Gabriela Flashcards
what is an affect?
Psychological states that involves valuation, defined as a relatively quick good-for-me/bad-for-me valuation
What are moods
- low intensity
- diffuse affective states
- no salient antecedent
- little content
What are emotions?
- Short-lived
- Conscious
- Prototypical content
Evolutionary perspectives of emotions
- Emotions selected for survival (Darwin, 1872)
- Emotions as commitment (e.g. love, punishment) for long term goals (Frank, 1998)
- Emotions as superordinate coordination (Cosmides and Tooby, 2000)
What are primary emotions
- Shared with other animals
- E.g. anger, fear, happiness
What are secondary emotions?
- Self conscious or social
- Unique to humans
- Less visible
- Develop later in life
- Have a social regulatory function
- E.g. embarrassment, guilt, shame
How are emotions traditionally seen?
Seen as states with personal relevance that involve specific cognitive, physiological and experiential components
What are macro-expressions?
- Expressions of single emotions that are not concealed
- They last .5 to 4 seconds
- Easy to see
- Mostly universal
- Prototypical, but. not clear cut e.g. a ‘true’ smile vs a ‘fake’ smile
What are micro-expressions?
- Very fast (less than a second)
- Appear in combination. with other emotions
- Often signs of concealed emotions
What is the facial feedback hypothesis?
Stack et al., 1998
McCanne and Anderson, 1987
Facial movement can influence emotional experience
What is Darwin’s (1872) idea of facial emotion?
- Facial expression of emotion evolved as part of the actions necessary for life
Anger –> frowning
- Protects eyes in anticipation of attack
Facial feedback hypothesis study (How funny are cartoons)
Strack, Martin and Stepper, 1988
Manipulation: Activation of facial muscles
Dependent variable: Measure of facial electromyography
- Inhibition or facilitation of smiling muscles modulated how funny cartoons were perceived to be
Divided attention experiment
Larsen et al., 1992
- 30 Ps
- Within-subjects
- Attach two golf tees to the subject’s brow
- Looked to see whether the golf tees pulled together (activates corrugator supercilii)
- Shown aversive photographs
- Measured experience of sadness
- Results showed that frowning led to increased sadness
How does facial feedback work?
- Subtle muscle contractions. in. the perceiver’s face generate an afferent muscular feedback signal from the face to the brain
- Perceiver uses this feedback to reproduce and understand the perceived emotional meaning
What do intrapersonal functions of emotions do?
- Prepare the body for action
- Influence thought
- Motivate for future behaviours
What do interpersonal functions of emotions do?
- Facilitate. specific behaviours in perceivers
- Signal the nature of interpersonal relationships
- Provide incentives for desired social behaviour
How do emotions work?
Emotions simultaneously activate certain systems and deactivate others in order to prevent the chaos of competing systems operating at the same time, allowing for coordinated responses to environmental stimuli
What happens when we are afraid?
- Digestive processes shut down –> dry mouth
- Blood flows disproportionately to lower half of the body
- Visual field expands
- Air is breathed in
What is the James-Lange theory of emotion (1980)?
- Emotions are the perception of physiological conditions that result from a stimulus
E.g. We don’t see a bear, fear it, and run
We see a bear and run, then we fear it
What are the consequences of affect?
- Affect triggers action tendencies
- Activates relevant goals
- Determines selective memory and processing styles
What happened to Phineas Gage?
- Railway explosion on 13 sept 1848 at. 4:30 pm led. to accident
- Gage was alive and had possession of reason but was free of pain
- Had a personality change: Became anti-social, uncaring, impulsive and irrational
- Lesion in Ventromedial region of frontal lobes caused poor rational decision making and processing of emotion
What happens in patients with ventromedial lesions of the frontal lobes?
- Largely preserve intellectual abilities
- Show abnormal personal and social decision making
What is the Somatic Marker Hypothesis?
Damasio (1996)
- Emotional processes guide behaviour, particularly decision making
Somatic markers = feelings in the body that are associated with emotions e.g. rapid heartbeat - anxiety; nausea - disgust
- Thought to be processed in the vmPFC and amygdala
How does arousal facilitate memory consolidation?
Mather and Sutherland (2011)
- Arousing experiences create long lasting memories
- Injections of adrenaline after learning enhance memory
- Exercise improves memory
How is memory stored?
- Amygdala activity regulates encoding + consolidation/storage of memories
- Activation of amygdala through through affect (e.g. arousal/stress) enhances retention
What is selective attention?
Narrowing the scope of attention
What is Arousal-biased competition
- Arousal modulates the strength of competing mental representations, enhancing memory for items that dominate the contest for selective attention
- Accounts for encoding and consolidation (goal relevant information)
What are the two central consequences of affect?
- Affect influences the content of thought (what we think)
2. Affect alters cognitive style (how we think)
What are evaluative judgements?
- People asking themselves “How do I feel about this?”
- They may misread current feelings as response to object of judgement
- More favourable evaluations under positive rather than negative moods, unless their informational. value is discredited
How does mood affect memory?
There is better retrieval when the emotional state at the time of retrieval is the same as the emotional state at the time of encoding
What is the mood congruency effect?
Bower (1981)
People retrieve information more easily when it has the same emotional content as their current emotional state
What are the peripheral cues of persuasion?
- Attractiveness
- Status
- Sex
- Likability
- Number of arguments
What are the central cues of persuasion?
- Message content
- Arguments
How does mood effect cognitive processing?
Happy mood. decreases cognitive capacity resulting in a decrease in elaborative processing
How does positive affect change cognitive processing?
Positive affect signals that the environment is safe and the person can rely on default processes
How does negative affect change cognitive processing?
Negative affect signals that the environment is problematic, default processes are no longer applied
What are the social functions of facial exressions?
During interactions:
- Expressions are not only. automatic, innate displays but serve social goals
What is facial mimicry?
Use of facial musculature by an observer to match the facial gestures in another person’s facial expression
Facial mimicry study
Dimberg et. al (2000)
- Participants unconsciously exposed to happy, angry or neutral facial expressions (30 ms)
- Back-masked and immediately followed by neutral faces
- Facial electromyographic (EMG)
DV: electromyographic activity in emotion-relevant facial muscles
Results: Activation of the same muscles in the observer (500ms delay)
What are the effects of mimicry?
- Increased liking of partners who mimic oneself
- Signals of being attuned with the other
- Easier communication
Visual cliff study
Sorce, Emde, Campos and Klinnert (1985)
- Mother calls to child from across the deep side of the visual cliff
- No infant crossed table when mother showed fear
- 6% did when mother posed anger
- 33% crossed when mother posed sadness
- Approx. 75%crossed when mother posed joy or interest