Emotions Flashcards
What is an emotion?
Hard to define, has many aspects and not all of these my be present in every emotional response e.g. recognise a cat without one feature
An emotion prototype, has 4 features, what are they? (P, NV, S, CC)
Physiological state e.g. heart rate or temperature, Nonverbal communication e.g. facial expressions or body language, Subjective experience e.g. feelings, Cultural construct and terms/language e.g. anger in one culture is different to anger in another culture
Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect, affective experience based on two dimensions, what are they?
1) Valence = pleasant or unpleasant
2) Arousal = activation or deactivation
Something qualitatively different about emotions, they arise from the same systems but differ in degree of ______ of these systems
Activation
Name 3 emotions that are harmful for self-regulation
1) Sad e.g. eat more, sleep in
2) Anxiety e.g. prevented socialising
3) Positive emotions like wanting to celebrate, can delay goals
Name 3 emotions that are helpful for self-regulation1
1) Happy e.g. more motivated
2) Negative emotions like guilt e.g. more drive
3) Negative emotions like anxiety e.g. work harder, adrenaline and pressure
Mostly, negative emotions impair self-regulation, explain how depression and social rejection can do this
Depression, leads people to prefer immediate rewards as opposed to delayed rewards, Social rejection can reduce peoples ability to control aggressive impulses
Even though negative emotions mainly impair self-regulation, they can sometimes improve it, explain Hoffman et al study?
After feeling guilty, participants rated their goals as more important and were more likely to identify a desire as a conflic
Why might negative emotions improve self-regulation?
Because increased tendency to focus on the more short-term when in a negative mindset
Even though Hoffman et al found that feeling guilty led people to rate their goals as more important, why wasn’t this good enough evidence?
Because this guilty feeling did not make people more successful, so this could cancel out the positive effects
Mostly, positive emotions improve self-regulation, outline Desteno et al study on inducing gratitude
Gratitude was induced by getting participants to recall events that made them grateful, and were then asked a delay discounting task, they were more likely to resist immediate gratification and wait for the delayed reward
Even though positive emotions mainly improve self-regulation, they can also impair self-regulation, explain how research on inducing pride can explain this?
When pride was induced by making participants write personal accomplishments, they were more likely to choose an indulgent reward rather than a useful one e.g already doing well so treat myself
Tice et al proposed 2 routes about why negative emotions might harm self-regulation, what were they?
1) Focus is on emotion regulation
2) Incompatible goal attainment strategies
Explain why a focus on emotion regulation can impair self-regulation?
Because there is a short-term focus on relieving distress, and a focus on getting rid of the negative emotion, rather than the long-term focus needed for impulse control
Incompatible goal attiainment strategies as a result of negative emotions, impairs self-regulation why?
Because many of the things people do to relieve distress are bad for long-term goals e.g. alcohol, food, shopping
Describe the evidence for improving mood as a motive for self-regulation?
When emotions were induced and frozen, by either reading a stress story or a happy story, people only ate more food or procrastinated when they were distressed IF they believed that their mood was changeable
As people only ate more food when they were distressed when they believed their mood was changeable, why is this?
Because they are doing these things for emotion regulation purposes e.g. their focus has shifted to wanting to prioritise their mood over their goals
Why might procrastination be a result of prioritising mood over goals?
Because aversive tasks lead to anxiety, so task avoidance is a strategy to avoid this negative mood
Arnott found that procrastination leads to poorer performance, how did he find this?
He looked at time to submit an assignment and the marks received, and people submitting last minute had an average grade of 59%, lower than the rest
However, Perry found what about structured procrastination, to suggest that it isn’t always bad?
By avoiding a task we dont want to do, we might do other tasks on our to-do list insteadm which could increase mood and feelings of accomplishment
Self-Regulation operates in a way that it detects a discrepancy and then tries to reduce it, this can be explained by what?
Control Theory: Negative Feedback Loop
What are the components of this Control Theory?
1) Input e.g. current time
2) Comparator e.g. late
3) Output e.g. increase walking speed
4) Impact on environment (variable)
Can be a disturbance as well
All goals are feedback loops e.g. attending lectures?
