3. Emotion and Learning

What is involved in observational learning?

• A basic form of learning

• where animals learn about danger/ group norms etc by observing the reactions of other group members

How does wild monkeys’ fear of snakes demonstrate observational learning?

• captive monkeys can learn the fear of snakes from wild monkeys

• there has been no direct negative consequence for the captive monkey, yet a stimulus becomes threatening because of observational learning

What is involved in the chameleon effect in observational learning?

• people unconsciously mimic the postures of the people they interact with resulting in pro-social behaviour

• overt copying of body posture and actions is most likely when people are in comfortable social interaction

• the mirroring of action seems to facilitate social interaction

What does this research show support for?

• During a mock marketing task, an experimenter mimicked the posture of half the participants, coping their body orientation (e.g. leaning forward), the position of their arms, and the position of their legs

• participants who had been mimicked were more helpful (picking up dropped pens) and generous towards other people (donating to charity) than those who were not mimicked

the chameleon effect and prosocial behaviour

What is involved in emotion mimicry?

• when observing the emotional response of another individual, learning is facilitated by simulation

• we are in the same motor state of another person and hence we feel what they are feeling

How is emotion mimicry investigated using Electromyography (EMG)?

• electromyography (EMG) discriminates positive (zygomaticus) and negative (corrugator) emotions

• these effects are quite subtle and cannot be seen with the eye, but the weak muscle activity can be recorded with electrodes in EMG

• studies show slight zygomaticus cheek activity when shown picture of someone smiling (within one second)

• more activation of corrugator muscle when shown a frown

How is mimicry unconscious?

• this emotion mimicry response appears to be automatic

• e.g. when a face is completely irrelevant to a person’s task and is ignored, the emotion is still mimicked

• and even if the emotional face is subliminal and people are unaware of its presence, mimicry of emotions still takes place

What are primary reinforcers in classical conditioning?

• our emotions can be direct and powerful experiences, such as the fear of a snarling dog

• direct emotional stimuli do not have to be learned

• food and water are also powerful emotional primary reinforcers about how to act in the world and stay alive

What are secondary reinforcers in the context of classical conditioning?

• money will not keep you warm or feed you

• however, we have learned to associate it with primary reinforcers: through exchange it can provide these things - it is positive via association

What were the foundational ideas for classical conditioning?

• dogs started to salivate before the food was presented

• the dog was responding to an event associated with and predicting the food

What is involved in emotional classical conditioning?

• autonomic conditioning: bodily responses, arousal, such as rapid heart rate, sweating.

• the most widely studied is fear conditioning. A harmless/neutral stimulus can evoke fear responses, such as in phobias

• evaluative conditioning: a conscious preference to like a stimulus more or less: most widely studies is advertisements

Example of classical conditioning SS

Where is autonomic physiological conditioning mediated in the brain?

And what is seen in lesion cases

• the amygdala

• patient with amygdala damage has no SCR (autonomic response) but is aware of the stimulus associated with the shock

Where is evaluative conditioning mediated in the brain?

And what is seen in lesion cases

• evaluative conditioning conscious explicit report mediated by the hippocampus

• lesions to the hippocampus have normal SCR (autonomic response) to conditioned stimulus but cannot report that the stimulus predicts shock

What is involved in extinction?

• after association has been formed, then present the conditioned stimulus without the shock

• the autonomic response is observed for a few trials but then declines

• in contrast the reduced liking of the stimulus can remain for a long time afterwards

• the resistance to extinction makes advertising potent

How has conditioning been seen in advertising?

• evaluative conditioning; more concerned with learned emotional responses of preferences and attitudes

• conditioned stimulus might be an everyday consumer product like coffee, paired with a positive unconditioned stimulus such as a famous movie star or attractive model

• neutral product becomes associate with the positive stimulus, becoming more positively evaluated by people

• the autonomic arousal response only lasts a short time but the preference may remain long after

How might activating emotions bypass rational thought and inhibitory processes?

• pairing attractive people with a product can be more effective than providing facts like fuel economy, engine power and transmission type

How does evaluative conditioning occur unconsciously?

• although people can report the relationship between the unconditioned and conditioned stimulus when preferences are changed, this awareness is not always necessary

• this lack of awareness is what can make advertising (e.g. product placement) effective on social media and in movies

• preference is acquired but we do not know where it came from

What is the method used to demonstrate evaluative conditioning?

• ppts presented with nonsense words

• told to passively observe the nonsense words. No need to actively remember

• due to masking there was no awareness that the briefly presented positive and negative words were present

• results suggest unconscious conditioning can make us like different things, even nonsense words

What is involved in the mere exposure effect?

• possible to change an emotional response without any associations with positive or negative stimuli

• simply by passively presenting neutral stimuli, people tend to like them more

• stimuli that have been presented in the past are preferred more than novel stimuli

• the effect is observed across a range of objects and tasks (liking, pleasantness rating and forced choice)

• the effects seem to be non-conscious, as people cannot recall they have seen the stimuli before; effect is stronger when they are unaware of the stimuli

What is involved in the perceptual fluency model? (Bornstein and D’Agostino)

• the mere exposure effect is bigger when ppts are not aware of the stimulus due to brief exposure and pattern masking

• explains why mere exposure effects tend to be stronger when ppts are not aware that they have already seen the pre-exposed stimuli

• after exposure to a stimulus we process it more fluently - we detect this subtle improvement in processing fluency and find it rewarding

What is involved in operant conditioning?

• the link between a response and a subsequent outcome

• e.g. press button and get food: reinforce and increase behaviour

• what was a neutral action starts to take on emotional value

How is operant conditioning related to emotion?

• rewards are desired and positive outcomes of motivated behaviour

• rewards can increase and maintain the frequency and strength of the behaviour they are contingent on

How is operant conditioning related to social rewards/punishments?

• how others respond to our behaviour shapes and influences what we do and say in the world

• being successful or prestigious is rewarding - it feels good

• we are motivated to play status games and improve our position in society

What did Spreckelmeyer (2009) find regarding operant conditioning and the anticipation of monetary vs social rewards?

• 32 Germans asked to hit a button as fast as possible when a white target square appeared on screen, during an fMRI scan

• to generate reward anticipation, target presentation was preceded by a cue signalling the reward that would be presented if the button was hit fast enough

• circle cues presented different levels of potential reward, while the triangle announced no outcome independent of reaction time

how is a gender difference also seen?

• no different between social and monetary rewards

• significantly faster reaction times for all levels of reward compared to ‘no outcome’ trials

• men reacted faster to cues signalling high money rewards than high social rewards while reacting equally slow to cues signalling low reward

How was Spreckelmeyer’s study on anticipation of monetary and social reward and gender seen in the brain using fMRI?

• fMRI during the anticipation phase

• Men’s activation in the prospect of monetary rewards encompassed a wide network of mesolimbic brain regions compared to only limited activation for social rewards

• women’s activation was more equal for monetary and social rewards

What did Izuma, Saito and Sadato find regarding the processing of monetary rewards in the striatum?

• told they would be evaluated and the results shown to them in study 2 - the emotional reward task

STUDY 2

• investigating whether the acquisition of a good reputation activated reward-related brain areas, such as the striatum

• increased striatum activation in high reward conditions (red bar) compared to no reward condition (blue bar)

• financial rewards activate the reward centre of the brain

• positive feedback about our reputation activates the same reward centre of the brain as money