Emotions Flashcards
What is emotion?
Essential feature is experience
What are the 2 dimensions of emotion?
Valence: how positive or negative
Arousal: how passive or active
James-Lange theory
Physiological response precedes emotion
Cannon-Bard theory
Physiological response and emotion occur simultaneously
Why is the Cannon-Bard theory better than the James-Lange?
- Emotions happen quickly, even if body reacts slowly
- People have difficulty detecting bodily response as emotional stimuli
- Not enough distinct responses for all emotions
Schacter and Singer’s Two-Factor theory
Context + interpretation determines emotions, though some physiological responses are limited to one emotion (e.g. red cheeks for blushing)
Role of amygdala
Involved in production of emotions (e.g. fear) and critical in making appraisals (evaluates emotional relevant aspects of stimulus)
What is the fast pathway for threat detection?
Stimulus -> thalamus -> amygdala
What is the slow pathway for threat detection?
Stimulus -> thalamus -> cortex -> amygdala
What’s the role of the cortex in threat detection?
It downregulates the amygdala by determining whether or not the emotion is appropriate
Describe behavioural strategy of regulating emotions
Avoidance of negative situations
Describe cognitive strategy of regulating emotions
Recruiting memories of desired emotions
What doesn’t work when it comes to regulating emotions?
Suppression, which is the inhibition of outward emotion or trying to push back thoughts about the situation. This can result in the rebound effect.
What does work when it comes to regulating emotions?
Affect labelling and reappraisal
Affect labelling
Putting feelings into words, which reduces the intensity of the emotion and identifies the cause.
Reappraisal
Changing emotions by changing thoughts about the emotion-causing stimuli
Emotional expression
Observable sign of an emotional state and can be observed from vocal cues, direction of gaze, gait, etc. They can convey messages.
Action unit
Muscles and movements in the face that help us make expressions
Universality hypothesis
Emotional expressions for anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness is universal.
What evidence supports the universality hypothesis?
- Emotional expressions can be observed even in newborns
- People are accurate when judging emotional expressions, even of members of other cultures
Facial feedback hypothesis
Emotional expressions can cause emotions (e.g. biting down on a pencil to mimic smiling). Effects are not limited to the face (e.g. fists = aggression)
Display rules
Norms for appropriate expression of emotion. Requires intensification, deintensification, masking or neutralizing.
Intensification
Exaggerating expression of emotion
Deintensification
Muting expression of emotion
Masking
Expressing one emotion while feeling another
Neutralizing
Feeling an emotion but not displaying it AT ALL
Distinguishing between sincere/insincere expressions (4 points)
Morphology: facial muscles tend to resist conscious control
Symmetry: sincere expressions are more symmetrical
Duration: sincere expressions last between 0.5 and 5 seconds
Temporal patterning: Sincere expressions appear and disappear smoothly over a few seconds
Nonverbal behaviour of liars (4 points)
- Speak more slowly
- Take longer to respond
- Respond in less detail
- Lack small imperfections in speech
What is the correlation between people’s ability to detect lies and confidence in that ability?
Zero! We’re horrible at detecting lies and perform at chance levels (machines aren’t much better)
