Emotion and Social Cognition

CGS 2301, Jiahui Guo, Spring '25

Emotion Definition

A positive or negative mental state that arises spontaneously and is often accompanied by physiological changes

Mood

Long term, self-sustaining mental state

Temperament

Tendency to experience particular emotions

Affect

Outward expression of emotions

The Hedonic Principle

All people are motivated to experience pleasure and avoid pain

Emotion “Fitness Meter”

• Guides us towards good things

• Guides us away from bad things

• Creates unjust biases

Components of Emotion

• Subjective Feeling

• Behavior

• Physiological Response

Subjective Feeling

Subjective valence (bad to good) and arousal (low to high)

Behavior

Approach or avoid

Physiological Response

Rest and digest or fight and flight

Six Basic Emotions

• Anger

• Fear

• Disgust

• Suprise

• Happiness

• Sadness

Contempt

A feeling of disdain or dislike toward someone perceived as unworthy or inferior. Some people consider it to be a 7th basic emotion, but others do not.

Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971)

Faces across cultures are similar for the same emotions

James-Lange Theory

Events cause physiological arousal (i.e., increased heart rate, flight-or-flight response), and emotion is the interpretation of this arousal

Cannon-Bard Theory

Events cause both arousal and emotion at the same time

Two-Factor Theory

Emotion is determined by both physiological state and cognitive appraisal of the situation

Misattribution of Arousal

The process of attributing emotional responses to the wrong source or cause, leading to incorrect feelings or interpretations of a situation.

Dutton, D. G., & Aron, A. P. (1974).

An attractive female experimenter stood in front of a “safe” or “scary” bridge. Men who walked across the “scary” bridge would call the phone number, incorrectly associating their arousal from the bridge to the experimenter.

Damasio, 1994

• Primary emotions are hardwired through the limbic system and cause a physiological response.

• Secondary Emotions require conscious deliberate cognitive evaluation, possible also activating the limbic system, before moving to a primary route

Hard-wired through limbic system (Primary Emotion)

A stimulus activates the system, which is associatively conditioned and pre-organized

Physiological Response (Primary Emotion)

From hypothalamus, which activates the endocrine system and neurotransmitters to form an internal response.

Yiend (2009)

Emotional Stroop Task - People were slower to name high-emotion words than neutral words: Anxiety is associated with extreme effects on emotional stroop tasks.

Kensinger et al (2006 and 2007)

Memory Task: Negative emotion enhances memory

Van’t Wout, M., Chang, L. J., & Sanfey, A.G. (2010).

Ultimatum Game: Participants in the emotional reappraisal group accepted more offers than participants in the suppression group

Self-Reference Effect

Memory for a word is improved by relating the word to the self.

Rogers et al. (1977)

Tested four conditions: physical characteristics, rhyming, meaning, and self-reference, and found that participants showed the best memory for words that described themselves.

Kesebir & Oishi (2010) Study 2

The farther a friend’s birthday was from their own, the less likely they were to remember.

Kelley et al., (2002)

Self-referential processing activated medial prefontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)

Default Mode Network (DMN)

Large-scale brain network that contains mPFC, PCC, and the angular gyrus. Most active when the brain is “at rest”, and decreases activity with an attention-demanding task.

Davey et al. (2016)

Substantial spatial overlap in self-referential processing and resting state processing, suggesting self-related processes are driven by PCC activity and moderated by mPFC activity.

Theory of Mind

The ability to attribute separate mental states to oneself and to others.

Mental States

Beliefs, intents, desires, knowledge

Mindblindness

The inability to develop an awareness of what is in the mind of others.

Wimmer & Perner, 1983

False Belief Task:

• None of 3-4 year olds were correct

• 57% of 4-6 year olds were correct

• 86% of 6-9 year olds were correct

For those who could correctly identify the location of the ball, 85% also correctly direct a friend to the correct location/foe to the incorrect location, suggesting they can not only represent this information, but use it strategically.

Temporo-pariteal junction (TPJ)

Posterior region of the lateral sulcus.

Saxe & Kanwisher (2003)

Showed that the TPJ is separate from extrastriate body area (EBA), the TPJ doesn’t respond to false representations in non-social contexts, and responds more when people read stories about people’s mental states compared to their physical states.

Schurz et al. (2014)

Meta-analysis found mPFC activation (along with TPJ) across multiple ToM studies, suggesting mPFC is a core network for ToM.

Richardson & Saxe, 2019

Shows Narrative Anticipation Effect: on second viewing of the movie, ToM regions activate earlier, and even earlier for older kids.

Duchenne Smile

Genuine smile, involves muscles of both eyes and mouth

Pan-American Smile

Polite smile, only involves muscles around mouth

Microexpressions

• Facial expressions that occur within a fraction of a second

  • An attempt to conceal emotion, according to Paul Ekman.

Self and Other in DMN

Integrates new external information (perception) and existing internal information (LTM) to form rich, context-dependent models of the world that can change over time. DMN is also involved in the tendency of social brains to align thoughts and actions.

Zaki & Ochsner (2012)

Empathy has three major components

• Mentalizing

  • Cognitive Empathy, Perspective Taking, ToM

• Experience Sharing

  • Affect empathy, shared self-other representations, emotional contagion

• Prosocial Concern

  • Empathetic motivation, sympathy, emphatic concern

Emotional Contagion

One person’s emotional state influencing those around them.

Sympathetic Concern

Experiencing someone else’s distress or concern for someone else’s well-being.

Perspective Taking

Understanding someone’s point of view

Singer & Lame, 2009

Sharing the emotions of others is associated with activity in regions associated with first-hand experience of that emotion.

Singer et al. (2004)

Vicariously experiencing pain activates the same network as is activated when we experience pain - aka. the pain matrix

Phillips et al. (1997)

Viewing pictures of disgusted faces activates the insula and greater

disgust leads to greater activation.