Emotion & Cognition (5) Flashcards
what are emotions?
- complex states of humans characterised by changes in autonomic nervous system arousal accompanied by distinct physiological expressions, specific action tendencies, and subjective feeling expereicnes of a certain valence (Pham ,2007)
what do emotions differ in?
- valence (positive or negative)
- type (happiness/ anger/ sadness etc.)
how were emotions viewed until 1980s by cognitive psychologists?
- part of social not cognitive psychology
- non-cognitive processes
how are emotions represented in the cognitive system, according to the associative network models? (e.g., Bower, 1981)
- knowledge of emotional states stored in memory as nodes, through a network of semantic concepts based around 5 core emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust)
- knowledge linked to autobiographical memories of the experience of each emotion
- activation of nodes (due to experiencing emotion) above certain thresholds triggers associated information coming into consciousness and influencing reactions/ behaviours
how are emotions represented in the cognitive system, according to the embodied simulation models? (e.g., Neidenthal, 2007)
- knowledge of emotional states not separate from sensory-motor sy
- understanding emotional meaning of event/ object entails reactivating neuron’s for all three modalities
- knowledge based on re-experiencing of emotions not abstract conceptualisation of knowledge about emotions
what does research suggest influences how we perceive/ interpret stimuli?
- how we’re feeling
- neutral facial expressions seen as negative when feeling anxious (Ohman et al., 2001)
how do our emotions impact how we perceive/ interpret stimuli?
- react to stimuli in line with current emotional state then automatically direct attention to stimuli as stimuli is important , preparing you to act adaptively
what do objects with emotional impact attract?
attention
threatening objects effect
- threatening-looking objects capture attention more than neutral objects (Williams et al., 2005)
- evident on various attention research tasks
examples of attention research tasks
- dot probe
- stroop
attentional blink tasks
attention narrowing when feeling threatened/ fearful (Gasper & Clore, 2002)
- focus more on information (cues) associated with threatening stimuli at expense of peripheral cues
- effect due to high-level of arousal linked with negative emotions engendered by threatening situations
- high-arousal emotional states induced in lab
Weapon focus effect (Loftus et al., 1987)
- due to narrowing of attention when highly-aroused (differential allocation of attentional resources
- studied with eye-witnesses to crime (memory for information about crime = greater for weapon_
- effect suggests arousal level is greater influence on attention
emotion and information processing
- after stimuli attended to, emotion can affect how information is cognitively processed
- emotion-congruence - effect due to emotional state activating stimuli/ object- consistent associations stored in memory
‘emotion-congruence’
objects/ stimuli with emotional significance that match with how we’re feeling classified/ processed quicker than neutral or emotion-incongruent material
memory (Schacter, 1999)
active and constructive process for storing, encoding and retrieving information about experiences form past
how does emotion impact memory (Bower, 1981)
emotion can influence encoding, storage and retrieval elements of process
- emotion-induced events recalled better and easier than neutral events (Houston et al., 2013)
- due to emotional impact of event and associated narrowing of attentional focus
mood-congruent memory (Bower et al., 1981)
- recall better for information that fits with current feelings
- recall details of sad events more accurately than happy events when feeling sad (Snyder & White, 1982)
- participants in mood recalled more facts about person in story who was experiencing same mood as them (Bower et al., 1981)
- effect due to current emotional state activating emotion-relevant information in memory
mood-congruency study (Halberstadt et al., 1995)
- participants induced to feel different positive and negative emotions using music recalled words that fitted with their mood better than words that didn’t fit with their mood/ no emotional connotation
mood-state-dependent memory (Eich, 1995)
- information retrieved better when learned in same emotional state as current emotional state
-effect due to mood cueing info thay fits with mood (memories encoded in same mood as current mood easier to recall than memories from different mood)
research evidence for emotion memory link
- intense emotions entail high level of arousal affecting memory (Pham, 2007)
- findings due to emotional state occupying too many cognitive resources, leaving insufficient resources free to remember information correctly
emotions increase production of irrelevant competing thoughts. What does this hamper?
