Cognition and Emotion 2

Question 1

Does affect require cognition?

Answer 1

-No it doesn’t
-Affective Primacy debate
-Zajonc (1984) “Affect and cognition are separate and partially independent systems”
-Claimed that cognitive processes aren’t necessary to produce affective responses to certain stimulus
-Tested using variant of the Mere Exposure debate

Question 2

What is the mere exposure debate?

Answer 2

-If you have previously seen stimuli then when represented with it, you are more likely to recognise it
-Ppts shown images whilst also involved in another task
-Then had to make preference judgements
-Results found that ppts gave higher liking ratings to stimuli that was previously seen
-Shows that cognition may be required for an emotional experience as emotion precedes cognition

Question 3

Describe the Murphy and Zajonc (1993) Priming experiment

Answer 3

-Prime stimulus presented for 4 ms or 1 sec (either a happy face or sad face)
-Subliminal level = 4 ms
-Normal conscious perceptual level = 1 sec
-Asked to respond to preference on a stimulus (Chinese)
-Shown for 4 ms showed that liking rating increased for happy prime and decreased for angry prime
-When shown at 1 sec, the time got later as cognitive processes kicked in

Question 4

Does affect require cognition?

Answer 4

-Yes
-Richard Lazarus developed a theory from Schachter and Singer (1962) work
-’Cognitive appraisal underlies and is an integral feature of all emotional status’ (Lazarus, 1982)

Question 5

What are cognitive appraisals, according to Lazarus?

Answer 5

-Interpretation of a situation that helps to determine nature and intensity of emotional response

Question 6

Describe the experiment conducted by -Speisman, Lazarus, Mordkoff and Davidson (1964)

Answer 6

-Ppts are shown anxiety evoking films and workshop accidents
1- No soundtrack
2 -Trauma narrative
3 -Denial narrative
4 -Scientific/intellectualisation narrative
-Measured arousal/stress using pulse during viewing (physiological responses)
-The 3rd and 4th one had reduced stress and emotional response when compared to the other two
-Shows that manipulating appraisals influences an emotional experience

Question 7

State what is meant by appraisal

Answer 7

-Evaluations of a situation relevant to goals, concerns and wellbeing

Question 8

What are the 3 types of appraisals?

Answer 8

-Primary appraisal
-Secondary appraisal
-Reappraisal

Question 9

What is a primary appraisal?

Answer 9

-Identify the stimulus as to whether there is a threat to personal well-being, and would have meaning to the individual
-E.g. Motivational relevance and congruence

Question 10

What is a secondary appraisal?

Answer 10

-Determine what personal resources are available to cope with the situation
-E.g. Accountability, Future expectancy

Question 11

What is a re-appraisal?

Answer 11

-Monitoring 1° and 2° appraisals and modify if necessary

Question 12

What are the 2 types of cognitive biases that we can have?

Answer 12

-Attention bias
-Interpretative bias

Question 13

What is meant by attention bias?

Answer 13

-Selective attention to emotionally related stimuli presented at the same time as neutral ones e.g. stroop task
-Emotional stroop - Shown both emotional and neutral words in different coloured inks and asked to name ink colour
-Normal stroop - Shown names of colours in congruent or incongruent ink and asked to report colour of ink

Question 14

What is meant by interpretative bias?

Answer 14

-A tendency to interpret a situation or ambiguous stimuli in a negative or threatening way

Question 15

Describe what the emotional Stroop task is

Answer 15

-Examines attention to word meanings by looking at how the word meaning interferes with colour meaning
-Measure trait anxiety using STAI (State Trait Anxiety Inventory)
-High trait anxiety ppts show larger interference effects on emotional stroop than low trait anxiety individuals
-Non anxiety individuals show no difference between the two conditions
-Emotional meaning of words captures attention away from relevant stimulus

Question 16

Describe the study conducted by Van Honk et al. (2001)

Answer 16

-Instead of emotional words, a variant of the task was using coloured faces expressing emotion
-Present angry and neutral coloured faces, either red, green , blue or yellow
-The task was to ignore the face itself and name the colour
-Results found that the colour naming was slower for the angrier faces as they capture attention away from primary task

Question 17

What is the Dot probe/Attentional probe task conducted by MacLeod, Mathews and Tata (1986) ?

