Week 1, Day 2

Question 1

What can we call emotions?

Answer 1

1. sadness
2. happiness/ joy
3. fear
4. jealousy
5. love
6. anger/hate
7. embarrassment

Question 2

how do we distinguish between emotion/ non emotion?

Answer 2

1. emotions have some kind of cog appraisal
2. non emotion are usually about body state and can be regulated
3. emotions require some kind of rumination

Question 3

what is an emotion Lazarus

Answer 3

organized psych and physical reaction to environment

“organized psychophysiological reactions to news about ongoing relationships with the environment”

Question 4

what is an emotion Oatley, Keltner, Jenkins

Answer 4

multi-component response to goals

“multi-component responses to challenges or opportunities that are import to the individuals’ goals, particularly social ones”

Question 5

what is an emotion LeDoux, 2012:

Answer 5

avoids using word emotion

“I describe a way of conceiving phenomena important to the study of emotion but with minimal recourse to the terms emotion or feelings…” ;”The focus is instead of circuits that instantiate function that allow organisms to survive and thrive by detecting and responding to challenges and opportunities”

Question 6

what is an emotion Adolphs & Anderson, 2018:

Answer 6

we can’t explain emotions

“emotions are one of the most apparent and important aspects of our lives, yet have remained one of the st enigmatic ato explain scientifically. On the one hand nothing seems more obvious than that we and many other animals have emotions… on the other hand, the scientific study of emotions is a piecemeal and confused discipline, with some… advocating that we get rid of the word emotion altogether.”

Question 7

Common themes in emotion definitions

Answer 7

1. Strong, valanced (pos/neg) feelings
2. Often come along with physiological activation
3. Plan for action
4. Adaptive; lead to changes that help an organism survive by responding to challenges/ goals

Question 8

What separates emotions from somatic states?

Answer 8

1. Emotions are about our relationship with the external environment; somatic states are about our relationship with our internal environment
2. Emotions “feel like” they’re in the mind; somatic states “feel like” they’re in our body
3. Understanding bodies vs minds
4. Can access the eliciting factors of emotion but not those of somatic states

Question 9

A brief (Western) history of emotion research: 
The Classical Period (Ancient Greece)

Answer 9

1. Pathe: Any object that was undergoing change through the action of an external agent
2. Diseases: for them emotions were diseases of the soul
3. Primary way to understand the world was rational inquiry; very high value placed on reason
4. In order to be rational, need to overcome the animal-like passions with reason

Question 10

A brief (Western) history of emotion research: Medieval and Modern Periods

Answer 10

1. After the fall of the roman empire, see the rise of Christianity
2. Primary way to understand the world: theology (God)
3. Emotion terms related to God in some way:
   a. Passions: ungodly, signs of man’s sinfulness (lust, rage, envy)
   b. Affections: godly, signs of relatedness to God (sympathy, compassion)

Question 11

A brief (Western) history of emotion research: 19th cen

Answer 11

1. Emergence of atheological ways of understanding the world
2. Beginning of the science of the mind
   a. Thomas Brown (1820)

Question 12

Thomas Brown (1820)

Answer 12

1. Philosopher not religious
2. Was the first to use “emotion” in his writing but never really defines
   a. Comes from French word meaning to stir up
   b. “The exact meaning of the term emotion is diff to state in any words”
   c. “[emotions are] vivid feelings, arising immediately from the consideration of objects, perceived or remembered, or imagined, or from other prior emotions”
   d. Takes the study of emotion out of the domain of religion (drops passions/ affections) and into the domain of science