processing of target stimuli and associated information
- participant in induced sad mood recalled fewer details of stories regardless of familiarity of story content (Ellis et al., 1995)
high-level cognitive processes
thinking
judgement
decision-making
lower-level cognitive processes
attention
perception
memory
reasoning
thinking in accordance with the principles of logic (Manktelow, 2012)
emotion can affect rationality
feeling positive = better creative problem-solving ability (Hirt et al., 1996)
rationality-emotion link
- anxiety linked with logical reasoning performance (Darke, 1988)
- experimentally induced positive or negative mood hampers reasoning task performance (Oaksford et al., 1996)
emotional content of reasoning tasks impair logical reasoning performance (Eliades et al., 2012)
- experimentally manipulated believability, logical validity and emotional content of reasoning tasks
- participants wrongly reported that logically invalid tasks were valid when content was emotional
judgements
evaluations of tasks/ situations
- typically comprise predictions and estimates
decisions
choosing among options
Johnson & Tversky’s (1983) research supports mood-congruent judgement effect
- effect evident for specific emotions as well as emotions of differing in valence
- mood congruent judgement effect due to emotional state being used to guide focus of attention and being source of information for judgements
Lerner and Keltner (2001) emotion and judgement
- judgements of risk involved with different like situations lower among participant’s induced to feel fear, whereas judgements higher among participants induced to feel anger
- found that judgements were higher among participants induced to feel happy (suggesting that certain positive and negative emotions influence judgements involving risk in same way)
emotion and decision-making: Cahir and Thomas, 2010
decisions on gambling task more risky among participants in induced positive or negative mood than participants in neutral mood
emotion and decision-making: maner and gerend, 2007
induced ancious mood and higher trait anxiety linked wit hless risky decision making
emotion and decision-making: Raghunathan and Pham, 1999
induced sadness linked with more risky decisions on gambling and career tasks
emotion and decision-making: Isen and Patrick, 1983
gambling task decisions less risky when in positive mood when odds of losing are high
arousal affects risky decision making (Ditto et al., 2006)
participants that could smell chocolate chip cookie made more risky decisions about drawing winning ticket for prize of cookies than participants that received description of attributes of cookies
- smell of cookies stimulating emotional arousal which in turn affected decision-making
arousal affects decisions about attractiveness of objects (Ariely & Loewenstein, 2006)
participants that were sexually aroused made more risky decisions about attractiveness of neutral and sexual objects/ pictures than non-aroused participants
mood maintenance hypothesis (Isen & Geva, 1987)
- make judgements/ decisions that maintain positive emotions and repair negative ones
- positive mood and risk-averse judgement and decision making
- negative mood and more risky judgement and decision making
- experienced emotion focuses attention on aspects of tasks that are congruent with mood state
affect-as-information model (Schwarz, 2000)
- feelings source of information and determinant of what information brought to mind
- results in mood-congruent information evaluation
- awareness of source of mood meaning mood no longer affected participant decision making
broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001)
- benefits of positive emotiosn for cognition in general
- participants induced to feel joy/ contentment generated more thoughts
- participants induced to feel fearful/ angry generated fewer thoughts
appraisal tendency framework theory (Lerner & Keltner, 2001)
- comparing positive and negative emotions insufficient to study link between emotion and high-link cognition
- risky decision-making differs between negative emotions
- appraisal of situations informs emotional responses
somatic marker hypothesis theory (Bechara & Damasio, 2005)
- risky decision making based on somatic markers that become linked with feelings over time
define somatic markers
emotional reactions to stimuli built up over time through associative learning and prior experience
affect heuristic theory (Slovic et al., 2007)
- judgements/ decisions based on feelings elicited by stimuli
emotion induction techniques
- cued autobiographical life event recall
- listening to music
- watching films
- seeing photos
- reading self-referent statements
- getting false feedback on task performance
international affective picture system
international affective picture system (IAPS)
- Lang et al., 1999
- set of validates emotional-orientated images of real-life events/ scenes rated for valences/ arosal
- specific emotions associated with different images
ethics: general rule
expose participants to no greater harm than could feasibly be experienced in everyday life