Cognitive Psychology: Emotion

Question 1

Cognition & Emotion in history

Answer 1

• Prior to the 1980s, these factors were often regarded as separate topics
• Cognitive experiments traditionally use ‘normal and healthy’ pp’s
• Cognitive psychologists would control lab conditions to ignore emotionally effects on cognitive tasks
• Emotion was the domain of a psychotherapists and clinical psychologists

Question 2

Differences between affect, emotion & affective judgment

Answer 2

Affect: the experience of feeling or emotion
Emotion: brief but intense experience (moods are less intense and not as long-lasting)
Affective judgement: a decision on what a person likes or dislikes

Question 3

What is an emotion?

Answer 3

• Watson & Clark’s (1994) definition: Emotions “…we can define as distinct, integrated psychophysiological response systems…An emotion contains three differentiable response systems: (1) a prototypic form of behavioural expression (typically facial), (2) a pattern of consistent autonomic changes, and (3) a distinct subjective feeling state.”

Question 4

How do we classify emotional experiences? 2 approaches

Answer 4

• Huge number of emotional states (e.g. happiness, sadness, boredom, etc.)
• Two approaches to classify emotional experiences:
• 1. Basic emotion approach – all emotional experiences are a mix of these
• 2. Dimensional approach

Question 5

What is the Basic Emotional Approach?

Answer 5

• Many researchers rely on a limited number of discrete emotions
• Lack of consensus on which emotions are basic (e.g. anger, courage, desire, fear, love)
• The big five: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness
• These are universal and hence are independent of culture and upbringing
• Ekman et al (1971,1972) Facial recognition of emotional studies

Question 6

Basic emotion: What characteristics determine whether an emotion is a basic one?

Answer 6

Ekman (1999)
- Distinct universal signal
- Distinct physiology
- Present in other primates
- Quick onset
- Brief duration
- Distinct thoughts, memories, images & subjective experience

Question 7

What is the Dimensional Approach?

Answer 7

• Lang (1988) used an affect-grid with 2 dimensions (valence & arousal) and asked pp’s to rate pictures in terms of the 2 dimensions
• International Affective Picture System (APS) images
• Also, IADS (Digitized sounds)
• IAPS images also rated on a 3rd dimension (dominance/ control)
• C-shaped pattern
• Issues: some emotions combine attributes that dimensional models are incompatible with

Question 8

Historical theories of emotion: 3 theories

Answer 8

1. James-Lange theory:
   - The subjective experience of emotion is a slave to the physiology of emotion
   - Feedback from bodily changes leads to us experiencing an emotion
   - Behaviour precedes cognition
   - Love feels different to fear because each has a unique physiologic signature
2. Cannon-Bard theory
   - Arousal & subjective experience of an emotion occur simultaneously as the result of a pattern of sub-cortical stimulation
3. Schacter & Singer (2 factor theory)
   - Arousal-interpretation theory
   - 2 factors essential for the experience of emotion (high physiological arousal & an emotional interpretation of that arousal)

Question 9

Schacter & Singer’s (1962) classic study:

Answer 9

• 3 groups injected with adrenaline, 1 group with saline solution (placebo)
• What the researchers told the 3 groups: Some were correctly informed about the side-effects (racing heart), Some misinformed (headaches & numb feet), Some not informed (adrenalin ignorant)
• Context Manipulation: After the injection Ps were placed in a situation aimed to produce joy/euphoria or anger
• Emotional state of Ps was later assessed by self-report questionnaire and independent judges (could lead to investigator effects)
• Ps in Euphoria group reported feeling the happiest and vice versa
• Results: Ps in Euphoria group reported feeling the happiest and vice versa
  So despite the identical physiological response in the adrenaline groups, the experience of emotion was influenced by information previously given and the situation/context that the participant was in

Question 10

Does affect require cognition?
The cognitive/emotion (primacy) debate:

Answer 10

NO
- Zajonc (1984) claimed that cognitive processes were not necessary to produce an affective response to a stimulus
- Tested using variant of the Mere Exposure Effect
YES
- Richard Lazarus developed a theory from Schachter & Singer’s (1962) work
- ‘Cognitive appraisal underlies and is an integral feature of all emotional states” Lazarus 1982

Question 11

What is the mere Exposure Effect? Zajonc

Answer 11

• Presented items subliminally to pp’s, whilst involved in a different primary task
• Pp’s then make preference judgments to stimuli set presented above plus new stimuli
• Results: pp’s gave higher liking ratings to the previously ‘seen’ stimuli
• Suggests an emotional response despite no cognition processing of the subliminal stimuli

Question 12

Murphy & Zajonc (1993): Priming Experiment

Answer 12

• Rating of liking were influences by the emotional primes
• But only when presented for 4ms
• At 1 sec, time for later cognitive processes to kick in

Question 13

What is Lazarus’ Appraisal Theory?

