Chapter 12, Emotion Flashcards
Emotions are
are adaptive responses that support survival.
Emotional components
Bodily arousal
Expressive behaviors
Conscious experiences
Theories of emotion generally address two major questions:
Does physiological arousal come before or after emotional feelings?
How do feeling and cognition interact?
James-Lange theory
Arousal comes before emotion.
Experience of emotion involves awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.
Cannon-Bard theory
Arousal and emotion happen at the same time.
Emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion.
Human body responses run parallel to the cognitive responses rather than causing them.
Schachter-Singer two-factor theory
Arousal + Label = Emotion
Emotions have two ingredients: physical arousal and cognitive appraisal.
Arousal fuels emotion; cognition channels it.
Emotional experience requires a conscious interpretation of arousal.
Spillover effect: Arousal spills over from one event to the next, influencing the response.
The Spillover Effect
Arousal from a soccer match can fuel anger, which can descend into rioting or other violent confrontations.
Zajonc, LeDoux, and Lazarus
Emotion and the two-track brain
Zajonc
Sometimes emotional response takes a neural shortcut that bypasses the cortex and goes directly to the amygdala.
Some emotional responses involve no deliberate thinking.
Lazarus
The brain processes much information without conscious awareness, but mental functioning still takes place.
Emotions arise when an event is appraised as harmless or dangerous.
Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System
The arousal component of emotion is regulated by the autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic (arousing) and parasympathetic (calming) divisions.
In a crisis, the fight-or-flight response automatically mobilizes the body for action.
Arousal affects performance in different ways, depending on the task.
Performance peaks at lower levels of arousal for difficult tasks and at higher levels for easy or well-learned tasks.
Physiology of Emotions
Different emotions have subtle indicators.
Brain scans and EEGs reveal different brain circuits for different emotions.
Depression and general negativity: Right frontal lobe activity
Happiness, enthusiasm, and feeling energized: Left frontal lobe activity
Detecting Emotion in Others
People can often detect nonverbal cues and threats as well as signs of status.
Nonthreatening cues are more easily detected than deceiving expressions.
Westerners
Firm handshake: Outgoing, expressive personality
Gaze: Intimacy
Averted glance: Submission
Stare: Dominance
Detecting Emotion in Others (part 2)
Gestures, facial expressions, and voice tones are absent in written communication.
In the absence of expressive emotion, ambiguity can occur.
How might this affect our electronic communications?
Gender, Emotion, and Nonverbal Behavior
Women
Tend to read emotional cues more easily and to be more empathic
Express more emotion with their faces
People attribute female emotionality to disposition and male emotionality to circumstance.
Gender and Expressiveness
Male and female film viewers did not differ dramatically in self-reported emotions or physiological responses.
The women’s faces showed much more emotion.
Culture and Emotional Expression (part 1)
Gesture meanings vary among cultures, but outward signs of emotion are generally the same.
Musical expression of emotion crosses cultures.
Shared emotional categories do not reflect shared cultural experiences.
Facial muscles speak a universal language for some basic emotions; interpreting faces in context is adaptive.
Culture and Emotional Expression (part 2)
Cultures may share a facial language, but they differ in how much emotion they express.
Those that encourage individuality, as in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America, display visible emotions.
Those that encourage people to adjust to others, as in Japan and China, often have less visible emotional displays.
European-American leaders express excited smiles six times more frequently in their official photos.
The Effects of Facial Expressions
The facial feedback effect
Facial expressions can trigger emotional feelings and signal our body to respond accordingly.
People also mimic others’ expressions, which helps them empathize.
The behavior feedback effect
Tendency of behavior to influence our own and others’ thoughts, feelings, and actions
Experiencing Emotion (part 1)
Izard isolated 10 basic emotions that include physiology and expressive behavior.
Joy, interest-excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt
Two dimensions that help differentiate emotions:
Positive versus negative valence
Low versus high arousal
Experiencing Emotion: Anger (part 1)
Causes
With threat or challenge, fear triggers flight, but anger triggers fight—each at times is an adaptive behavior.
Anger is most often evoked by misdeeds that we interpret as willful, unjustified, and avoidable.
Smaller frustrations and blameless annoyances can also trigger anger.
Experiencing Emotion: Anger (part 2)
Consequences of anger
Chronic hostility is linked to heart disease.
