W1 Emotion

Question 1

What is Emotion?

Answer 1

intense, short-lived lived affective condition which involves taking an evaluative position with respect to an intentional object/event (e.g. Anger, disgust, surprise)

Question 2

What is Mood?

Answer 2

Usually less intense and longer lasting affective state, which is not directed at any specific object, reflecting more diffuse and generalized evaluative processes (e.g., Calm, Tense, Drowsy).

Question 3

What is Affective?

Answer 3

Any mental state involving and evaluative relationship with the environment. Important subcategories are emotion and mood.

Question 4

What is Affective Well-being?

Answer 4

Generalized evaluation of affect that is more enduring than mood. Severely impaired affective well-being is a feature of affective disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety).

Question 5

Emotion 1884 James

Answer 5

Bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.

Question 6

Emotion 1954 Arnold and Gason

Answer 6

The felt tendency towards an object judged suitable, or away from an object judged unsuitable, reinforced by bodily changes.

Question 7

Emotion1991 Lazarus

Answer 7

Organized psycho-physiological reactions to news about ongoing relationships with the environment.

Question 8

Emotion 2013 Keltner, Oatley and Jenkins

Answer 8

Multifaceted responses to events that we see as challenges or opportunities in our inner or outer world, events that are important to our goals - particularly our social goals.

Question 9

Emotions are made up of what?

Answer 9

Reaction to a stimulus(= Physiological response, attentional orientation)
Appraisal (= relevance to goals, evaluation of meaning),
Organization of response (=overt action, facial expression).

Question 10

Discrete/categorial Model

Answer 10

a set of basic and fundamental emotions exists = innate, universal, irreducible and correspond to specific neurophysiological systems (= facial expressions).
6 basic emotions (now 7: contentment)

Question 11

Evidence for basic emotion (Discrete/Categorical Model)
Ekman et al. 1972

Answer 11

Tribe in New Guinea who had never been exposed to Western cultures, imagine how they would feel in a certain situation and their facial expressions.
Their facial expression were then shown to American students, they were able to identify the emotions.

Question 12

Evidence against basic emotions (Discrete/Categorical Models)

Answer 12

Facial expression don’t reflect the emotion, they’re a social tool to communicate emotions. Context is important. Facial expression of the valence of the emotion (positive or negative) but less so on the individual basic emotion were universal.

Question 13

Dimensional Models = The circumplex model of affect .

Answer 13

Emotions arise from two dimensions: Pleasure and Arousal. Each emotion is the linear combination of these two dimensions. Happiness = high pleasure and moderate arousal. Anxiety= low pleasure and high arousal. (+)

Question 14

Dimensional Models = Darwin’s Theory (evolutionary adaptations)

Answer 14

Emotions are innate, unlearned, biological responses consisting of a complex set of movements.
Emotions evolved because they allowed humans and animals to survive and reproduce. Universal and important to understand other species emotions to our survival.

Question 15

Dimensional Models = James-Lange Theory (bodily response)

Answer 15

Emotions = the experience of the sets of bodily changes that occur in response to emotive cues in the world. Event happens = brain reactions = emotions as feedback.
1- Emotion producing situations elicit appropriate set of physiological responses (trembling, sweating) and behaviours (clenching of the fists).
2- Brain receives sensory feedback from muscles and organs producing these responses.
3- Feelings of emotions consist of this feedback. 

Question 16

Critical evaluation of James-Lange Theory by CANON

Answer 16

Activity does not differentiate all emotion states. The same bodily changes occur in non-emotional states (fever, exposure to cold) Separating organs from brain in animals does not impair emotion behaviour. Body changes too slow to be a source of emotional feeling.

Question 17

Dimensinal models = Cannon-Bard Theory = Thalamic theory of emotion (brain response)

Answer 17

The hypothalamus (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- removal of cortex allows uncontrolled emotion displays
Influenced by lesion studies = Decorticated cats had sudden and inappropriate anger outbursts
(Case of Phineas Gage injuries to prefrontal cortices - problems with emotional processing.)

