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PFoMH > Nature of emotion > Flashcards

Nature of emotion Flashcards

1
Q

What are emotions?

A

Results of a stimulus or eliciting event provoking a change in equilibrium
- external stimulus: real and objective
or
- internal stimulus: subjective

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2
Q

What are the 2 perspectives on the components of emotions?

A
  1. Neuroscience perspective

2. Social constructivist perspective

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3
Q

What are emotions according to the neuroscience perspective?

A

Expressive behaviours, physiological responses, subjective states
- resulting from a cascade of events, coordinated by the nervous system

  • they have evolved to ensure our survival
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4
Q

What is the neuroscience perspective on the emergence of neural events?

A

Neural events emerge in response to Punishments and Rewards

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5
Q

What are the 3 ways the neuroscientists Prof. Edmund T. Rolls presents emotions in ‘The Brain and Emotion’ (2000)?

A
  1. Emotions = occurence of reward or punishment
    - happiness or fear are a set of behavioural, bodily, neural and cognitive responses to presence of reward or punishment
  2. Emotions = termination of reward or punishment
    - reward not received -> anger
    - punishment avoided -> relief
  3. Emotions = same nature, but vary in intensity
    - reflect inter-individual differences in habitual responses to same triggers
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6
Q

What are the roles of happiness and fear according to Edmund T. Rolls?

A

> Happiness: to facilitate an approach to rewards as they’re beneficial

> Fear: to facilitate avoidance or escape

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7
Q

What are emotions according to the social constructivist perspective?

A

Learned rules in response to sociocultural norms
- cultural differences, varying effects on display rules, the way emotions are managed and controlled in particular social settings

  • e.g. Japanese vs. American participants watching stressful films -> differences in the intensity of rating emotional facial expressions
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8
Q

What are the 3 points of criticism against the social constructivist perspective on emotions?

A
  1. Behaviours associated with many basic emotions are shown by other species
  2. There’s a conserved specific brain circuitry for expression of basic emotions
  3. Emotional expressions are universal (cf. Paul Ekman)
    - > something biologically inherent about emotions
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9
Q

What did Paul Ekman show regarding the universality of emotional expressions?

A

Different cultures, similar facial expressions for basic emotions

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10
Q

What is William James’s thesis on emotions?

A

Emotions as result of perception of bodily changes

  • Perception of stimulus -> physiological bodily response -> emotion (feeling of the bodily changes)
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11
Q

What is the cognitive appraisal theory on emotions?

A

Emotions as result of cognitive appraisals

  1. Subjective appraisals of situations
    - e.g. situation resembles threat
  2. Emotions
    - e.g. fear initially
  3. Reappraisal
    - > reduces fear responses
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12
Q

What is the negative view on the function of emotions?

A

“emotions are useless and bad for our peace of mind and our blood pressure”

Skinner (1948)

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13
Q

What is the positive view on the function of emotions, which most scientists take?

A

“Emotions, positive and negative, as solutions to problems or opportunities related to physical or social survival”

Keltner and Gross (1999)

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14
Q

What are the 4 functions of emotions?

A
  1. Motivation to act appropriately
    - approach or avoid things (pleasure vs. fear)
  2. Consolidating social bonds
  3. Communication
    - motivating behaviour of others
  4. Provide basic functions
    - autonomic and endocrine responses
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15
Q

What type of basic functions emotions are though to provide?

A
  1. Generating autonomic responses
    - e.g. relief -> decrease in heart rate
  2. Generating endocrine responses
    - e.g. apprehension -> secretion of cortisol

=> Preparing the body for action

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16
Q

What is the paradigm of a test with conditioning exercise?

A

> Object (e.g. red triangle) conditioned to induce fear
- e.g. electric shock

> Object (e.g. green square) conditioned to induce pleasure
- e.g. financial reward

> Apparatus so participants can act
- e.g. joystick to move mannequin on computer screen

17
Q

What do studies using test with conditioning exercise show?

A

> Degree of participants’ fear in presence of red triangle (associated with electric shock) is likely correlated to greater distance set by participants between red triangle and mannequin on computer (using joystick)

> Degree of participants pleasure in presence of green square (associated with financial reward) is likely correlated to shorter distance set by participants between green square and mannequin on computer

18
Q

How do emotions impact cognitive processes?

