Emotions 3.5

Fear

A response to a specific perceived danger either to oneself or a loved one

Anxiety

A general expectation that something bad might happen; a pervasive, ongoing sense of uncertainty and threat

Social Anxiety

Intense anxiety around social interaction, especially meeting new people or having their attention focused on you

Startle Response

Reaction to a sudden loud noise in which the muscles tense, eyes close, shoulders pull back, and arms pull toward head

Information travels from ears to pons, medulla, and spinal cord within 1/5 second

Startle Potentiation

Enhancement of startle reflex in a frightening/unpleasant situation as opposed to a safe one; used to measure fear

Major Categories of Phobias

Dangerous Animals (i.e., snakes, spiders)

Social Threats (i.e., unfamiliar people and unwanted attention)

Nonliving Physical Threats (i.e., heights, thunder)

John B Watson

Showed that people can learn fears based on experience

Conditioned a young orphan named Little Albert to become afraid of white rats by playing a gong every time one was nearby

Prepared Learning (Biological Preparedness)

Proposal that people are evolutionarily-predisposed to learn some fears more easily than others

People receiving shocks paired with pictures of snakes developed conditioned fear responses more quickly than shocks paired with pictures of houses

Safe experiences with an object decrease fear

Amygdala and Fear

Helps scan information from the environment to assess potential danger

* Receives input from vision, hearing, and pain signals, sending output to hippocampus, pons, pfc, and other startle regions
* Startle response originates and is modulated based on information
* Conditioned fears depend on synaptic changes

Anxiolytics

Drugs that relieve anxiety by inhibiting overall brain activity

Most commonly benzodiazepines

* Facilitate the effectiveness of GABA, the brain’s most abundant inhibitory neurotransmitter
* Temporarily produce emotional effects associated with amygdala damage (i.e., difficulty identifying others’ facial expressions)
* Suppresses activity in other regions of the brain, causing drowsiness, memory impairment, etc

Freeze Response

Danger is distant or uncertain; attempts to avoid detection:

* Motion stops
* Heart rate slows
* Muscles tense

Flight Response

Danger is imminent; attempts to escape:

* SNS activation
* Increased HR and BP

Genetics of Fear

Individual differences in fearfulness/anxiety tend to be consistent over decades

Panic disorder and phobias tend to run in families

* More common in monozygotic twins and relatives with similar disorders

Gender and Fear

Women report more fear and anxiety in all countries for which we have data

* Greater startle response and more likely to fear animals
* These differences appear before one year of age
* Also seen in animals like rats
* Men and women show equal fear in regard to shocks & shock cues, likelihood of social phobia, claustrophobia, and fear of injury

Joint Laxity Syndrome

Double jointedness may be influenced by a common gene with anxiety, as many people with this condition also develop severe anxiety

Positive Feedback Loops

Output increases initial input

* Tends to “burn out”
* Associated with symptom emergence
* i.e., being anxious about public speaking leads to SNS response, leading individual to believe individuals are judging them and reinforcing the anxiety

Negative Feedback Loops

Output decreases initial input

* Tends to “stick”
* Associated with symptom maintenance; avoidance
* i.e., being anxious about public speaking leads to a poor experience during public speaking, causing the individual to avoid public speaking in the future to avoid anxiety

WEIRD

Western Educated Industrial Rich Democratic (countries) experience panic attacks relating to fear of heart attack

WEIRD Panic Attacks

* Sensation of tight chest, short breath, sweating, trembling
* Salient belief that tightness indicates impending heart attack
* Interpretation of having a heart attack
* Attentional consequence of increased autonomic arousal
* Very intense and short

Pathological through thought process, turning thoughts into an avoidance strategy

Computer Game Fear Study

Participants play either an approach or avoidance based computer game

* Then choice of exciting, fearful, or anger-inducing music

Approach game is to make money to build a theme park

Avoidance game is to avoid flying monsters trying to kill you

* Preference for fear-inducing music in avoidance game, which is helpful rather than harmful

Georgetown Study

High levels of anxiety, fatigue, and stress in self-reports

Same pattern but inflated when individuals estimate levels of others’ emotions

Shows that students believe that others are experiencing stronger negative emotions than they are (but also more positive/excitement-related emotions)

