lecture 11- introduction to emotion Flashcards
(31 cards)
why are theories of cognition good and bad?
- show how we think about society (ideologies)
- great for understanding basic memory and attention
- but cognition occurs in a both a biological and emotional context- theories often ignore emotion when explaining basic systems
how does cognition occur in biological and emotional contexts?
- biological: evolutionary constraints (survival and reproduction)
- emotional: different motivations, desires, tendencies, biases
what are the different types of emotion?
- strong overwhelming ones (quickly, 0 to 100, central to who we are and what we do)
- subtle (ok, anxious, happy- colour everyday lives)
- moral emotions (we feel when someone else has violated a social norm, strong or subtle- disgust, shame, contempt, help regulate social behaviour and social status)
how do emotions help us monitor current state and adjust behaviour?
- emotions have evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life-tasks -> drive behaviour
- every emotion has unique features (signal, physiological, antecedent events)
- each emotion also has characteristics in common with other emotions (rapid onset, short duration, unbidden occurrence, automatic appraisal, coherence among responses)
how are emotions organised?
have a primary emotion (e.g anger) but have subtle variations cluster around it (frustrated, annoyed, aggressive, offended)
what’s Ekman’s (1992) view of emotions?
no emotion is inherently good/bad- can be valenced differently
do other animals have emotions?
(e.g dogs) they do- but do not have as advanced cognitive processes, so only really have basic emotions
what are the three components in the theories of defining emotion?
- cognitive component (conscious experience- self-talk e.g i feel happy, i am enjoying)
- overt expression of internal state (facial expression and body language)
- physiological experience (heart rate, sweating, breathing, flushed face, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin)
what did Ekman (1993) find about overt expression of internal state?
- facial expressions are pretty universal in the emotions they display (cross-cultural- new guinea vs USA)
- cultural variations, but basics stay the same
what did Matsumoto & Willingham (2009) find about production of facial expressions?
- compared expressions of sighted, congenitally blind and non-congenitally blind athletes
- examined how changes over context (winning/losing)
- found no differences between any of them (in level and configuration)
- blind did have more facial activity, but only in terms of head and eye movement
- provide evidence that the production of spontaneous facial expressions of emotions is not dependent on observational learning
- also demonstrates learned component to social management of expression, even among blind individuals
why is overt expression important?
- has evolutionary basis
- social interactions- allows us to infer how others are feeling and what they may be thinking or feeling about us (relevant for approaching/avoiding people)
- significant for attracting friends and partners- how you present yourself determines if people avoid or approach you
how does gender affect body language interpretation?
- two images controlled to show same level of sadness and anger- one a man, other a woman
- people tend to think woman looks sadder and man angrier
what is the physiological component of emotion?
- emotions are usually accompanied by arousal of the autonomic nervous system
- e.g fear- heart rate, breathing and blood pressure increase, pupils dilate, release of adrenaline
how does a polygraph detect lies?
most people find lying stressful- spike of adrenaline and then anxiety when lie
- leading to activation of autonomic nervous system
- detects galvanic skin response (GSR)- sweating
- and skin conductance response (SCR)- electrical response
- also heart rate increase
what are the two theories of emotion?
james-lange and cannon-bard
what is the james-lange embodied account of emotion?
- physical response occurs before conscious experience of emotion
- emotions occur because of the physiological response
- amygdala plays key role in this
what is the evidence for the james-lange embodied account of emotion? (Strack, Martin & Stepper 1998)
- feedback from the body (facial activity) influences our emotions
- p’s hold pen in mouth in ways that either facilitated or inhibited muscles typically associated with smiling (without requiring p’s to pose in a smile)
- more intense humour responses when cartoons were present under facilitating condition
what is the evidence for the james-lange embodied account of emotion? (Wood et al. 2016)
- facial responses also play functional role in perceptual processing of emotional expressions
- disrupting individuals facial action using gel mask interferes with verbal emotion recognition tasks (worse perceptual discrimination of facial expressions, but not non-face stimuli)
- looking at another person’s facial expression of emotion can trigger the same neural processes involved in producing the expression (this response plays role in emotion recognition)
- motor processes involving the face contribute to the visual-perceptual processing of expression
what is the evidence for the james-lange theory of emotion? (Wollmer et al. 2012 and Magid et al. 2014)
- inhibiting the movement of muscles associated with worry/anxiety can reduce feelings of depression
- p’s who underwent treatment of glabellar frown lines with botulinum toxin experienced positive effects on mood (as stops them frowning)
- major depression remitted or improved- feedback from not frowning influenced emotion
how do beta-blockers work?
- anti-anxiety medication
- anxiety symptoms: pounding heart, tight chest, hard to breathe/breathe too much, sweating
- beta blockers suppressing signals from the body (e.g adrenaline)
- support james-lange theory- treating symptoms of anxiety leads to reduction in conscious experience of emotion
what is the limitation of the james lange theory?
- autonomic experiences can be ambiguous- fear, excitement or exercise?
- so theory cannot explain emotion entirely by itself
what is the cannon-bard theory of emotion?
- emotion can be experienced independently of body states such as autonomic responses
- autonomic responses can be ambiguous than the experience of emotion
- argued there is experience of fear AND THIS ACTIVATES autonomic responses
what is the evidence for the cannon-bard theory? (Dutton & Aron, 1974)
- male passersby were contacted by attractive female interviewer either on fear-arousing suspension bridge or non-fear arousing suspension bridge
- fear-arousing bridge triggers autonomic response
- sexual content of stories and tendency to contact interviewer was significantly greater on this bridge (no difference if interviewer was male)
- heightened attraction under conditions of high anxiety
how do the theories of emotion work together?
have conscious pre-disposition of situation (e.g know that in bear territory) and unconscious autonomic response of panic and fear (heart rate rise)
use both to work out emotion and then act from that (this is fear, not excitement -> run)
NOTE- theories are partially true but don’t really capture reality/complexity of most emotions
