32 /Introduction to Emotion

Emotion, Arousal, Behavior, and Cognition

How Arousal, Expressive Behavior, and Cognition Interact in Emotion

• Motivated behavior is often connected to powerful emotions.

• Emotions are subjective but real.

• Lisa Feldman Barrett: Experiencing an emotion (e.g., anger) is real.

• Emotions are our body's adaptive response to ensure we do what is best for us (France de Wall).

• Emotions focus our attention and energize our actions when facing challenges (Citizen Smith).

• Emotional stress involves integrating data from our environment, body, and experiences (Francis).

• Positive emotions can lead to tears of joy, triumphant gestures, and newfound confidence.

• Negative and prolonged emotions can harm our health.

• Emotions involve:

  • Bodily arousal (e.g., heart pounding).

  • Expressive behaviors (e.g., quickened pace).

  • Conscious experience (e.g., feelings of panic, fear, joy).

• Psychological phenomena like vision, sleep, memory, and sex can be approached physiologically, behaviorally, and cognitively.

• Early emotion researchers addressed two key questions:

  • Does bodily arousal come before or after emotional feelings?

  • How do thinking (cognition) and feeling interact?

James-Lange Theory: Arousal Comes Before Emotion

• Common sense suggests we cry because we are sad, lash out because we are angry, tremble because we are afraid.

• William James proposed that this view is backward.

• James-Lange Theory: We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble (James).

• Emotions result from attention to our bodily activity.

• The theory was also proposed by Danish physiologist Karl Lange.

• Example: Noticing a racing heart and shaking with fright leads to feeling fear.

• Joy is expressed because we are smiling with our teammates.

Cannon-Bard Theory: Arousal and Emotion Occur Simultaneously

• Physiologist Walter Cannon disagreed with the James-Lange theory.

• Bodily responses (heart rate, perspiration, body temperature) are too similar and change too slowly to cause different emotions.

• Cannon-Bard Theory: Bodily responses and experienced emotions occur separately but simultaneously.

• The triggering stimulus travels to the sympathetic nervous system, causing bodily arousal, and to the brain's cortex, causing awareness of the emotion.

• Pounding heart does not cause fear, nor does fear cause a pounding heart.

• Studies of people with spinal cord injuries:

  • Lower spine injuries (loss of sensation only in legs): little change in emotion intensity.

  • High spinal cord injury (loss of sensation below the neck): reported changes in emotions.

Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory: Arousal Plus Label Equals Emotion

• Thinking and feeling interact; how we interpret experiences matters.

• Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory: Emotions have two ingredients: physical arousal and cognitive appraisal.

• Emotional experience requires a conscious interpretation of arousal.

Spillover Effect

• Arousal spills over from one event to the next.

• Example: Receiving news of a dream job after an invigorating run might lead to feeling more elated than if hearing the news after being awake all night studying.

• Arousal from a soccer match can fuel anger, leading to rioting or violent confrontations.

Experiment

• College men were injected with epinephrine, triggering arousal.

• One group was told to expect arousal; the other was told it would help test their eyesight.

• Participants who were not expecting the arousal caught the apparent emotion of the other person in the waiting room (euphoric or irritated).

• A stirred-up state can be experienced as one emotion or another, depending on how we interpret and label it.

• Arousal fuels emotion; cognition channels it.

• Emotion = arousal + interpretation

Influence of Drugs

• We can influence how we feel by deliberately changing brain chemistry (e.g., with coffee, nicotine, alcohol).

• Drugs stimulate the limbic system.

• Amphetamine experiment:

  • Volunteers were told they were given a placebo or a stimulant (amphetamine), but all received amphetamine.

  • Those expecting a placebo interpreted sensations negatively (jittery, anxious), while those expecting a stimulant recognized the sensations and enjoyed the effect (energized, focused).

  • The basic physiological responses involved in emotion are only part of the experience; the person's understanding and interpretation of the situation strongly influence the emotion.

Zajonc and Lazarus: Cognition and Emotion

Zajonc

• Emotional reactions can occur apart from or before conscious interpretation of a situation.

• We may like or dislike something immediately without knowing why.

• People prefer stimuli they have seen before, even if flashed subliminally (unaware of having previously seen them).

• We have an automatic radar for emotionally significant information.

• A subliminally flashed stimulus can prime us to feel better or worse about a follow-up stimulus.

Lazarus

• The brain processes vast amounts of information without conscious awareness.

