Emotion & perception Flashcards
qualitative effects of emotional stimuli
how people can categorise different stimuli into emotional categories
quantitative effects of emotional stimuli
how the emotionality of a stimulus can modulate or transform perception
categorical perception
even when stimuli is continuous, we place them into categories. during categorisation, a continuously changing stimulus is identified against discrete and pre-existing categories or conceptual boundaries (top-down process)
what are emotional stimuli
highly relevant for survival.
Some stimuli may signal threat whereas other may signal chances for growth. Stimuli requires rapid response of avoidance of approach. Emotional responses are adaptive
emotion-specific response patterns
events produce emotion-specific response patterns such as facial expressions and physiological reactions driven by specific neural response systems
constructivist theories of emotion
emphasis on the role of culture, language and high-level cognition. High level cognition influence – at any given time we feel core affect without reason (good/meh etc for no reason) but try to define why using experience and using language to categorise core affect can influence wellbeing.
the experience of emotions is based on categorisation of core affect
core affect
states are experienced as feeling good/bad, energised/enervated, core affect is always present and can be experienced as fee floating or can be attributed to a cause –> this influences perception and cognition
mood
prolonged core affect without an object = not attributed to a cause
emotional experience
core affect directed at an object through attributions or appraisal
is there universality in emotional categorisation
vocalisations of emotions ae correctly categorised across cultures (Juslin & Laura, 2003)
when facial expressions are morphed along a continuum, as some point there will be a line to divide into 2 discrete categories (e.g. happiness or fear)
accuracy is universal but better in the same culture who are conditioned to express emotions in the same way = suggest some cultural influence
issues with basic emotions research
uses extreme versions of facial expressions
uses forced choice - often make more errors when responding freely = more variety and less categorical manner
this suggests that available language-based categories drive the answer in a top-down manner
colours and emotions study
Jonauskaite et al 2001
ppts reported associations between 12 colours and the 20 discrete emotions.
All nationalities studied associated colours with emotions with global similarities e.g. black =sadness/fear/hate, red =love/anger
Differences also observed e.g. Nigeria red = fear/love/anger, chinese white = sadness and relief
context and top-down effect in emotional categorisation
context can affect interpretation
minimal verbal information can bias the way the information is presented
when shown ambiguous facial stimuli (morphed faces) while category knowledge about one of the emotions was made more accessible = remembered the face as being in line with that conceptual knowledge
olfactory impressions influence
important for autobiographical memory.
due to the involvement of the limbic structures in olfactory processing, most odours that are consciously perceived are either good/bad, disgusting/pleasant
Willander & Larsson
different cues for Ams
93 older adults five a word/picture/odour cue and asked to recall any ABmemory it triggered. Those triggered by olfactory info were older than the memories associated with verbal and visual cues.
odour-evoked memories were associated with stronger feelings despite being though of less often .
olfactory memories don’t demonstrate reminiscence bump - doesn’t require language to encode = avoids infantile amnesia
