PSY lec 7: Emotion & Personality

Give examples for how an emotional stimulus can produce a psychological response.

Emotion can cause subjective feelings (±) or arousal, or affect your motivation.

Give examples for how emotional stimuli can produce physical responses.

Emotion can affect your posture or facial expression.

Give examples for how an emotional stimulus can produce physiological effects.

Emotion can affect your heart rate and blood pressure.

Give examples for how an emotional stimulus can produce adaptive behavioral responses.

Emotion can trigger defensive behaviour for our survival such as disgust or fear.

In what situations can emotion be useful in decision-making?

When there is a lack of time/information, a surplus of options, or option szre ambiguous.

Sometimes logical decisions cost you time.

Compare Incidental emotion vs Integral emotion.

Incidental: emotion not related to the decision, but influe ces it anyway (e.g. shopping when sad).

Integral: emotion directly related to the decision and its (anticipated) consequences (e.g. being nervous to make a risky decision, or sad when firing an employee).

What is impact bias?

How does it relate to loss aversion?

The assumption that our expected emotion will be more intense and long-lasting than is reasonable.

We often overestimate the potential emotional impact of a loss to be great, which can contribute to loss aversion.

What is Ekman's Core Emotions Theory?

How does Plutchik's model slightly differ?

6 discrete emotions, each tied to an easily identifiable facial expression.

Plutchik's model has 8 core emotions in opposed pairs.

Emotions can be categorized as Basic/Discrete, Dimensional, or Constructionist. Explain each approach.

Basic/discrete = emotions are categorical.

Dimensional = emotions are a continuous spectrum.

Constructionist = emotion is a construct of culture, upbringing, values, etc.

Emotions have contrasting effects on your Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems. Why (what is each division of the Autonomic Nervous System responsible for)?

The SyNS is associated with fight or flight responses, which are triggered by fear.

The PaNS is associated with rest and digestion, which are best done in a calm state.

Why were old tests of the relationship between emotion and physiology (such as Reading Mind Through Eyes Test, Facial Action Coding Systems, and the Facial Feedback Hypothesis) criticised?

Expresions used were often exaggerated.

Language labels were pre-assigned, so testcsubjects were more likely to see those emotions.

The observation of physiology excludes the factor of voice (prosody).

Context informs the meaning of physiological reactions.

Athletes, even blind, exhibit similar body language after a win/loss.

Humans in isolated tribes exhibit similar expressions.

What does this suggest?

Physiological responses have an intrinsic component, though environment (i.e. cultural context) also matters.

What are the 3 steps in the common view for where emotions originate?

Perception of event → feeling of fear → physiological reaction (in the Autonomic Nervous System).

What are the 4 sequential steps in the James-Lange Theory for the origin of emotion?

What sets it apart, and where does it fall short?

Event → Arousal → Interpretation → Emotion.

It emphasizes that physiological changes (arousal) contribute to emotion. However, arousal can look similar for different emotions, and they do not always come before the emotions.

What are the 2 steps of the Cannon-Bard Theory for the origin of emotions?

What sets it apart, and why does it fall short?

Event → Arousal + Emotion.

It emphasizes that emotion and arousal are generated separately and in parallel. However, emotions are blunted when the capacity for physiological changes is reduced (e.g. spinal cord injury), meaning they are connected.

What are the 4 steps in Shachter Singer’s 2-Factor Theory for the origin of emotions?

What sets it apart, and where does it fall short?

Event → Arousal → Cognitive Labels → Emotion.

It emphasizes the role of interpretation of the event. However, we are not always aware of the event (misattribution), and conscious labelling may not be required for the emotion to be triggered.

What is the Modern View of the origin of emotions?

Emotion is a product of complex, reciprocal influences.

It varies greatly by experiences.

There is no one neural signature, no one behavioural signature that applies uniformly to everyone, but is a distribution of neural networks.

How is the polygraph supposed to detect lies, and why is it not totally trusted?

The polygraph measures physiological changes associated with lying.

However, physiological responses can be aroused even if not lying, leading to false positives.

“Drives pushing us in a certain direction.”

Motivation

What is the Drive Reduction (DR) theory for our motivation to eat?

How does it relate to glucostatic theory and lipostatic theory?

