Emotions and feelings Flashcards
An emotion is
a relatively brief episode of coordinated brain, autonomic, and behavioral changes that facilitate a response to an external or internal event of significance for the organism.”
Feelings are
correspond to the subjective experience of emotions. […] they are the way you as an individual experience the emotion
Moods
diffuse affective states that are often of lower intensity than [an] emotion but considerably longer in duration”.
The core features of emotion
a - behavioural & physiological responses
b - evolved from basic mechanisms of survival
c - attached to an object or situation
The core features of affect
free - floating state, mood
The core features of variables
valence, intensity/arousal
Positive valence
attractiveness
negative valence
aversiveness
James-Lange Theory of emotion
Event produces physiological arousal. The physiological changes are then interpreted to produce the emotion
Cannon-Bard Theory of emotion
The even itself can trigger the emotion and arousal (at different times), but the arousal does not have to come first
Diagram: James-Lange Theory of emotion
Event, arousal, interpretation, emotion
Diagram: Canon-Bard Theory of Emotion
Emotion, event, arousal (arousal and emotion are interchangeable)
Cognitive theory of Emotion
it is the event and the arousal happening in parallel, not just the arousal that causes an emotion
emergence- synthesis theory
some emotions do not require interpretation while others do. So, many different affective configurations are possible
Amygdala
Fear is caused when a threatening stimulus activates it. Can induce the feeling of being scared without any thought or appraisal
Internal factors of function of emotion
Plans, memories, extended appraisal, physiological changes
external predicaments of function of emotion
antecedents, consequences, coping, automatic appraisal
The neural mechanisms for reason and emotion are linked to classical view and romantic view
Reason - frontal/pre-frontal cortex
emotion - limbic system, esp amygdala
classical view
emotions get in the way of reason
romantic view
emotions are better than reason
Attention
acts like a filter, focusing on what’s important(salient) and blocking out the rest
Emotions
steer attention towards items in the visual field that are important for survival
Threat-superiority test
It is easer to detect an angry face hidden among neutral faces than it is to detect a happy face hidden among neutral faces
The stroop effect
it takes longer to name the colour of a word tat spells a different colour. There are two perceptual dimensions - the colour of the word and the meaning of the word
Flashbulb memory
Involves better recall for personal events during significant or emergency situations. Type of autobiographical memory since it is for events, not facts
Hierarchy of emotional influences on memory
Negative stimuli are remembered better than positive or neutral stimuli and more arousing stimuli, whether they are positive or negative, are remembered better
Mood congruent memory
moods must match during learning(only). We remember more stimuli if those stimuli match a mood we were in while learning them
Mood dependent memory
moods during learning must match during recall. Recall is better when the mood at recall matched that during learning.
Amygdala
part of the limbic system, is responsible for classical conditioning of a fear response
The ‘low road’
shorter neural circuit to the amygdala mediates fast emergency responses
The ‘high road’
longer neural circuit to the amygala mediates more thoughtful responses
Neurotransmitters fight/flight hormones
epinephrine, norepineprhine, travelling between nerve cells, activating the amygdala and hippocampus
adrenaline/epinephrine
fight or flight
norepinephrine
prepares the body for alertness/arousal
noradrenaline
concentration
dopamine
pleasure
serotonin
mood
y-aminobutryic acid
calming
acetylcholine
learning
glutamate
memory
aspects of metacognitino
credit and blame (two prespectives of social cognition)
mentalism
people use mental representations for social phenomena. Change - mental representations and cognitive processes develop, operate, and change over time
functionalism
social cognitive processing serves a purpose. Cognition is emobided and distributed (units and levels) e.g. the success of the system depends on more than one individual or module
Intentionality
people try to control the environment, objects can’t
mutuality
people think about each other, objects don’t
self-concept
others judge or talk about us and are similar to us, objects don’t
observational bias
people act differently when observed, objects don’t
nonobservable attributes
this we can’t see make a big difference, we can study objects more easily
change
people change, objects change less
accuracy of cognition
it can be hard to interpret others, easier to evaluate objects
complexity
people are complex, objects are less complex
explanation
we have to explain others, we don’t always have to explain objects
thinking about
theory of mind, attribution, stereotypes
thinking with
joint attention, common ground, distributed cognition
The mentalist “theory of mind”
1) The ability to understand others’ mental states: belief, dsires, intentions
2) “we use our mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, mutual expectations, mutual assumptions to ground our interactions”
Fundamental attribution error
the tendency to prefer internal or dispositional traits as best explanation for people’s behaviour
self-serving bias
the tendency to explain our own failures to external causes but to explain other people’s failure as internal ones
blief in a just world (phenomenon)
the phenomenon in which we think that people get what they deserve
stereotypes
deal with our schemas about people, help us organise and understand people
ingroup favouritism
views their own group as having more diversity, being more attractive, being nicer, being more socially acceptable
outgroup homogeneity effect
others are seen as having more similarity
prejudice
prejudgment about a group, person, thought (about a person or group), and a predisposition to act upon a prejudgement, involves emotions associated with a person or group, can be conscious or unconscious
ontology can be:
- distributed across groups
- distributed over inner and outer processes
- culture can organize cognition
distributed across groups
a group has an organization structure. Group intelligence has: public and private goals, emergent organizational structure and cans hare as well as transform information
distributed over inner and outer processes
cognition can be distributed between internal processes and external processes or things
culture organizes cognition
it can be distributed across time with products of earlier events cultural additions - transforming the nature of later events
socially distributed cognition
can involve shared tacit knowledge… how to attend and what to attend to
Joint salience
the ideal solution to a coordination problem among two or more agents is the solution that is more salient, prominent, or conspicious with respoect to their common ground
