Week 8, Day 1

Question 1

Worry?

Answer 1

a. Worry is a defining feature of anxiety disorders
b. Tends to be more language-based (abstract/conceptual) than imagery-based
c. Could it also reduce affective processing?

Question 2

Worry Study 1- Borkovec & Hu, 1990

Answer 2

1) 45 fems speech phobics
2) Subjs were asked to:
a) Worry about giving a speech
b) Relax
c) Think about neutral activities
3) Then asked to imagine giving a speech
a) Key: told them to visualize the moment when you’re in front of the audience behind the podium and you’re looking out at the audience
4) Heart rate was assessed throughout
a) Those worried HAD REDUCTION IN HEART RATE!!! WERE SEEMING CALMER THAN OTHER TWO CONDITIONS!!!

Question 3

Worry Study 2- 75 speech phobic fems (Borkovec et al., 1993)

Answer 3

1) Subjs were then asked to worry about a personal topic:
a) Thought worry: emphasize worrying with thoughts
b) Image-worry: emphasize worrying with images
c) Affect-worry: emphasize worrying w/feelings or physio rxns
d) General worry non specified
e) Relaxation
2) Then asked to imagine giving speech
3) Heart rate assessed throughout
4) Results:
a) Diff kinds of worry did not affect heart rate while worrying
b) While imagining speech: thought worry less HR!
c) PPL REPORTED FEELING MORE FEAR BUT DIDN’T SHOW PHYSIOLOGICALLY

Question 4

Instrumental Emotion Regulation

Answer 4

1. Most work in emotion regulation assumes that we try to enhance pos feelings and reduce neg feelings
2. But ppl might also want to feel certain things when they are useful/instrumental to them
3. Might want to feel anger in a confrontational task
4. Might want to feel fear/worry, see slide online
5. 3 studies of ppl forgoing pos feelings to obtain long-term goals

Question 5

Instrumental Emotion Regulation Study 1

Answer 5

1) Methods: participants were told that they would be playing diff kinds of vid games
a) Approach goals:
b) Avoidance goals:
c) Control goals:
2) Before playing: participants would be recalling a memory and rated the extent to which they wanted to recall this memory
a) Event in which you were excited/enthusiastic
3) And music?
a) Results:
b) Excitement inducing vs fear inducing
c) We prefer excitement inducing for approach goals but fear inducing for avoidance goal

Question 6

Instrumental Emotion Regulation Study 2

Answer 6

1) Can we motivate ppl to inc feels of anger
a) Confrontational vs nonconfrontational vid game
b) Exciting, neutral or anger music preference
c) results
1) Confrontational: prefers angry music
2) Non confrontational: other music types

Question 7

Instrumental Emotion Regulation Study 3

Answer 7

1) Looking at if being in a particular state actually helps in confrontational task
2) Procedure: record baseline performance, emotion induction music, test performance (game +music)
3) Conditions:
a) Music: excited, angry, neutral
b) Vid Games: dinner dash (non con) or soldiers of fortune (con)
c) Results
i) Confrontational game: doing better with angry music but exciting music a bit worse
ii) Non con: not significant
Conclusions: emotions are cultivated b/c they are useful to us not just b/c they make us feel good

Question 8

Social buffering:

Answer 8

the ability of a companion to reduce behav and physio responses to threats

Question 9

Social regulation of emotion Study 1: guinea pigs

Answer 9

1. Reduction in cortisol when the guinea pigs are with a bonded female
2. Higher levels with unfamiliar or alone

Question 10

Social regulation of emotion Study 2: sheep- Dacosta et al., 2004

Answer 10

1. Brought sheep into situation where they were alone
2. Showed images of sheep, goats or triangles
3. Results: these sheep show calming effect simply by looking at images of other sheep

Question 11

Social regulation of emotion Study 3: humans- Master et al., 2009

Answer 11

1. Partner, stranger, objs

2. See effects across all kinds of species

Question 12

Social buffering; social suppport figures regulate our emotion, BUT WHY?

Answer 12

1. Brought in all fems in long term relationships
2. Painful heat stimulation
3. Diff trials: images of partner, stranger or neutral obj
4. Whenever got the pain asked to make rating of how much pain they experienced through conditions

Question 13

social buffering neurologically

Answer 13

1. Ventral medial PFC lit up
2. Important b/c
   a) Known to be responsive to safety cues
   i) From another study: spider moves further away then anterior om PFC would light up
   b) Involved in threat reduction
   i) Also talks to amygdala
   ii) We saw that there was this region that isn’t active in other studies
   iii) We see in other lines of work that it seems really important though