Intro to Positive Psych Midterm Chapter 2 Flashcards
Basic Emotions
(Original Research)
- Basic emotions varied from 4 to 10 depending on theory
Basic Emotions
(Paul Ekman)
- Listed seven basic emotions: sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, surprise, and happiness
Basic Emotions
(New Research)
- 27 categories of emotions
Admiration, Adoration, Aesthetic Appreciation, Amusement, Anger, Anxiety, Awe, Awkardness, Boredom, Calmness, Confusion, Craving, Disgust, Empathic Pain, Entrancement, Excitement, Fear, Horror, Interest, Joy, Nostalgia, Relief, Romance, Sadness, Satisfaction, Sexual Desire, Surprise
Combining Basic Emotions
- Positive emotions can be combined in many ways to create variations in emotional experience.
- If emotions do combine this would suggest that any attempt to totally remove negative emotions from our life would have the unintended consequence of eliminating the variety our emotional experiences.
Are positive and negative emotions dependent or independent?
- Positive and negative emotions are relatively independent.
- How often a person feels a positive emotion has little to do with how often a person feels a negative emotion.
- Increasing positive emotions will not automatically decrease negative emotions and vice versa!
Core Affect
-Relatively elemental and primitive emotional reaction that is fairly consistently experienced but often not consciously acknowledged, it comprises our unique blend of the pleasant/unpleasant and the activated/deactivated dimensions that we carry with us at almost an unconscious level.
Impact of Core Affect
- Variations can lead to identical situations being evaluated differently because different core affects can push people toward either negative or positive interpretations.
Basic Emotions Composition
- Complex combination of aspects from biological, cognitive, behavioral, and sociocultural influences.
Intrinsic Motivation
(Autonomous Motivation)
- is operating when we are compelled to engage in some activity for its own sake, regardless of any external reward.
Extrinsic Motivation
(Controlled Motivation)
-comes into play when we act to obtain some external reward, be it status, praise, an excellent grade, money, or another incentive that comes from outside ourselves
Autonomous Motivation
- is self-chosen and is congruent with one’s true self
Controlled Motivation
- Driven by external rewards or guilt and is not congruent with a person’s core values.
The Broaden and Build Model
Positive emotions give us:
- nonspecific action tendencies that lead to new adaptive behavior
- the spark for change in cognitive activity that lead to newer thought-action tendencies
- broadening of our available options to maximize our future resources
Motivation and the Pursuit of Goals
- Good goals autonomously motivated, personally valued, realistic, freely chosen, help others.
Self-Concordance
Congruence between one’s personality and goals
Approach Goals
Motivate us to move toward something
Avoidance Goals
Motivate us to avoid difficulties, dangers, or fears
Domains of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Health, Work, Relationships, Parenting, Education, Religion, Politics
Strategies to foster goal attainment
- Own your goal (reinforce personal reasons)
- Make it fun (enhance intrinsic motivation)
- Remember the big picture (remember how small goals fit into long-term goals.
- Keep a balance (balance with all other aspects of life)
Affective Forecasting
-Predicting how one will feel upon achieving goals
- People are bad at this
- Asking others about what they felt after achieving goals a more accurate assessment
The Biology of Emotions: Neurotransmitters and the Chemicals of Pleasure
Oxytocin- the love hormone
Tetrahydrocannabinols or THC
Anandamide- Bliss Molecule
The Biology of Emotions: The Happy Brain
Left prefrontal cortex- associated with happiness
Addiction is partly associated with the prefrontal cortex
Pleasure is related to regions the brain known as “pleasure hot spots” that are associated with neural pathways of craving
The Biology of Emotions: Neuroplasticity
Growth of a brain
Gray matter may slightly increase in size upon learning music and meditation
Brain does not stop growing every time we practice an old skill or learn a new one existing neural connections are strengthened and over time new connections are made.
The Biology of Emotions: The Genetics of Emotions
Genetic influence 30-50%
Family environment and learning can also impact well-being
The Happiness Set Point
Hereditability most people have an average level or set point
Everyone returns to an average or baseline level of well being after highs and lows
Do our genes rule our emotional lives?