• Some emotional responses do not require conscious thinking.

• Appraisal: To know whether a stimulus is good or bad, the brain must have some idea of what it is.

• Emotions arise when we appraise an event as harmless or dangerous.

Neural Pathways of Emotions

• Emotional responses can follow two different brain pathways.

High Road

• For complex feelings like hatred and love.

• The stimulus travels via the thalamus to the brain's cortex.

• Analyzed and labeled before the response command is sent out via the amygdala (emotion control center).

Low Road

• For simple likes, dislikes, and fears.

• A neural shortcut bypasses the cortex.

• A fear-provoking stimulus travels from the eye or ear, via the thalamus directly to the amygdala.

• Enables grease-lightning emotional response before intellect intervenes.

• The amygdala's reactions are so fast that we may be unaware of what has transpired.

• A conscious fear experience occurs as we become aware that our brain has detected danger.

• The amygdala sends more neural projections up to the cortex than it receives back.

• In the forest, we can jump at the sound of rustling bushes before our cortex decides whether it was a snake or the wind.

• Some of our emotional reactions involve no deliberate thinking.

Summary of Emotion Theories

• Some simple emotional responses involve no conscious thinking (Zajonc, LeDoux).

• Automatic perception can influence political decisions.

Table 32.1: Summary of Emotion Theories

• James-Lange: Emotions arise from awareness of specific bodily responses to stimuli (e.g., observe heart racing, then feel afraid).

• Cannon-Bard: Emotion-arousing stimuli trigger bodily responses and simultaneous subjective experience (e.g., heart races and feel afraid at the same time).

• Schachter-Singer: Experience of emotion depends on general arousal and a conscious cognitive label (e.g., interpret arousal as fear or excitement).

• Zajonc, LeDoux: Some embodied responses happen instantly without conscious appraisal (e.g., automatically feel startled by a sound).

• Lazarus: Cognitive appraisal (dangerous or not) defines emotion, sometimes without our awareness (e.g., sound is just the wind).

• Complex feelings are affected by conscious and unconscious information processing, memories, expectations, and interpretations.

• We have more conscious control over complex emotions.

• Reappraisal: Changing our interpretations when feeling emotionally overwhelmed.

• Reappraisal reduces distress and improves school performance.

• Embrace stress and approach exams with the view that stress helps maintain focus and solve problems.

• Automatic emotion and conscious thinking weave the fabric of our emotional lives.

Embodied Emotion

• Emotions involve the body.

• Some physical responses are easy to notice; others occur without awareness.

Distinct Emotions

• Most emotion scientists agree that anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness are basic human emotions (Ekman).

• Carol Izard isolated 10 basic emotions: joy, interest/excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt, most present in infancy.

• As many as 28 emotions exist, including awe, love, and pride (Cowen and Keltner).

• Emotions are categorized along two dimensions: positive versus negative, and arousal (low versus high).

Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

• In a crisis, the sympathetic division of the ANS mobilizes the body for action.

• Triggers adrenal glands to release stress hormones (epinephrine/adrenaline and norepinephrine/noradrenaline).

• Liver pours extra sugar (glucose) into the bloodstream.

• Respiration increases to supply needed oxygen.

• Heart rate and blood pressure increase.

• Digestion slows, diverting blood to muscles.

• Pupils dilate, letting in more light.

• Body perspires to cool down.

• Blood clots more quickly if wounded.

• The parasympathetic division calms the body when the crisis passes.

• Without conscious effort, the body's response to danger is coordinated and adaptive, preparing to fight or flee.

• Different emotions may have distinct arousal fingerprints, but discerning physiological differences among fear, anger, and sexual arousal is difficult.

Physiology of Emotions

• Different emotions can share common biological signatures.

• A single brain region can serve as the seat of seemingly different emotions.

• The insula is activated when we experience negative social emotions, such as lust, pridefulness, and disgust.

• It is also active when people bite into or think about disgusting food, or feel moral disgust.

• Similar multitasking regions are found in other brain areas.

• Scary thrills, elated excitement, and panicky fear involve similar physiological arousal.

• Some emotions have distinct brain circuits.

• Observers watching fearful faces show more amygdala activity than those viewing angry faces.

• Positive moods trigger more left frontal lobe activity.

• People with positive personalities show more activity in the left frontal lobe.

• We cannot easily see differences in emotions from tracking heart rate, breathing, and perspiration, but facial expressions and brain activity can vary with the emotion.