A

They influence the utilisation and efficiency of cognitive processes:
- Selection of relevant information for memory storing

  • Improve retrieval (e.g. emotion associated to events, feeling same emotion at later date)
  • Action selection, on the basis of previous responses to similar emotions and the associated consequences
19
Q

How could emotions be detrimental to survival?

A

For some people, there are situations in which the intensity with which they feel particular emotions may not be beneficial for survival and may even be detrimental

20
Q

What did Radke-Yarrow and colleagues (1985) show regarding the exposure to inappropriate emotions?

A

Excessively negative emotions in particular, at young age can have detrimental effects on the formation of social bonds

21
Q

How do we generate emotions in experimental conditions (in a lab)?

A

Provide emotion-provoking stimuli

- to measure neural/physiological aspects of emotions

22
Q

What is the advantage of using facial expressions as emotion-provoking stimuli in the lab?

A

> Facial expression are universal -> applicable across individuals

> They have an emotional significance:
- even when presented briefly and masked by neutral face, they’re capable of activating emotional brain circuits

23
Q

What is the criticism against using faces to generate negative emotions?

A

Faces are too mild to elicit subjective response

24
Q

Which improvement was brought to the generation of emotions in laboratory?

A

Using eyes conveying the emotions rather than faces

-> eye test for emotion recognition

25
Q

What is the limit of using eyes to generate emotions in the lab?

A

They do not elicit strong emotions

- e.g. contentment, elation, excitement

26
Q

What is the limit of using faces or eyes to generate emotions in the lab?

A

Lack context of experience:

- faces or eyes are removed from wider sociocultural context, in which many of our richest emotional experiences occur

27
Q

How are realistic emotional responses generated in the lab?

A

Embed the negative or positive stimulus in everyday contexts that we know generally generate emotional responses

  • > monetary reward tasks
  • > chat room tasks
28
Q

How does the monetary incentive delay task work?

A

On particular reward trials, participants have monetary reward

  • cued by a geometric shape
  • AND if they have a quick enough response after variable interval
29
Q

How does the chat room task work?

A

> Teenagers are told they would be with other young people over internet (peer feedback)

> They were asked to rate how much they wanted to talk to these people based on pictures
They were told their pictures were also being rated

> Lying in MRI scanner, they were receiving positive or negative feedback from each other person in the photos they had seen

-> Measure subjective responses to peer rejection or acceptance AND correlated brain responses

  • > More complex stimuli, more emotionally provocative
  • especially at subjective rating level
30
Q

Where do ethics stand on generating negative emotions?

A

Ethics prevent us from generating negative emotions likely to be long lasting post-experiment
-> you need approval from ethics committees

31
Q

Which measures can be taken in experiments presenting emotional stimuli to participants in wider social context, such as the chat room task?

A

> Photos of actors

> Feedbacks are computer-generated

> All participants (e.g. young people) fully briefed after the task

> Vulnerable participants (e.g. suicidal) are not invited to this kind of study

> A clinician checks that each participant before they leave the lab

32
Q

What is the method of real life diaries?

What are its advantages?

A

Diaries from participants, on events they experienced, rating their emotional responses
- it’s more realistic: participants choose themselves emotionally salient events

33
Q

What is the limit of the method of real life diaries?

A

Strong inter-individual differences in choice of events:
- some chosen events are objectively more serious

-> higher rating could be reflective of objective characteristics of an event, rather than the participants’ emotional responses

34
Q

How can we change mood states in the lab?

A

Mood induction

- experimentally or pharmacologically

35
Q

What is the limit of the method of mood induction?

A

We’re never sure that any change in positive mood is not a demand effect:
- participants respond the way they think the experimenter wants them to

36
Q

What can be done to reduce the impact of the demand effect (bias) when using the method of mood induction in the lab?

A

Demonstrate the transfer of positive mood effects to multiple measures
- e.g. the participant’s reporting of the probability for positive/negative events after mood induction

PFoMH (18 decks)

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