Human Emotions and Relationships

These flashcards cover key concepts related to human emotions, attachment theories, and social behaviors discussed in class.

Harlow's Experiment

An experiment that demonstrated the importance of caregiving and companionship in social and cognitive development, where infant monkeys preferred a cloth mother over a wire mother that provided food.

Basic Emotions

Emotions that all individuals are born with, such as joy, anger, interest, disgust, surprise, distress, sadness, and fear.

Social Emotions

Emotions that are learned from one's social environment, including embarrassment, guilt, shame, and pride.

Galvanic Skin Response

A change in the electrical resistance of the skin caused by emotional stress, measurable with a sensitive galvanometer, often used in lie detector tests.

Schachter-Singer Theory of Emotion

A theory suggesting each emotion has the same physiological basis; we label our emotions based on environmental context.

Mere Exposure Effect

The phenomenon where individuals develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them, supporting the evolutionary theory of basic emotions.

Passionate Love

A strong emotional component present early in relationships that tends to fade over time.

Companionate Love

A type of love that develops slowly over time, characterized by deep commitment, attachment, and personal history.

Social Facilitation

The tendency for people to perform tasks better in the presence of others, especially for simple or well-learned tasks.

Social Loafing

The tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone.

Deindividuation

A psychological state characterized by diminished self-awareness and increased impulsivity, often occurring in group settings.

Zajonc's Theory

The hypothesis that the mere presence of others increases arousal, which can enhance performance on well-learned tasks and hinder performance on complex tasks.

Quality of Romantic Relationships

A reflection of early attachment styles to caregivers; secure attachments in childhood often lead to secure relationships in adulthood.

Hazan and Shaver's Attachment Theory

Theory suggesting that our romantic attachments reflect the attachment styles we develop in childhood based on caregiver interactions.

Hatfield’s Two-Factor Theory of Love

Theory stating that love consists of physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation, similar to the Schachter-Singer theory of emotion.

Empirical Evidence for Deindividuation

Research studies supporting the concept of deindividuation, including Mann's study on suicide baiting, Watson’s research on warrior cultures, and Deiner’s Halloween study.

How and when do basic and social emotions develop? 

Basic emotions develop early in infancy, while social emotions emerge later as children learn social cues and norms. Typically after two years of age.

How has emotion research been used in the legal system? 

By examining the microexpressions of individuals and using lie detection tests (polygraph testing).

What is an emotion? 

A natural instinctive state of mind that happens because of one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

What are limitations to the Schachter-Singer Theory?

Current research suggests that emotions are not as malleable, and physiological responses are often more consistent than the theory suggests.

What are some assumptions of the Schachter-Singer Theory?

The theory assumes that emotional experiences require both physiological arousal and cognitive labeling of that arousal to produce specific emotions.

What was the design of the Schachter-Singer experiment?

The experiment involved male college students receiving an injection of either epinephrine or a placebo before being placed in a room with a confederate displaying either happiness or anger, to assess emotional responses. Subjects found the injection to be more arousing than experimenters thought. 

How does an evolutionary approach to human emotions differ from the Schacter-Singer two-factor approach?

The evolutionary theory of emotion asserts that you do not need cognition to feel emotion whereas the other two theories imply that cognition is needed. Cognition is not always required for emotional response.

According to Zajonc, what does he mean by the statement “thinking is not required for feeling”?

Zajonc meant an individual does not have to think in order to have emotions. Merely being exposed to something similar is enough for people to feel an emotional response whether they can explain it or not.

What theory of emotion does the “Mere Exposure Effect” support?

Mere Exposure Effect supports the evolutionary theory and basic emotions

What is the difference between liking and love?

how much passion is present in the relationship

Describe research by Zick Rubin and Keith Davis on distinguishing liking and love.

Their research claimed that there were specific qualities of loving relationships that make them more rewarding and emotionally charged. These qualities include enjoyment, acceptance, trust, respect, confiding, understanding, and spontaneity. He found that love distinguishes itself with passion and caring.

Love and liking someone are feelings and we have yet to find a way to measure these qualitative findings. It is based mainly on people's responses to how they feel towards someone.

