Feeling & communicating emotion Flashcards
Appraisal approach; How do emotions feel?
- Arnold (1954)
emotions are relational, they connect us to the environment (they are about something)
- an appraisal is an evaluation of an event or object or people
- -> followed by experience of the emotion
- -> tend to be relatively stable across cultures (what appraisals underlie different emotions?)
- events that elicit these emotions may differ across cultures
Appraisal theory:
2 stage process
1) primary appraisals: good or bad?
= weak/ automatic evaluation/response
–> focus on anger/fear/ sad
2) secondary appraisals: more precise evaluation
a) discrete approach - focus on appraisals that give rise to distinct emotions
b) dimensional approach - focus on components of appraisal that can relate to several emotions (focus on diff dimensions and whether they map onto each other)
Discrete approaches: Lazarus 2 stage approach
(part of secondary appraisal in 2 process theory)
Problems with discrete approaches?
stage 1: GOAL RELEVANCE
= focus on the events - whether they require an emotional response
Stage 2: GOAL CONGRUENCE
= if emotional response necessary, is a positive or negative response needed?
Stage 2: EGO INVOLVEMENT
= more precise labelling of object or event
Oatley & Johnsons (1987) - points of contrast of our experiences help us to label what we are feeling
Problems:
- problems explaining similarities between different emotions and events that cause them
eg. pride and shame from an event (if event you organised goes well = pride, badly = shame)
(secondary dimensional appraisal tackles this weakness)
- can’t explain why peoples emotions change so quickly (eg. anger –> guilt)
Dimensional approaches
- Ellsworth and Smith (1985)
- Ellsworth & Smith (1985) argue there are 8 dimensions of appraisals:
1) attention
2) certainty
3) control/coping
4) perceived obstacle
5) pleasantness
6) responsibility
7) legitimacy
8) anticipated effort - we evaluate people around us based on these 8, and dependent on the value we place on each of these we produce an emotion based on this
- can switch emotions based on changing events eg. team losing rather than winning = negative emotion
These dimensions allow us to differentiate between emotions but also highlight similarities between pairs of emotions eg, pride and shame share similarities
- Dimensions explain how we rapidly move from one emotion to another eg. appraisal of responsibility may shift in the light of new information, changing emotion from anger to guilt
- BUT, do they adequately capture subjective experience?
combining the properties associated to different emotional dimensions we can’t reproduce genuine affective experiences (eg. combining positivity and high arousal we’ll not necessarily observe enthusiasm)
Prototype approach
used to identify the distinct characteristics of each emotion (Eg. shaver et al, 1987)
- narrative methodology used to produce a ‘script’ or ‘paradigm scenario’ for a typical emotion
- approach highlights ‘fuzzy boundaries’ between emotions
- also suggests different ways of experiencing same core emotion so helps explain variations within-emotions
eg. anger experienced as irritation vs rage
eg. define a certain object or event - core elements of objects or events = ‘prototypical characteristics’
- use narrative methodology to describe prototypical elements of emotion
Feeling emotions in the body
Nummenmaa et al (2013) emploted an innovative method to determine whether the somatosensory feedback of emotions account for conscious emotional experiences
- some emotions are consistently associated to certain bodily sensation maps
- evidence is concordant across Western European and Eastern Asian cultures (not restricted by language)
HOW?
- p’s has to colour the area they felt sensations in when they felt certain emotions (eg. happiness usually head/ chest)
Individual differences in experiencing emotion
- some people may respond in a more intense way to objects or events
- neuroticism (emotional instability) = overreact
- some people may be more prone to experiencing positive and negative emotions
- positive affectivity (optimism) Vs negative affectivity (pessimism)
- there’s evidence that people may differ in responses to stimuli - but is their phenomenological experience of emotion different?
Summary of experiencing emotions
1) appraisal approach suggests we can understand how people experience emotions by identifying the underlying patterns of cognitive appraisals
2) primacy of affect theory suggests that affective reactions can take place without participation of any cognitive input
3) prototype approach suggests we can use people’s narratives about their experiences of emotions to develop prototype scripts for emotions
4) emotions can be experienced in the body; somatosensory feedback can consistently trigger conscious emotional experiences
Communicating emotions
communication is one of the key social functions of emotion, it tells others about our needs, goals, our relationship with the receiver
- expressions of emotion helps to coordinate social interactions –> rewarding or punishing behaiviour
- we use FACE, BODY, VOICE to communicate emotion
Facial expressions of emotion: Ekman(1972)
- what are they?
