Chapter 10: Emotion

Question 1

Describe the difference between primary and secondary emotions. Give examples

Answer 1

Primary: Universal, basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, hate
Secondary are combinations of primary: Jealousy, guilt, submission, love, bitterness, shame

Question 2

What roles do the insula play in human emotion?

Answer 2

Insula - particularly active when people experience disgust or observe facial expressions of disgust, receives an integrates signals from the body and involved in subjective awareness of body states, such as heartbeat, feeling hungry, or needing to urinate. The insula plays an important role in the experience of emotion. Damage results in no recognition of disgust. Activated in other emotions including anger, guilt, anxiety

Question 3

What does the amygdala play in human emotion?

Answer 3

The amygdala processes emotional significance of stimuli, generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions. Most important for emotional learning and developed for a fear response. People with damaged amygdala have no fear response to objects associated with dangerous outcomes. Electric shock, blue square, regular person would be aroused when they see blue square, but damaged amygdala person would not be aroused. Emotional events increase activity of the amygdala correlating to prolonged memory of the event. Those with damage have difficulty judging fearful faces.

Slow route: visual or auditory complex then amygdala or fast route: through thalamus straight to amygdala

Question 4

Two common mistakes people use to regulate moods. What’s more effective?

Answer 4

Two common mistakes: rumination and thought suppression; Thought suppression actually has a rebound effect that makes the thought recurring while rumination is incomplete thinking and only makes a person more depressed

Better strategies include: control the location - by putting yourself in the right situation you can encourage some emotions while discouraging other ones from occurring
Change the meaning - directly alter emotional reactions to events by putting them on neutral terms (i.e. reminding yourself a movie is staged)
Find humor - you are more relaxed when you laugh, and helps people distance themselves from their negative emotions and strengthens connections to other people
Distraction - You absorb attention thereby taking away focus on the problem bothering you. Some distractions can backfire, such as overeating or drinking to escape self awareness

Question 5

Explain affect as information theory

Answer 5

Idea that people use current moods to make judgements and appraisals. They rely on their mood to make decisions even if they’re unaware of a mood’s source. Moods can be affected by the day of the week, weather, health, etc. If people knew the causes of their moods their feelings would have less influence on their judgements

Question 6

Somatic markers

Answer 6

Idea that most self-regulatory actions and decisions are influenced by bodily reactions called somatic markers. Gut feeling Somatic markers influence other regions of the brain to make decisions. Damage to middle of prefrontal region are insensitive to somatic markers. People can recall the information but the information loses emotional meaning. They can talk about the death of a loved one but not feel pain.
https://natnelson19.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/week-6-of-know-thyself-the-somatic-marker/

Question 7

Display rules

Answer 7

Govern how and when people exhibit emotions. For example, display rules dictate that you shouldn’t sleep in class in front of the professor since it’s disrespectful. The rules are learned through socialization and dictate which emotions are suitable in situations. Differences in display rules across cultures give to cultural stereotypes

Question 8

What can the case study of Elliott teach us about the role of emotion?

Answer 8

Elliott had a large tumor in prefrontal cortex, very smart, but afterward became very indecisive after the tumor. As a result, he made many risky business decisions and went bankrupt. Elliot lacked motivation, and his marriage and businesses collapsed. He didn’t have a sense of his own suffering even though he was the protagonist. It turns out, Elliot’s lack of emotion paralyzed his decision-making capabilities.. We learn that emotion assists the reasoning process.

Question 9

What is the evidence that supports an evolutionary perspective on emotions?

Answer 9

Evidence of evolution of emotions helps us meet challenges in life/environment tasks. Examples include that feeling in your stomach during an adrenaline rush is actually blood rushing to limbs. When you show disgust, you scrunch up your facial features. when you’re in fear, your eyes open very wide. Babies smile when they learn something new, even if they are blind

Question 10

What are the three components of emotion

Answer 10

Subjective experience, expressive behaviors, cognitive label

Question 11

James Lange Theory

Answer 11

James Lange theory says that a person’s perceives specific patterns of bodily responses which we perceive and feel as emotion. For example, seeing a bear will make our heart beat race, and a higher heart beat as a result makes us feel fear. Lange also implies that if you mold your facial muscles to a certain emotional state, you will trigger that emotional experience. Evidence for this is the pencil between teeth study. Those who held a pencil between their teeth found cartoons funnier than those who did not or held the pencil while frowning.

