Psychology Exam Lecture 11

Emotion

Emotion

an immediate, specific response to environmental events or internal thoughts, also known as affect. (Includes physiological response (increased heart rate), behavioral response (particular facial expression), and cognitive appraisal (interpretation). Different from (but related to feeling or mood

Feeling

subjective experience of the emotion part of the cognitive appraisal component

Mood

general, long-lasting emotional state without specific, identifiable trigger

Multiple approaches to identifying/ classifying emotions

primary/secondary emotions, and multidimensional models (circumflex model)

Primary Emotions

Innate, evolutionary adaptive, universal (shared across cultures), [anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, contempt]

Secondary Emotions: combinations of primary emotions

combinations of primary emotions

disapproval = sadness + surprise

Circumplex Model

can characterize emotions along two dimensions, valence, and arousal

Valence

how positive or negative the emotion is

Arousal

arousing the emotion is (reflected in psychological activation, pupil response, heart rate, sweating, etc)

Depression

a state of negative affect and low arousal

Excited

a state of positive affect and high arousal

Many emotions involve physiological responses

changes in state of the nervous system and related systems (designed to prepare the body for response to stimulus, increased heart rate when fearful)

Substantial emotional processing occurs within subcortical structures

Amygdala and Insula

Insula

receives somatosensory signals from throughout the body, subjective awareness of body states (sensing heartbeat, hunger) Important because emotions produce bodily responses, active when experiencing disgust or viewing disgust expressed by others (both affected by damage to insula)

Amygdala

processes emotional significance of stimuli, involved in generating immediate responses to emotional stimuli. Ex. people with amygdala damage do not show conditioned fear responses

Fast Path

sensory system to thalamus to amygdala, prepares quick behavioral response if necessary

Slow Path

involves cortical processing as well; enables more thorough evaluation

Amygdala interacts with the hippocampus:

affects memory consolidation, leads to stronger memories for emotional events

Amygdala plays a role in:

perception of socially relevant stimuli (facial expressions), especially perception of fear (even for the faces, shown subliminally)

What are the three major historical theories as to how emotional processes work?

James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schachter Singer Theory

Key Difference: relationship between body’s response and psychological experience

Common view of relationship

bodily responses are the result of emotions

Stimulus: a threatening grizzly bear approaching → Emotion: Fear → Arousal: heart pounding, trembling, sweating, running away

James-Lange Theory

emotion is a result of the bodily response, “We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.”

Argument: First, we perceive our bodily responses then, as a result, we experience the emotion.

Stimulus: a threatening grizzly bear approaching → Arousal: heart pounding, trembling, sweating, running away → Emotion: Fear

Problem: physiological reactions aren’t sufficient to specify emotion that is experienced (increased heart rate accompanies several emotions)

Evidence: Laird- forcing facial expression can led to a specific emotional response (Experiment: Holding pencil forced either smile or frown, “Smiling” participants found cartoon funnier, however, recent failure to replicate this finding)

Cannon-Bard Theory

Criticisms: Mind experiences emotion faster than bodily responses occur (feel embarrassment earlier than blushing occurs), many emotions produce similar bodily responses, even non-emotional events can cause the same bodily responses (exercise increases heart rate; working on a challenge problem dilates the pupil)

information about emotional stimuli is sent simultaneously to mind and body, amygdala and insula process information, pass it on to cortical structures (mind) and body, independently

Result: experience both cognitive experiences of emotion (“feeling”) and bodily responses

Stimulus: a threatening grizzly bear approaching → both Arousal: heart pounding, trembling, sweating, running away, and Emotion: Fear

Schachter-Singer Theory

Influenced by both James-Lange and Cannon-Bard Theories: agreed that participation of bodily responses leads to emotion, but also agreed that many emotions are associated with the same bodily responses

Proposal:

1. Emotional stimuli produce a psychological response, which is more or less the same for all emotions, undifferentiated physiological arousal 2. Person searches for the source of the arousal, labels the emotional experience based on the situation- the stimulus that produced the physiological response

Stimulus: a threatening grizzly bear approaching → Arousal: heart pounding, trembling, sweating, running away → Label: “That is one scary bear! I’m afraid of it!” → Emotion: Fear

Schachter and Singer

Experiment: participants were injected with adrenaline (which produced bodily responses: shakiness, increased heart rate, flushed feeling), informed participants were told that the drug would have these effects, uninformed participants were not.

Key Point: informed participants were given an explanation for their bodily response.

Participant then placed with a confederate (person posting as a participant but are actually working with the experimenter). Euphoric Condition: confederate was in a great mood (played with a hula hoop, made paper airplanes). Angry Condition: had to fill out questionnaire with insulting questions; confederate three up the questionnaire and stormed out. Researchers coded euphoric behaviors or angry behaviors.

Results: people who weren’t told about the drug’s effects exhibited more euphoric behavior in the euphoric condition and more angry in the angry condition, Misattribution of Arousal

How are Emotions Adaptive?

Support protective behaviors (avoid things that provoke a fear response), provide information about value of stimuli, help us learn social rules

Emotions and Interpersonal Relationships

interpersonal interactions often involve emotion (emotional responses to being excluded from a group), emotional expressions can communicate powerful information (about inner moods, states, and consequences for someone else’s actions), the ability to communicate emotion is probably fundamental to being able to live in groups

Emotion and Decision Making

Decisions can be influenced by anticipated future emotional states (how did you decide to come to Auburn?), emotions help us understand the consequences of our decisions, current mood and emotion can influence judgements about life satisfactions

Emotional Expression

the ability to express emotion is important for communicating with others, the eyes communicate emotion (fear: eyes open wider, exposing more white, showing people more of the white of someone’s eyes increases amygdala activity), the mouth communicates emotion (especially positive vs. negative affect)

Body posture can communicate emotion, and can even change how we interpret facial expression

Darwin Facial Expressions Across Cultures

facial expression is adaptive and are universal- understandable regardless of one’s culture.

Tested by Ekman (who believed that there would be cultural differences in the interpretation of facial expressions) and Ekman was proven wrong Dawin was correct