Lecture 6 / Emotions

Emotions

Automatic, largely unconscious behavioral and cognitive responses triggered by significant stimuli .

Feelings

Conscious perceptions of emotional responses .

Charles Darwin

Scientist who credited emotions as adaptive, evolutionarily conditioned, and biologically based .

Six Basic Emotions (Original List)

Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust .

Folk Psychology View

The informal observation that a feeling triggers an autonomic reaction (e.g., I feel fear, so my heart races) .

James-Lange Theory

The theory that autonomic reactions trigger feelings; we feel fear because we run .

Cannon-Bard Theory

The theory that emotional experience and bodily response occur simultaneously .

Hypothalamus

The "emotional center" important for emotional expression and homeostasis; acts as the source of raw physical energy for anger .

Cerebral Cortex

The "thinking brain" that acts like a brake to keep the hypothalamus's emotional energy under control .

James Papez

Scientist who proposed that emotion is a physical cycle or "loop" in the brain rather than a single spot .

Limbic System

A collection of structures (including the amygdala and hippocampus) between the brainstem and cortex that manages emotions, memories, and survival instincts .

Paul MacLean

The scientist who added the amygdala to Papez's circuit and named the "Limbic System" .

Schachter-Singer Experiment

A study showing that the conscious experience of emotion depends on analyzing both bodily sensations and the environment (context) .

Epinephrine (Adrenaline)

The substance used in the Suproxin experiment to trigger physical arousal like trembling and rapid breathing .

Klüver-Bucy Syndrome

A set of behavioral symptoms (loss of fear, hyperorality, hypersexuality) caused by removing the anterior temporal lobes .

Amygdala

The "fear center" necessary for fear conditioning and processing negative emotional stimuli .

Fear Conditioning

The process where a neutral stimulus is associated with a painful stimulus until the neutral stimulus elicits a freeze reaction .

Urbach-Wiethe Disease

A rare genetic disorder causing the amygdala to calcify, damaging nerve cells and targeting emotional processing .

Operant Conditioning

Linking a voluntary action (like pressing a lever) to a consequence such as a reward or punishment .

Reward System

Structures that use incentives to reinforce specific behaviors; artificial electrical activation can be more powerful than natural rewards .

Valence

The horizontal dimension of emotion describing whether a feeling is pleasant (high) or unpleasant (low) .

Arousal

The vertical dimension of emotion describing the intensity or "volume" of a feeling .

Paul Ekman

Researcher who studied the expression of six basic emotions across different cultures .

Theory of Constructed Emotions

The theory that emotional labels are cultural constructs based on bodily responses and interoceptive capacity, not deeply rooted in biology .

Interoceptive Capacity

The ability to sense internal bodily responses, which serves as a basis for constructing emotions