Ideal Affect

Tsai - varies across people and cultures, although general trend of wanting to feel positive emotions rather than negative

* Americans prefer high-arousal positive states
* East Asians prefer low-arousal positive states

Although high positive emotion is a better predictor of life satisfaction, negative emotion is less problematic in collectivist cultures than individualistic

Value of Anger

People confer status and power to those who display moderate amounts of anger

* Negotiators expressing mild anger tend to elicit greater concessions
* Constructive and mild displays of anger can improve relationships by communicating needs and boundaries

Gender and Anger

Men’s anger tends to be viewed as justified while women’s anger is seen as dispositional or due to lack of self-control

* This bias can be eliminated if the situational reason for women’s anger is made clear

Hostile Aggression

Motivated by anger with specific intent to harm

Instrumental Aggression

Harmful/threatening behavior used to obtain an end

* Majority of human aggression
* Milgram experiments show that normal, healthy, well-intentioned people sometimes inflict pain on someone they have never met -- possibly endangering their lives -- if an authority figure tells them to
* Warfare is the most obvious example of this

Biology of Aggression

No single biological mechanism

* Some people have deficits in areas that normally inhibit aggression, like the PFC
* Implicated in intermittent explosive disorder
* In the body, leads to sympathetic activation

Frontal Asymmetry

* Negative emotions and avoidance motivation activate the right hemisphere of the brain


* Positive emotions and approach motivation (also anger) activate left hemisphere of brain

Cognitive Restructuring

Anger management strategy in which normally anger-invoking events are reinterpreted to be less threatening and thoughts are replaced with calmer ones

Social Skills Training

Anger management strategy in which people identify when they are starting to get angry and learn to calm down before speaking

* Communicating needs without provoking anger

Exposure Therapy

Anger management strategy in which the client practices remaining calm in the presence of events/insults that would usually provoke anger and learning to modulate their response

Problem Solving

Anger management strategy in which people learn to approach situations constructively and problem solve without anger

Disgust

Revulsion at the prospect of offensive objects, entailing a desire to avoid something as well as the rejection of the mere thought of the object/concept

* Many responses are learned, reflecting conditioned associations and cultural ideas
* Something can be labeled as “dangerous” after a single experience with contamination
* Response is shut down in sexual activity
* Similar facial expressions to bitter tastes, photos of insects, and unfair behavior in an economic game

Magical Thinking

Disgust response in which people avoid the thought of contamination even when no risk is present

* Reaction inconsistent with physical reality
* i.e., refusing to drink something a bug has touched

Core Disgust

Protects health

* Body products
* Spoiled food
* Mold
* Some insects

Moral Disgust

Violations of moral code, such as abnormal sexual practices or beliefs

Disgust Response

People shown disgusting videos show SNS activity but also increased PNS influence on the heart

* Gore, especially for blood-phobic individuals, causes heart rate to slow
* Activation of anterior insula

Politics and Disgust

Those who are more politically conservative tend to hold stricter norms regarding sexual and bodily purity

* Political conservatism linked to disgust proneness

Is Happiness an Emotion?

People can be happy for no reason, and happiness levels remain stable over lifetimes

* Studies have failed to detect reliable physiological/behavioral signatures of “happiness”
* Often referred to as “subjective wellbeing” to avoid confusion

Subjective Wellbeing

Overall evaluation of one’s life as pleasant, interesting, satisfying

* High life satisfaction
* High positive affect
* Low negative affect
* Subjective factors (i.e., meaning, purpose, wealth)

2023 World Happiness Report

Average 5.5 across 137 countries

Highest: 7.8 (Finland)

Lowest 1.9 (Afghanistan)

North American and Scandinavian countries happiest

* In US, happiest along East Coast and Midwest

Happiness Stability

Stable levels from work → recreation contexts

* Especially life satisfaction (r=0.95)

Partially heritable

* 40% of individual differences in happiness are genetic

Strongly correlated with Extraversion

* Agreeableness, conscientiousness, and low neuroticism also predictors
* Acting extraverted proven to make people happier regardless of personality

