Module 16

Emotion

INTRODUCTION

• Emotional experience• Four components of emotion

– First, interpret or appraise some stimulus in terms of your well-being

– Second, experience a subjective feeling, such as fear or happiness

– Third, experience physiological responses, such as changes in heart rate or breathing

– Fourth, show observable behaviors, such as smiling or crying

PERIPHERAL THEORIES

• Studying emotions– Peripheral theory

• emphasizes how physiological changes in the body give rise to emotional feelings

– Cognitive appraisal theory• emphasizes how interpretations or appraisals of

situations result in emotional feelings– Affective neuroscience approach

• studies the underlying neural bases of mood and emotion by focusing on the brain’s neural circuits that evaluate stimuli and produce or contribute to experiencing/expressing different emotional states

PERIPHERAL THEORIES (CONT’D)

• James-Lange theory– Says that our brain interprets specific physiological

changes as feelings or emotions and that a different physiological pattern underlies each emotion

• Facial-feedback theory– Says that the sensations or feedback from the

movement of your facial muscles and skin are interpreted by your brain as different emotions

PERIPHERAL THEORIES (CONT’D)

COGNITIVE APPRAISAL THEORY

• Cognitive appraisal theory– Says that your interpretation, appraisal, thought, or

memory of a situation, object, or event can contribute to, or result in, your experiencing different emotional states

COGNITIVE APPRAISAL THEORY (CONT’D)

AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE APPROACH

• Four qualities of emotions– First expressed in stereotypical facial expressions,

such as showing a fearful expression (open mouth, raised eyebrows), and accompanied by distinctive physiological responses

– Second less controllable than we might like and may not respond to reason

– Third influences many cognitive processes, such as making decisions, developing personal relationships, and selecting goals

– Fourth hard-wired in the brain

AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE APPROACH (CONT’D)

• Affective neuroscience approach– Studies the underlying neural bases of mood and

emotion– Focuses on the brain’s neural circuits that evaluate

stimuli and produce or contribute to experiencing and expressing different emotional states

AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE APPROACH (CONT’D)

• Emotional director and memorizer– Physical survival depends on a brain structure about

the size and shape of an almond called the amygdala• Amygdala

– Located in the tip of the brain’s temporal lobe and receives input from all the senses

– Monitors and evaluates whether stimuli have positive or negative emotional significance for our well-being and survival

– Involved in storing memories with emotional content

AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE APPROACH (CONT’D)

AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE APPROACH (CONT’D)

• Brain circuits for emotion– Thalamus

• functions as a major relay station for all the senses (except smell)

– Amygdala• recognizes threats almost immediately

– Prefrontal cortex• involved in complex cognitive functions, such as

making decisions, planning, and reasoning

AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE APPROACH (CONT’D)

UNIVERSAL FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

• Universal emotional expressions– Number of specific inherited facial patterns or

expressions that signal inherited facial patterns or expressions that show specific feelings or emotional states, such as a smile signaling a happy state

• Number of expressions (seven)• Cross culture

– Anger, sadness– Happiness, fear– Surprise, disgust– Contempt

FUNCTIONS OF EMOTIONS

• Social signals – Facial expressions

• accompany emotions • may send social signals about how we feel as well

as provide social signals about what we’re gong to do

• Survival, attention, and memory– Evolutionary theory of emotions

• says that one function of emotions is to help us evaluate objects, people, and situations in terms of how good or bad they are for our well-being and survival

FUNCTIONS OF EMOTIONS (CONT’D)

• Arousal and motivation– Yerkes-Dodson law

• says performance on a task is an interaction between the level of physiological arousal and the difficulty of the task

• difficult tasks– low arousal results in better performance

• most tasks– moderate arousal helps performance

• easy tasks– high arousal may facilitate performance

HAPPINESS

• Positive emotions– Happiness

• indicated by smiling and laughing • can result from

– momentary pleasures, such as funny commercials

– short-term joys, such as, a great date– long-term satisfaction, such as an enjoyable

relationship

HAPPINESS (CONT’D)

• Positive emotions– Reward/pleasure center

• includes several areas– nucleus accumbens– ventral tegmental area– several neurotransmitters, especially dopamine

HAPPINESS (CONT’D)

HAPPINESS (CONT’D)

• Long-term happiness– Adaptation level theory

• says that we quickly become accustomed to receiving some good fortune (money, job, car, degree)

• we take the good fortune for granted within a short period of time

• impact of good fortune fades and contributes less to our long-term level of happiness

HAPPINESS (CONT’D)

• Long-term happiness• Happiness set point

– each person has a set point for experiencing a certain level of happiness

– some more and some less– personal level for being happy is half genetic and half

environmental

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

• Display rules– specific cultural norms or rules regulate how, when, and

where a person expresses emotions and how much emotional expression is appropriate

• Perceiving emotions– depends on culture– five emotions

• surprise• anger• happiness• disgust• sadness

CULTURAL DIVERSITY (CONT’D)

RESEARCH FOCUS

• What is emotional intelligence?

– Ability to perceive emotions accurately

– Take feelings into account when reasoning

– Understand emotions

– Regulate or manage emotions in oneself and others

APPLICATION

– Lie detector (polygraph) tests• based on theory that, if a person tells a lie, he or she will feel

some emotion, such as guilt or fear• guilt or fear will be accompanied by involuntary physiological

responses• difficult to suppress or control; can be measured

– Galvanic skin response• changes in sweating of the fingers (or palms) • accompany emotional experiences and are independent of

perspiration under normal temperature

APPLICATION

APPLICATION

• Control question technique– Lie detection procedure in which the examiner

asks two kinds of questions designed to elicit large emotional responses

– Person answers only “yes” or “no”– If guilty, expected to show a greater emotional

response to critical questions than neutral questions

APPLICATION