Cognition & Emotion Flashcards
What are emotions?
Emotions are biologically-based responses to situations that are seen as personally relevant.
How are emotions shaped?
Emotions are shaped by learning, and usually involve changes in peripheral physiology, expressive behaviour, and subjective experience.
What are intrapersonal functions of emotion?
- Emotions helps us act quickly with minimal conscious awareness.
- Emotions prepare the body for immediate action.
- Emotions influence thoughts.
- Emotions motivate future behaviours.
What are the components of emotion?
- Feelings.
- Bodily arousal.
- Sense of purpose.
- Expressive behaviour.
Why do pupils dilate as a fight or flight response?
- The body prepares itself to become more aware of its surroundings.
- Dilation of the pupils allows more light in to the eyes, resulting in better vision.
Why does our skin become pale or flushed as a fight or flight response?
Blood flow to the surface areas of the body is reduced while flow to the muscles, brain, legs and arms in increased.
Why does the fight or flight response result in a rapid heart rate and breathing?
The body is provided with the energy and oxygen needed to fuel a rapid response to danger.
Why do we tremble as a fight or flight response?
Muscles tense and become primed for action, causing trembling or shaking.
Describe the James-Lange theory on emotion.
Emotions are perceptions that are created to interpret and represent bodily changes.
- We don’t run when we are afraid, we ran and then felt afraid.
- The perception of the fear came from interpreting the physiological changes that were happening as we were running away.
Evaluate the James-Lange theory.
- Theory was largely the result of introspection, not experiments.
- Physiological responses are not necessary to exprerience emotion.
- Emotional experience occurs more quickly than physiological reaction.
- Physiological reactions augments, rather than causes, emotion.
Describe the Cannon-Bard theory.
- Bard removed cats’ cerebral cortex which led to spontaneous behaviours known as “sham rage”.
- Behaviours included: arched back, extended claws, snarling, increased blood pressure and heart rate, dilated pupils and raised fur.
- Bard suggested expression of coordinated emotional behaviour doesn’t depend on cortical processes, but subcortical centres like the hypothalamus and thalamus.
- Physiological arousal and emotional experience happen simultaneously, but independently.
- The emotional feeling and physical reaction are separate processes.
Describe the Schachter & Singer (1962) study on testing the role of appraisal.
- Participants received adrenaline injections, some were told to expect physiological reactions, and others told the injection would have no side effects or unrelated effects.
- After the injection, they waited with a confederate showing either euphoric or angry behavior.
- Participants who expected arousal did not report any emotional charge related to euphoria or anger. However, those who did not expect arousal were more likely to report emotions of euphoria or anger.
- This suggests that only those not expecting the arousal used the context to interpret their physiological responses.
What is the two-factors theory of emotion?
- Emotions involve two key factors: arousal and cognition.
- Arousal is common to all emotions, but emotions differ based on how we cognitively interpret the source of that arousal.
- Sometimes, a high level of arousal can be misinterpreted or mislabelled.
What are interpersonal functions of emotion?
- Emotion conveys information about the quality of the relationship.
- Emotional expressions facilitate specific behaviours in perceivers.
- Emotional expressions provide incentives for desired social behaviour.
What did Ekmans studies on emotions show?
At least six emotions are cultural universals:
- Anger.
- Fear.
- Surprise.
- Disgust.
- Happiness.
- Sadness.
How did Darwin study emotion?
- He applied galvanic probes to the facial muscles of subjects to make the muscles contract and stimulate specific emotions.
- He then asked people to recognise the emotions.
What did emotion recognition in the early blind find?
5 emotions: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness.
- Worse performance of the early blind in threat related emotions like fear and anger.
What did studies on mimicry and facial electromyography show?
When exposed to others’ emotional expressions, we tend to mimic their facial expressions, voice, posture, movement and behaviour.
What is the attentional blink paradigm (Raymond et al., 1992)?
- Stimuli are presented in a rapid succession, and participants are told to ignore most and only pay attention to a certain kind.
- They can accurately identify the target they focus on, but only if there’s enough time between the targets.
- If the targets appear too close together, participants will miss the second one.
In relation to the attentional blink paradigm, what was found about emotional influence (Arnell et al., 2004)?
- If the second target is emotionally salient, the attentional blink effect goes away.
- We exhibit an increased awareness for emotionally salient stimulus.
Describe the ‘attention bias: dot probe task’ (Eysenck et al., 1987).
Two stimuli presented simultaneously:
- One is emotionally positve.
- The other is neutral.
(In critical trials, one is emotionally negative and one is neutral).
Participants have to detect a dot replacing one stimulus.
Bias attention is indicated by:
1. Engagement with negative stimuli.
2. Subsequent attentional disengagement from negative stimuli.
- Anxious participants have fast attentional engagement and slow disengagement.
Describe Eysenck’s (1991) study on interperative bias.
“At the refugee camp, the w*** would soon be finished”
- Week or weak?
Participants with more anxiety heard the negative interpretations more often than either controls or those recovered from anxiety.
The data suggests controls have bias towards the neutral stimuli, that is absent in the anxious participants.
What role does the amygdala play in emotion?
- Early detection of emotional information.
- Rapid response to that information.
- Learning the emotional significance of information.
What role does the hippocampus play in emotion?
It plays a critical role in forming connections between emotion and memories as well as in emotional memories recall.