Happy Life

Key Features

* Comfort, joy, security

Facilitators

* Money, relationships, positive mindset

Measurement

* Life satisfaction, positive affect

Outcomes

* Personal satisfaction

Meaningful Life

Key Features

* Significance, purpose, coherence

Facilitators

* Morals, consistency, relationships, religiosity

Measurement

* Meaning in life, subjective meaning

Outcomes

* Social contribution

Psychologically-Rich Life (Oishi)

Key Features

* Variety, interest, perspective change

Features

* Curiosity, time, energy, spontaneity, openness to experience

Measurement

* Psychologically-rich life & experience

Outcomes

* Wisdom

Happiness Interventions

Lyubominsky

Performing acts of kindness and practicing gratitude regularly doesn’t increase wellness because people habituate quickly to positive emotions

“Mixing and Matching” interventions makes positive affect last

Hedonic Treadmill Model

People rapidly return to baseline after a positive or even deeply negative event

Injuries causing major disability, job loss, and loss of spouse to death/divorce are most likely to have lasting effects

* In some cases, you may even develop a new baseline happiness level (i.e., divorce from a bad marriage)

Bonnano Resilience

Traumatic events causing death, severe injury, life-threatening situations

* Individuals with self-esteem, minority status, and relationships with friends more likely to be resilient
* Individuals who self-report potentially traumatic events (PTEs), childhood sexual abuse (CSA), have low impulse/emotional control, or abuse substances are less likely to be resilient

Chronic Resilience

5-30% do not return to baseline after a trauma

Never the majority of the group

Delayed Resilience

0-15% experience a delayed spike in negative affect after an event

Recovery Resilience

15-25% experience a rapid decline in negative emotion after 1-2 years

Resilient Resilience

55-85% peak in the beginning after a traumatic event and quickly return to baseline

Flexibility Sequence

A stressor leads us to evaluate demands and opportunities

* Context Sensitivity

Leads us to select a regulatory strategy

* From our repertoire

The feedback from the strategy is monitored and modified as needed

* Flexibility and a large repertoire of coping strategies may aid resilience

Love as

Attitude

* Combination of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors directed towards a person, object, or category

Script

* Culturally-learned set of expectations about events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

Prototype

* Set of characteristics that describe the ideal example of some category, but may not be held by every member
* Most prototypical forms are related to family or close relationship partners (maternal love highest)

Bowlby Love Programs

Attachment Love

* Emotion elicited by attachment figure, other individual currently providing care and support

Nurturant Love

* Emotion elicited by young, vulnerable, cute others, especially offspring and young kin

Sexual Desire

* Emotion elicited by a promising sexual/reproductive partner

All three involve oxytocin but different facial expressions and cognitive effects

Awe

Emotional response to vast, extraordinary stimuli that challenge our comprehension

* Reaction in SNS, especially the heart
* Promotes cognitive accomodation
* Increases need for cognitive closure because our confidence and certainty are challenged

Cognitive Accomodation

Taking new information from the environment rather than filtering it through the lens of our expectations and assumptions

Sadness

Response to irrevocable loss

* 70% of people around the world recognize the prototypical sadness expression
* SNS activation prior to loss
* Reduced HR and SCR when loss occurs

Sadness Demographics

* Women more likely to report and express sadness; cry more often
* Sadness declines with age, but more intense in individuals in 60s and beyond
* Older adults show greater physiological responses to sad films, an effect of age that doesn’t extend to other negative emotions
* May be due to increased understanding and/or implications of loss

Self-Conscious Emotions

Embarrassment, Shame, Guilt

* Appraisals of the self and appearance to others, conveying the belief we have done something wrong
* All activate similar brain areas and function to repair relationships after mistakes or transgressions
* Blushing is exclusive to humans and may bring people closer after a transgression by signaling self-consciousness

Embarrassment

Doesn’t necessarily imply wrongdoing, usually occurs when someone is the focus of attention due to an understandable mistake, accident, or even positive event occurring in public

