AP Psych Unit 7; Emotion & Personality

Emotion

a response of the whole organism involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience

James-Lange Theory

Physiological response then emotion

Cannon-Bard theory

Physiological response and emotion are simultaneous

Schacter-singer/two-factor theory

Physical arousal, cognitive label, them emotion; two factors are physical arousal and cognitive label

Role of nervous system in emotion

Sympathetic nervous system in ANS releases adrenaline and prepares body for action, then parasympathetic nervous system calms the body
Too much or too little arousal is bad in some situations

Physiological similarities between emotions

Anger, fear, sexual arousal- high breathing, heart rate, tension

Physiological differences between emotions

Fear and rage- different figure temp and hormone secretions
Fear and joy- different facial muscles
Different brain circuits and activation- fear is amygdala, negative emotions in right, positive in left (more dopamine receptors)

Cognition and emotion relationship

Cognition can define emotion- spillover effect and two factor theory
Zajonc- arousal sometimes lingers without cognitive label

LeDoux Theory & physiology of emotion

Some emotions take low road- bypass cortex and go straight to amygdala for fast emotional response- prevents feelings from hijacking thinking so we can have speedy response
Some take high road- pass cortex and then go to amygdala

Zajonc theory

theory that some emotional responses occur instantly, sometimes we feel before we think

Lazarus theory

Experience of emotion depends on how the situation is labelled or appraised (is it harmful or beneficial), responses don't require conscious thinking and much are automatic
Appraisal, then physiological response, then emotion

Gender differences in emotion detection

Women are better at decoding others' emotions, more emphatic, more sensitive to emotions

Ekman's research on nonverbal expressions of emotion

Most facial expressions are universal, emotional display rules are universal too (showing more emotion to certain people than others)

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7 emotions- happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt

Culture's role in emotions

Emotion expression is similar across all cultures, but individuality cultures (Western Europe, Australia, new zealand, North America) show more emotion than collective cultures where people adjust to others (china, Japan)
Expression stays consistent with heredity from certain countries

Do facial expressions influence feelings

Laird- activating certain muscles of emotions can make you actually feel that emotion, facial feedback effect
Smiling can make you happy

facial feedback effect

the tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness

Izard's 10 basic emotions

joy, interest-excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt

Why don't children feel shame, guilt, contempt

Young children don't understand other people's perspectives to experience these complex emotions

How do we learn fear

conditioning (heights) and observation (snakes)

Biological basis of fear

We're biologically scared of things that may harm us (certain animals) so we are more prone to become scared of them
Amygdala allows fear but hippocampus allows us to be conditioned

Consequences of anger

More anger, regret, prejudice, chronic hostility, heart disease

behavior feedback effect

the tendency of behavior to influence our own and others' thoughts, feelings, and actions (acting angry makes us more angry)

Catharsis

a release of emotional tension

Causes and consequences of happiness

Causes- objective well being, acting happy, control, sleep, close relationships, focusing beyond self, gratitude, leisure, movement, spiritualism

Consequences- feel good, do good, health, satisfaction

feel-good, do-good phenomenon

people's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood

Subjective well being

self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life, used along with measures of objective well-being (physical and economic indicators) to evaluate people's quality of life

adaption-level phenomenon

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

relative deprivation

the perception that one is worse off relative to those compared to

Behavioral medicine

an interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease

health psychology

a subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine

Stress

the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging

Coronary heart disease

the clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in many developed countries

Type A

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people

Type B

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people

psychophysiological illness

literally, "mind-body" illness; any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)

the study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health

Lymphocytes

The two types of white blood cells that are part of the body's immune system
B lymphocytes- form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections
T lymphocytes- form in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances

Coping

alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods

Problem-focused coping

Attempting to alleviate stress directly by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.

Emotion-focused coping

attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to one's stress reaction

Biofeedback

a system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension

Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)

a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not presently considered to be a part of conventional medicine

Predictors of happiness

high self esteem, optimistic, outgoing, agreeable, close friendships, meaningful religion, sleep well, exercise

How does stress impact health

Coronary heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, altered heart rhythms, prediction of new neurons slows, telomeres shorten (shortened life span), high cortisol, AIDS/HIV, cancer, worn out white blood cells (supressed immune system)

Stress responses

Flight or fight
Withdraw and conserve energy
Tend and befriend- seek and give support (common in women)

Why do men become more aggressive during stress

Women have higher levels of oxytocin- stress moderating hormone released by nurturing

Glucocorticoids (cortisol)

Hormone secreted by adrenal glands during stress

General Adaptation Syndrome

Seyle's concept that the body responds to stress with alarm, resistance, and exhaustion

Alarm- mobilize resources, heart rate increases, blood in skeletal muscles, high respiration, blood pressure, activation of SNS

Resistance- coping, everything remains high, sudden outpouring of hormones

Exhaustion- resistance cannot last longer, more vulnerable to illness, collapse, death

Catastrophes

unpredictable large scale events (terrorist attack, hurricane)

significant life changes

personal events, life transitions (death, loss of job, moving)