- facial expressions are universal? - 2 hypotheses
- 3 assumptions?
- criticisms?
argues that each of the 6 basic emotions are associated with distinct muscle configurations that produce obvious facial expressions
- facial expressions tend to be very brief, 1-10 seconds
- they involve involuntary muscle actions that people can’t produce on demand or easily express (faked emotions usually lack this muscle action - eg. non-Duchenne smile
Facial expressions are universal
- if facial expressions of emotions are hardwired they will be universal:
1) encoding hypothesis = same expressions will be used in every society
2) decoding hypothesis = people from all cultures will interpret expressions in the same way
- Ekman found:
accuracy of emotion identification of the 6 basic emotions across cultures (about 80-90%) (even in cultures not exposed to Western media)
Assumptions:
1) facial expressions represent basic emotions
EVIDENCE - high coherence for amusement & smiling. Surprise and disgust not generally accompanied by their expected facial expressions (Reinsenzein, Studtmann & Horstmann, 2013)
2) basic emotional expressions are hardwired
EVIDENCE - blind people may also spontaneously form the same facial expression as sighted people (Matsumoto & Willingham, 2009)
-EMG can’t reliably distinguish facial muscle patterns for anger vs sadness (Cacioppo, Berntson, Carsen, Poehlmann & Ito, 2000)
3) facial expressions are universal
EVIDENCE - Jacks et al (2009) found people from East Asia find it hard to tell fear from surprise and anger from disgust –> may be because they focus on eyes?
NOTE: when facial expressions are spontaneous = may not be as easy to detect as more context may be needed
Criticisms
1)critique of Ekmans methods
- ecological validity (opposed to spontaneous expression)
- order of presentation of facial expressions
2) might facial expressions convey emotional info in terms of dimensions?
- facial muscle movements don’t correspond in a 1:1 way with self-reported emotional experiences
–> eg. sad doesn’t have exact facial muscle response
3) is facial expression enough?
context is important when trying to work out what specific emotion a person is feeling (Barrett & Kensinger, 2010)
- body language could also provide more info
–> Aviezer et al (2008) showed that disgust expression accompanied by different body position and props is interpreted differently
other ways of expressing emotion?
how to read what someone else is feeling more accurately? (2 strategies)
Communicating emotion without facial expression
- Sauter (2010) argues that positive emotions are often talked about in less discrete terms than negative due to focus on facial expressions for positive
how to read what someone is feeling:
1) theorization - inferring a persons perspective by experiencing his or her behaviour
2) simulation - getting that persons perspective by experiencing his or her behaviour
- -> people more accurate when using simulation, but overestimated the accuracy they had achieved by inferring perspective (Zhou, Majka & Epley, 2017)
communicating without facial expression: - the voice!! eg: tone of voice speed of speech loudness interjections (Goddard, 2014) non-verbal vocalisations (eg. sigh of relief) language
individual differences in communicating emotions
do we all communicate to the same extent?
trait of emotional expressivity (Gross &John) = extent to which people display behavioural emotional impulses
- dimensional and discrete approaches:
Gross & John (1997) suggest a valence-specific expressivity model - 2 dimensions:
1) positive expressivity
2) negative expressivity
Friedman et al (1980) & Kring et al (1995) suggest a unidimensional model
Gender differences
3 variables that explain the difference?
adult women tend to be more emotional
women express greater positive emotions (Chaplin, 2015)
women cry and smile more, and show more facial expressivity in general (Fischer & LaFrance, 2015)
–> the size of these effects are explained by 3 variables (Fischer & LaFrance, 2015):
1) stereotypes - dictate which emotions are more appropriate and when
2) social roles & situational constraints - (mens self report on crying more dependent on norms, whereas women are dependent on intensity of emotion)
3) emotion intensity
(women = more emotionally expressive not necessarilly more emotional)
