Exam 3 Flashcards
- Describe the dot-probe task used in research on attentional bias and explain how the data from this task are interpreted.
a. Researchers examine individual differences in the extent to which emotion-eliciting images distract participants from finding a dot on the screen
b. Studies suggest that anxiety-prone individuals show more intense attentional bias, although research is inconsistent.
c. The task could also be done with words.
d. If your attention is drawn to the emotional evocative picture, it takes longer to switch your attention and push the button.
e. PA survivors show greater attention to the assault related picture and the negative picture, but not so much towards the positive picture.
- Summarize the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.
a. Early work by Barabara Fredrickson and others indicated that while negative emotions may focus attention, positive emotions may broaden attention.
b. Negative attention was directed towards solving problems, and positive emotions towards identifying new opportunities and build resources
c. Positive emotions focus on more global attention and negative emotions focus more on local attention.
d. An Emotion’s motivational intensity was argued to require more attention
e. Pre goal emotions are high in motivational intensity and involve solving of problems
f. Post goal emotions are low in motivational intensity and involve reactions to events that have already happened.
g. Seeing a picture of a cat versus a picture of an ice cream sundae that would elicit hunger.
- Describe the design and results of the experiment run by Cahill and colleagues (1994) testing the hypothesis that weakening physiological arousal weakens memory storage.
a. Questioned if emotional memory facilitation depends on physiological arousal
b. Viewed slides while hearing emotional or non-emotional accompanying story. Participants were injected with either a beta-blocker which interferes with peripheral effects of the sympathetic nervous system activation or a placebo. Memory measured for story details
c. Story details were manipulated either in a positive or negative way.
d. The group that got the emotionally intense version remember details better unless they had been given beta-blockers
e. Physiological arousal is necessary for emotional facilitation of memory.
- Explain the difference between systematic and heuristic cognition and offer a new example (not from your textbook or class) illustrating each type of cognitive processing in a judgment or decision-making context.
a. Systematic cognitions is logical reasoning, careful and effortful evaluation of available information
b. Heuristic cognition is making decisions based on shortcuts, superficial and irrelevant factors.
c. Receiving a bad grade on an exam and how a student might prepare for the next one can differ.
d. Systematic cognition would make the student assess what they did wrong and take the necessary steps to get a better grade such as studying more, getting better sleep, or making a better study guide.
e. Heuristic cognition would make the student disregard the grade they got and say that it was just bad luck. They would undergo the same process in preparing for the exam and change none of their habits.
- Summarize the affect infusion model and describe a real-world example illustrating the relationship between affect and judgment proposed by the model.
a. Theory that people’s mood influences their evaluation of other events, including those unrelated to the reason for the current mood
b. People who get into a small car crash can differ in how their current mood is.
c. People in a negative mood would see the car crash as bad luck occurring to them and pinpoint that bad things always happen to them.
d. A positive mood before a car crash would still cause negative emotions but the response could be, at least I am okay and alive, or it could have been worse.
- Summarize the somatic marker hypothesis and describe a real-life example (not previously discussed in class or your textbook) of this process.
Theory that we make decisions by imagining the emotional consequences of various possible options and select the choice that feels best.
b. Individuals with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex do not show normal electrodermal responses when contemplating risky action; fail to learn from mistakes.
c. People with orbitofrontal cortex damage will be careless around a stove when cooking because they are not able to learn that touching a hot pan will burn you.
- Describe one of your own “flashbulb memories.” Explain the circumstances of the remembered experience; describe the qualities of your memory; and analyze the likely accuracy of your memory given research on flashbulb memories discussed in the textbook and the details of your own example.
a. Talk about covid 19.
b. Where were you, what were you doing, who told you/ how did you find out? Feelings of others, own emotional feeling, aftermath.
c. People report memories as very accurate, immune to forgetting, complete, vivid.
d. Personal relevance is key to FM.
