Emotion & Mood

Question 1

Emotion

Answer 1

Neural and physiological states in response to internal or external events.
-often characteristically associated with particular thoughts/behaviors.

Accompanied by feelings-our conscious perception of these states
-very simply, such feelings are either pleasant or unpleasant

Question 2

Mood

Answer 2

also known as “affect”

longer duration than emotion; less intense and less directly related to external stimuli.
-intuitively, you might think of positive and negative emotion/ affect as being opposites-two poles of a single dimensions (Bipolar model)

Question 3

Basic Emotion Theory

Answer 3

classifies emotions into a small number of basic categories-happiness, anger, etc.

more specific feelings (contempt, rage, indignant, etc. as variations of anger) are clustered within one of these categories.

basic emotions map on to specific facial expressions and body language
-we perceive emotion in others by comparing their expression to prototypes.

Question 4

Characteristics which distinguish basic emotions from one another and from other affective phenomena (11)

Answer 4

1. distinctive universal signals
2. distinctive physiology
3. automatic appraisal, tuned to:
4. distinctive universals in antecedent events
5. distinctive appearance developmentally
6. presence in other primates
7. quick onset
8. brief duration
9. unbidden occurrence
10. distinctive thoughts, memories images
11. distinctive subjective experience

Question 5

Valence-Arousal Model

Answer 5

claims that emotion can be divided into two dimensions: valence and arousal

specific emotions are categorized by their level of each dimension
ex: tense= high arousal, low valence

Question 6

Valence

Answer 6

aka affect

whether the emotion is “positive” or “negative”

Question 7

What emotions have high arousal and high valence

Answer 7

excited
happy

Question 8

what emotions have high valence and low arousal

Answer 8

relaxed
calm

Question 9

what emotions have low valence and low arousal

Answer 9

sad
fatigued

Question 10

what emotions have low valence and low arousal

Answer 10

upset
tense

Question 11

Kuppens et. al suggested that this valence-arousal relationship (model) is closest to reality

Answer 11

very high or low valence is associated with high arousal;
neutral valence is associated with low arousal

Question 12

In Valence-Arousal Model, it is possible for positive and negative affect to be treated as independent; they are often measured separately.

According to the PANAS (Watson et al. 1988)

Answer 12

Positive and negative affect are quasi-independent; small negative correlation between ratings of positive and negative emotions within specific time-periods.

Question 13

Many possible explanations for why people experience emotions (Feldman Barrett, 2012):

Answer 13

• linking the body to the world to create meaning: emotions are a cognitive interpretation of our bodily state and its relation to events in the world around us.
• regulating action: affect helps us self-regulate our physiology and behavior, ex: Control-Process View
• communication: emotions provide a means of describing our state to others, and of perceiving their states.
• social influence: emotions allow us to regulate other people

Question 14

What makes mood “disordered”?

Answer 14

depends on what you think mood represents/what mood is for:

• if the purpose of mood is derive meaning, then “disordered” mood is when you arrive at incorrect conclusions about what things mean.
• if the purpose of mood is to regulate your body, then “disordered” mood is when you fail to do that properly and become dysregulated.

Question 15

Evidence that emotion affects cognition (and that cognitions can regulate emotion):

Answer 15

• regions of the brain responsible for emotion and cognition overlap and interact
• shared resources, ex. attention
• effects of motivation, learning

Question 16

Dual-Competition Theory (Pessoa, 2009)

Answer 16

If emotion and cognition share neural resources, ex. attention, and if these resources are limited, then emotion and cognition will compete for use of these resources

-depends on how arousing the emotion is, and whether the emotion is task-relevant.
-different executive functions also (partly) share resources

Emotion can enhance or impair performance depending in how it interacts with cognitive control processes

Question 17

Broaden and Build

Answer 17

• People are biased towards processing positive information (Fredrickson, 2004)
  -in basic evolutionary sense, negative stimuli are aversive (we avoid them) and positive stimuli are attractive (we move towards them)
• Emotions affect our “Though-action repertoire”
  -people experiencing positive affect are more flexible, creative, and accepting in terms of their thinking and behavior.
  -they can imagine more possibilities and consider more options
• Positive emotions encourage and reward exploration of the environment (White, 1959)
• Positive emotions help people build and maintain resilience to averse events/situations:
  -ex. the coping strategies discussed previously by Amber Egido-humor, gratitude, etc.
  -positive reframing of events/circumstances is a common strategy in CBT

Question 18

Shielding-Shifting Dilemma

Answer 18

Shielding: the ability to shield a cognitive process or task from distraction

Shifting: the ability to respond to new information and switch processes/tasks

These processes are oppositional

Positive emotions seem to weaken shielding, leading to greater distractibility, but also easier shifting (Goschke & Bolte, 2014)

Question 19

Importance of Emotion-Cognition Interactions

Answer 19

• emotions have many implications for our thinking and behavior (and vice versa)
• deviance or dysfunction in how our brains process emotion or experience mood will affect our cognition and our behavior.
  -attention, motivation, concentration, task-switching, reactivity to stimuli, overall activity levels, and more.