Emotion (L6)

Question 1

What are emotions?

Answer 1

Feeling (or affect) states of short duration that involve a pattern of cognitive, physiological, and behavioural reactions to event.
This is in contrast to a mood: a stable state of long duration.

Question 2

Adaptive functions

Answer 2

• Increases changes of survival (through fear).
• Positive emotions help us form intimate relationships.
• Important form of social communication.

Question 3

Categorical or dimensional emotions

Answer 3

• Categorial indicates that emotions are discrete (on/off) states: one is either angry or not.
• Dimensional indicates that emotions vary along a continuum (for multiple): we have multiple words describing anger (irritated, upset, cross, angry, livid, fuming, enraged).

Question 4

Basic emotions - Darwin

Answer 4

Charles Darwin hypothesised the existence of basic emotions, so named because they are conserved across species.

Question 5

Basic emotions - Ekman

Answer 5

Paul Ekman proposed six basic emotions for humans, because they appear to be conserved across cultures (culturally invariant)

Question 6

Circumplex model

Answer 6

Proposed that emotion varies along two continua:

1. Valence (unpleasant <–> pleasant)
2. Arousal (activation <–> deactivation)

Question 7

Four main features of emotion

Answer 7

1. Eliciting stimuli
2. Appraisals (meaning and significance) of these stimuli.
3. Physiological response.
4. Behavioural response.
   a. Expressive behaviours
   b. Instrumental behaviours

Question 8

Eliciting stimuli

Answer 8

Stimuli that trigger cognitive appraisals and emotional responses.

• Some stimuli have the greatest potential to arouse emotions because of innate biological factors.
• We are primed to respond to stimuli or events of evolutionary importance.
• We learn, through experience, emotional responses to previously innocuous stimuli.

Question 9

Emotional appraisals (2)

Answer 9

1. Culture and appraisal
2. Cognitive appraisals

Question 10

Culture and appraisal (emotional)

Answer 10

• Strong cross-cultural similarities in some types of appraisals (fear of death)
• Cultural differences in other types of appraisals (being alone).

Question 11

Cognitive appraisals (emotional)

Answer 11

The interpretations and meanings that we attach to sensory stimuli and events.

• Can be conscious or unconscious.
• Appraisals influence how we express our emotions and act on them
• Explains why different people can have different emotional reactions to the same object, situation, or person.

Question 12

Physiological response + brain regions involved

Answer 12

Activity of the autonomic nervous and endocrine system: higher heart rate and blood pressure; increase sweating; release of stress hormones.

• Emotions involve interactions between several brain areas:

1. Brainstem (pons)
2. Limbic system (amygdala, insula)
3. Cerebral cortex (prefrontal)
4. Hypothalamus and pituitary gland.

• Cognitive appraisal processes involve the cortex.
• Ability to regulate emotion depends on the prefrontal cortex.
• Subjective feelings such as fear, love, involves the amygdala and pons.

Question 13

Patient SM

Answer 13

• Urbach-Wiethe disease: severe atrophy of the amygdala.
• No deficits in intelligence or language.
• Profound inability to recognise and experience fear.

Question 14

Role of amydgala in fear

Answer 14

• Fear expressions activate the amygdala during fMRI more than other expressions.
• Amygdala damage in humans impairs fear expression recognition in faces and (sometimes) voices but not other types of emotion.
• Seen in Patient SM

Question 15

Role of amygdala in social threat

Answer 15

• Faces that are viewed as untrustworthy activate the amygdala.

Question 16

Role of amygdala in strong emotions

Answer 16

fMRI shows amygdala activity for emotionally intense stimuli relative to neutral ones irrespective of whether positive/negative.

• Convincing evidence for role of amygdala in fear, but also clear role of amygdala in coding of emotional intensity.

Question 17

Dual pathways model

Answer 17

• LeDoux, 2000.
• Thalamus can send messages along two independent neural pathways:
  1. High road to the cortex
  2. Low road to the amygdala
• Low road enables amygdala to receive direct input from senses. Able to generate emotional reactions before the cerebral cortex has had time to interpret the stimuli. Enables organism to respond very quickly.

Question 18

HPA axis

Answer 18

• Hypothalamus activation via low road pathway can trigger the release of stress hormones via the pituitary gland.
• These hormones trigger the release of adrenaline from the adrenal glands (adrenaline rush).
• This pathway is called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.
  This triggers flight or flight response.

Question 19

Expressive behaviours (3)

Answer 19

• The person’s observable emotional displays e.g., facial expressions like smiling, or frowning; crying.
• Facial expressions of emotion can be measured with EMG using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS).
• Bodily expressions can be measured with EMG using the Body Action Coding System (BACS).

Question 20

Behavioural expressions

Answer 20

• People are better at judging emotions from facial expressions when they have information about situational cues.
• Facial expressions of emotion can be influenced by cultural norms - these norms can manifest as display rules (context where expression is taboo or not)

Question 21

Behavioural expressions experiment

Answer 21

• Ekman, Feisen & Ellsworth 1972.
  Japanese and American college students were shown aversive videos. Once was with the experimenter not in the room, then again with.
  Japanese and American students had the same expressions when the experimenter was not there. Japanese expressions were neutral/pleasant when the experimenter was there, while American students remained the same in there expression.

Question 22

Instrumental behaviours

Answer 22

• Behaviours directed at achieving some emotion-relevant goal (e.g., punching someone in the face).
• Emotional responses are often called calls to action.
• Relationship between emotional response and performance takes the shape of an ‘inverted U’.
• Simpler tasks require higher optimal levels of arousal.

Question 23

James-Lange Theory

Answer 23

• Our bodily reactions determine the subjective emotion we experience.
• “We feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.”

Question 24

Evidence for James-Lange theory (3)

Answer 24

1. Perceiving one’s own bodily reactions enhances the intensity of emotion.
2. Spinal cord lesions: impaired perception of bodily reactions report lower intensity of fear and anger.
3. Facial feedback hypothesis: facial movement can influence emotional experience.

Question 25

Cannon-Bard Theory

Answer 25

• The subjective experience of emotion and physiological arousal do not cause one another, but instead are independent responses to an emotion-arousing situation.
• Problem with James-Lange theory: arousal response may take seconds to emerge, yet people experience emotions immediately.

Question 26

Evidence for Cannon-Bard theory (3)

Answer 26

• Cannon (1929) severed the nerves in animals that provide feedback from the internal organs to the brain: emotional responses persisted.
• In humans, there is no lowered intensity of experienced emotions with spinal cord injury
• James-Lange proposes that bodily feedback is essential for emotional response; for Cannon-Bard they are independent.

Question 27

Two-factor theory of emotion

Answer 27

Schacter proposed that emotion is produced by two interdependent factors:

1. The intensity of physiological arousal tells us how strongly we are feeling something.
2. Situational cues give us the information we need to label the arousal and tell ourselves what we are feeling (fear, anger, love).