Question 18

Schachter & Singer theory (Biopsychosocial)

Answer 18

Physiological arousal alone does not explain all emotional reactions. Physiological arousal requires cognitive assessment to determine whether the state of arousal corresponds to anger, happiness, fear ect. Emotions determined jointly by perception of physiological responses + cognitive appraisal.
(Mis)Attributing the cause of emotion = wrongly attributed to different aspect of situation (Dutton and Aron bridge + male participants arousal)

Question 19

Social factors implicated in emotions how?

Answer 19

Social direction (what is the emotion directed to?), Appraisal of emotions depends on social factors (presence of others), our emotions affect other people, emotions elicit soical sharing of emotions, regulation of emotion due to their impact on other.

Question 20

Emotion contagion (Hatfield et al. 1994)

Answer 20

The tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations postures, and movements with those of another person’s and, consequently, to converge emotionally.

Question 21

Function of emotion contagion (Hazy & Boyatzis, 2015)

Answer 21

Enable emotional understanding and identification with others.
Provide a proto-organizing state that enables or prevents cooperative responses.

Question 22

Emotion contagion Home

Answer 22

Joiner (1994) showed that individuals living with a depressed roommate were more likely to become depressed themselves.

Question 23

Emotion Contagion Workplace

Answer 23

Totterdell et al. (2004) examined the spread of affect in employee networks in two organizations. An employee’s affect could be predicted from the weighted affect of everyone else in the network.

Question 24

Emotion contagion Community

Answer 24

Fowler and Christakis (2008) conducted a 20-year community study of 4739 people and found that people’s happiness was related to the happiness of the people to whom they were connected, even when those connections were indirect (i.e., via another person).

Question 25

Emotion contagion social-media

Answer 25

Kramer et al., (2014) = evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks by manipulating the emotional content in people’s facebook news feeds.
positive expression was reduced, people produced fewer positive posts.
negative expression was reduced they produced fewer negative posts.

Question 26

Emotion contagion Mechanisms (2 processes)

Answer 26

Reactive: automatic processes that occur without awareness (e.g. motor mimicry). Also known as primitive emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994).
Inferential: conscious processes that occur through social appraisal of other people’s emotions or by social comparison (e.g., my mates seem happy, perhaps I am too)

Question 27

Primitive emotion contagion = Motor Mimicry

Answer 27

= Emotions communicated through unintentional imitation of expressive gestures. Merely perceiving a behaviour can be enough to make others behave similarly. People often automatically mimic the gestures of people around them (e.g. yawning).

Question 28

Primitive emotion contagion Facial feedback hypo

Answer 28

Stack et al. 1988 = grip the pen between their teeth/lips watced a funny video. P’s with pen between teeth (smiling) rated it funnier. 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.

Question 29

Facial feedback hypothesis critical evaluation

Answer 29

= Only one positive emotion was measured- difference between conditions could be due to relative comfort/pleasantness of one facial position over the other. Recent studies didn’t replicate the findings (Andreasson & Dimberg, 2008; Soussignan, 2002).

Question 30

Social appraisal

Answer 30

= occurs when we understand the implications of others’ emotional expressions which affects our appraisal of the same objects and events. (Will Smith slap)

Question 31

Social sharing of emotions

Answer 31

when individuals communicate openly with one or more persons about the circumstances of the emotion eliciting event and about their own feelings and emotional reaction.

Question 32

Emotions as social information model (EASI) van Kleef, 2009

Answer 32

Emotional expressions provide information to observers which may influence their behaviour, through two processes
= Observer inferences (observers infer info about others’ feelings, attitudes, and intentions based on their emotional expression.) = Affective reactions (emotions may spread directly from expresser to observer via emotion contagion processes.)

Question 33

Self-report scale

Answer 33

most common method. Limitations = requires self awarness and understanding of emotions. + social desirability

Question 34

Diary studies

Answer 34

regularly report, recorded, can use smartphones to send reminers, ecological balitidy is high, minimise memory recall problems, examine change over time.
Limites = P’s burden, biases, response rate may be low.

Question 35

Affect Grid

Answer 35

Based on two dimensions: pleasure and arousal continuums. Single item scale to measure emotions. Easy and rapid to administer. Advantages over multiple item questionnaires that are too time consuming and are not appropriate for repeated administration. Requires training of respondent.

