Lecture 25 Flashcards
(20 cards)
What are the four key components in recognizing others’ emotions?
Reading expressions, forming impressions, sharing experiences, and reading minds.
What evidence supports the universality of basic emotions?
Ekman & Friesen (1971) found that facial expressions of basic emotions are recognized across cultures.
What challenges the stereotype of universal facial expressions?
Real emotional expressions often don’t match expected facial stereotypes; context is crucial for interpretation.
How does context influence emotion perception?
Studies show people use situational context to interpret ambiguous facial expressions.
What role does conceptual knowledge play in emotion perception?
Patients with semantic dementia sort emotions by valence rather than discrete categories, showing reliance on conceptual labels.
Which brain regions are associated with forming positive and negative impressions?
Positive: ventral striatum, vmPFC; Negative: amygdala.
What happens when the amygdala is damaged in impression formation tasks?
Patients rate untrustworthy faces as more approachable, indicating reduced sensitivity to negative cues.
How quickly can we form impressions about trustworthiness and threat?
Threat can be judged in ~39ms, trustworthiness in ~100ms, and attractiveness in ~13ms (even subliminally).
What brain activity predicts how people weigh positive or negative information in impression formation?
Amygdala and PCC activity correlates with how strongly each piece of information influences the final judgment.
What is automatic mimicry and what does it show about emotion sharing?
People unconsciously mimic others’ emotional expressions within milliseconds, supporting empathy and social bonding.
How do we share others’ pain neurologically?
Self and other pain activate overlapping areas in the anterior insula and dACC.
How does group status affect empathy?
People show reduced empathic brain responses when outgroup members (e.g., rival fans) experience pain.
What brain responses reflect pleasure from rival suffering?
Ventral striatum activity increases when a rival loses, showing ‘schadenfreude’ effect.
What brain damage impairs emotion recognition by disrupting sensorimotor processing?
Lesions to somatosensory regions impair emotion recognition, showing the importance of simulation.
What is theory of mind?
The ability to represent others’ thoughts and beliefs as distinct from your own.
What brain region is especially active during theory of mind tasks?
The temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) becomes more active when inferring others’ mental states.
What areas form the ‘mentalizing network’?
dmPFC, PCC, and TPJ.
When is dmPFC more active in mentalizing?
When judging people dissimilar to oneself, due to greater need for self-other adjustment.
What’s the difference between simulation and mentalizing?
Simulation uses shared feelings and mirror systems; mentalizing uses inference and abstract reasoning.
How do we selectively use simulation vs. mentalizing?
People may rely more on simulation for familiar or emotionally engaging targets, and more on mentalizing for unfamiliar or abstract ones.
