College 8: emotions and humans in other animals

Question 1

Antropomorphism vs. antropodenial

Answer 1

The tendency to attribute human emotions to other species vs. denying that others species have these emotions.

Question 2

Comparative research between animal and human emotions can:

Answer 2

• Specify behaviour - are emotions uniquely human?
• Research the evolution of behaviour.
• Occurrence of certain behaviour despite certain differences between humans and animals.

Question 3

Zajonc-Lazarus debate

Answer 3

Zajonc said that emotional stimuli can be processed without cognitive appraisal and Lazarus said that emotions can’t be produced without a prior cognitive appraisal.

Question 4

Zajonc (ZajONc –> NO cognitive appraisal)

Answer 4

Affective and cognitve processes are coordinated by separate systems and can operate independently.
–> No cognitive appraisal needed.

Question 5

Lazarus (Lazarus –> Jazarus –> yes cognitive appraisal).

Answer 5

An emotion cannot be produced without a prior cognitive appraisal.
-> Cognitive appraisal needed.
The mere exposure effect (Zajonc) can be explained as a form of appraisal of valence, which is cognitive. Preference is NOT an affective reaction, but a cognitive process.

Question 6

LeDoux’ low road and high road

Answer 6

Evidence for Zajoncs theory:

In the low road there is no affective appraisal needed to process an emotional stimuli (affective blindsight).

Question 7

Mere exposure effect (Zajonc)

Answer 7

Evidence for Zajoncs theory

Repeated exposure to an object leads to increased positive affective reaction, it doesn’t involve cognitive processing. People tend to like nonsense words more when they were exposed to in more often.

Question 8

Lazarus’ experiment

Answer 8

• Group 1: heard a soundtrack during a movie.
• Group 2: heard no soundtrack during a movie.

The skin conductance was higher in de group that did hear a soundtrack –> the way that people appraise the video was determined by the emotional response.

Question 9

Appraisal conclusion

Answer 9

• Zajonc: appraisal is an implicit function (gut feeling).
• Lazarus: appraisal is a cognitive function.

They are both right, because early appraisal is not cognitive, it’s an implicit gut feeling. But late/slow appraisal is cognitive, rational thinking that can be ‘quickened’ by arousal.

Question 10

Appraisal (Arnold)

Answer 10

Arnold said that appraisal is NOT a conscious, intellectual judgment, but a fast, rough evaluation (is it good or bad for me). This causes a tendency to be drawn towards positively appraised events and away form negatively praised events. After this appraisal, emotions arise.

Question 11

Do animals also use appraisal?

Answer 11

Animals also respond to the suddenness of a situation. They also know social norms. Animals do more than thoughtlessly reacting to an emotional event and do show certain types of appraisal. They react to:
- Focusing
- Alerting
- Readiness
- Anticipation
- Approach

Question 12

Unpredictability in zebrafish and rats

Answer 12

When they are moved into a new tank, they have to habituate. After some time they show less freezing behaviour and more explorative behaviour. This is also seen in rats. When they feel like they have more control over the event, they prefer this over unpredictable events, because then coping is not possible.
–> Appraisal is also present in animals.

Question 13

Dominant emotions in binocular rivalry (Bannerman)

Answer 13

When you show 2 stimuli at the same time, people often prefer one stimuli over the other (like a face over a house).
- Fearful faces were faster recognised compared to a house.
- Happy faces were less fast noticed compared to a house.
- Neutral faces were noticed, but were not as dominant as fearful faces.

Question 14

Emotional state and mood congruency

Answer 14

• Being in a certain emotional state causes a longer looking time at emotional stimuli (like faces). –> emotional stimuli enhance awareness.
• Valence: when you’re in a negative mood, you tend to look longer at negative faces.
• Congruency: when you’re in a positive mood, you look longer at smiley faces –> mood congruent effect.

Question 15

Mood congruency

Answer 15

Stimuli that are congruent with mood we are in are more likely to enter our awareness.
–> Important in mood disorders.

Question 16

Attention

Answer 16

Attention enhances mental representations and allocates neural resources to relevant stimuli.

Question 17

Gaze avoidance in social anxiety

Answer 17

People who score high on social anxiety tend to look less at someone’s eyes, but look more to different parts of the face and to hands.

Question 18

Dot-probe paradigm and attentional bias

Answer 18

When the picture contained an emotional stimuli, people respond much faster to it than to a neutral stimuli. The location of the dot also influenced the reaction-time.

Question 19

Emotional attention in the Bonobo (with the dot-probe task)

Answer 19

Monkeys are even faster than humans in emotional attention in the dot-probe task. They also showed an attention bias to positive stimuli (Kret).

Question 20

What drives our attention?

Answer 20

• Biologically salient stimuli
• This is very species-specific
• Whatever is relevant for us at this particular moment / mood.

Question 21

Within-species pupil-mimicry (Kret)

Answer 21

For chimpanzees there is more pupil-mimicry in the same species, compared to mimicry between chimpanzees and human pupils. Pupil mimicry also correlates with trust and perspective-taking.

Question 22

The amygdala, the hippocampus and memory consolidation

Answer 22

Emotional arousal activates the amygdala, the amygdala has a modulating effect on hippocampus and memory consolidation (permanently storing). When you experience more emotions, your memory is better (also with negative emotions).

Question 23

Suppressing emotions

Answer 23

Causes worse recall performance for suppression group and increased cardiovascular activation.