Emotion 5.2 [HY] Flashcards
What’re 3 elements of emotion
physiological, behavioral, & cognitive response
Physiological Response
- When a feeling is first experienced, arousal is stimulated by the autonomic
nervous system - includes changes in heart
rate, breathing rate, skin temperature, and blood pressure. - Can include fear, aggression, and embarrassment
Behavioral Response
- includes facial expressions and body language
- smile, friendly hand gesture, head tilt
Cognitive Response
- the subjective interpretation
of the feeling being experienced. - Determination of one’s emotion is an evaluative process largely based on memories of past experiences and perception of the cause of the emotion.
Darwin’s Universal Emotions
all humans evolved the same set of facial muscles to show the same expressions when communicating emotion, regardless of their society or
culture.
7 Universal Emotions
happiness, sadness,
contempt, surprise, fear, disgust, and anger
Cultural Dissimilarities in Emotion
varying reactions to similar events, differences in the emotional experience
itself, the behavior exhibited in response to an emotion, and the perception of that emotion by others within the society
Evolutionary perspective
- everything we do, think, and feel is based on specialized functional programs designed for any problem we encounter.
- different emotions are thought to have evolved during different periods in history.
James-Lange theory of Emotion
- Stimulus -> leads to arousal of nerves and ganglia -> leads to emotion
- Disproven by spinal cord injury not affecting emotional lvl
Cannon–Bard Theory of Emotion
- Nervous system arousal + emotion = action in response
- Disproven by vagus nerve that is a feedback system of nerves to CNS
Schachter–Singer Theory of Emotion
- Nervous system arousal and cognitive appraisal needed to experience emotion
- Basically, unexpected environment + arousal = emotion
Parts of Limbic System
- amygdala, thalamus,
hypothalamus, hippocampus and fornix, septal nuclei, and parts of the cerebral cortex - Important in motivation and emotion
Amygdala Functions
- Signals attention and emotion
- processes the environment, detects external cues, and learns from the person’s surroundings in order to produce emotion.
- detects facial expressions
How does hypothalamus dictate emotion?
by controlling the neurotransmitters that affect mood and arousal
Hippocampus and emotion
- Along with the functions of the amygdala and
hypothalamus, the storage and retrieval of emotional memories is key in
producing an emotional response - explicit memory system, primarily controlled by the hippocampus in the medial temporal lobe, and the implicit memory system, controlled by the amygdala.
Emotional memory
the storage of the actual feelings of emotion associated with an event.
Explicit vs Implicit Memory
- explicit memory of the emotion produces a conscious memory of the experience, and implicit memory determines the expression of past emotions.
- Implicit is stored, and explicit is recalled
- Implicit is the sensation of a memory
- Explicit is the events of the memory
Lobes involved with interpreting facial expression
- Mainly temporal, and some occipital
- the right hemisphere is more active when discerning facial expressions than the left.
- Women’s brains activate more for this
Prefrontal cortex
- associated with planning intricate cognitive functions, expressing personality, and making decisions.
- left prefrontal cortex is associated with positive emotions and the right prefrontal cortex with negative emotions.
Dorsal prefrontal cortex
attention and cognition
Ventral prefrontal cortex
connects with regions of the brain responsible for experiencing emotion
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
- Thought to play a substantial role in decision making and controlling emotional responses from the amygdala
Physiological components of emotion
- Skin temperature, heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure are all affected when experiencing emotion.
- Skin temp. increases with rage
- Diastolic blood pressure (resting) is increased to the greatest degree by anger, followed by fear, sadness, and happiness.