Emotional catharsis may be temporarily calming but does not reduce anger over the long term.
Expressing anger can make us more angry.
Controlled assertions of feelings may resolve conflicts, and forgiveness may rid us of angry feelings.
Anger communicates strength and competence, motivates action, and expresses grief when wisely used.
Experiencing Emotion: Anger (part 3)
Individualist cultures encourage people to vent anger; collectivist cultures are less likely to do so.
The Western vent-your-anger advice presumes that aggressive action or fantasy enables emotional release, or catharsis.
Better ways to manage anger:
Wait
Find a healthy distraction or support
Distance yourself
Experiencing Emotion: Happiness (part 1)
State of happiness influences all facets of life
Feel-good, do-good phenomenon
People’s tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood
Subjective well-being
Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life
Used along with measures of objective well-being to evaluate people’s quality of life
Experiencing Emotion: Happiness (part 2)
Positive psychology: Study of human functioning, with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to thrive
Research areas
Positive health
Positive emotions
Positive neuroscience
Positive education
Experiencing Emotion: Happiness (part 3)
Three pillars of positive psychology
Positive well-being
Positive character
Communities and culture
The Short Life of Emotional Ups and Downs
Emotional ups and downs tend to balance out; moods typically rebound.
Wealth and Well-Being
Wealth does correlate with well-being in some ways.
Having resources to meet basic needs and maintain some control over life does “buy happiness.”
Increasing wealth matters less once basic needs are met.
Economic growth in affluent countries provides no apparent morale or social well-being boost.
82 percent of entering U.S. college students say that “being very well off financially” is “very important” or “essential” (Eagen et al., 2016).
Two Psychological Phenomena: Adaptation and Comparison
Adaptation-level phenomenon
The tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience
Prior experience partly influences feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction and success and failure.
Comparison
Satisfaction comes from income rank rather than income level.
Relative deprivation is the perception that one is worse off relative to the comparison group.
What Predicts Our Happiness Levels?
Happiness levels are product of nature–nurture interaction.
Twin studies: About 36 percent of happiness rating differences are heritable.
Culture: Variation in groups’ valuing of traits
Personal history: Emotions balance around a level defined by experience (happiness set point).
Individual happiness level may influence national well-being.
Evidence-Based Suggestions for a Happier Life
Take control of your time
Act happy
Seek work and leisure that engage your skills
Buy shared experiences rather than things
Join the “movement” movement
Give your body the sleep it wants
Give priority to close relationships
Focus beyond self
Count your blessings and record your gratitude
Nurture your spiritual self
Stress and Illness
Stress: The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging
Stressors appraised as threats can lead to strong negative reactions.
Extreme or prolonged stress can cause harm.
Stressors: Things That Push Our Buttons
Catastrophes: Unpleasant, large-scale events
Significant life changes: Personal events; life transitions
Daily hassles: Day-to-day challenges
Stress Response
Cannon viewed the stress response as a “fight-or-flight” system.
Selye proposed a general three-phase (alarm, resistance, exhaustion) general adaptation syndrome (GAS).
Facing stress, women may have a tend-and-befriend response; men may withdraw socially, turn to alcohol, or become aggressive.
Stress Effects and Health (part 1)
Psychoneuroimmunology: Studies mind-body interactions
Emotions (psycho)
Affect your brain (neuro),
Which controls the stress hormones that influence the disease-fighting immune system.
This field is the study of (ology) those interactions.
Stress Effects and Health (part 2)
Four types of cells active in the search-and-destroy mission of the immune system
B lymphocytes
T lymphocytes
Macrophages
Natural killer (NK) cells
Stress and Vulnerability to Disease
The immune system is affected by age, nutrition, genetics, body temperature, and stress.
When the immune system does not function properly:
It responds too strongly
It underreacts
Stress Effects and Health: Immune System Malfunctions
Reacting Too Strongly
Self-attacking diseases
Some forms of arthritis
Allergic reaction
Underreacting
Bacterial infections flare up.
Dormant herpes virus erupt.
Cancer cells multiply.
Stress Effects and Health (part 3)
Stress hormones suppress the immune system.
Animal studies: Stress of adjustment in monkeys causes weakened immune systems.