- Your textbook differentiates the trolley dilemma and the footbridge dilemma. How would you respond in each of these scenarios? For each scenario, describe the emotions you anticipate experiencing in each possible course of action, and if you each a different decision, try to explain why. Based on your introspection, generate one new research question for future research on moral decision-making.
a. Trolley dilemma: decide whether to flip a switch turning trolley away from killing 5 people but toward one who will die.
b. Footbridge dilemma: must decide whether to push a big wrestler off a foot bridge to save 5 people.
c. My emotions for the trolley dilemma would include anxiety, and sadness knowing that I would have to kill one person to save five, but a feelings of certainty knowing that there was no other way.
d. For the footbridge dilemma I would feel uncertainty, guilt, shame because I know that my physical body was involved in killing a person.
e. A research question would be do guns give a separation of guilt when killing someone versus using a closer proximity method such as stabbing or choking.
- Despite the fact that far more people are killed or injured by cars than by sharks, most people are more afraid of sharks. Summarize two explanations of this phenomenon, offered by your textbook.
a. Fear is a response to a specific perceived danger, either to oneself or to a loved one.
b. Anxiety is a general expectation that something bad might happen. It is an ongoing sense of uncertainty and threat.
c. The visual stimuli received from seeing a car versus a shark is different. When people see a shark, they see a predator or a lethal killing machine. Also the environment that would present you with a shark is one where an individual would have no chance of survival if presented with a hungry shark.
- Your textbook describes the idea of emotions as algorithms for selecting one of a few possible responses to a general kind of situation, using fear as an example. Illustrate the concept of fear as an algorithm by (a) describing a general threatening situation, (b) describing two versions of the situation that should evoke different versions of the fear response; and (c) explaining the distinct physiological and behavioral outcomes that are likely in these versions of the situation, based on research described in your textbook.
a. Seeing a tiger in person will cause a freeze or flight response. If the tiger is far away, the person will stop and tense up to prevent sudden movements and the heart rate slows. If the tiger begins to approach, the heart rate and blood pressure will increase to support escape.
- Provide three pieces of evidence that individual differences in fear/anxiety can be partly attributed to genetics.
a. Panic disorder and phobia tend to run in families an are more common when a close relative has a similar disorder.
b. Identical twins will show similar behavior patterns, versus fraternal twins, and suggest heritability of psychological disorders.
c. Joint laxity syndrome in people will cause them to develop severe anxieties. Other people with this syndrome will show the same results relating it to genetics as there is a common gene .
- Summarize the recalibrational theory of anger and describe an example situation consistent with this theory.
a. The recalibrational theory of anger is the appraisal of someone’s behavior failing to take our welfare into account. Such as in a relationship, being upset at your partner for making you wait to go out instead of them communicating with you shows this theory. Showing them that you are upset for what they did demonstrates a boundary for yourself and expecting them to understand, apologize, and learn from their actions is included.
- Differentiate hostile versus instrumental aggression and provide an example of each.
a. Hostile aggression is harmful behavior motivated by anger, and the intent to hurt someone. One example would be that one person was insulted by another thus eliciting aggression towards the one insulting.
b. Instrumental aggression is harmful or threatening behavior used purely as a way to obtain something or to achieve some end. Physical punishment is used to get a person to change their behavior or way of thinking.
- Explain the difference between core disgust and moral disgust, and for each give an example of a situation that might evoke that kind of disgust.
a. Core disgust is an emotional response to an object that threatens your physical health. Seeing rotten meat or mold on bread can cause core disgust.
b. Moral disgust response to violations of moral code. Seeing a person tried for murder could induce a moral disgust.
- Differentiate guilt and shame, and describe a realistic example of each that illustrates the distinction.
a. Guilt is felt when one does something morally wrong, focuses on the act; more likely to make amends.
b. Shame is felt when one does something morally wrong and focuses on the self; less likely to make amends.
c. Cheating in a relationship can cause guilt in a person because what they did hurt someone.
d. Lying to your mom about going to school and instead skipping out to party can cause shame if you were raised to always tell the truth, especially to your parents.
