Emotion

Emotions

A complex psychological state that involves:

1. Physiological arousal

2. Behavioral/expressive behaviors

3. Conscious/subjective experience including thoughts and feelings

More about emotions

• Allow people to communicate with each other (idea by Charles Darwin)

• Absorbed in body in about 6 seconds

• Humans don’t know how to regulate emotions

Mood vs Emotion

Mood

• Long lasting (minutes, hours, days)

• Much more diffuse (spread out) with no identifiable object

• Do not have unique facial expressions

Emotions

• May only last seconds to minutes

• About something specific (ex: person or situation)

• Universal emotions may have facial expressions

More about Emotion vs Mood

• Easier to identify emotional trigger but not cause of mood

• We don’t choose our mood, but we have a choice on how to deal with it

Charles Darwin

First to study emotion (1870s)

Evolutionary psychologists believe…

• Emotions are the product of evolution (emotion = survival)

• Emotions help us adapt to problems proposed by our environment

• We are biologically prepared to learn fears that helped our ancestors survive

  • Fear → avoid potential danger

  • Love → seek mate & care for offspring

  • Anger → defend oneself

6 basic emotions

• fear

• surprise

• anger

• disgust

• happiness/joy

• sadness

Emotions are most commonly classified according to two dimensions:

1. Degree to which it is pleasant or unpleasant

2. The level of activation of arousal associated with the emotion

3rd dimension?

Emotional connection to other people

Interpersonal engagement

An emotion dimension reflecting the degree to which emotions involve other emotions

• People’s emotions change is simply because certain people are around

• Ex: doing something embarrassing alone vs everyone watching; watching horror movie alone at home vs at crowded movie theater

Theories of Motivation

1. James-Lange Theory

2. Cannon-Bard Theory

3. Two-Factor Theory

4. Cognitive-appraisal theory of emotions

James-Lange Theory

Your feelings follow your body’s response

• Our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physical responses to emotional arousing stimuli

• In order to experience emotion, you must first have a physiological reaction

• Ex: Haunted house → realize you are tensing up → start to feel fear, not thinking WHY you are tensing up

Cannon-Bard Theory

Physical arousal and emotional experience occur simultaneously

• You think AND feel at the same time

  • You don’t need a physiological reaction to have emotion. You have psychological reaction same to you have emotion

• The emotion-triggering stimulus is routed simultaneously to the brain’s cortex & sympathetic nervous system

• You can experience emotion without sympathetic nervous system arousal

• Different emotions have the same physiological response → people confuse what they’re feeling physically with the emotion they have

Two-Factor Theory

To experience emotion, you must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal (by Schachter and Singer)

• You must THINK about the situation you’re in and label the emotion

  • as opposed to James-Lange theory, where the emotion automatically follows the response

• Ex: Realize kid in supermarket is gone → body tenses up → think about what could’ve happened → freak out

Cognitive-Appraisal theory of emotions

Emotional responses are triggered by cognitive evaluation

• We can’t experience emotion unless we perceive a reason for it

• No physical reaction needed, emotionally triggered after thought

• Unlike Two-Factor theory, you don’t need a physical arousal to experience emotion

Spillover Effect

The state you are in can determine the emotion experienced in the next situation

• your present mood can affect the next emotional response

Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Division

The automatic nervous system controls our arousal / emotions

Sympathetic division

Releases stress hormones epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine

• increases heart rate, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, etc. in times of emergency

• produces stress hormones (neurotransmitters)

• reactions happen (blood boiling, tense legs, pit-stomach)

Parasympathetic division

Inhibits further production of stress hormones (though arousal diminishes gradually since the hormones are already in the bloodstream)

• You don’t calm down immediately, because your system still has all the stress hormones. You must wait for stress hormones to dissipate

• Unhealthy for those who always have stress hormones

Fight or Flight response

An automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening.

• Triggered by the sympathetic nervous system → adrenal glands release norepinephrine into the bloodstream

  • With flight, there is a burst of energy that leads to a response of perceived danger

• These are immediate responses → we feel stress, anger, etc. as a result → we chose to deal directly with the situation or avoid it

Flight pros & cons

Pros:

• Know how to let things go & keep things in perspective

• Understand when to keep something & let something go

Cons:

• Don’t know how to deal with problems

• They let the same things happen over and over again

Fight pros & cons

Pros:

• Most likely to go after what they want

• Quick to defend what they want & protect

• We evolve because of flight people

Cons:

• Aggressive

Emotional Intelligence

The capacity to understand and manage your own emotional experiences and to perceive, comprehend, and response appropriately to the emotional responses of yourself and others

• Self-regulation, taking a moment & thinking how you feel before you talk

• Your emotional reaction is not in your control, but what we do with that emotional reaction is in your control

• A person with a high EQ is going to think before they act

Parts of brain for thinking

• Cortex: thinking part of the brain

  • When emotional reactions bypass the cortex and travel from thalamus directly to amygdala (thru the thalamus-amygdala pathway) → immediate emotional response

    • We react without thinking → emotions rule our behavior

• Amygdala: the emotional control center of the brain

• Neural pathways: response for instinctual fear responses that occur when you perceive a threatening stimulus

Culture and Emotional Expression

• Facial expressions and physiological states are universal

• The most universally understood way of expressing emotion is through facial expressions

  • high EQ people can read people’s expressions

  • low EQ people is oblivious to people’s expressions

• BUT we are still able to control our facial expressions

  • Expressions of emotion can be affected by culture and environmental factors

  • When we react to other people’s emotion, we give them the power (power = not losing control of emotion & giving satisfaction)

• Gestures = NOT universal, they vary based on culture

Nonverbal Communication

Communicating without talking

• You must listen more than the words coming out of their mouth

• Ex: saying “I’m sorry” vs cleaning the room & giving flowers

Facial feedback hypothesis (effect)

Facial expressions of emotion can trigger or intensify the subjective experience of that emotion

• The face you make can impact your mood & the people around you

Empathy & facial feedback

When we imitate another’s expression, we are more likely to feel what they feel

Feed-good, do-good phenomenon

The happier you are, the more you do for others

The adaptation-level phenomenon

Our tendency to form judgments relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experiences

Relative deprivation

The perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares

• Ex: you thought you failed a test → you get a B → happy → see everyone around you get an A → not happy with B anymore

Subjective well-being

Refers to self-perceived happiness

• Instead of being upset that you have to work harder, be happy that you get to be here

• It’s about how you look at a situation

• It’s a choice to be happy

Catharsis

Emotional release

Catharsis hypothesis

• Rather than aggression, do non-aggressive acts → can also reach catharsis

  • Can reach catharsis through both aggression and non-aggression

• Best way to respond to anger is through emotional intelligence

• Best response to anger is forgiveness

• We need anger as long as we use it as an anchor