Human studies: Stress affects surgical wound healing and development of colds. Low stress may increase the effectiveness of vaccinations.
Stress does not make people sick but does reduce the immune system’s ability to function optimally.
Slower surgical wound healing; increased vulnerability to colds; decreased vaccine effectiveness
Stress Effects and Health (part 4)
Stress and AIDS
Stress cannot give people AIDS, but it may speed the transition from HIV infection to AIDS and the decline in those with AIDS.
Stress and cancer
Stress does not create cancer cells, but it may affect their growth by weakening natural defenses.
Stress-cancer research results are mixed.
Stress and Heart Disease (part 1)
Stress and heart disease
630,000 American coronary heart disease–related deaths yearly
Stress is related to the generation of inflammation, which is associated with heart and other health problems.
Meyer and colleagues
Stress predicts heart attack risk for tax accountants.
Type A men are more likely to have heart attacks.
Conley and colleagues
Stress is related to everyday academic stressors in students.
Stress and Heart Disease (part 2)
Type A
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people
Type B
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people
Stress and Heart Disease (part 3)
Stress, pessimism, and depression
Pessimists are more likely than optimists to develop heart disease.
Depression increases the risk of death, especially from cardiovascular disease.
Stress and inflammation
Chronic stress triggers persistent inflammation, which increases the risks of heart disease and depression.
Personality, Pessimism, and Depression
Happy and consistently satisfied people tend to be healthy and to outlive their unhappy peers.
Having a happy spouse predicts better health: Happy you, healthy me.
Health and Coping
People deal with stress through the use of several coping strategies.
Problem-focused coping
Emotion-focused coping
Personal Control (part 1)
In both animals and humans, uncontrollable threats trigger the strongest stress responses.
Animal studies
Laudenslager et al. (1984): Rat studies
Seligman et al. (1967): Learned helplessness dog studies
Human studies
Rodin (1986): Nursing home residents study
O’Neill (1993): Work-site environment studies
Personal Control (part 2)
Why does perceived loss of control predict health problems?
Losing control increases stress hormones blood pressure increases immune responses decrease.
Increasing control has noticeably improved health and morale in prison and nursing home studies.
Tyranny of choice can create information overload.
Personal Control (part 3)
Personal Control (part 3)
Those who have an external locus of control believe that chance or outside forces control their fate.
Those who have an internal locus of control believe they control their own destiny.
Building Self-Control
Self-control: Ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards
Exercising willpower temporarily depletes the mental energy needed for self-control on other tasks.
Self-control requires attention and energy, but it predicts good adjustment, better grades, and social success.
Explanatory Style: Optimism Versus Pessimism
Pessimists
Expect things to go badly and blame others
Optimists/optimism
Expect to have control, work well under stress, and enjoy good health
Run in families; genetic marker/oxytocin
Danner and colleagues: Optimism–long life correlation study
Social Support
Social support helps fight illness in two ways.
Calms cardiovascular system, which lowers blood pressure and stress hormone levels
Fights illness by fostering stronger immune functioning
Close relationships give us an opportunity for “open heart therapy,” a chance to confide painful feelings.
Reducing Stress (part 1)
Aerobic exercise, relaxation, meditation, and active spiritual engagement may help us gather inner strength and lessen stress effects.
Based on what we have learned so far, can you guess why?
Reducing Stress (part 2)
Aerobic exercise
Sustained activity increases heart and lung fitness and reduces stress, depression, and anxiety.
Can weaken the influence of genetic risk for obesity
Increases the quality and “quantity” of life (~2 years)
Aerobic Exercise and Depression
Mildly depressed college women who participated in an aerobic exercise program showed markedly reduced depression compared with those who did relaxation exercises or received no treatment (from McCann & Holmes, 1984).
Reducing Stress (part 3)
Relaxation: More than 60 studies found that relaxation procedures can provide relief from headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia.
Relaxation training: Has been used to help Type A heart attack survivors reduce their risk of future heart attacks
Mindfulness meditation: A reflective practice in which people attend to current experiences in a nonjudgmental and accepting manner
Faith Communities and Health
Faith factor
Religiously active people tend to live longer than those who are not religiously active.
Possible explanations include the effect of intervening variables, such as the healthy behaviors, social support, or positive emotions often found among people who regularly attend religious services.
