3:1 The nature of emotion

Question 1

A neuroscience perspective on emotions considers that the set of behaviours, physiological responses and subjective states results from a cascade of events coordinated by what and for what?

Answer 1

Coordinated by the nervous system to ensure survival.

Question 2

Neuroscientists specify that neural events emerge in response to various events involving ______ and ________.

Answer 2

Punishments and rewards.

Question 3

What is Edmund Rolls’ (2000) definition of punishment and reward?

Answer 3

A reward is anything for which an animal will work.

A punishment is anything an animal will work to avoid and escape.

Eg. Happiness is a set of behavioral, bodily, neural, and cognitive responses to the presence of a reward, for example, winning money or being praised.

Eg. Fear is an emotion state elicited by the presence of a punishment.

Question 4

List three of Rolls’ statements of emotions.

Answer 4

1. Emotions involve the presence of reward and punishments.
2. Emotions result from the termination or reduction of likelihood of rewards or punishments.
3. Different emotions are actually the same in nature, but differ in intensity.

Question 5

In contrast to the neuroscience approach, a social constructive perspective suggests emotions are:

Answer 5

Emotions are learned as rules in response to sociocultural norms.

Question 6

Give three points of criticism against the social constructivist perspective:

Answer 6

1. Similar behaviors are shown by other species.
2. Specific brain circuitry for expressing basic emotions.
3. Expressions are universal.

Eg. Paul Ekman study of facial expressions on preliterate cultures in New Guinea.

Question 7

Give an example that supports the social constructivist perspective:

Answer 7

There are some distinct cultural differences on the way emotions are controlled in particular social settings.

Eg. Japanese vs Americans rating emotional facial expressions.

Question 8

What are some functions of emotions?

Answer 8

They generate autonomic and endocrine responses.

Eg. Relief is associated with a decrease in heart rate.
Eg. Apprehension is associated with secretion of cortisol.

Communication - motivating the behavior of others.

Help us approach or avoid things.

Consolidating social bonds - encouraging attachment of infants.

Question 9

How did a study on Pavlovian conditioning test emotions?

Answer 9

One stimulus gave an electric shock while another gave money.

There was more fear in participants corresponding with the electric shock stimulus so they moved more slowly.

They approached the money stimulus more quickly.

Question 10

Give examples of how emotions motivate others?

Answer 10

Emotional expressions communicate to others the value of stimuli they haven’t yet experienced themselves.

Eg. About to enter a room and see an expression of terror –> activates autonomic and endocrine responses.

Question 11

How do researchers generate realistic emotional responses?

Answer 11

By embedding negative or positive stimulus in everyday contexts that are known to generate emotional responses.

Eg. The monetary incentive delay task. Participants respond quickly to geometric shapes to activate the brain’s reward systems / positive emotions.

Question 12

What are two study methods for measuring negative emotion responses?

Answer 12

1. Chat room task.

MRI showed:

• subjective responses towards peer rejection and peer acceptance (the negative and positive emotions of teenagers) and
• the correlated brain responses.

2. Real life diaries.

Participants write about events that they experience and then to rate their emotional response to it.

Question 13

What is mood induction and how is it done?

Answer 13

The attempt to produce emotionally provocative stimuli to try to capture an emotional response.

Can be done experimentally or pharmacologically.

Eg. Playing music to induce a mood then having participants rate their mood.

Question 14

What does it mean when study participants respond as a “demand effect”?

Answer 14

That they are only responding in the way they thing the experimenter wants them to.

Question 15

What event or element do researchers and academics from different disciplines agree is needed to create emotion?

Answer 15

There needs to be a stimulus or eliciting event, something that provokes a change in equilibrium of experience.

EXTERNAL STIMULUS: seeing a car speeding towards you,

INTERNAL STIMULUS: the memory of your partner cheating on you with someone else.

The stimulus could signal something real and OBJECTIVE, such as the car speeding towards you.

Or it could be a SUBJECTIVE evaluation of the potential consequences of a situation, such anticipating winning the lottery.

Question 16

Who posed the question: Do we run from a bear because we are afraid? Or, Are we afraid because we run?

What was his thesis on emotion and physical responses?

Answer 16

William James.

“The bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.”

Ie. Emotion first, then physical response.

Question 17

What is a cognitive science theory of emotions?

Answer 17

Emotions occur in response to subjective appraisals of particular situations.

Eg. An ambiguous situation that resembles a threatening situation could be initially interpreted negatively and then instigate a cascade of subjective feeling, neural responses, bodily changes, and behaviors that are consistent with fear, but then, upon re-appraisal that the ambiguous situation is not actually dangerous, could then reduce the set of fear responses.

Question 18

Who said: Emotions are useless and bad for our peace of mind and our blood pressure.

Answer 18

BF Skinner.

Question 19

Describe the positive view of emotions taken by most scientists.

Answer 19

We can view emotions, both positive and negative, as solutions to physical or social problems or opportunities that we encounter in our lives that can benefit our survival.

Question 20

List four ways emotions influence the utilization and efficiency of cognitive processes.

Answer 20

1. MEMORY: Emotions can influence the way that things are stored.
2. SELECTION: Emotions can help us select the most relevant pieces of information from an event for further storage so that we only have to remember the bits of information from an event that are most important.
3. IMPROVE RETRIEVAL: When we are in a particular mood or we experience an emotion at a later date, this can improve the ease with which information related to this current mood.
4. ACTION SELECTION: We are better able to select appropriate behavioral responses to current events on the basis of how we responded the last time we felt this emotion and what the effects of that response were.

Question 21

How might emotions be detrimental to survival?

Answer 21

Exposure to inappropriate – and in particular, excessively negative emotions– when we’re young can also have detrimental effects on how we form social bonds with others.