Describe the Hazan and Shaver approach to love as an attachment process. What research was done to support their theory?

Quality of our romantic relationships can be predicted based on the how attached they were to their caregiver in early life. If our lives began with insecure attachments, then it is probable that we will end up in insecure attachments later on in life.
They experimented on this theory by surveying adults by having them define their romantic relationship. The findings showed that adult emotional attachments are similar to that of infants and the adults self-selected themselves as secure, anxious avoidant or anxious ambivalent following the same percentages found in children.

Describe Elaine Hatfield’s two-factor theory of love. Explain how it relates to the Schacter-Singer two-factor theory of emotion. Summarize the research discussed in class that supports this theory. Also, describe the Passionate Love scale developed from this theory. Does this scale correlate with other measures or indicators of romantic love?

Elaine Hatfield's two factor theory of love says love requires physiological arousal and cognition (thinking). These are the same requirements for the Schachter-Singer theory of emotion. Dutton and Aron experimented with arousing males by warning them they would be shocked (physiological) and comparing them with a group of males who were not told they would be surprised. They were exposed to an attractive female confederate (cognition) findings showed that the males who were given the physiological arousal wanted to kiss the confederate whereas the others didn't. The Passionate Love Scale uses a 30 item Likert scale to measure three aspects of love (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral).

This scale is very reliable and correlates with Rubin's liking and loving scale, as well as ratings of overall satisfaction with relationship and sexual satisfaction

Explain how social facilitation and social loafing take place. What does Zajonc say about how social facilitation works?

Zajonc argues that the "mere presence" of other people have a consistent effect—it increases arousal, motivation, and drive (thought to be innate).
- Task at hand is critical factor: If the task requires a well-learned behavior (which is called the dominant response), increased motivation or arousal is helpful and increases performance. (The dominant response can be complex as well but highly developed—like an Olympic athlete).
- Conversely, if the task requires a behavior that is complex or poorly learned, then the increased arousal and motivation is likely to impair performance.
- Point: If the task is well learned you get social facilitation, if the task is not well learned you get social inhibition.

What impact does the presence of other people have on human performance? How were the conflicting findings on this question resolved?

The presence of others can enhance or impair performance depending on the task's complexity and the individual's level of expertise. Researchers concluded that well-learned tasks benefit from social facilitation, while poorly learned tasks can lead to social inhibition.

Under what conditions does social loafing occur?

Social loafing occurs primarily when people work in a group, and the task is easy, there is little incentive (reward), when the person is not directly accountable for his or her performance, when he or she is an anonymous member of the group, when the person thinks that the group can get the job done without them putting in much effort (free-rider effect), and when the person perceives that others are not putting in enough effort and resents working harder than the other people (sucker effect).

How does deindividuation take place?

Input Variables: anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, energizing effects of others, large group size with much activity, novel or unstructured situation, arousal, altered states of consciousness (drugs)
- PLUS Internal states (what happens to the person): (deindividuation), no concern for evaluation or consequences of behavior, weakening of social controls (the inhibitions we learn against anti-social behavior start to decline because of the conditions that are present), lowered threshold for expressing inhibited behaviors, focus on present time (forget about past or future), loses sense of personal responsibility for one's actions
- EQUALS Behavioral effects: impulsive, irrational, often destructive and intentionally anti-social, behavior is highly emotional, behavior becomes self-reinforcing and intensifies, behavior is extremely difficult to terminate.

Leon Mann (1981)

Studies of suicide baiting: baiting increases with crowd size and time of episode (night versus day)

Watson (1973)

Studied warfare patterns in over 200 cultures. Cultures in which warriors deindividuated themselves by wearing masks and paint were more likely to torture their captives as compared with cultures that did not deindividuate their warriors.

Deiner (1976)

- Children who came in groups were more likely to steal or cheat (take more than one candy) than children who came alone
- Also when the experimenter asked the children who they were and where they lived, they were less likely to steal as compared to children who were not asked these questions.

What real-life examples are there where deindividuation takes place?

-riots, mosh pits, concerts, cyberbullying