3- Conceptual approaches: The biological approach

Question 1

Historical biological theories

Answer 1

Darwin: Emotions as adaptations- facial expressions and body reactions prepare an individual for action and serve communicative signals.

Emotions as bodily responses- James Lange

• there is emotion specific activation in the body
• the body changes support specific actions
• the body changes produce the feeling.

Critiqued by Cannon

• body changes are too non specific to account for the variation in emotional experience
• body changes are too slow to account for emotions and can be found without the associated emotion being produced
• individuals not sufficiently sensitive to body changes.

Question 2

evidence that emotion arises from the body-

Answer 2

Inducing emotion from body action. 
Maturational dualism (mendes (2010). ability to sense bodily states and physiological reactivity declines in older age.

Physiological measures Ekman et al., heart rate, galvanic skin response, finger temperature.

Question 3

Autonomic nervous system specificity

Answer 3

Whether or not emotions are body responses depends on the evidence for emotion specific ans activity.

AnS is part of the peripherall nervous system.

SNS - fight
PNS- restorative

Question 4

WHat is the dynamic systems view of the ANS

Answer 4

• the ans has many pathways and components so emotion speciifcity is possible
• Thayer and Lane (2000) proposed a neurovisceral model of emotion regulation that integrates neural systems with autonomic systems.

Question 5

the heart

Answer 5

Heart rate variability
= variation in beat to beat interval: produced by influence of SNS and PNS.
- PNS influences vagal nerve.
- SNS dominates during stressful events.

Question 6

greater HRV at rest

Answer 6

associated with ability to regulate negative emotions (pu et al., 2010)

Question 7

Porges POlyvagal theory (1995)

Answer 7

DNMX path decreases heart rate
NA path increases HRV.
reptiles only have DNMX path. - freezing.
NA path inhibit cardiac response
- inputs from amygdala and facial nerve = emotions.

Question 8

Emotion in the brain> Amygdala

Answer 8

LeDoux (1993) critical structure for emotion. Automatically evaluattes the emotional significaance of an event. (primary appraisal)

• not involved in the experience of emotion only evaluation.

Question 9

cortex

Answer 9

inhibition. 
reward learning. -vmPFC body feedback based on previous events to make and guide decisions 
decision making
monitoring
regulation
self awareness.

Question 10

lateralisation

Single system model

Answer 10

each emotion has its only neural system

Mills (1912) right hemisphere emoitions- perception and expression.

Question 11

Dual system model

- valence hypothesis

Answer 11

Davidson (1984)
right hemisphere withdrawal or inhibition
left hemisphere approach or activation

Question 12

Mannovich, Ferrari and Bruno (2017)

Answer 12

Selfie takers prefer left cheeks.
- earlier reseacrh has found left cheeks are preferred.
Right hemisphere hypoth= more expressive on the left side.
- left cheek bias in selfies.
Negative emotions expressed more strongly on left cheek= positive on right. (valence hypothesis)

Question 13

What does neuro research tell us

Answer 13

emotion functions are not isolated in single anatomical structures.

Question 14

Generating emotions

Answer 14

Bottom up or top down processes.
(quick bottom up analysis of a stimulus.
Slower top down analysis based on stored knowledge)

Question 15

oschsner et al (2009) bottom up or top down

Answer 15

participants looked at unpleasant images (bottom up) or neutral but appraised as negative (top down)

Findings:
- bottom up activated amygdala
top down activated LEFT amygdala

Question 16

Regulating emotions - gender differences

McRae et a (2008)

Answer 16

fMRI participants have to stop themselves feeling distressed in response to negative images.
- No gender differences in reactivity
- men less activation in prefrontal, amygdala and ventral striatum
men use less effort in cognitve emotion regulation OR women recruit more positive emotions

Question 17

Empathy

Answer 17

Mirror neurons.

Question 18

Expressing emotion: BOTOX

Answer 18

Havas et al (2010) injecting botox leads to slower processing of emotional language because it can paralyse the muscles used for exmotional expression. Impair feedback from the face while language processing. (we mentally act out emotional expressions)

Question 19

Decision making: Domasio somatic marker hypothesis

Answer 19

gut feeling comes from retrieving the markers of bodily reactions to previous similar events
BEchara et al 2000 patients with vmfc damage chose more risk gambles. controls = elevated skin conductance avoided risky deciscion.

• could be important adaptation.