1. Emotions Flashcards
(49 cards)
1
Q
What are emotions?
A
hard to define
- comes from Latin: ‘to move’ or to ‘stir up’
- display of feelings that are evoke when important things happen to us
- distinct from moods
2
Q
How has the definition of emotions changed over time?
A
James: original focus on bodily changes
Lazarus: introduced cognitive impact
- despite changes, all focus on physiological aspect making you feel a certain way
3
Q
What is an affect?
A
- any mental state involving an evaluative relationship with the environment
- important subcategories: emotion and mood
4
Q
How does mood differ to emotion?
A
- usually less intense and have a longer lasting affective state
- not directed at any specific object: more diffuse and generalised
5
Q
What is affective well-being?
A
- generalised evaluation of affect that is more enduring than mood
- when this is severely impaired, it is associated with affective disorders e.g depression and anxiety
6
Q
What are the 3 key components of emotion?
A
- reaction to stimulus: physiological response, attentional orientation
- appraisal: relevance to goals evaluation of meaning (positive/negative)
- organisation of response: overt actions e.g facial expressions
7
Q
What are the discrete/categorical models of emotion?
A
- idea that a set of basic and fundamental emotions exist
- basic, as in being innate, universal and irreducible
- correspond to specific neurophysiological systems
- facial expression of the emotion is universally recognisable
8
Q
What are Ekman’s original 6 basic emotions?
A
- surprise
- anger
- sadness
- disgust
- fear
- happiness
9
Q
How does Plutchiks number of basic emotions vary to Ekmans?
A
- also includes acceptance/trust and expectance/anticipation
10
Q
What evidence does Ekman have for the basic emotions?
A
- south fore tribe in New Guinea (never exposed to a western culture)
- asked the tribespeople to imagine how they would feel in certain situations and their facial expressions were filmed : eliciting different emotions
- videos were showed to US students who accurately identified the emotions on average 86% of the time
11
Q
What evidence is there against basic emotions?
A
- facial expressions don’t reflect the emotion, instead they are social tools to communicate (Zajonc and Fridlund)
- context in which emotions are presented is important
- Gendron et al: universality in the facial expressions of the valence of the emotion chosen (positive or negative) but less so in the individual basic emotion (fear or anger) in the Himba cultural group
12
Q
What is the circumplex model of affect? (dimensional model of emotion)
A
emotions arise from 2 dimensions:
- pleasure
- arousal
each emotion is a linear combination of these two dimensions
E.g happiness is high pleasure and moderate arousal
anxiety is low pleasure and high arousal
13
Q
What is Darwins theory of emotions?
A
- they are innate, unlearned, biological responses consisting of a complex set of movements
- emotions evolved as they allow humans and animals to survive and reproduce e.g feelings of fear leads to fight/flight
- emotion expression is consistent within and across species
14
Q
What is the James-Lange theory?
A
emotions are the experience of the sets of bodily changes that occur in response to emotive cues in the world
1. emotion producing situations elicit appropriate set of physiological responses and behaviours
2. brain receives sensory feedback from muscles and organs producing these responses
3. feelings of emotions consist in this feedback
stimulus - response - interpretation
15
Q
What is the Cannon-Bard theory?
A
thalamic theory of emotion
- hypothalamus in the brain region is involved in emotional response to stimuli
- physiological changes in the body and the subjective experience of emotion occur simultaneously
- responses are inhibited by neocortical regions
16
Q
What is Schacter and Singers theory? (two factor theory)
A
- physiological arousal alone does not explain all emotional reactions and can be interpreted as any emotion
- physiological arousal requires cognitive assessment to determine whether the state of arousal corresponds to anger, happiness, fear etc
- emotions are determined jointly by perception of physiological responses and cognitive appraisal
17
Q
What evidence is there for Schacter and Singers theory? (two factor theory)
A
- PPs were told they are receiving a vitamin: given injections of adrenaline vs placebo
- 4 conditions: placed in anger provoking/neutral situation AND either told about potential side effects or not
- those informed about the physiological effects of the injection reported feeling less angry than those not told of any side effects (as they could understand the response)
- appraisal of physiological response determined the emotion
18
Q
What did Dutton and Aron find in terms of attribution of emotions, in evaluation to Schacter and Singers theory?
A
- emotions can be wrongly attributed to different aspects of a situation
- PPs crossed either a suspension bridge (fear inducing) or a sturdy bridge
- after they were interviewed by a female confederate
- more likely to contact female interviewer if they met her after crossing a sturdy bridge: attributed their arousal to attraction, rather than crossing a dangerous bridge
19
Q
How does the modal model of emotion explain how emotions are generated?
A
situation - attention - appraisal - response
- situations can be real/imagined
- attention is direct towards the emotional situation
- appraised either consciously or unconsciously in terms of what it e=means in relation to an individuals goals
- generates an emotional response which leads to change in experiential, behavioural and physiological response systems
20
Q
In what way can emotions vary?
A
- valence: extent to which an emotion is positive or negative
- arousal: strength of emotion
21
Q
How do people vary in terms of their emotion?
A
- affectivity: degree to which they experience emotions
- hedonic capacity: capability to feel good
- affective style: dispositional way of emotionally responding to an event
- emotional reactivity: the threshold magnitude, rise time, recovery function and duration of an emotional reaction
22
Q
What are complex emotions?
A
- the element of basic emotions combine to form other more complex emotions
- defined as ‘any emotion that is an aggregate of two or more emotions’
- comprise the majority of our emotional experiences
- vary in how they are expressed: no easily recognisable expressions
23
Q
What are mixed emotions?