Question 36

Noon-linguistic measure

Answer 36

Neuroimaging, physiological measures, record facial expression.

Question 37

Neuroimaging

Answer 37

Restrictive environment in which emotions can be elicited (e.g. in scanner), needs validation by self-report. X = But emotions are complex and likely to involve networks of brain regions.

Question 38

Psychological measures

Answer 38

= Skin conductance, heart rate, perspiration, blood pressure etc. Pleasure and arousal seem to be related to physiological responses. X = However, mapping to specific emotions imprecise and cannot distinguish all emotion.

Question 39

Record facial expressions

Answer 39

X Coding of facial behaviour to analyse emotions is complex. X = Facial expressions seem to be sensitive to the valence of the person’s emotional state. X = Facial behaviour is not always a direct reflection of the person’s emotional states = suppression and faking of emotions.

Question 40

Linguistic measures

Answer 40

Cogntiive measures, qualitative accounts, peer reprots, sentiment analysis from text

Question 41

Cognitive meausres

Answer 41

Stroop type tasks to assess nonconscious accessibility of emotions

Question 42

Peer reports

Answer 42

No acces to person’s internal experiences, subjective, requires good knowledge of person

Question 43

Qualitative accounts

Answer 43

Interview, focus groups, diary entries. Rich data but idiographic (person centred), difficult to generalise

Question 44

Sentiment analysis from text

Answer 44

online media but contextual ambiguity.

Question 45

Emotion elicitation measure

Answer 45

film clips, international affect picture system

Question 46

International affect picute system

Answer 46

Library of photographs that have been normatively rated on dimensions of pleasure, arousal and dominance (Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 1997)

Question 47

Film clips

Answer 47

for eliciting specific emotions e.g., disgust – eating dog faeces (Gross & Levenson 1995).

Question 48

Appraisal research

Answer 48

focus on how people evaluate what is happening immediately before or during emotional experiences.

Question 49

Emotion w/social object = Schadenfreude

Answer 49

(Freude = joy, Schade = damage/harm)
= describing the pleasure that people take in someone else’s misfortune.
Schadenfreude research = emotions can depend on interpersonal and intergroup dynamics.
Function = defend self-esteem when confronted by unfavorable social comparisons.

Question 50

Social dimension to schadenfreude experiences

Answer 50

require target person (suffering) another individual (takes pleasure in target). No need for direct contact (e.g. videos)

Question 51

Why do people experience Schadenfreude

Answer 51

envy, feeling that they deserve to suffer, feeling inferior to them
Schadenfreude depends on relative perceptions of own status in relation to others.

Question 52

Appraisal (judgement) as a social process

Answer 52

Appraisal research agrees that different perceptual and cognitive operations (range) are involved.
Intrapsychic aspects of the relational process (appraisal) = pay less attention to the role of the world (external) and the others.
Appraisal depends on the perceived appraisals of others. Communicated disappointment can activate normative concerns about appropriate behavior.
Appraisals asses the relevance of what is happening for social and personal identities.

Question 53

Group-based appraisal

Answer 53

Group-based emotions manipulate group identification at individual level. Social appraisal can manipulate social identify.
= current growth in research, wider range of emotions (pride, schadenfreude, nostalgia).

Question 54

Social appraisal

Answer 54

cover situations sin which relational meanings depend on other people’s perceived evaluations.

Question 55

Reverse appraisal

Answer 55

= People draw on their knowledge of appraisal–emotion associations to make inferences about the other person’s appraisal. These inferences in turn may influence their own appraisals, emotions, or behavior.

Question 56

Gazed-cue appraisal

Answer 56

= Someone else gaze can direct your attention towards objects in the environment. Emotions are associated with patterns of gaze towards or away from objects, they can have relatively direct effects on other people by influencing their attention. Gaze direction can also moderate effects of other’s emotion expression on evaluations of objects.
social appraisal can operate without explicit inferences. Gaze-cued appraisal represents another distinct process that might mediate some of the social effects of emotion.

Question 57

Emotion contagion

Answer 57

= Emotions can spread like diseases around the social world.
“Primitive emotion contagion” = people automatically mimic each other’s facial expressions and bodily postures, and interoceptive feedback from these reactions in turn produces corresponding emotions.