* Scores on Embarrassability Scale and Susceptibility to Embarrassment Scale correlate highly with neuroticism and social anxiety, shyness, loneliness
* Negative correlation with extraversion and self-esteem

Shame

Emotion when one does something wrong and focuses on inadequacies in explaining the transgression

* Thinking about self as bad/unworthy
* More problems with relationships, anger, and social anxiety than guilt-prone people; feel less empathy

Guilt

Emotion when you fail or do something morally wrong but focuses on making amends and repeating transgressions

* More useful than shame
* More responsibility for and control over repeating actions

Resilience Paradox

After a potential trauma, there is usually a stable trajectory of resilience, yet it is incredibly difficult to predict who will be resilient and who will not

* Resilience questionnaires and both unsupervised + machine learning fail to predict resilience
* Paradox is accounted for by the differing responses/flexibility needed for a situation
* Resilience is not “one size fits all”

Enthusiasm

Pleasure from anticipating a reward (delayed gratification)

* May have evolved to motivate goal attainment
* Activation of NAcc if anticipated reward and even more if an unexpected reward arrives

Exception to the broaden and build hypothesis for narrowing attention

Contentment

Feeling after consuming a reward

* PNS activation
* Cognitive activity slows down and resort to cognitive shortcuts
* Facilitates memory consolidation in rodents (possibly humans)

Pride

Emotional response to one’s achievements/admiration by others

* Pride pose is easily recognized by children as young as four and even congenitally blind people
* Pose suggests high social status

Authentic Pride

Positive emotion based on accurate assessment of one’s accomplishments

Hubristic Pride

Emerges from the belief that one’s achievements come from being naturally “better” than others and reflects ability rather than efforts (arrogance)

Amusement

Obvious yet under-studied aspect of emotion, as it is difficult to find stimuli that universally evokes humor

* One theory is that humor is our response to a cognitive shift in perception
* Doesn’t seem to have an adaptive purpose beyond the possible opportunity of learning presented by play

Hope

High agency in a challenging situation combined with the active generation of plans that facilitate the desired outcome

Optimism

Expectation that mostly-good things will happen; facilitates hope

Leads people to make friends more easily, experience less anxiety/emotional exhaustion, less likely to abuse drugs

Tendency to generate plans to overcome problems

Unrealistic Optimism

Belief that you are more likely than others to experience good things or avoid negative situations

Gender and Emotions

US men reported more positive emotions and less fear, sadness, and disgust than US women

* Women cry and smile more often; men aggressive more often
* Women reported more acceptance of emotions, cognitive reappraisal, ruminating, and emotional support-seeking than men


* Equal anger, embarrassment/shame, frequency of emotion across gender

Differences may reflect differences in status and power

* Power increases access to rewards and therefore positive emotions
* Low perceived control leads to negative emotions

Children Emotions

Meta-analysis shows that gender differences in emotion are not apparent in infants and toddlers

* In childhood and adolescence, girls showed more positive emotions, which is a discrepancy in comparison to higher self-reports of positive emotions in adult men
* Small but present difference in girls internalizing and externalizing emotions more
* Early in life, boys exhibit more negative emotions, which switches to girls in adolescence

Gender and Smiling

Meta-analysis of adults show differences in smiling are more pronounced in unfamiliar social partners, especially in Canada and US (less in UK)

* Largest effect for teenagers, then young adults, then middle-aged/older adults
* Largest effects with equal power; lower for power differential
* Women smile more regardless of status

Gender and Empathy

In a prisoner’s dilemma game, men and women both experienced pain-related neural activity when a cooperator was shocked, but men did not when watching a defector experiencing shocks

* Suggests that men need an attachment to the person to feel empathy

When guessing thoughts and feelings of a woman discussing a personal failure, women did much better at simply doing the task

* No gender differences when practicing task with feedback or receiving payment for greater accuracy
* Implies that gender differences in empathy may reflect motivation to empathize

Extraversion

Dozens of studies have linked extraversion to high positive emotionality

* Highly-extraverted people react more strongly to positive stimuli
* Extraverts and introverts show same association of social interaction with positive affect, but extraverts interact more and are therefore happier

