Chapters 11 and 13 Flashcards
Emotions
Short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events
A psychological construct that unites and coordinates the above four aspects of experience into a synchronized pattern
Six perennial questions in contemporary emotion study
What is an emotion?
What causes an emotion?
How many emotions are there?
What good are the emotions?
Can we control our emotions?
What is the difference between emotion and mood?
Four components of emotion
Feelings
Bodily responses
Sense of purpose
Expressive behaviours
Feelings as a component of emotion
Subjective experience
Phenomenological awareness
Cognitive interpretation
Has personal level of meaning
Bodily responses as a component of emotion
Bodily preparation for action
Physiological activation
Changes in hormonal activity
Neural
Sense of purpose as a component of emotion
Impulse to action
Goal-directed motivational state
Functional aspect to coping
Function of emotion is to direct behaviour
Expressive behaviours as a component of emotion
Social signals and communications
Facial expression
Voice tone
How we publicly express private states
Emotion as motivation
Emotions are one type of motive which energizes and directs behaviour
Emotion as readout
Emotions serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going
What causes an emotion?
Significant life event
How many emotions are there from a biological perspective?
2-8 (a small #)
Emphasizes primary emotions (e.g., anger, fear)
How many emotions are there from a cognitive perspective?
Unlimited (a large #)
Acknowledges the importance of the primary emotions, but it stresses the complex (secondary, acquired) emotions
James-Lange Theory of Emotion
Different life events activate different patterns of bodily reaction, and the different patterns of reaction led to the different emotions
Problems with the James-Lange Theory of Emotion
Cognitive part is missing
Role of physiological arousal is to increase or augment, but not cause, emotion
Cognitive perspective on the cause of an emotion
Reasons we should think that cognitive appraisal is a necessary prerequisite to the activation or experience of an emotion
2 premises of the cognitive perspective on the cause of an emotion
Events per se don’t cause emotions. Rather, only the person’s appraisal that the event might have an impact on their well-being elicits an emotional reaction.
Emotions covary so well with cognitive appraisals
Appraisal
Estimate of the personal significance of an event
Three premises of an appraisal
Without an antecedent cognitive appraisal of the event, emotions do not occur
The appraisal, not the event itself, causes the emotion
If the appraisal changes, then the emotion will change
3 questions of Arnold’s Appraisal Theory of Emotion
How does the perception of an object or event produce a good or bad appraisal?
How does the appraisal generate emotion?
How does felt emption express itself in action?
Lazarus’ Appraisal Theory of Emotion
Expanded into primary and secondary appraisals (is this a threat? can I cope?)
Two broad categories of the utility of emotion
Coping functions
Social functions
Coping functions
We adapt better to the life event
Social functions
Social interaction is better, adaptive
Emotion regulation
Process in which the person seeks to determine which emotion is experienced, when it is experienced, how it is experienced, and how it is expressed publicly and observably
Name 5 emotion regulation strategies
Situation selection
Situation modification
Attentional focus
Reappraisal
Suppression
Situation selection
Taking action to make one emotional experience more or less likely
Situation modification
Problem-focused coping, efforts to establish control, and searching for social support
Attentional focus
Redirecting attention within the situation (distraction vs. rumination)
Reappraisal
Changing the way one thinks about the situation to modify the emotional impact
Suppression
Down-regulating one or more of the four aspects of emotion, such as lessening bodily activation by deep breathing or inhibiting facial expressions