A
- co-occurrence of two or more positive and negative effects
- e.g students report feeling happy and sad on moving out day
- experience of mixed emotions contributed to psychological wellbeing and the feeling that life has more meaning
24
Q
How are social factors implicated in emotion in various ways? (Parkinson and Manstead)
A
- the objects at which emotions are directed have a social direction
- the appraisal of emotions depends on social factors
- our emotions affect others
- emotions elicit social sharing of emotions
- we regulate our emotions due to their impact on others
25
What is emotion contagion?
- tendency to automatically mimic and synchronise expressions, vocalisations, postures and movements with those of another persons, consequently to converge emotionally
26
What at home evidence is there for emotion contagion?
- Joiner showed that individuals living with a depressed roommate are more likely to become depressed themselves
27
What workplace evidence is there for emotion contagion?
- Totterdell et al examined the spread of affect in employee networks in two organisations
- found employee affect can be predicted by the weighted affect of everyone else in the network
28
What community evidence is there for emotion contagion?
- Fowler and Christakis conducted a 20 year community study of 4739 people
- found that people happiness was related to the happiness of those they were connected with
29
What evidence is there for emotion contagion?
Not just limited to face-face interaction
- Kramer et al found that when positive expression was reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and the same was found for negative
- Coviello et al showed that rainfall not only influenced the emotional content of users status messages (direct influence), but also the emotional content of the status message of friends in cities where it was not raining (indirect influence)
30
What two processes lead to emotion contagion?
1. reactive: automatic processes that occur without awareness (aka primitive emotional contagion) e.g motor mimicry
2. inferential: conscious processes that only occur through social appraisal of other peoples emotions or by social comparison
these can act at the same time
31
What is motor mimicry?
- unintentional imitation e.g yawning
- emotions communicated through unintentional imitation of expressive gestures
- primitive emotion contagion: mimicry + interoceptive feedback from facial expressions
32
What is the facial feedback hypothesis? (primitive emotion contagion)
Stack et al
- presented to PPs as a psychomotor coordination study
- PPs told to grip between their teeth/between their lips
- PP rated video as funnier when the pen was held between their teeth (i.e smiling)
two possible mechanisms for this:
- cognitive: people make inferences about what they are feeling based on their facial expression
- physiological: the physical position of the muscle in your face can influence emotion
33
How has primitive emotion contagion been evaluated?
Stack et al
- only one positive emotion was measured: findings may be due to relative comfort of one facial expression
- recent replications didn't have the same findings
- effect sizes for facial feedback are too small
34
What is social appraisal?
- physical mimicry of expressions are not necessarily required for emotion contagion
- emotion contagion also occurs through inferential processes
- social appraisal occurs when we understand the implications of others emotional expressions which affects our appraisal of the same objects and events
35
How does the emotions as a social information model explain influence behaviour? (van Kleef)
emotional expressions provide info to observers which may influence their behaviour through 2 processes:
1. inferential processes: observers infer info about others feelings, attitudes, intentions based on their emotional expression
2. affective reactions: emotions may spread directly from expresser to observer via emotion contagion processes
- these processes may converge or compete depending on the observers information processing and relational factors
36
What is social sharing of emotions?
- when individuals communicate openly with one or more person about the circumstance of the emotion eliciting event and about their own feelings/emotional reaction
Rime
- occurs shortly after emotion eliciting event
- repetitive and shared with multiple people
- universal
- valence of emotion does not affect
- more intense emotions are shared more
- share with close others e.g parents
37
What are the consequences of sharing emotions with others?
Rime
- leads to an interpersonal dynamic: similar to self disclosure
- strengthens bonds between individuals
- distribute knowledge about important events in a community
38
What is the affect grid?
Russell et al
- based on two dimensions: pleasure and arousal
- single item scale to measure emotions
- easy and rapid to administer
- advantageous over multiple item questionnaires: too time consuming and can't be repeated
- requires correspondent training
39
What are limitations of the affect grid? (self report)
- requires self awareness and understanding of emotion
- only captures one point in time
- social desirability may lead to lower reporting of negative emotions
40
How are diary studies used to assess emotion?
- can be recorded at regular intervals e.g hourly or in response to a signal or when a designated event occurs
- can use phones to send reminders
- high ecological validity: experience reported in context of daily life
- minimises memory recall problems
- can examine changes over time
- participant burden: biased towards highly motivated
41
How can neuroimaging be used to measure emotion? (non-linguistic)
- restrictive environment in which emotions can be elicited, needs validation by self report
- emotions are complex and likely to involve networks of brain regions
42
How can physiological measures be used to measure emotion? (non-linguistic)
- skin conductance, heart rate, blood pressure etc
- pleasure and arousal seem to be related to physiological responses
43
How can recording of facial expressions be used to measure emotion? (non-linguistic)
- coding of facial behaviour to analyse emotions is complex
- facial expressions seem to be sensitive to the valence of the persons emotional state
- facial behaviour is not always a direct reflection of the persons emotional states
44
How can cognitive measures be used to measure emotion? (linguistic)
- stroop like tasks to assess nonconscious accessibility of emotions
45
How can qualitative accounts be used to measure emotion? (linguistic)
- interview, focus group, diary entries
- rich data
- ideographic, person centred, so hard to generalise
46
How can peer reports be used to measure emotion? (linguistic)
- no access to persons internal experience
- subjective
- requires good knowledge of person
47
How can sentiment analysis from text be used to measure emotion? (linguistic)
- online media
- contextual ambiguity
48
What is the best method for assessing emotion?
Multi method approach (Mauss and Robinson)
- limited convergence across methods
- no 'gold standard' measure
- choice depends on research question
- not possible to capture the construct of emotion with a single measure alone
49
What are ways of eliciting emotion?
- film clips
- international affect picture system: library of photos rated on pleasure, arousal and dominance
