L8: Emotions - Cognitive factors

Not included: mere exposure effect (Moreland and Zajonc): last few slides

Multiple roles of cognition in emotion

• Schachter’s two-factor theory

  • Emphasis on labeling of arousal

• Other cognitive accounts place emphasis on the generation of emotion

• These aren’t mutually exclusive

Appraisal theory

• Basic claim of appraisal theories is that emotion is based on an appraisal of the meaning and significance of an event

Who is one of the most influential appraisal theorisits

Lazarus

Appraisal: Lazarus’ distinctions

• Primary appraisal

  • Something relevant to the person’s well-being has occurred

• Secondary appraisal

  • The consequences of a given action (any benefits or harm)

• Reappraisal

  • Happens later than appraisal

Role of Appraisal in emotion

Emotions are caused and differentiated by appraisal

What are Lazrus’ 6 appraisal components

• Primary appraisal

  • Goal relevance

  • Goal congruence

  • Type if ego-involvement (e.g. self-esteem, or moral values, or life goals)

• Secondary appraisal

  • Blame or credit (accountability/responsibility)

  • Coping potential (how can I deal with this situation?)

  • Future expectancy (are things likely to change for better or worse?)

Laboratory evidence for emotion being caused by appraisal

Speisman et al.

• Ps watch film depicting adolescent aborigines undergoing a circumcision ritual

• IV (different voiceover soundtrack to manipulate viewers’ appraisal of films emotional content)

  • Intellectualisation (detached perspective)

  • Denial (ritual occasion for joy not pain)

  • Trauma (emphasised unpleasantness)

• Physiological measure (skin conductance and HR) used to measure emotional response

• Results

  • Much higher skin conductance for trauma condition than any other

• Critique

  • Strength of emotion shown to vary, not the quality

Affect Primacy

• Proposed by Zajonc

• Argues emotional reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing

  • E.g. feel fear after watching a snake

• We can form evaluations without being aware of having been exposed to stimuli (exposure effect)

Alternative causal sequences

• Feedback from face and body

• Affect primacy (Zajonc)

• Context (action and social)

  • Context provides enough information for emotion to occur in many everyday situations without the need to appraise what is happening (past experience)

Appraisal’s effect on wellbeing (Stein et al.)

• Stein et al. analysed transcripts of interviews with the partners of men who died from AIDs

• Findings

  • The higher proportion of positive appraisals

    • The greater the number of short and long-term plans

      • The better the psychological well-being

Emotions as somatic markers (Damasio, 2000)

• Thoughts largely made from images (including perceptual and symbolic representations)

• Images ‘marked’ by positive or negative feelings linked directly/indirectly to bodily states

• Images become alarm signals

• Somatic markers increase accuracy and efficiency in the decision process

  • Absence (brain damage) degrades decision performance