cognition and emotion Flashcards
what is affect
the experience of feeling emotions
what is emotion
- brief but intense experience
what terms come under affect
- emotions
- moods
- preferences
what is affective judgment
a decision on what a person likes or dislikes
how do watson and clark 1984 define emotions
- distinct integrated psychophysiological response systems
- an emotion contains 3 differential response systems
how does lang 1971 define emotions
- behavioural, physiological and cognitive/verbal component
what are the components of emotions according to watson and clark
- behaviour e.g. facial expressions
- physiological response - e.g. heart rate, sweating
- feeling e.g. feel frightened
how do we classify emotional experiences
- 2 approaches
- the basic emotion approach
- the dimensional approach
what is the basic emotion approach
emotions are a mixture of basic types of emotions
- no consensus of what emotions are basic
what does arnold consider are basic emotions
anger, aversion, courage, desire, dejection, despair, fear, hate , love and sadness
what does james consider are basic emotions
fear, grief, love and rage
what are the ‘big five’ basic emotions
anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness
- they are universal
what characteristics determine whether an emotion is a basic one
ekman 1999 - distinct universal signal, distinct physiology, present in other primates, quick onset
what is the dimensional approach
- describe emotional experiences through key dimensions
what is an affect grid
- lang 1988
- based on 2 dimensions: valence and arousal
- pps asked to rate pictures in terms of 2 dimensions
- 3rd dimension is dominance/control
- c shaped pattern on grid
what is the self assessment manikin
9 point rating scale
- rate image on valence and also on arousal
what is the james-lange theory
- sematic theory
stimulus –> sensory perception —> bodily changes and automatic arousal —> particular emotional experience - emotion comes after the physiological behaviour
- behaviour proceeds cognition
what is the cannon-bard theory
stimulus —> sensory perception —> general automatic arousal and particular emotion experienced at the same time
- sub-cortical stimulation leads to arousal and subjective emotion simultaneously
what is the schachter and singer theory
- arousal-interpretation theory
- 2 essential factors: high physiological arousal and an emotional interpretation of the arousal
stimulus —> sensory perception —> general automatic arousal —> cognitive appraisal —> particular emotional experience
what did schacter and singer find 1962
- told pps they were investigating a vitamins compound on vision
- 3 groups inected with adrenaline, 1 group saline solution - placebo
- some were told effects of adrenaline and some were told incorrect effects of adrenaline, some weren’t informed of any effects
- manipulated context - situation to produce emotion
- found happy groups - misinformed felt happiest
- found angry groups - misinformed felt most emotion
what does zajonc argue about cognition
- affect and cognition are separate and partially independent systems
- cognitive processes were not necessary to produce an affective response to stimulus
- tested using the mere exposure effect
what is the affective primacy debate
- does emotion precede cognition
what is the mere exposure effect
- zajonc
- presented images subliminally to pps whilst involved in a diff primary task
- pps then make preference judgements to stimuli set presented above plus new/novel stimuli
- pps gave higher liking ratings to the previously seen stimuli
- suggests an emotional response despite no cognitive processing
what is the priming experiment
- murphy and zajonc
- stimulus is angry or happy or sad face
- stimulus presented for either 4ms or 1s
- they were then shown a 2nd stimulus
- then rating of likability
- ratings of liking were influenced by the affective/emotional primes but only when presented for 4ms
- at 1s, time for later cognitive processes to kick in
what does richard lazarus argue about cognition
- cognitive appraisal underlies and is an integral feature of all emotional states
what is the cognitive appraisal effect
- interpretations of a situation that helps us determine the nature and intensity of the emotional response
what did speisman, lazarus, mordkoff and davidson do to research the appraisal theory
- pps shown anxiety evoking films
- measured emotional responses by having them rate and also measured physiological responses e.g. heart rate
- they changed sound track in videos e.g. no sound, trauma narrative, denial narrative, scientific narrative
- compared stress responses to control conditions
- less anxiety with denial narrative and scientific narrative
what are the 3 types of appraisals
- primary appraisal
- secondary appraisal
- reappraisal
what is primary appraisal
identify the stimulus as to whether there is a threat to personal well-being. significance/meaning of the event to the individua
what are secondary appraisals
determine what personal resosources are available to cope with the situation
what are reappraisals
monitor primary and secondary appraisals and modify them as necessary
what are the 2 primary appraisal components
- smith and lazarus
- motivational relevance
- motivational congruence
what are the 4 secondary appraisal components
- accountability
- problem-focused coping potential
- emotion focused coping potential
- future expectancy
what is attention bias
- selective attention to emotionally related stimuli presented at the same time as neutral ones
what is interpretative bias
a tendency to interpret a situation or ambiguous stimuli in a negative way
what is an example of attentional bias
the stroop task
what is the emotional stroop task
- shown both emotional and neutral words in different coloured ink
- asked to name ink colour
- how the word meaning interferes with the colour naming
- high trait anxiety show larger interference effects
- also done with faces - van honk et al
what is the dot-probe paradigm or attentional probe task
- examines early allocation of attention
- maclead, mathews and tata 1986
- emotional and neutral info presented side by side to anxious patients and controls
- location of threat info is controlled. some trials have no dot
- examine spread of responses when dot occupies location previously occupied by neutral versus emotional stimuli
- controls faster for neutral compared to threatening
anxious patients faster in threat area
how was interpretative bias studied
- eysenck, maclead and mathews
- homonym task
- present words auditorily
- homophones
- pps must write down words
- high trait anxiety used more threat related spellings
- criticised by response bias
what task did richard and french carry out
- used homographs instead of homophones - dual meanings
- if prime and word are related in meaning responses are faster
- found greater priming effect for target words related in meaning to the negative interpretation of the prime for high anxiety pps
what is target pop-out
automatic process not requiring attention
what did ohman suggest about detection of threatening faces
- it is evolutionary adaptive for us to detect threat quickly and automatically
- we should detect angry faces faster because they are threatening
what is the face in the crowd effect
- if detection of threat is fast and automatic, we might expect threatening objects to be detected rapidly
how did hansen and hansen research the face in crowd effect
- grid of 9 faces
- one discrepant emotion
- faces show angry, happy or neutral expressions
- pps respond same or different
- suggests anger superiority effect - easy to find a discrepant angry face in a crowd
- 2nd experiment - 4 faces - pps had to identify where the discrepant face was - pps took less time to identify angry face in crowd of happy faces
