Emotion & Affect Flashcards
Russell’s Core Affect Theory
Russell’s (2003) article on core affect theory reviews multiple studies to describe the simplest building blocks of emotion (e.g., feelings, mood, affect). Russell posits that core affect theory describes how an individual will consciously experience, in a simple and raw sense, two dimensions of feeling on a wheel: pleasure-displeasure (horizontal) and sleepy-activated (vertical). Russel describes that core affect is a current mental experience, free-floating and without stimulus, and is separated from cognitive elements as cognition tends to be focused on Objects. An individual can experience a neutral core affect in the center of these dimensions that tends to fade into the background. They can also experience more a moderate to extreme core affect towards the periphery poles of these dimensions which is consciously felt if it occurs rapidly and intensely. Core affect can also be experienced in the short- and long-term. Russel describes that core affect can be compared to one’s internal temperature which is felt at any time and does not need a definition regardless of what may be externally contributing to it. Core affect can be influenced by substances, external events, stress, and biological processes. People might attempt to maintain or change their core affect through affect regulation (e.g., morning coffee) indicating that the concept of core affect relates heavily to reinforcement, motivations, and rewards.
Subcortical fear circuitry: High vs. low road
A critical neuroscientist, Joseph LeDoux (1996) described two parallel processes involved in emotional responses: the low road (i.e., from the thalamus to the amygdala; quick, automatic, reactive, broadly tuned, unconscious) and the high road (i.e., from the thalamus to the sensory cortex to the amygdala; slow, narrowly tuned, cognitively demanding). LeDoux (1996) emphasized that the low road is a quick responsive defense system to an emotional stimulus before we have the conscious opportunity to respond and before a visual or audial representation of the threat is fully made. On the other hand, the high road is slower and meant to determine whether our immediate response to an emotional stimulus was appropriate, or not, using cortical processes. An example of this could be an adult woman walking alone feeling something brush up against her arm. Her ‘low road’ processing might lead to immediate fear and turning to protect her handbag. Once she determines she walked by a large bush, her ‘high road’ processing overrides her ‘low road’ processing to determine it was not a thief stealing her belongings.
Serotonin Deficiency Hypothesis
The serotonin deficiency hypothesis in relation to aggression, specifically described by Bear and colleagues (2016), explains how reduced turnover rates in the synthesis, release, and resynthesis of serotonin might be responsible for more aggressive behaviors. This has been shown in male rodents in which regardless of the level of serotonin they have, physical isolation results in poor serotonin turnover and thus leads to aggression. This has additionally been shown in mice who, when serotonin synthesis is blocked, become aggressive and attack other mice more frequently as well as primates who, when serotonin activity was blocked, became more aggressive. However, Bear and colleagues (2016) emphasize that while evidence supports this correlated process, that actual neurobiological process are likely much more complicated.
Confirmatory Bias in Basic Emotions
Researchers state that individuals tend to naturally want to confirm their own assumptions and hypotheses rather than disprove them. Confirmation biases also extend to attitudes, beliefs, and emotions, where people will respond in ways that reflect these. This can easily influence one’s behaviors, judgements, and decisions throughout life. Wason (1960) tested this theory using number sequencing challenges and found that people would consistently generate number sequencing rules that confirmed their hypotheses. Those that were successful in the experiment actually engaged in more decisions to test contradictory hypotheses from their assumptions. Other studies have also shown that people tend to utilize interviewing questions that would affirm the outcome they are expecting; for instance, if a clinician is seeking out whether a client has depression, they might have the tendency to only ask questions related to depression and seek affirmative responses while overlooking other diagnoses. Finally, Ekman (2004) further described how individuals are frequently driven by emotions and seek to confirm what they are feeling in order to appropriately respond. When individuals struggle to accept their emotions or instead ignore this information, they might further struggle to manage emotional challenges.
