L12 - Theories of Emotion Flashcards
1
Q
What is emotion?
A
- Episodic, Short term and biologically based patterns of perception and communication that occur in response to specific physical and social challenges and opportunities
- Lasts seconds/mins, moods are lower level and longer & can stem from nowhere
- Not affective disorders or personality temperaments
- Can be accompanied by facial expressions, physiological responses
- Not every emotion has positive results
2
Q
What are the components of emotion?
A
- Subjective feelings: types of feelings we can report and discuss = hard to predictresponse to stimuli presented
- Physiological responses e.g sweating and blood movement = stem from evolution
- Expressive behaviour: facial expressions, can be suppressed (under effortful control), variations cross-culturally
- Appraisals: what does this mean for their goals
- Action tendency; tendency for behaviours associated with emotions e.g fear = run
3
Q
What are the antecedents in the evolutionary theory?
A
- Based on Darwin’s writings
- Observational approach: looking at human/animal emotion expression
- Universality and functional adaptation, including communication e.g disgust = avoid, and we avoid those things others have shown disgust at
- Emotions arise when we detect a threat to survival or opportunity for reproduction
- Signal stimuli indicates an adaptive problem
- Emotions associate with action tendencies
- STUDY: looked at theory of actions taken in response to adaptive problems, their associated emotions and outcomes
4
Q
What are the evolutionary biological given(basic emotions)?
A
- Small set of emotions that are most important
- Innate, quick-acting and automatically caused by signal stimuli
5
Q
What makes an emotion basic?
A
- Universal expression
- Discrete physiology
- Presence in other primates
- Involve automatic evaluations of the environment
6
Q
What are the six basic emotions?
A
- Anger
- Disgust
- Happiness
- Fear
- Sadness
- Surprise
- 7th possible: contempt: feeling dislike and superiority over another person
- Basic emotions can overlap/combine to create complicated emotions e.g regret
- Evidence to suggest that emotions are recognised and produced cross-culturally BUT methodological concerns (one tribe in New Guinea, using a forced-choice paradigm where lucky guesses are possible, expressions are exaggerated): Happiness was most accurately recognised but fear and disgust were least
7
Q
What was the physiology associated with the six basic emotions?
A
- Directed facial action task: ppts contract specific muscles to create expression of the emotion without reference to it
- Took heart rate, skin conductance etc.
- Emotions show different physiological changes in heart rate and skin conductance (hard to work out difference and if it’s a pattern)
- Replicated in Indonesian ppts who lived in isolation from western culture
- Other physiology to consider could be blood flow in anger and fear, and in happiness = neurotransmitter release and dampening effects of neg emotions
8
Q
How do emotion components come together in the evolutionary theory?
A
- Affect programs: emotional responses tell our body what to do in response to problem we face: all components happen together
- Signal stimuli = affect program = emotion
- Affect programmes are innate but can change to include knowledge gain through individual experience
9
Q
What are the antecedents in appraisal theories?
A
- Very few stimuli cause the same emotion in everyone
- Emotions are determined by how an individual appraises their circumstances
- Appraisal: mental process which allows detection and evaluation of stimuli and how they affect your well-being (does not acknowledge signal stimuli)
- Unconscious and can form part of feeling without awareness
- Not as simple as good vs bad and occurs along dimensions
10
Q
What were the appraisal Scherer came up with?
A
- Novelty
- Valence: good/bad = approach/avoid
- Goal-relevance
- Agency: who caused this to happen? Can I control it?
- Norms
11
Q
What was a study on appraisal?
A
- Went to airport and some ppts did not receive their luggage on the baggage rail
- Had a structured interview and asked how they felt before/after going to the help desk and all aspects of appraisal
- Looked at variation in emotions experiences following the same event: people who started in good spirits, stayed in good spirits. Some people after speaking to the help desk had good spirits, but those who started angry stayed angry
- Goal relevance was best predictor of their emotion
12
Q
What are the biological givens for appraisal theory? (1st/2nd)
A
- Distinction between primary and secondary appraisals
- Primary: fast, clear-cut and innate e.g novelty and valence, Secondary: higher-order, learned e.g goal-relevance, agency and norms
13
Q
How does appraisal theory interact?
A
- Stimulus - Appraisal - Emotion (not all emotional components occur together)
- Emotions: review of evidence of the relationship between reported feelings and appearance of specific facial expression
- Emotions and expressions did not reliably co-occur
14
Q
What is the psychological constructionism?
A
- Emotions are not reactions to the world, you are an active constructor of emotions
- Specific emotions are caused by applying learned categories to experience
- Categorisation: mental process by which we take experience and give it meaning
- Categories are based on the individuals learning history, culture and current context, and contain varied examples
- Can explain and predict cross-cultural variations
15
Q
What are the biological givens under Psych Constructionism?
A
- Core affect: current affective state, always there in our conscious state, related to bodily state
- Composed of two dimensions: valence (un/pleasant) and activation (de/activated)
- Dimensions must be made meaningful to construct the emotion including past experience
- Critical implications include how emotions differ in alexithymia: hard to describe emotions and will categorise things as bodily states and those with anxiety will categorise bodily states as emotions
