emotion Flashcards
emotion is…
- psychological activation
- expressive behaviours
- conscious experience
when do emotions occur
when a situation becomes relevant to our personal goals
emotions are a ___ set of…
- coordinated
- behaviours, feelings, and physiological changes
when are emotions strongest
when we have strong desire to avoid or obtain
commonsense view
- thought leads to emotion, which leads, to physiological response
- this dark alley may not be safe -> fear -> heart-racing, palms sweating
james-lange theory
- physiological activity precedes the emotional experience
- sight of oncoming car -> pounding heart -> fear
cannon-bard theory
emotion and body’s arousal are simultaneous
two-factor theory
physical arousal + cognitive label = emotion
embodied emotion
- emotions involve bodily responses
- responses throughout the body
- mobilizations throughout the body
how much arousal is needed for difficult tasks to have high performance
low arousal
how much arousal is needed for easy tasks to have high performance
high arousal
physiological differences among emotions
- facial muscles: fear vs. joy
- amygdala: fear vs. anger
- more right frontal brain activity: depression
- more left frontal brain activity: happiness
examples of emotion in the body
- mass killer with tumor near amygdala
- stimulating particular left-frontal area induces smiling, laughter, euphoria
- spinal cord patients with no bodily sensation report less intense emotions
what is the problem with lie detector tests
there is no evidence that any pattern of physiological reactions is unique to deception
spillover phenomena
arousal from previous event influences reaction to next event
- ex. horror movie or anger
two routes to emotion
without conscious appraisal vs. with conscious appraisal
zajonc/ledoux perspective
- emotion without cognition/appraisal
- neural shortcut that bypasses the cortex to create fear
lazarus/schachter-singer perspective
- emotion with cognition/appraisal
origins or emotional expression
darwin speculated that facial expressions preceded spoken language -> survival value
discrete emotions
- izard (197) identified 10 emotions
- all are present in infancy (except contempt, shame, and guilt)
biology of fear
amygdala
- some fears are easier to learn than others
what makes us angry?
- friends and loved ones who commit wrongdoings
- foul odours, high temperatures, traffic jams, aches and pains
feel-good, do-good phenomenon
when we feel happy, we are more willing to help others
adaptation-level phenomenon
like the adaptation to brightness, volume, and touch, people adapt to different income levels
relative deprivation
perceiving that we are worse off than others we compare ourselves to
does money = happiness?
small correlation between money and happiness
valuing love vs money
- people who value money more have less life satisfaction
- people who value love more have more life satisfaction
spending on self vs. others study
- elizabeth dunn and colleagues
- people who spend more on others are happier
- people who spend more on others are happier in the future
- people randomly assigned to spen $5 on others, rather than themselves, are happier afterwards