Predatory Aggression vs. Affective Aggression
Predatory and affective aggression are autonomic nervous system (ANS) manifestations, likely driven by the amygdala and hypothalamus, that differ in resulting behaviors. Among animals, the former occurs when a species member attacks the head or neck of another species for resources in cases of lower ANS activity. The latter occurs for theatrics including posturing, loud vocalizations, and emotional reactions in cases of higher ANS activity. In cats, researchers at Yale discovered that stimulating their medial hypothalamus resulted in greater affective aggression while stimulating the lateral hypothalamus resulted in greater predatory aggression, indicating different neural mechanisms.
Auto-appraisers (or, automatic-appraising mechanisms)
It is suggested by Ekman (2004) that cognitive evaluations occur quickly enough that one is unaware of an evaluation actually occurring. This suggests the existence of neurobiological automatic-appraising mechanisms within most bodily senses that continuously scan and send information so that an emotion can quickly follow. These mechanisms are sensitive and can be triggered by both universal events, which may be culturally determined, and individual-specific events. The former involves possible evolutionary-based schemas or themes of fear (e.g., survival) and the latter involves learned events resulting from experiences with strong emotions like anger or sadness (e.g., loved one’s death). This concept can be related to how we immediately emotionally react to external stimuli in anxiety-provoking situations, like the sound of a gun being shot, a sound that culturally determines the presence of a deadly weapon and a universal desire to seek safety. Ultimately, auto-appraisers quickly evaluate through the senses of the presence of danger, leading one to become quickly afraid or upset without conscious appraisal.
Reflective Appraisal
According to Ekman (2004), reflective appraisals are considered processes that involve one’s own awareness of their inner evaluations and reactions to an event, especially uncertain ones. This sometimes occurs before automatic appraising mechanisms determine what our reaction to an event should be despite the former taking much longer time than the latter. Ekman (2004) additionally describes how this process can be used to one’s advantage and help rationalize out of automatic emotional appraisal.
Refractory Period
The psychological refractory period effect is described by Eysenck and Keane (2020) as when an individual provides slower responses when a second stimulus is quickly presented after the first stimulus. Researchers emphasize that the refractory period occurs due to a central task bottle neck in which only one primary task can be perceived, decided upon, and executed at a time. This phenomenon occurs even when participants are incentivized to be quicker and in real-world experiments (e.g., braking to slow down in a car). The refractory period lessens when there is a greater amount of time between stimuli presentation. In research, the refractory period likely occurs because participants have not been given enough time or practice to accommodate for it or do not utilize parallel processing when responding to stimuli. This refractory period concept is extended by Ekman (2004) who describes it as a process in which it is too difficult for an individual to take in information that is incongruent with their current emotions and feelings in order to focus attention on the immediate issue. The refractory period leads to a slower input of outside, contradictory information, a useful system in high emotional state situations where a response is quickly needed (e.g., slightly burning one’s hand on the stove). However, a longer refractory period might become maladaptive when the fear extends and one continues to close themselves off from outside information (e.g., consistently being afraid one’s hand will be injured). Overall, this concept describes an individual’s natural tendency to drive focus towards immediate stimuli and possibly struggle to respond to other, outside stimuli in too close of time.
Adaptive function of emotions
Fredrickson (2000) describes how models of emotion imply emotions are couched within actions that result from adaptive functions. More specifically, the urges to freeze, escape, or attack paired with physiological changes during fear emotions implies emotions were evolutionarily adapted for survival. However, Fredrickson (2000) emphasizes that the same theoretical background has been weaker for positive emotions and their adaptive qualities. Therefore, he describes how positive emotions may have their own respective urges and adaptive qualities that are both indirect and long-term. For example, joyful emotions might urge one’s creativity, sense of play, and expand one’s mind while prideful emotions might encourage interpersonal communication and hopes for the future. Kaplan and colleagues (2016) additionally note that positive emotions indicate and allow for openness to focus on broader interests. Therefore, Fredrickson’s (2000) broaden-and-build model emphasizes the adaptability of positive emotions because of how they improve one’s enduring personal resources that can be utilized at a later time, when needed.