Motivation to eat comes from a drive to achieve balance of internal physiological needs (e.g. blood sugar, fat content).

What is the Hedonic Impact and Incentive Salience theory for our motivation to eat?

Motivation to eat comes from liking a food for the fun of it, and/or wanting a food out of craving. It emphasizes reward and reward-associated cues.

What does this graph convey about our tendency to approach vs avoid a person?

As distance from the person decreases, you are more likely to avoid than approach them, and vice versa.

Why is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs not considered universally applicable?

The order of the ranking is not always the same for every person; some value different levels more and prioritize them more.

“A relatively enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving.”

Personality

Explain the 3 aspects of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: psychic determinism, symbolic meaning, and unconscious motivation.

Psychic determinism = events have a cause.

Symbolic meaning = no action is meaningless, they may represent another desire (Freudian Slip), and dreams represent wish fulfilment.

Unconscious motivation = we rarely understand why we do what we do, until that is determined by an intense response (breakdown).

What did Freud’s Psychodynamic Model suggest that personality might be?

Personality may be the result of the Ego’s efforts to “control” the Id.

Give 3 examples for how the Ego may put up defenses against negative memories.

Repression, denial, and projection/displacement.

What are the 4 reasons Freud’s model was criticized?

External validity / generalizability (it uses small case studies).

Many theories are untestable, thus unverifiable.

It has low predictive power.

It overestimates the role of parenting.

What is the Radical Behaviouristic Perspective on personality?

Why is it inadequate?

Behaviour is shaped by reinforcement/punishment (Operant Conditioning).

It cannot completely explain how a personality develops.

What is the Humanist Theory of personality?

Why is it inadequate?

Personality comes from a drive to achieve self-actualization, and problems like mental health issues come from failing to meet our conditions of worth.

It doesn’t effectively explain negative/harmful behaviours, and is difficult to test.

“Relatively stable units of personality; conceptual variables that we measure with tests.”

Personality traits

How does a Correlational Matrix show the relation of 2 traits?

The table compares which questions correlate with which traits.

What are the 5 factors in the Five Factor Model of Personality (FFM) / OCEAN?

Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

High C, low N and high A predict ____ job perfomance.

strong

O is ______ correlated, A ______ correlated with perceived leadership.

Positively, negatively

O is _____ correlated with family size.

negatively

Why did the factors of the Five Factor Model not evolve for optimal reproductive fitness?

Potential trade-offs: traits may be valuable in one place, problematic in another, and extreme values might not be ideal.

What is assortative mating by personality?

Give 2 examples of compatible features.

Compatibility based on common FFM traits.

N + N are compatible.

O + O are incompatible.

How does the HEXACO model differ from the Five Factor Model? What does each letter stand for?

It includes a sixth feature, honesty-humility (H), and emotionality instead of neuroticism.

(Honesty-humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to experience)

How does the Cattell 16PF model differ from the Five Factor Model?

It measures 16 fundamental traits using a self-report test.

h² of religiosity and conservatism ______ with age.

increases

How does the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) model assess for psychopathology (disorders) in adults?

How does it address the potential issue of people exaggerating/falsifying answers?

MMPI uses over 500 questions to differentiate healthy controls from ppl with a disorder.

To discourage exaggeration/falsification, the questions are written in a way to disguise which traits they are assessing. Additionally, the test has validity scales that detect abnormal patterns of responding.

What is the issue with the Byers-Briggs Type Indicator test?

It is categorical in all 4 options (e.g. introversion VS extraversion, instead of a continuous spectrum).

“The tests that are thought to reveal unconscious processes by having people project them onto items.”

E.g. Rorschach Inkblot Test, Thematic Apperception test, Draw-A-Person test.

Projective Tests

How are phrenology and physiognomy theorized to reveal a person’s personality?

Skull measurement and facial structure/emotivity are often seen as indicative of a person’s personality traits.

How is graphology theorized to reveal a person’s personality?

A person’s handwriting is thought to reveal their personality traits.

“Tendency to believe that descriptions are specific to oneself, even though they are general enough to describe almost anyone.”

What is our sensitivity to this effect reliant on, among other factors?

The Barnum Effect

Depends on the favourability of the judgement.