exam questions Flashcards
T1: How is the core assumption of Maslows supported by the survey of Taomina and colleagues?
Satisfaction of the lower-level need indeed predicted satisfaction of the next higher-level need.
T1: What is the core assumption of Maslows hierarchy of needs model of motivation and the needs in the right order starting from the bottom.
- motivation to fulfils several hierarchical ordered needs
- trying to reach the highest one, self actualisation
- to achieve this they much reach lower/basic needs before moving on to a more advanced one
- thus only can move up when the lower level is satisfied
order of needs: physiological, safety/security, love/belongingness, esteem, self actualization
T1: What is the core assumption of the cognitive attribution model of emotion?
- emotions result from cognitive evaluations
- appraisal, evaluation, interpretation of event)
- which lead to different specific reactions in different people
Describe the incentive-salient perspective and motivation/emotion and include an explanation of the difference between liking vs wanting and how the mesolimbic dopamine system is involved in this.
Incentive salience perspective states that we are motivated by experiencing/anticipating pleasure of looking forward to (wanting to approach) future events that imagined to be awarding
- instead of being motivated by liking or by directly experiencing consummatory reward
- only wanting relies on the dopamine system (becomes active when looking forward to a pleasurable event).
A well-known emotion researcher assumed that our emotions have to obey certain laws (laws of emotion, 1988). How does he define emotions (what is an emotion and how is it initiated), and what does he actually mean by they have to obey certain laws.
According to Frijda, emotions are changes in our readiness to act, triggered by how we interpret events. These emotions involve affective (such as liking or disliking) and physical changes in our bodies (hormonal/autonomal).
The initiation, intensity, and direction of these changes follow certain universal rules linked to the way our emotional mechanisms work, which we can only control to a limited extent.
Through which two different routes in the brain might threat-related stimuli be prioritized for further processing? (be sure to mention amygdala, sensory cortices, and parietal cortices in your answer).
relevance/valence, modulate activity in sensory cortcices (V1), enhancing representation, connection with fronto-paretal attention networks involved in allocation of attention is spatial locations
Amygdala first quickly determines the relevance of stimuli (for ones goals, motives, etc.) and if relevant can directly modulate (enhance) activity in sensory cortices (via reciprocal amygdala – V1 connections) thereby enhancing the neutral representation of the emotional stimulus compared to other surrounding neutral stimuli.
The amygdala has direct connections with fronto-parietal attention networks (amygdala – inferior temporal – parietal connections) involved in allocation of attention in certain spatial locations (via this route attention to a certain emotion-initiating location in space can be enhanced and stimuli that appear at that location will be processed better.)
Some researchers have introduced the term ‘weapon-focus’ effect referring to the fact that in crime scenes people appeared to have very detailed memories of a weapon (threat-related stimulus) but remembered very few details about other aspects of the scene, like how the perpetrator looked like. Another example is having a detailed memory of the syringe but not for the nurse giving injection. The memory of such peripheral details is often found to be inversely correlated with the degree of arousal (the more arousal by the sight of the syringe, the less contextual details were remembered). How to explain these findings?
Emotional arousal and related amygdala activation causes narrowing of attention for central, affective parts of a scene (in this case caused by the weapon or syringe) while the peripheral parts of the scene receive less/no attention. Affective events may be remembered better also because of the indirect effects of affect on better encoding and more frequent rehearsals (or simple fact that they tend to be unusual).
In what way and via which biological mechanisms/routes are emotions thought to influence (modulate) the memory consolidation process?
Emotion might improve the consolidation of certain memories, which is established by a strong emotional response eliciting enhanced physiological activity by which the amygdala can modulate hippocampal activation (via beta-adrenergic receptors), leading to an increase/enhancement of specific memory traces.
Let’s assume you have to investigate the influence of sleep deprivation (compared to normal sleep) on people recognition of facial (e.g., positive and neutral) expressions of emotions. What would then be the most likely outcome based on the general literature regarding the effects of inadequate sleep on processing of emotional information (facial expression of emotions)?
