emotion and decision making

Question 1

basic emotions - Darwin, 1872

Answer 1

anger - fear - surprise
sadness - disgust - enjoyment

Question 2

criteria for “basic” emotions, Ekman, 1992

Answer 2

• rapid onset
• brief duration
• unbidden occurrence
• distinctive universal signals
• specific physiological correlates

Question 3

dimensional view of emotion - Russel & Barret, 1998

Answer 3

x axis - low valence to high valence
y axis - low arousal to high arousal

Question 4

universal expression - Gendron et al, 2018

Answer 4

“people are active perceivers who categorize facial movements using culturally learned emotion concepts”

Question 5

the James-Lange view

Answer 5

stimulus - percept - physiological changes - emotion

“the bodily change follow directly the perception of the exciting fact and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion”

Question 6

emotions not dependent on physiology - Cannon, 1927

Answer 6

people without peripheral inputs still experience emotion (perhaps not as strongly)

peripheral arousal doesn’t recreate emotion

peripheral states not sufficiently differentiated

Question 7

predicting emotions from physiology - Siegel et al (2018)

Answer 7

• observation of substantial variation in ANS (autonomic nervous system) responding during instances of the same emotion category
• an emotion category is a population of context-specific, highly variable instances that need not share an ANS fingerprint

Question 8

Schachter and Singer, 1962: cognition in emotion

Answer 8

argued the effect of somatic arousal depends on its attribution - how it is interpreted given context

administered adrenaline to participants under the pretense that is was a vitamin shot, prior to placing participants with a confederate who behaved in either a euphoric or angry fashion. Naive participants reported more negative effect in the latter.

Question 9

currently a broad consensus that emotion has the following components:

Answer 9

• cognitive (evaluation of objects and events)
• physiological (changes in somatic state)
• motivational (action tendencies)
• expressive (facial and vocal signals)
• subjective (the feeling of the emotion)

Question 10

scherer and moor (2019) emotion model

Answer 10

• physiological changes are an important component of emotion
• there probably aren’t clear-cut physiological “fingerprints” for specific emotion
• or simple, unidirectional causal pathways between the different components of emotion

Question 11

emotions and decision making - lerner et al. 2015

Answer 11

more complex but the following can have an impact on a decision and each other :
- characteristics of decision maker
- characteristics of other options
- current emotions
- incidental influences
lead to
- conscious or non conscious evaluation
lead to
- decision

Question 12

amygdala and emotion

Answer 12

LESIONS:
- reduce fear conditioning (Blanchard & Blanchard, 1972)
- Selective recognition of fear from face photos (Calder et al., 1996)
- lack enhanced memory for emotional components of narrative (Adolphs et al., 1997)

recall of emotional information predicted by amygdala activation at encoding (Hamann et al., 1999)

Question 13

vmPFC & emotion

Answer 13

damage:
- no elevated SCR for emotional stimuli with “social significance”
- more likely to “overcome an emotional response” during moral dilemma
- heightened emotinal reactivity and hypo emotionality

patient EVR
- following a tumor and lesion to the vmPFC, EVR had normal intellect, impulsiveness, memory and reasoining ability, but lacked emotional reactions and engaged in poor real-world decision-making

Question 14

the iowa gambling task

Answer 14

one must balance the possibility of big rewards with the risk of substantial losses

task:
- participants given $2000 fake money,
- confronted with 4 decks of cards (A, B, C, D)
- each card they turn over yield a reward, some a penalty
- goal is to make as much as possible
- participants turn over a total of 100 cards, dont know how many they will be asked to turn
- every card in A and B has a large reward or consequence
- C and D have smaller wins but smaller losses
- in the long run C and D more advantageous

in a subsequent study, Bechara et al. 1996, recorded the skin conductive respons (SCR) of participants - a measure of sweating

Question 15

Iowa gambling task: vmPFC damage

Answer 15

vmPFC patients shown to choose from A and B, while controls gravitated to C and D
and demonstrated a lower skin conductive response than controls overall
- almost no anticipatory SCR
- a lesser reward and punishment SCR

Question 16

Iowa gambling task: vmPFC vs amygdala

Answer 16

• those with amygdala lesions did not learn to select from the good decks (like vmPFC)
• amygdala lesions abolished the anticipatory SCRs that preceded selection from a bad deck (like vmPFC)
• unlike the vmPFC group amygdala damage eliminated the SCRs that accompanies the rewarding/punishing outcomes

Question 17

conclusions on amygdala and vmPFC from iowa gambling task

Answer 17

one idea that the amygdala is involved in associating particular stimuli or actions with affectively-meaningful outcomes, but the vmPFC is cruicial in re-activating these representations at the time of choice

Question 18

somatic marker hypothesis: bechara et al., 1997

Answer 18

divided the iowa gambling task up, every 10 trials after n20, they would be questioned about what they knew/felt about the game
- in normal individuals, nonconscious biases guide behaviour before conscious knowledge does

somatic marker hypothesis:
a given situation activates “dispositional knowledge” of the emotional experiences previously associated with the various options/outcomes. The vmPFC is a key structure in storing such knowledge, its activation posited to trigger autonomic responses

Question 19

IGT and somatic marker hyp critique: do we need physiological reponses to perform the task

Answer 19

Heims et al., 2005
- examined patients with pure autonomic failure (PAF), involves degeneration of autonomic neutons and failiure of the autonomic nervous system to regulate bodily states
- PAF patients were significantly more likey than controls to select the good decks - certainly not evidence that one needs somatic changes to signal which deck to pick

Question 20

IGT and somatic marker hyp critique: do SCRs really signal anticipated outcomes

Answer 20

Damasio and colleagues interpret the high SCRs that precede selection from the “bad” decks as being a somatic representation of the negative outcomes that will follow
- “bad” decks also involve more money -greater uncertainty - greater anticipatory SCR

Question 21

IGT and somatic marker hyp critique: do people “decide advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy?”

Answer 21

Maia and McClelland (2004) challenged that somatic states “unconsciously” signal the advantageous/disadvantageous outcomes - point out shortcomings

• “good” and “bad” decks determined based on long run expected returns, a participants behaviour should be based on their experiences prior to point of choosing
• the questions used to probe “conscious knowledge” are very vague

might be unconscious knowledge that shapes decision making, but the data from Maia and McClelland (2004) show that we don’t need to posit this to explain performance on the gambling task

Question 22

IGT and somatic marker hyp critique: vmPFC patients

Answer 22

Farah and Fellows, 2005:
argue that the patients show a deficit in reversal learning rather than a failure to associate particular choices with long run negative outcomes

Question 23

intuitive reasoning task - Dunn et al. (2010)

Answer 23

modified version of the IGT
- one each trial participants selected from 1/4 decks and then had to guess whether the colour of their chosen card would match another card about to appear on screen - correct guess wins money and vice versa
- computer rigged so predictions right 60% for A and D, but only 40% for C and D
- A and C small wins/losses, B/D higher magnitude - points translated into real financial reqards

outcome magnitude/variability no longer confounded with “goodness” of deck

results:
- people chose more from good decks (A and B), responses were unaffected by the size of the wins/losses
- reduced physiological response when selecting from the good decks
- people with larger warning signals (physical) made better choices