Answer 13

• Cognitive appraisal – the interpretation of a situation that helps to determine the nature and intensity of the emotional response
• Speisman, Lazarus, Morfkoff & Davidson (1964) Pp’s shown anxiety evoking films (No soundtracks, Trauma narrative, Denial narrative, Scientific narrative)
• Measured arousal and stress during viewing
• Denial and scientific resulted in reduced stress response compared to trauma, when contrasted with no soundtrack
• So manipulating appraises influences an emotional responses

Question 14

What are three types of appraisals?

Answer 14

1. Primary – identify the stimulus as to whether there is a threat to personal well-being
2. Secondary – determine what personal resources are available to cope with the situation
3. Reappraisals – monitor 1st and 2nd appraisals and modify if necessary

Question 15

What are the 6 appraisal components?

Answer 15

Smith & Lazarus (1993)
(1) Motivational relevance (i.e. Related to personal commitments?
(2) Motivational congruence (i.e. Consistent with goals?)
(3) Accountability (i.e. who deserves the credit/blame?)
(4) Problem-focused coping potential (i.e. Can the situation be resolved?)
(5) Emotion-focused coping potential (i.e. Can the situation be handled psychologically?)
(6) Future expectancy (i.e. How likely is it that the situation will change?)

Question 16

Attention & Emotion: 2 biases

Answer 16

• Evidence suggests that attentive processed may be biased by emotion
• Cognitive biases: (e.g. Stroop task)
• 1. Attention bias – selective attention to emotionally related stimulus presented at the same time as neutral ones
• 2. Interpretative bias – a tendency to interpret a situation or ambiguous stimuli in a negative way

Question 17

Difference between the normal Stroop and Emotional Stroop

Answer 17

• Normal Stroop – shows the names of colours in congruent and incongruent ink. Slower on incongruent trials
• Emotional Stroop – shown both emotional and neutral words in different coloured inks
• Anxiety related attentional bias – high trait anxiety pp’s show larger interference effects on the emotional Stroop

Question 18

Emotional Stroop and faces

Answer 18

• Instead of emotional words a variant of the task uses coloured faces expressing emotion e.g. Van Honk et al (2001)
• Present Angry and Neutral coloured faces (red, green, blue & yellow) and the pp’s had the ignore the face itself and name the colour
• Results: Colour naming latencies are slower for angry faces
• Angry faces capture attention away from the primary task, which suggests an attentional bias towards angry faces

Question 19

Attentional probe task (Paradigm): (MacLead, Mathews & Tata 1986)

Answer 19

• Examines early allocation of attention
• Emotional and neutral info presented side by side to anxious pp’s and controls
• Location of threat info is controlled, and some trials have no dots
• Examines speed of responses when dot occupies location previous occupied by neutral versus emotional stimuli
• Results: controls show a positive bias, the reverse is true for anxious patients. Anxious pp’s allocate attention to threat words
• (MacLead & Mathews 1988) tested high and low trait anxious groups using DP (Dot-Probe) 1 & 12 weeks before an important exam
• Results: 12 weeks = neither groups showed any bias, 1 week = only high trait anxious students showed bias towards threat-related stimuli

Question 20

Interpretative Bias:
(Eysenck, MacLead & Mathews 1987)

Answer 20

• Homonym task – present words auditorily and homophones
• Pp’s must write down words and high trait anxiety pp’s showed more threat related spelling
• Issues: maybe both interpretations were available, but high anxiety pp’s choose to only write the negative ones (response bias)
  (Richards & French 1992)
• Used homographs instead in a priming lexical decision task
• Results: greater priming effect for target words related in meaning to the negative interpretation of the prime for high anxiety pp’s

Question 21

Visual search tasks

Answer 21

• Cluttered scenes containing distracters and target (e.g. ‘Where’s Wally’)
• Basic visual search paradigm – measure reaction time and accuracy of the targets
• If detection times for target don’t vary = search is assumed to be parallel (target pop-out)
• If reaction times vary = search is assumed to be serial (controlled processes requiring attention)

Question 22

Detection of threatening faces

Answer 22

• Ohman (1999) Suggests that it is evolutionarily adaptive for us to detect threats quickly and automatically
• visual threat-relating stimuli (e.g. angry faces) should be detected faster than non-threatening stimuli
• Hansen & Hansen (1988) presented 9 different faces with angry, happy or neutral expressions
• Results: there may be an anger superiority effect (easier to find an angry face in a neutral crowd than the reverse)
• Experiment 2: the faces were the SAME individual and pp’s had to now say WHERE the discrepant face was
• Results: pp’s took less time to locate the angry face in the happy distractors than to locate the happy face in angry distracters
• Experiment 3: vary the number of faces shoeing angry & happy expressions and pp’s respond ‘same’ or ‘different’
• Results:
• Issues: Purcell et all (1996) couldn’t replicate so suggest that detection on the angry faces was a result of visual artefact of the stimuli and nothing to do with ‘emotion’