997: greater effect during free recall than cued recall (aka a greater reliance on internal cues)

Ucros, 1999: positive mood effects greater than negative mood effects (people apply cognitive strategies to change their mood)

Bower’s network theory: mood congruity (Bower et al., 1981)

info with emotional content is more easily learned when mood is congruent with content

→ Bower et al., 1981: participants recalled more from the sad story if they had been hypnotized to be sad and vise versa

Bower’s network theory: thought congruity Forgas & Locke (2005)

thoughts/beliefs/judgements are often congruent with emotional state

→ Forgas & Locke, 2005: teachers manipulated into a specific mood and their assessment of their workplace mirrored said mood (eg happiness = optimism)

Bower’s network theory: mood intensity (Eich, 1995)

as mood intensity increases, so does the activation of associated nodes in the semantic network

→ Eich, 1995: mood state dependent memory phenomena is stronger when mood is more intense

processing bias

emotionally congruent information is processed at the expense of emotionally incongruent info

Beck & Clark 1988 schema theory of depression and anxiety

clinical depression and anxiety are result of maladaptive schemas formed in childhood

→ anxiety = bias toward future threats, depression = bias toward negative past events and self

WHY DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY ARE HIGHLY CORRELATED

Beck schema theory attentional bias (Armstrong and Olatunji, 2012)

selective attention to threat related stimuli

→ faster RT on dot probe test when the probe is on a negative word

→ eye tracking on valenced words: depressed individuals are not as vigilant toward negative words but focus on positive words for less time (Armstrong and Olatunji, 2012)

Beck schema theory interpretative bias (Eysenck et al., 1987)

interpreting ambiguous stimuli as threatening

→ interpreting homophones as negative (Eysenck et al., 1987), most common in anxious individuals

Beck schema theory explicit memory bias (Murray et al., 1999)

retrieving negative information rather than positive or neutral during free recall tests involving conscious recollection

→ more common in depressed people or specific anxious disorders like OCD/PTSD over-remembering negative words on lists (Murray et al., 1999)

Beck schema theory implicit memory bias

superior performance for negative info on tests NOT involving conscious recollection

→ more common in anxious people completing incomplete words to be negative

components of an attentional bias

facilitation, delayed disengagement, avoidance

→ engagement and disengagement an issue for anxious people (Radinsky et al., 2014), evidence for all components weak for depression (Rogers et al., 2020)

inducing emotion experimentally

• autobiographical musings, effective but difficult to control

• IAPS standardized picture database with standardized valence, might be outdated

• music: falls upon the 2 dimensions of emotion (energy and affect), easy, reliable, less intense than photos

emotion at retrieval - encoding specificity hypothesis (Tulving & Thompson, 1973)

retrieval is best when mood at recall matches mood at encoding

→ emotion after encoding can still reshape the valence of a memory