Emotions Flashcards
What is an emotion?
Hard to define, has many aspects and not all of these my be present in every emotional response e.g. recognise a cat without one feature
An emotion prototype, has 4 features, what are they? (P, NV, S, CC)
Physiological state e.g. heart rate or temperature, Nonverbal communication e.g. facial expressions or body language, Subjective experience e.g. feelings, Cultural construct and terms/language e.g. anger in one culture is different to anger in another culture
Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect, affective experience based on two dimensions, what are they?
1) Valence = pleasant or unpleasant
2) Arousal = activation or deactivation
Something qualitatively different about emotions, they arise from the same systems but differ in degree of ______ of these systems
Activation
Name 3 emotions that are harmful for self-regulation
1) Sad e.g. eat more, sleep in
2) Anxiety e.g. prevented socialising
3) Positive emotions like wanting to celebrate, can delay goals
Name 3 emotions that are helpful for self-regulation1
1) Happy e.g. more motivated
2) Negative emotions like guilt e.g. more drive
3) Negative emotions like anxiety e.g. work harder, adrenaline and pressure
Mostly, negative emotions impair self-regulation, explain how depression and social rejection can do this
Depression, leads people to prefer immediate rewards as opposed to delayed rewards, Social rejection can reduce peoples ability to control aggressive impulses
Even though negative emotions mainly impair self-regulation, they can sometimes improve it, explain Hoffman et al study?
After feeling guilty, participants rated their goals as more important and were more likely to identify a desire as a conflic
Why might negative emotions improve self-regulation?
Because increased tendency to focus on the more short-term when in a negative mindset
Even though Hoffman et al found that feeling guilty led people to rate their goals as more important, why wasn’t this good enough evidence?
Because this guilty feeling did not make people more successful, so this could cancel out the positive effects
Mostly, positive emotions improve self-regulation, outline Desteno et al study on inducing gratitude
Gratitude was induced by getting participants to recall events that made them grateful, and were then asked a delay discounting task, they were more likely to resist immediate gratification and wait for the delayed reward
Even though positive emotions mainly improve self-regulation, they can also impair self-regulation, explain how research on inducing pride can explain this?
When pride was induced by making participants write personal accomplishments, they were more likely to choose an indulgent reward rather than a useful one e.g already doing well so treat myself
Tice et al proposed 2 routes about why negative emotions might harm self-regulation, what were they?
1) Focus is on emotion regulation
2) Incompatible goal attainment strategies
Explain why a focus on emotion regulation can impair self-regulation?
Because there is a short-term focus on relieving distress, and a focus on getting rid of the negative emotion, rather than the long-term focus needed for impulse control
Incompatible goal attiainment strategies as a result of negative emotions, impairs self-regulation why?
Because many of the things people do to relieve distress are bad for long-term goals e.g. alcohol, food, shopping
Describe the evidence for improving mood as a motive for self-regulation?
When emotions were induced and frozen, by either reading a stress story or a happy story, people only ate more food or procrastinated when they were distressed IF they believed that their mood was changeable
As people only ate more food when they were distressed when they believed their mood was changeable, why is this?
Because they are doing these things for emotion regulation purposes e.g. their focus has shifted to wanting to prioritise their mood over their goals
Why might procrastination be a result of prioritising mood over goals?
Because aversive tasks lead to anxiety, so task avoidance is a strategy to avoid this negative mood
Arnott found that procrastination leads to poorer performance, how did he find this?
He looked at time to submit an assignment and the marks received, and people submitting last minute had an average grade of 59%, lower than the rest
However, Perry found what about structured procrastination, to suggest that it isn’t always bad?
By avoiding a task we dont want to do, we might do other tasks on our to-do list insteadm which could increase mood and feelings of accomplishment
Self-Regulation operates in a way that it detects a discrepancy and then tries to reduce it, this can be explained by what?
Control Theory: Negative Feedback Loop
What are the components of this Control Theory?
1) Input e.g. current time
2) Comparator e.g. late
3) Output e.g. increase walking speed
4) Impact on environment (variable)
Can be a disturbance as well
