Lecture 16 - 11/5/26 - Sleep and Emotion

Defining Emotion

• Emotions are rapid, multi-faceted responses to specific (internal or external) stimuli/events that allow the individuals to meet the demands of their environment

• Emotions can be felt briefly or longer over time

• They serve specific functions in different types of situations and contexts

Measuring Emotion

• Subjective ratings

• Linguistic analysis

• Behavioral observation

• Physiological components

• Patterns of brain activation

Gross’s Model of Emotion Generation

• Emotions involve person-situation transactions that give rise to a set of coordinated, yet flexible multi-system of responses

• A sequence is initiated by a situation (internal or external) that is personally relevant to the individual

Emotional Responses

• Emotional responses can be highly adaptive because they allow us to meet situational demands

• Emotional responses can also be maladaptive, however, in terms of their

  • Intensity (too small/given the situation)

  • Duration (lasts too long or not long enough)

  • Frequency (occurs too often or too seldom)

  • Type (inappropriate for the specific situation/feeling)

• Maladaptive emotional responses are core features of psychiatric disorders

Emotion Regulation

• Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which we influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express them

• ER can occur before, during, or after an emotional response has been fully generated

• There are a multitude of ways one might attempt to regulate his/her emotions

Gross’s Model describes five stages at which emotion regulation strategies might occur

• Situation Selective (create, seek out, or avoid a situation)

• Situation Modification (attempts to modify aspects of a situation) → Situation

• Attentional Deployment (direct attention in a certain way when in a situation) → Attention

• Cognitive Change (think about the situation differently) → Appraisal

• Response Modification (strategies used after an emotional response has happened) → Response