Russell’s point on degree of correlation between emotion components
Russell’s (2003) proposed alternative model argues against tying emotion components and manifestations to any one event or emotion. This leads into his proposal that the degree of correlations between these components can differ in many ways. While the folk understanding of fear might lead us to expect that specific appraisals, behaviors, and physiological activity are related to fear (e.g., rushing heartbeat, sweating, fight-or-flight), Russell (2003) describes that this would not be the case in many situations (e.g., driving a car is dangerous but Alice does not experience these components all at once). Thus, the correlation between components is typically low. High correlations might be observed in two instances: either when a person self-perceives these components as making up their emotion or when the component is observed twice by two valid measurements. Russell’s (2003) position on the low correlations between components and specific emotions is supported in prior research where expected behaviors and facial expressions may only occur part of the time during specific emotional events. Therefore, the prototypes of certain emotions are much more uncommon than the traditionalist view of emotions believes as the degree of overlap between components can vary so much.
Amygdala
The amygdala is an almond-shaped nucleic structure in the anterior temporal lobe of the brain responsible for emotion regulation and memory as sensory information is sent to this region. In animals, damage to the amygdala can result in flattened fear and aggression while in humans usually results in one being unable to visually recognize fear, and sometimes anger. However, a patient named S.M. with a damaged amygdala showed through multiple experiments that she had difficulty recognizing most emotions that are typically shown in one’s eyes unless directed to observe them. Researchers posited that a lack of amygdala response leads to one’s visual cortex failing to examine some emotional facial expressions in certain regions. Too, the direct stimulation of the amygdala can also result in greater fear, anxiety, and vigilance. Bear and colleagues (2016) posit that the synaptic changes in one’s amygdala might be responsible for continued fear and anxiety that maintain after a distressing event, possible evidence for conditioned fear within the amygdala. Additionally, the amygdala might hold some responsibility for emotional processing and memory, as individuals tend to show greater amygdala activity when remembering emotional pictures as opposed to neutral ones. A slightly differing opinion is held by Barrett (2016) who describes the amygdala’s role in learning, regulation, and allostasis rather than simply fear as shown by lesion studies. Thus, the amygdala’s role in emotion and memory functions is extremely complex.
Display Rules
Ekman (2004) describes display rules as socially and culturally determined norms of expressing facial and behavioral emotions. In other words, display rules establish the appropriateness, within settings and groups, of displaying certain emotions. Sometimes these rules are established from younger ages, where adults may dictate what emotions are appropriate per the situation. Ekman (2004) conducted research across Japanese and American groups who displayed culturally adjusted facial expressions in the presence of a researcher, but displayed similar expressions to each other when alone. For instance, during an interview within the U.S., an interviewee is socially and professionally pressured to smile regardless of internal anxieties.
Emotions With Distinct Universal Expressions/Facial expression of emotion
Ekman (2004) describes his lengthy history exploring the possibility of universal emotions across cultures, specifically regarding facial expressions. Ekman (2004) describes seven emotions with more distinct facial expressions: sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, contempt, and happiness. These emotions can vary in both type and strength with the latter showing more distinct facial markers. The facial expression of emotions typically conveys to another person what they might be feeling or what they might do next. For instance, an individual might experience a disgust facial response to a strong smell and display an even stronger expression (e.g., more pronounced frown, eyebrows scrunched) the more aversive the scent; this would signal to another individual that something might be wrong.
Fear Extinction
In behavioral psychology and classical conditioning research, fear extinction is described as occurring when the response (e.g., startle) no longer occurs after repeated presentations of a stimulus (e.g., loud buzzing noise). When one is exposed to the stimulus multiples times, the fear response should typically reduce or go extinct (i.e., disappears, but is inhibited and can return). For example, someone who is afraid of swimming who is continuously thrown into a pool will eventually have their fear and startle of the water go away when they realize they will not drown. Gray and Bjorklund (2014) describe this process as a part of exposure treatment, typically used with specific phobias. This treatment is utilized for fears that are conditioned (e.g., learned experience that led to the fear) or unconditioned (e.g., no experience with the stimulus).
James-Lange theory
The James-Lange theory was proposed in 1884 and described how physiological changes are responsible for individuals’ emotions which was very different from emotion theories at the time. For example, this theory might explain that when an individual sees a snake and experiences physiological responses involved in protecting oneself and running away (e.g., changes in muscle tension, heart racing) that the emotional fear results from these bodily changes.
