emotions

Question 1

3 functiosn of emotions

Answer 1

1. intrapersonal
2. interpersonal
3. cultural

Question 2

intrapersonal function of emotiosn

Answer 2

they influence how we think and behave

Question 3

interpersonal funmction of emotions

Answer 3

they guide social behaviour and how others behave towards us

Question 4

cultural function of emotiosn

Answer 4

theyre shaped by culture imn a way that reinforeces social order

Question 5

what are emotions

Answer 5

Motivated states with various components:physiological arousal (e.g. autonomic nervous systemand hormones), expressive behaviors (e.g. facialexpressions, postures), and conscious experience(feeling a certain way)

Question 6

‘emotion’ as to define an emotional state

Answer 6

intense, short-lived, specific feelinsg about something

Question 7

‘mood’ as to define an emotional state

Answer 7

less intense, longer lasting, more general, not clearly linked to an evfent ot cause

Question 8

‘affect’ as to define an emotional state

Answer 8

generic term covering both ‘emotion’ and ‘mood’. often just means feeling good or bad

Question 9

why do we have emotions

Answer 9

Evolutionary perspective: emotions promote the “right” response to recurring situations of adaptive significance in our evolutionary past, such as fighting, falling in love, escaping predators, losing status (Loewenstein, 2010)

Question 10

how do Emotions influence the judgments we make about ourselves

Answer 10

• We often tend to make more positive judgments about ourselves than other people (e.g., the fundamental attribution error, the better than average effect).
• Emotions can influence these judgments; e.g., depressive realism describes the finding that mildly depressed people tend to make more accurate (and thus less positive) self-ratings.

Alloy & Abramson, 1988; Moore & Fresco, 2012

Question 11

Emotions influence judgements we make about other people

Answer 11

“Misattribution of arousal” (Dutton & Aron, 1974)
* Participants who’d just crossed the bridge, and thus had higher physiological arousal, seemed to misattribute that arousal and interpret it as attraction for the experimenter
* We seem to use our emotions as a source of information when we make judgements, whether or not the emotions are relevant
* on the high bridge, 39% called the female researcher
* on the low bridge, 9% called the female researcher
(Feelings As Information model; Schwarz & Clore, 1983)

Question 12

would people make better judgements if they had no emotions ?

Answer 12

Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex impairs emotional processing, but this doesn’t make people more rational; instead, it impairs their ability to make decisions and learn from mistakes (e.g., Bechara et al., 1994)

Question 13

what are emotions and why do we have them

Answer 13

Emotions are co-ordinated physiological, behavioural andcognitive states, which influence thoughts and behaviour in waysthat might have helped us to survive as we evolved

Question 14

how do emotions influence our judgements and decisions?

Answer 14

We are influenced both by our current emotion, and the predicted emotional consequences of our actions. Decision making is impaired without them, suggesting these effects are functional

Question 15

self-conscious emotions seem to be especially important

Answer 15

• Tracy & Robins (2004) suggest the function of these emotions is to regulate the self in the context of social groups and relationships
• Pride reinforces and motivates socially valued behaviours, and shame, guilt and embarrassment are felt in response to transgressions of norms

Question 16

‘emotions are social’ [parkinson, 1996]

Answer 16

• emotions are often caused by social factors, they have consequences for other people and they serve interpersonal and cultural functions
• emotions are essentially communicatiev

Question 17

emotiosn as social infomation model [EASI]

Answer 17

• Other people’s emotional expressions change how we feel and how we interpret the situation, and thus trigger changes in our behaviour.
• This process is influenced by factors such as our relationship with the other person.
• We use other people’s expressions of emotions to make sense of social situations

Question 18

mood/emotion contagion

Answer 18

• individuals living with a depressed roommate are more likely to become depressed themselves - joiner [1994]
• this can also happen on a much shorter timescale; just hearing someone talk in a depressed tone of voice can cause contagion - Neumann & Starck [2000]

Question 19

controversial study on contagion by Kramer et al.,2014]

Answer 19

• Researchers at Facebook reduced the amount of positive or negative emotional content in N = 700k people’s news feeds
• Their manipulation influenced the emotions their ‘participants’ expressed in their own statuses

Question 20

facial feedback hypothesis [Strack, Martin & Strepper, 1988]

Answer 20

• Strack et al. (1988) found that participants were more amused by cartoons when holding a pen with their teeth (i.e., smiling) than when holding the pen by their lips
• Their facial feedback hypothesis states that people’s facial activity influences their affective responses
• Debate about this theory is ongoing at the moment, as some research has failed to replicate this original study (Wagenmakers et al., 2016)

Question 21

who did the study on botox and its relation to emotions

Answer 21

Neal et al. (2011), Davis et al. (2011)

Question 22

what was Neal et al. (2011), Davis et al. (2011)study

Answer 22

Getting Botox reduces your ability to understand other people’s emotional expressions, as well as reducing your own emotional responses

Question 23

do emotions have a social function

Answer 23

Theories have suggested that emotions evolved to guide social behaviour, and this is supported by various evidence (e.g. on how social functioning is negatively affected when emotions are absent)

Question 24

how do our emotions influence other people ?

Answer 24

Emotions influence both how we behave in social interactions, and how others behave towards us. They also influence others’ emotions, through processes such as mood contagion

Question 25

what are the two theoretical perspectives on cultural differences in emotions

Answer 25

1. universalist views
2. constructivist views

Question 26

universalist view on cultural differences in emotions

Answer 26

• emotions are products of biological processes
• emotions are independent of social norms and culture

Question 27

constructivist view on cultural differences in emotions

Answer 27

• emotions depedn upon social concepts
• emotions are largely learned and subject to cultural influence

Question 28

we don’t just learn these expressions by copying others STUDY

Answer 28

• Matsumoto and Willingham (2009) studied athletes’ facial expressions after winning or losing Judo matches at the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic games
• They found no differences between blind and sighted athletes, or across cultures

Question 29

STUDY does this tell us whether emotional experiences differ across cultures?

Answer 29

• basic emotions are expressed similarly across cultures, and are universally recognised across cultures. -Ekman & Friesen [1971]. Elfeinbein & Ambady [2002]
• But, just because humans have the potential to experience the same emotions doesn’t mean they actually have the same emotion experience. -Mesquita & F

Question 30

evidence that emotional experiences do differ across cultures

Answer 30

• Americans report a higher frequency of positive than negative emotions, whereas Japanese report equal frequencies - Kitayama et al. (2000)
• The emotions that are ‘normal’ in a given culture will influence what’s perceived as ‘abnormal’; sadness is especially noticeable in a culture that values happiness
  **Mesquita & Walker (2003)

Question 31

studies that reflects the importance of emotions in different cultures

Answer 31

• culture vary in the number of terms they have for particular emotions; an emotion with many different labels in hypercognized [Levy 1984]
• for example, the chinese language has 113 terms for shame [Li et al. 2004]

Question 32

does the way we label an emotion influence what we feel ?

Answer 32

• It’s been argued that the experience of feeling an emotion occurs when a person categorizes their internal state (Feldman-Barrett, 2006)
• This is a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that the structure of a language determines how speakers categorize and perceive the world
• Implication: language and concepts shape emotion, and people with different labels might actually experience emotions different

Question 33

Feldman Barrett’s theory of constructed emotion [2006]

Answer 33

• emotions aren’t discrete mental or bodily states: instead, they are things we construct based on knowledge and past experince
• maybe there is no such things as a universal emotonal experience