Involve getting there on time, attending the lecture etc
Where would emotions belong in the Control Theory?
Serve as an “input”, they are a feedback system that guide our self-regulation and guide our decisions
When people imagine outcomes, their expectancies are associated with ______
Emotions
Depending on whether people associate expected outcomes with positive or negative emotions, these function as ______ to indicate whether to?
Emotions, to indicate whether to put in further effort and reduce discrepancy or abandon the goal
Even thought emotions are an input, they are also an output, how is this?
They signal a rate of progess e.g. negative emotions signal progress slower than the desired rate, and positive emotions signal progress higher than the desired rate
Emotions serve an informational function, and a ______ function
Motivational
Emotions feed into our self regulation, and our self regulation feed into our _____
Emotions
What is affective forecasting?
Predicting future affective states, by simulating the situation and predicting valence, specific emotions and their intensity and duration
A study looking at affective forecasting, looked at peoples wellbeing 1 year after winning the lottery, and found what?
That their wellbeing had returned to its pre-existing level, and was no different from controls
Why was their wellbeing returning to a pre-existing level after winning the lottery a surprising finding?
Because the participants predicted much larger and longer-lasting differences in their wellbeing between them and controls
What is the Hedonic Treadmill?
How people return to a basic level of happiness, no matter what has happened
We tend to correctly predict the valence (pleasant or unpleasant) of our emotions, overestimate _____ and ____
Intensity and Duration of emotions
Overestimating our emotions may have positive effects, for example?
Overestimating negative outcomes could motivate us to work harder to prevent them, and overestimating positive emotions could motivate us to work harder to obtain them
What is impact bias?
We tend to overestimate the enduring impact that future events will have on our emotional reactions, and underestimate the rate at which our emotions will dissipate
What is Misconstrual?
Imagining a different situation to the one that actually occurs
What is Framing effects?
Focusing on features of an event that we think will be important for our emotional responses but actually aren’t e.g. choosing between restaurants focusing on menus, but enjoyment more affected by atmosphere
What is Memory bias?
Misrememberinour past experiences and how we felt after similar events in the past
What is Immune Neglect?
Failing to anticipate how well we recover from negative events
What is Focalism?
Underestimating how much other future events that are more important will influence our emotions
What is Projection bias?
When our current feelings influence our predictions about our future feelings
Outline Mallett et al study on black and white expectations
Expect that interactions with outgroup members will be more negative, but reality is that they were similarly positive to ingroup interactions
Outline Gilbert et al study on having an opportunity to change a decision
Having an opportunity to change your poster will make you happier with that decision, however people who weren’t allowed to change were actually happier with their poster because they were able to adapt and weren’t debating IF they chose the right one
Outline Dunn et al study on poor accommodation
Expect that students will be happier if they are assigned to a more desirable student room, but reality is that they were equally happy if they weren’t put in a nice dorm, because they had good social features still
Epley says that we ignore strangers because we ________ the positive consequences of social connection
Mispredict
What is the Illusion of Courage?
Where we fail to appreciate how much fear and anxiety will shape our future behaviour
Outline Van Bovens study on dancing in front of the class
30% said that they would when it was framed hypothetically, but only 8% said yes when it was a real opportunity
Outline Dunning et al study on womans sexual harrassment
Women predicted they will respond angrily to it, but actually experience fear so are less likely to confront them in a real-life scenario
Why do people not express gratitude, because they overestimate how _______ recipients will feel and underestimate how _______ recipients will feel
Awkward, Positive
Underestimating value of prosocial actions could keep people from engaging in behaviour that would _____ their own and others wellbeing
Maximise
Students predicted that they would feel more negative if prevented from social media, but actually did ____
Not
People expect to feel better after their facebook fix, but actually feel _____
Worse
Fear of failure can influence 2 things to do with goals?
1) Whether or not we set goals in the first place
2) Undermines our ability to achieve that goal through self-handicapping
Reducing negative affect about past procrastination can _______ procrastination
Reduce
Loss of positive mood states associated with a present task appear to promote ______
Procrastination
Loss of positive mood states associated with the act of procrastination appear to ____ future procrastination
Curb