Experiences, interventions, and environments MATTER
Genes do not completely determine happiness - typical level of well-being can change overtime
Cognition: How we think impacts how we feel
Changing negative styles of thinking changes how we feel
Possible to unlearn style and learn how to interpret events with more realistic optimism
The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
DOES
Differential susceptibility
Impact of environment - behavior or emotional responses not always dependent on genetic makeup
DOES
D- exhibits greater depth of cognitive processing
O- easily overstimulated
E- emotionally reactive and empathetic
S- sensitive to subtle stimuli
Differential Susceptibility
Genes can express themselves differently in different environments.
Genetic makeup does not always directly determine our behavior or emotional responses.
Five Approaches that influence our happiness
Past negative type
Past positive type
Present-hedonistic type
Present- fatalistic type
Future-oriented type
Transcendental-future type
- Balanced Time Perspective
Past Negative Type
Focuses on negative past experiences that still upset you
Past Positive Type
Adopts a pleasant nostalgic view of the past
Present-hedonistic type
Dominated by pleasure seeking impulses
Present- fatalistic type
Feels powerless to change the present or future
Future-oriented type
Ambitious but feels a nagging sense of urgency that can impact close relationships
Transcendental-future
Tend to focus on how present life will impact life after death
Behavior: How we act influences how we feel
Behavior causes a major influence on emotions
Contribution of positive psychology is its focus on positive behaviors
Social and Cultural Influences on Emotions
-Social constraints model of mood regulation- people regulate moods based on understanding of social situations
-Emotions in collectivist cultures do not exist so much within people rather AMONG people
- So multi-level model of well-being includes an assessment of cultural factors
Virtues, Strengths, Character, and Our Emotions
Strengths and Virtues- important tools to handle stress and difficult situations
The StrenghtsFinder evaluates 34 themes
Signature strengths are most important
Broaden and Build Model: Positivity ratio
3:1 Positive to negative emotions ratio
Extrinsic Strivings
Done for the sake of someone else or only for extrinsic rewards
Introjected Strivings
Pursued not necessarily for personally relevant reasons but because if you didn’t you’d feel guilty that you let someone done
Identified Strivings
Relate to pursuing a goal that someone else says is important
Intrinsic Strivings
Are engaged in because they are personally meaningful and have been freely chosen by the individual
Emotional Intelligence
An ability to recognize the meanings of emotions and their relationships, and to reason and problem solve on the basis of them
5 Characteristics that define Emotional Intelligence
- Knowing one’s emotions
- Handling interpersonal relationships well
- Able to motivate oneself
- Recognize emotions in others
- Manage one’s emotions
4 Branch Ability model of Emotional Intelligence
- Emotional perception and expression
- Emotional facilitation of thinking
- Understanding and analyzing emotions
- Reflective regulation of emotion
RULER Program
recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions
Broaden and Build Model of Positive Emotions
(What is it)
- In her model the purpose of positive emotions is markedly different from the purpose of negative emotions.
-Positive emotions help preserve the organism by providing nonspecific action tendencies that can lead to new adaptive behavior
What does the Broaden and Build Model do?
-Positive emotions broaden our awareness and then build on the resultant learning to create future emotional and intellectual resources
-So not only can positive emotions broaden our awareness and build up on resources, but also those resources are more enduring than the positive emotions that initiated them
EI training objectives
-Teach skills of being aware of one’s feelings, accurately labeling one’s emotions, enhancing communication, appropriately disclosing one’s feelings, and managing one’s emotions and conflict which enhances empathy and validation of others
Self-Determination Theory (SDT)
- Postulates that certain inherent tendencies towards psychological growth, along with a core group of innate emotional needs, are the basis for self-motivation, and personality integration.
Three Basic Needs (SDT)
1- Competence (need for mastery experiences that allow a person to deal effectively with their environment)
2- Relatedness (need for supportive interpersonal relationships)
3- Autonomy (need to make independent decisions about areas in life important to the person)
SDT (When needs are met)
When 3 basic needs are met, then people show better adaptive functioning and higher well-being
Cognitive Evaluation Theory (Deci & Ryan 1985)
-Subset of SDT to explain social and environmental factors that lead to greater autonomous motivation.
Organismic-integration theory
-Proposes that extrinsic motivation exists along a continuum from external regulation up to introjection then to identification and finally to integration
Introjection
level in organismic integration theory where behavior is driven by desires to garner pride and esteem to avoid guilt and shame
Integration
-level in organismic integration theory where behavior is driven by a coherent and autonomous sense of self
-Most desirable level of motivation
What are basic emotions according to