Neuroticism

Frequent experience of negative emotion

* Participants instructed to behave more neurotically in a lab reported more distress regardless of actual traits
* Highly-neurotic individuals rely more on wishful thinking and withdrawal; less on problem solving and reappraisal

Agreeableness

Predicts positive affect beyond extraversion

* Stronger experience of love, compassion, and forgiveness and lower anger
* Greater PFC activation when viewing unpleasant pictures, suggesting stronger emotion regulation

Conscientiousness

People with high levels report feeling more joy, contentment, and pride

* Less likely to retaliate against a confederate who insults them, suggesting strong emotion regulation and self-control

Openness to Experience

Predicts high dispositional affect even when controlling for other four personality traits

* Stronger experience of love, compassion, and awe

Diagnosing Disorder

DSM-5 lists psychological disorders and their diagnosis criteria

* Used to standardize diagnoses and determine treatment
* DSM-5 diagnosis generally required for insurance coverage

DSM Problems

Diagnoses are based on symptom profiles and are not tests for underlying causes of disorder

Two people with the same diagnosis may have very different symptom profiles

Lack of specificity, as a typical client meets criteria for multiple disorders

Western lens of disorders and distress

Baksbat

Cambodia - “Broken Courage”

Formal cultural trauma syndrome distinct from PTSD with very different symptoms

Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) Model

Hierarchical alternative to DSM that conceptualizes psychopathy as a set of dimensions

Somatoform, Internalizing, Thought Disorder, Disinhibited Externalizing, Antagonistic Internalizing, Detachment

Somatoform Disorders

* Somatic Symptom Disorder
* Illness Anxiety Disorder

Internalizing Disorders

* Sexual Problems
* Eating Pathology
* Fear (Phobias and OCD)
* Distress (Anxiety and Depression)
* Mania (Bipolar)

Thought Disorders

* Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders
* Mood Disorders with Psychosis
* Schizotypical PD
* Schizoid PD
* Paranoid PD

Disinhibited Externalizing Disorders

* Substance-Related Disorders
* Antisocial Behavior Disorders

Antagonistic Externalizing Disorders

* Antisocial Behavior Disorders
* Narcissistic PD
* Histrioinic PD
* Paranoid PD
* Borderline PD

Detachment Disorders

* Schizoid PD
* Avoidant PD
* Dependent PD
* Histrionic PD

Schizophrenia Report vs Behavior

People with schizophrenia have much less intense showing of emotions via facial expressions

Flat affect, yet self-reported affect is similar to control groups for both positive and negative emotions

Major Depressive Episode

At least two weeks with depressed mood and/or loss of interest & pleasure every day

Some combination of feelings of worthlessness, agitation or inactivity, impaired sleep, increased or decreased appetite, impaired concentration

Anhedonia and Dysphoria necessary for diagnosis

Anhedonia

Loss of interest/pleasure

Dysphoria

Unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life

Depression Characteristics

* Diminished reactivity to positively and negatively valenced clinical interviews, imagery, slides, and films
* Greater emotional carryover
* Less emotional differentiation
* Greater emotional network density
* Greater mood brightening after positive events
* Decreased motivation for positive and high-arousal emotions and increased motivation for negative and low arousal emotions

Serotonin Transporter Gene

Short (s) and Long (l) alleles

* People can have ss (slow reuptake), ll (quick reuptake), or sl (middle reuptake)
* S is less efficient in producing the transporter than l
* Linked with greater anxiety, neuroticism, and depression
* Also effective at enhancing positive emotions; may enhance emotional sensitivity rather than negative emotionality
* L linked to agreeableness
* Despite making serotonin more available, does not seem to alleviate depression/anxiety like SSRIs

Emotional Intelligence

Perceiving emotional signals, understanding/managing emotions, communicating emotions effectively

* MSCEIT questionnaire score correlates with extraversion and emotional stability

MDD

Loss of interest and pleasure lasting almost every day for at least two weeks

Also feelings of worthlessness, increased or decreased appetite, and impaired concentration

May last weeks, months, a year, or more, but eventually subsides

Diagnoses used to exclude bereavement, but today therapists try to distinguish between a normal and abnormal grieving period