Question 12

Cannon-Bard Theory

Answer 12

Cannon bard theory suggested that the automatic nervous system was too slow to account for subjective feeling of emotions. Cannon and Bard argue that many emotions produce similar physiological responses, so it’s very difficult to figure out what they’re experiencing. (i.e. blood pressure, anger, anxiety all because of higher heart rate). Exercise brings this state but does not change emotion. Information are sent to the mind and body simultaneously. As a result, mind and body experience emotions independently. People experience two components: one emotion produced in the cortex and physical reactions in the body. In other words, the bear makes your heart race and you feel scared at the same time.

Question 13

Schachter Two Factor Theory

Answer 13

Physiological response to all emotional stimuli was essentially the same, but each time the body initiates a search for a cognitive explanation or label and is often straightforward. Your knowledge that bears are dangerous leads you to attribute the arousal to the bear and label the arousal as fear. What the person believes caused the emotion will determine how the person labels the emotion

Consider Adrenaline Experiment: Two groups control and adrenaline
Those who were told they were injected with something that would make them more aroused labeled their symptoms as a result of the injection. Those who did not know they were injected resorted to environmental factors to look for the label, resulting in them feeling more angry with the angry confederate situation and happier with the happy confederate situation - they attributed their feelings to the confederate

Think Stimulus -> arousal -> Label -> Emotion

Question 14

Describe the findings in class on smiles

Answer 14

Smiling is universal, even in non human primates The truth in a smile is in the eyes - A duchenne smile involves crinkling during the real smile; A video tape of couples disagreeing could predict if couples would break up or not based on their smiles College yearbook photos found that those who had Duchenne smiles or “real” smiles were happier later in life

Question 15

Yerkes Dodson Law

Answer 15

Arousal correlates to performance in a bell shape curve: a medium amount of arousal should give off optimal performance.
The complexity of a task affects how much arousal should be given to maximize performance: if you’re comfortable with a task, you want high arousal, while if you’re not comfortable with a task, you want low arousal
Cockroach study: Does better with more arousal on a simple tasks such as running in a line
Does worse with more arousal on a hard complex task such as running a maze

Question 16

What are three measures of happiness

Answer 16

Three measures include: Satisfaction with Life study - you rate your happiness on a scale of 1-7, Ladder Method - 10 rungs on the ladder and you think about where you are on the ladder, and Positive and Negative Effect Scale - 10 positive words, 10 negative words, 1-5 scale. You can have positive and negative results from this measurement or be low in both departments.

Question 17

What’s the feel-good, do good hypothesis

Answer 17

If a person is in a good mood, they’re more likely to do good things. Handing out a cookie in the dining hall might allow that person to help pick up someone’s dishes, doughnuts at kellogg and picking up books.

Question 18

What are things that do make you happy

Answer 18

Personality/Genetics, finding meaningful work (challenges without overwhelming you) can also include hobbies, volunteering, etc. Social connection, Religion can give you a sense of purpose and community. Anything that gives life meaning can also substitute religion

Question 19

What are researched things that don’t make you happy

Answer 19

Age - Happiness is generally consistent, although there is peak neuroticism at young adult age Having Kids- Does not necessarily affect happiness although people do claim to find more meaning in life Intelligence - does not profoundly affect happiness, although there is a very slight positive correlation, Attractiveness - does not affect happiness, people who are happier think they look better Disability has a tiny effect as it allows you to overcome and bounce back - Renee’s stepfather is the happiest person got a Gallup survey but yeah he is disabled in many ways. Happy people tend to think they’re healthy Money does not affect happiness, lottery winners are not necessarily happy

Question 20

Explain the complex association between money and happiness

Answer 20

You need some money to be happy, but after a certain cutoff, more is not necessarily better. Our spending power might have doubled over the century, but our happiness has still been pretty consistent. People say that in wealthier nations on average tend to be happier but there are exceptions (Japan)

Question 21

What is the Danish Effect

Answer 21

Scandinavian countries tend to be a lot happier than countries such as the US because there is a greater sense of equality among citizens. The countries have the ability to psychologically care for citizens at every income level regardless of socioeconomic conditions. As a result, these countries tend to have low income equality, low poverty, and high welfare.

Question 22

Explain the relevance of hedonic adaptation on the understanding of happiness.

Answer 22

There’s an idea of the hedonic treadmill, that no matter how much happier a person is, eventually their happiness level will return to normal and/or level out. You’re then focused more on what you don’t have. Think about Renee’s thoughts on living in a high-rise on the lake, her neighbors, then wanting exposed brick, which had power issues, which in turn she moved into new construction, which made her want to grow stuff. When you compare other events such as marriage, it’ll go up but eventually level out, unemployment hits hard but eventually returns to almost all the way (a bit lower), divorce dips earlier but almost returns to normal, widowed goes way down before the incident. Point being, the events differ in the timing and rate of recovery.