Daily hassles

everyday minor events that annoy and upset people, can add up and cause greater susceptibility to hypertension and less life satisfaction

Personality

an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

Freud's Psychoanalytic theory

Attributes thoughts and actions to unconsumed motives and conflicts, techniques used in psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

Unconscious, Preconscious, conscious mind

Unconscious- reservoir of unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, memories, processing we are unaware of
Preconscious- some thoughts stored here temporarily and we can access
Conscious- accessible thoughts

Psychoanalytic strategies to explore unconscious mind

Free association
Dream analysis

Free association

in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

stages of psychosexual development

Oral- 0-1, mouth pleasure
Anal- 1-3, bowel/bladder elimination + control
Phallic- 3-6, genitals and incestuous sexual feelings
Latent- 6-puberty, sexual feelings
Genital- puberty-on, maturation of sexual interests

Oedipus Complex

in phallic stage, boys sexually desire their mother, but fear the father's punishment (castration anxiety)

ego

mediates among demands of id, superego, and reality- reality principle to satisfy id's desire in ways that bring pleasure rather than pain

Identification

the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos

defense mechanisms

in psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

Repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Regression

psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated

Reaction formation

psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

Projection

psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

Rationalization

defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions

Displacement

psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet

Denial

refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities

Collective unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history

Criticisms of psychoanalytic theory

-very vague
-unresponsive to the external environment
-too reliant on the early development of the individual
-uses a small sample for drawing conclusions
-can't predict events, only explains them after the fact
- underestimated peer influence
- new theories of dreaming
- infants don't have neural networks mature enough for great emotional trauma

Jung research

Less emphasis on social factors of Freud's theories, agreed that unconscious is powerful
Collective unconscious, explains why different cultures share symbols and images (mother is nurturance)

Horney & Adler research

Agreed that childhood is important but childhood social tensions are important, not children sexual tensions
Behavior is driven to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority or anxiety
Countered Freud's view of penis envy in women and that they have weak superegos

Projective tests

a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli to trigger projection of one's inner thoughts and feelings

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Rorschach inkblot test

the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach, seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

humanistic theory

An explanation of behavior that emphasizes the entirety of life rather than individual components of behavior and focuses on human dignity, individual choice, and self-worth

terror management theory

a theory of death-related anxiety, explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death

Maslow's self-actualization

one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved, the motivation to fulfill one's potential

Rogers' theory

personality is shaped by the need for self-actualization, and positive regard from others to develop trust
unconditional positive regard- attitude of total acceptance towards another person
Ideal self vs actual self
3 conditions for growth promotion- genuine, accepting, emphatic

Possible selves

images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future, by Markus

third-force perspective

Maslow & Rogers perspective that emphasized human potential

self-concept

all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"

Criticisms of humanistic theory

Vague
Subjective
Can lead to selfishness, erosion of moral constraints
Naive, fails to recognize evil

Traits

a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

a personality test that taps four characteristics/scales and classifies people into 1 of 16 personality types:
Extraversion/introversion
Sensing/intuition
Thinking/feeling
Judging/perceiving

Polygraph

a machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes)

Cattell's factor analysis

Statistical procedure to identify clusters of test items that relate to each other

Eyesenck's Trait Theory

We can reduce our individual variations to two or three dimensions- extraversion/introversion and emotional stability/instability
These factors emerged as basic dimensions in a factor analysis test from the Eysenck personality questionnaire

Big five personality factor theory

McCrae & Costa five main traits:
Conscientiousness (organized, careful)
Agreeableness (trusting, helpful)
Neuroticism (calm, secure)
Openness (imaginative, independent)
Extraversion (sociable, affectionate)

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) strengths and weaknesses

Most widely researched and used personality test, developed to identity emotional disorders but is now used for many other screening purposes
Strengths- valid, reliable, can detect lying
Weaknesses- not good predictor

Personality inventory

a questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors, used to assess selected personality traits.

empirically derived test

a test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups

Extent traits are stable across lifespan, heritable, useful predictors of behavior

Stable in adulthood but some increase with age
About 50% of traits are heritable
Predicts good grades, morning types, evening types, and marital/sexual satisfaction

Criticisms of trait theory

Person-situation controversy- look for genuine personality traits that persist over time, is behavior influenced by ourselves or environment
People are not very predictable
Personality test scores are weak predictors of behavior on every occasion

Social-cognitive theory

views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people's traits (including their thinking) and their social context.

What influences shape one's personality

Conditioning, observing others, mental processes, how we interact with environment, schemas, memories, expectations

Bandura's reciprocal determinism

explanation of how the factors of environment, personal characteristics, and behavior can interact to determine future behavior
Different people choose different environments
Personalities shape how we intercept and react to events
Personalities help create situations we react to

Rotter's theory of external and internal locus of control

External- change or outside forces beyond personal control determine fate
Internal- you control your own fate- more independent, healthy, less depressed
Personal control- extent to which people perceive control over environment rather than feeling helpless

Benefits of personal control

health, moral, satisfaction, adjustment, social success, better grades, low depression risk, improved self management in other areas

Seligman's learned helplessness

the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events