12.1 Emotional Behaviours Flashcards
Emotion is a difficult topic because it implies conscious feelings that we cannot observe. Biological researchers therefore concentrate mostly on ____ ____, which are observable, even if the emotional feelings are not.
emotional behaviours
By one definition, ____ includes “cognitive evaluations, subjective changes, autonomic and neural arousal, and impulses to action”.
emotion
One definition of ____ is “an internal process that modifies the way an organism responds to a certain class of external stimuli”.
motivation
Distinguishing between motivation and emotion is ____, and possibly not worth the effort.
difficult
Psychologist generally agree that emotion has three components – ____ (“this is a dangerous situation”), ____ (“I feel frightened”), and ____ (“run for the nearest exit”).
cognitions : feelings : actions
Emotional situations arouse the ____ ____ ____, which has two branches – the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
autonomic nervous system
____ ____ was the first to understand that the sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for brief, vigourous “fight-or-flight” responses.
Walter Cannon
The ____ nervous system increases digestion and other processes that save energy and prepare for later events.
parasympathetic
According to James-Lange theory the autonomic arousal and skeletal actions come first. What you experience as an emotion is the label you give to your response: you feel afraid ____ you ran away; you feel angry ____ you attack.
because
William James later clarified his position. An ____ has three components: cognitions, actions, and feelings.
emotion
The ____ aspect comes first. You quickly appraise something as good, bad, frightening, or whatever. Your appraisal of the situation leads to appropriate action, such as running away, attacking or sitting motionless with your heart racing.
cognitive
The James-Lange theory leads to two ____: people with weak autonomic or skeletal responses should feel less emotion, and causing or increasing someone’s responses should enhance an emotion.
predictions
In people with an uncommon condition called ____ ____ ____, output from the autonomic nervous system to the body fails, either completely or almost completely.
pure autonomic failure
In pure autonomic failure, heartbeat and other organ activities continue, but the nervous system no longer ____ them. Someone with this condition does not react to stressful experiences with changes in heart rate, BP, or sweating.
regulates
People with pure autonomic failure report having the same ____ as anyone else. However, they say they feel their emotions much less intense than before.
emotions
The decreased emotional feeling of someone with pure autonomic failure is ____ with the predictions from the James-Lange theory.
consistent
According to the James-Lange theory emotional feelings result from the ____ ____. If your heart started racing and you started sweating and breathing rapidly you would feel an emotion.
body’s actions
Rapid breathing in particular makes people worry that they are suffocating, and they experience a ____ ____, marked by extreme sympathetic nervous system arousal.
panic attack
The sensation of smiling increases ____, although only slightly.
happiness
Although smiles and frowns slightly alter happiness, smiles are not necessary for happiness. People with a rare condition called ____ ____ cannot move their facial muscles to make a smile. They nevertheless experience happiness and amusement.
Möbius syndrome
Overall the results suggest that our perceptions of the body’s actions contribute to our emotional feelings, as the James-Lange theory proposed. Many psychologists therefore refer to the emotions as “____” – that is they depend on responses of the body.
embodied
Traditionally, the ____ ____ – the forebrain areas surrounding the thalamus – has been regarded as critical for emotion.
limbic system
Much of the ____ ____ also reacts to emotional situations.
cerebral cortex
Whereas many brain areas respond to emotion in one way or another, it is ____ important to know whether different brain areas respond to different emotions.
theoretically
Many researchers have used PET or fMRI techniques to identify the cortical areas that respond while people look at ____ pictures or listen to ____ stories.
emotional
Of all emotions, only disgust seems to be associated with the response of a particular brain area. The ____ ____, or insula, is strongly activated if you see a disgusting picture or the facial expression of someone who is feeling disgusted.
insular cortex
Locating ____ in the insular is interesting because that is the primary taste cortex. ____ is literally ____, or bad taste.
disgust
Another hypothesis relates the two ____ of the brain to different categories of emotion.
hemispheres
Activity of the left hemisphere, especially it’s frontal temporal lobes, relates to the ____ ____ ____ (BAS), marked by low to moderate autonomic arousal and a tendency to approach, which could characterise either happiness or anger.
behavioural activation system
Increased activity of the frontal and temporal lobes of the right hemisphere is associated with the ____ ____ ____ (BIS), which increases attention and arousal, inhibits action, and stimulates emotions such as fear and disgust.
behavioural inhibition system
The difference between the hemispheres relates to _____: on average, people with greater activity in the frontal cortex of the left hemisphere tend to be happier, more outgoing, and more fun-loving. People with greater right-hemisphere activity tend to be socially withdrawn, less satisfied with life, and prone to unpleasant emotions.
personality
The ____ ____ appears to be more responsive to emotional stimuli then the left. For example, listening to the laughter or crying activates the right amygdala more than the left.
right hemisphere
People with damage to the ____ ____ ____ had trouble identifying other peoples emotional expressions or even saying whether two people are expressing the same emotion or different ones.
right temporal cortex
Evidently, when the right hemisphere is inactive, people do not experience ____ ____ and do not even remember feeling them.
strong emotions
We base many important decisions partly on ____ ____ – how we think one outcome or another will make us feel.
emotional considerations
In short, when we are making a decision about right and wrong, we seldom work it out ____. One decision or the other immediately “feels” right. After we have already decided, we try to think of a logical justification.
rationally
Damage to parts of the ____ ____ blunts people’s emotions in most regards, except for an occasional outburst of anger.
prefrontal cortex
Damage to the prefrontal cortex also impairs ____ ____. People with such damage often make impulsive decisions without pausing to consider the consequences, including how they will feel after a possible mistake.
decision-making
When given a choice those with prefrontal cortex damage frequently make a ____ ____ and then immediately sigh or wince, knowing that they have made the wrong choice.
quick decision
Antonio Damasio examined a man with prefrontal cortex damage who expressed almost __ ____. Nothing angered him. He was never very sad, even about his own brain damage. Nothing gave him much pleasure, not even music. Far from being brilliantly rational, he frequently made bad decisions that cost him his job, his marriage, and his savings.
no emotions
In a sense, any choice requires consideration of values and emotions – how we think one outcome or another will make us feel. In Damasio’s words, “Inevitably, emotions are ____ from the idea of good and evil”.
inseparable
After damage to a particular part of the prefrontal cortex – the ____ ____ ____ – people seem deficient in their sense of guilt, both in everyday life and in laboratory situations.
ventromedial prefrontal cortex
In short, people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex show less than normal ________. If most people didn’t show a reasonable amount of concern for others, civilisation would fall apart.
concern for others
People with damage to either the prefrontal cortex or the amygdala (part of the temporal lobe) are slow in processing ____ ____.
emotional information
In short, failure to anticipate the ____ of likely outcomes leads to bad decisions.
unpleasantness