Answer 17

-Emotional and neutral information were presented side by side to anxious patients (generalised) and controls
-Location of threat info is controlled and some trials had no dot
-Examine speed of responses when dot occupies location previously occupied by neutral versus emotional stimuli
-Results found that controls showed positive bias (faster for neutral area than threat area
-Reverse was found for anxious patients
-Patients slower for neutral words, and allocate their attention to threat words

Question 18

What were the results of the study?

Answer 18

-Results found that controls showed positive bias (faster for neutral area than threat area
-Reverse was found for anxious patients
-Patients slower for neutral words, and allocate their attention to threat words

Question 18

What is the Dot probe/Attentional probe task conducted by MacLeod and Mathews (1988) ?

Answer 18

-Tested high and low trait anxious groups of students using DP 1 and 12 weeks before important exam
-1 week before found that high anxious students showed bias towards threat stimuli
-12 weeks before found that neither group showed any bias

Question 18

Describe research conducted by Richards and French (1992) looking at interpretative bias

Answer 18

-Used homographs instead (dual meaning) e.g. batter, punch, stalk
-Priming lexical decision task
-If prime and target words are related in meaning then responses are faster
-Response is whether it’s a word or not
-Greater priming effect for target words related in meaning to the negative interpretation e.g. Batter-Assault should have quicker responses than Batter-Pancake
-Interpretative bias shown for high anxiety ppts

Question 19

Describe research into interpretative bias by -Eysenck, MacLeod and Mathews (1987)

Answer 19

-Homonym task where present words auditorily using homophones such as pane/pain
-Ppts had to write down the words
-Found that high trait anxiety showed more reaction to threat related spellings

Question 20

How do we detect emotional expressions?

Answer 20

-Faces have been shown to have priority for detection compared with non face objects
-Visual search tasks used, where cluttered scenes containing distractors and targets e.g. where’s wally

Question 21

Describe the process of visual search

Answer 21

-Search display where there would be target and distractors
-Task would be to search for target and respond ‘present’ or ‘absent’
-Would measure reaction times and accuracy
-If detection times for target don’t vary as function of set size then search is assumed to be parallel known as target pop out (automatic process not requiring attention)
-If the target is not present then the search for each item continues until we reach the last item and then respond ‘no’

Question 22

What did Ohman (1999) suggest about detecting threatening faces?

Answer 22

-Suggests that it is evolutionarily adaptive for us to detect threat quickly and automatically
-Visual threat stimuli e.g. angry faces should be detected faster than non threatening stimuli
-If detection of threat is fast and automatic then we may expect threatening objects to be detected rapidly in cluttered scenes

Question 23

Describe the 1st experiment conduced by Hansen and Hansen (1988)

Answer 23

-3x3 grid of 9 different faces
-Half of the trials had all the same emotion and the other half had one discrepant emotion
-Faces are either happy, angry or neutral
-Ppts respond same or different
-Examined reaction time and error rates for face detection
-Pattern of data suggests that there may be superiority effect
-Faster to find an angry face within a neutral or happy crowd compared to other conditions

Question 23

Describe the 2nd experiment conduced by Hansen and Hansen (1988)

Answer 23

-Presented crowds of 4 faces all containing a discrepant face but very briefly
-Then masked with scrambled letters
-E.g. Angry face in happy crowd and happy face in angry crowd
-This time, all faces were the same individual
-Ppts had to say where the discrepant face was e.g. top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right
-Findings found that ppts took less time to locate angry face in happy crowd
-However, these experiments don’t tell us whether certain emotional expressions pop-out of crowds, as search sets within an experiment were always the same size

Question 24

Describe the 3rd experiment conduced by Hansen and Hansen (1988)

Answer 24

-Vary the number of faces e.g. either 4 or 9 as a set size
-Ppts search a 2x2 or 3x3 matrix of different faces
-Faces show angry or happy and had to respond ‘same’ or ‘different’
-Took longer to recognise discrepant faces when there were more faces within the crowd, for the finding happy face in angry crowd condition
-Faster to find the angry face in the happy crowd rather than finding the happy face in the angry crowd

Question 25

What did this study show overall?

Answer 25

-The study suggests that angry faces pop out within a crowd of happy or neutral faces
-Purcell et al (1996) couldn’t replicate