That the sleep deprivation group will recognize (rate) positive as well as neutral facial emotion expression as more negative compared to the control group.
Sleep deprivation increases negative bias/overestimation of negative cues; greater negativity perception of neutral and positive stimuli and less positive as well as enhanced emotional reactivity and attention towards negative stimuli.
Related to alterations in ACC and amygdala activity after sleep deprivation associated with heightened emotion when viewing negative stimuli).
Inadequate (bad) sleep is found to be a major predictor for the development of affective disorders, and it seems that its negative impact on emotion regulation capacity plays an important role in this relation. Can you briefly explain the most important negative effects that impaired sleep has on the following three levels of emotion regulation: situation selection, situation modification and attentional deployment.
Situation selection: decreased likelihood to situate oneself in positive emotional context which is undermined by altered neural reward circuitry manifesting in both decreased motivation for and altered value of rewards.
Situation modification: maladaptive instead of adaptive strategies to change aspects of the environment resulting from reduced ability to self-monitor, pick up nonverbal cues and accurately identify other emotions.
Attentional deployment: increased vigilance for negative/threatening information.
The importance of good sleep for healthy emotional functioning is supported by neuroimaging studies, mainly by differences in connectivity between involved brain areas under bad compared to good sleep. Explain these brain connectivity differences between the two sleep situations.
Normal/good sleep is found to strengthen functional connectivity between prefrontal control systems and limbic structures (i.e., amygdala), whereas sleep loss reduces this connectivity resulting in enhanced amygdala reactivity to emotional and neutral content (reducing top-down control of emotions).
Scientific evidence points towards a potential dark side of empathy in the sense that it can increase depression, but this depends on the type of empathy in combination with the use of the emotion suppression emotion regulations strategy. Briefly explain this.
Higher levels of emotion response suppression reduce levels of depression (as well as stress) for those higher in affective empathy compared to a negative effect for response suppression in individuals high in cognitive empathy, since it decreases the protective effects of of cognitive empathy on affective distress. They should learn other emotion-regulation strategies.
Explain the differences between empathy and compassion and describe their different effects on one’s emotional well-being and prosocial behavior.
Empathy refers to the propensity to feel what you believe others are feeling (so also their pain) and can thus lead to empathetic distress, a precursor for burnout and can lead to the avoidance of the situation causing the distress (less prosocial behavior).
Compassion refers to having positive and warm thoughts toward others but without experiencing their suffering, which leads to positive affect, higher resilience and stress coping and more pro-social behavior.
During this course, you have read studies that focused on the relationship between work engagement and recovery after work. Part 1: Define work engagement and recovery after work. Part 2: Describe how these two concepts are related, and explain which moderating factor influences the relationship between work engagement and recovery after work.
Part 1: Work engagement: a positive, fulfilling, work related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Recovery: the persons momentary state of feeling refreshed and replenished after work.
Part 2: Situational constraints attenuated the relation between recovery and work engagement, but job demands did not. The results suggest that recovery translates into (improves) employee work engagement and work engagement in turn, prevents a loss in recovery throughout the day, particularly when situational constraints are low. Situational constraints seem to interrupt the reciprocal processes between recovery level and work engagement.
What should employees who are at risk of burnout (compared to employees without such a risk) in particular do (and/or not do) during their free (off-work) time to be better able to recover from work? How to explain this from a job demands resources model point of view?
It is important for employees who are at risk of burnout to stop spending time work-related activities during off-job time, and start spending more time on low-effort and social and physical activities in order to recover from work on a daily basis (effects of these activities on recovery were stronger for the employees who are at risk).
JD-R: long-term exposure to job demands (e.g., work overload, emotional demands) will exhaust employees’ cognitive and physical resources, which in the long run may lead to the depletion of energy (e.g. exhaustion) and health outcomes. Recovery activities are hence important to replenish resources, to compensate for the job demands. Employees at risk for burnout have already low resources (compared to no risk employees) making them more vulnerable for the negative effects (reduced recovery) of spending time on work-related activities during their off-work time.
