Emotion Flashcards
Define emotion
- affective feeling (good/bad) as a reaction to something/event
Describe 3 aspects of emotion
Brief:
- instant
- 1-5 sec expression
- minutes
- mood/disorder last much longer
Specific:
- to specific people/event
- disorder/mood generalised, biological and no clear reason
Socially functional:
- motivate us to act in specific ways that effect
- purpose of emotion, usually evoking action to maintain or change
Describe Darwin’s theory of three hypotheses
- emotion is adaptive and for survival
- Principle of serviceable habits: emotional expressions come from behaviour that was beneficial to evolve
Universality:
- across cultures
- 6 key expressions
Similarity with mammals:
- especially primates
- anger, threat displays, attack postures - recognition across specieies
- embarrassment; appeasement gestures
- laughing; chimpanzees
Encoded, not learned:
- blind from birth show expressions same as sighted - biological basis
- Tracy and Matsumoto; congenitally blind athletes showed same facial expressions as sighten when losing a medal
What are Duchenne and Non-Duchenne smiles?
- we can control expression
- Duchenne (real) and non-Duchenne (fake) smiles
- muscle contraction around eyes is Duchenne and lip corners of moth are pulled up and equally
Describe cultural specificity in emotional accents
- emotions are innate
- certain display rules - differ in different cultures
Focal Emotions:
- cultures put emphasis on different things
- collectivist tend to show shame and embarrassment but individuals = pride
- hypercognize specific - multiple words and descriptions for emotions
Display rules:
- govern how, when and whom emotions should be expressed
- difference in emphasis; Asian; eye based emotions
Describe the functions of fear and disgust
- indicate the immediate environment and evoke action
Fear:
- eyes wide, mouth downward, eyebrows up - baby face
- expression of submission - HELP
- facilitates an approach reaction (Marsh)
- elicits sympathy and empathy
Disgust:
- moral social emotions
- physical/social contaminant lead to physical/social ill reactions
- moral judgements - Schnall et al - rated behaviours as immoral if exposed to disgusting stimuli
What are emotions and social cognition?
- influence reasoning
- feelings as information - complex judgements - rely on emotions to make quick decisions
- Forgas and Maylon - put people in bad mood, more likely to make negative judgements
Schwartz and Clore:
- cloudy or sunny day
- 1/2 ppts were reminded of weather
- asked about life judgements
- when asked about weather; 20% more satisfied with life when it was sunny
- HOWEVER; when attention was drawn to the weather; no difference as they attributed feelings to weather
- using feelings as info - temporary and acts as quick heuristic for more complex judgements
What is the processing style perspective?
- positive emotion promotes creative thinking and intellectual resource development - BROADEN AND BUILD HYPOTHESIS
- Isen; more novel word associations, more creative thinking, more categorising objects inclusively
- negotiators were more successful when in good mood as they became more empathetic and had more flexible thinking
- anger leads people to rely on heurostics and stereotypes- top down processing = quick actions and thoughts
- sadness - less likely to use heuristics, making people feel sad, less stereotypes - more astute, careful and paying attention to context - extra rumination as to why
Affective states = informing situation
What is emotional appraisal?
- how we asses what emotion we are feeling
Describe the two stages of emotional appraisal
Primary appraisal:
- unconscious, fast thinking, auto
- initial flash and positive/negative assu,option
Secondary appraisal:
- more deliberate, conscious, transforming pos/neg into specifically labelled emotions to trigger different reactions
What is the two-factor theory of emotion?
1) undifferentiated physiological arousal
2) cognitive explanations (construal) or arousal
Describe evidence into the two-factor theory of emotion
Schachter and Singer
- told drug placebo or epinepherane
- 1/2 of epinephrine receivers told they would have increases arousal and 1/2 told nothing
- ppts interacted with confed who was either very happy or very angry
The epinephrine ignorant group - felt happy if confed happy and construed themselves with the situation
Epinephrine informed: those in both conditions reported feeling less emotional than placebo ppts even with more arousal - overattributed arousal to drug
What is the misattribution of arousal and give evidence?
- physiological experience of arousal is incorrectly attributed tot he wrong cause
- uninformed ppts attributed arousal to environmental cues
Shaky Bridge Study - Duton and Aron
- attractive women approach to ask q’s after man walks across a safe or scary bridge
- also given number to ask follow up
- those on scary bridge were more likely to flirt with woman and call them after
- men believed they were more attracted to her due to left over physiological arousal and misattributed to her instead of scary rbdige
What is retrospective emotion?
Three determinants of happiness (bias in recall)
Peak:
- moment of max intensity (funniest)
End:
- last moment of experience
Duration Neglect|:
- ignoring the length of emotional experience, very little influence on overall evaluation
- ignoring duration and favour peak/end judgements
e. g. Colonoscopy study
- painful
- patient A - shorter experience but abrupt and painful end
- patient B- longer but less pain at end
- A deemed more unpleasant and painful
What is Affective forecasting?
- predicting how we would feel
- how we will feel after positive/negative events
- often incorrect and assume it impacts much more
Reality:
- people were not as devastated by breakups as they assumed they would be when in relationship
- overestimation of emotional experience
Why?
- immune neglect: underestimating our resilience and our emotional immune system which recovers and fights from emotional upset - painful and difficult are less upsetting because of more protection
- focalism: a tendency to focus on one aspect of an experience/event and trying to predict that - more exaggerated - when really there is still plenty of other influencing events
