L13 - Functions of Emotions Flashcards
1
Q
Are emotions functional?
A
- Functionality initially associated with evolutionary theory
- Appraisal and constructionist theorists also see emotions as useful, problem-solving phenomena
- Emotions being functional does not rely on them being innate
2
Q
What do atypical emotional experiences do?
A
- Useful in understanding the ways in which emotions are functional
- Emotion deficits can have the consequences for social support, aggressive behaviours and decision making
3
Q
What does suppression of emotions show?
A
- Higher levels of suppression at college associated with reduced self-reported social support, closeness and social satisfaction
- Suppression not associated with likeability
- Suppression of emotions has meaningful and diverse social consequences
4
Q
How does emotion recognition explain functionality? (Study)
A
- Male adolescents with Conduct disorder and age-matched control without
- Reduced emotion recognition in individuals with CD
- Participants with CD who also had high psychopathic traits showed impaired fear, sadness and surprise recognition compared to those with low traits
5
Q
What is emotional intelligence?
A
- Ability to accurately perceive other’s emotions
- Understand one’s own emotions
- Use current feelings to aid in making good decisions
- Manage one’s emotions in ways that fit the current situation
6
Q
How to measure emotional intelligence?
A
- MSCEIT:
Fill in the gap to select the best choice
7
Q
What was a study looking at emotional intelligence?
A
- Study had told ppts that interaction was helpful, and then met a confed in the waiting room of exp
- Real-time social engagement compared to self-evaluated emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence test and judges rating how the interaction went
- Found emotional intelligence correlates with social success in men
- Self-evaluation did not correlate with actual social success = emotional intelligence did correlate with other peoples scores in men = scoring is more attuned to men
8
Q
What are the levels of Social Experience?
A
- Individual: Physiology of emotion has survival function, experience of emotion helps redirect goals, positive emotion affects thinking and builds future resources
- Dyad: communication and signalling to others
- Group: group formation and affective diversity
9
Q
What is the survival function of emotion?
A
- Physiology of emotion supports adaptive action
- Sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system (fight/flight)
- Adaptations to ensure self-preservation
10
Q
How do emotions come into play when managing our goals?
A
- Emotions occur when progress on a goal is interrupted
- Emotions are adaptive but occur when people realise that goals are interrupted un/consciously, and are functional as they provide internal evaluation for goal-directed behaviour and guide behaviour
11
Q
What is the Broaden and Build framework?
A
- Positive emotions = increase in flexibility and open-mindedness and novel thoughts = building of psychological resources like resilience, coping and social connection = Resources accumulate and contribute to overall wellbeing = Produces more experiences of positive emotions = creates upwards cycle
- Narrow emotions narrow responding, calling specific action tendencies e.g attack
- Positive emotions broaden responding = pursuing a wider range of thoughts or actions
- Narrowing is useful in short-term, survival situation, broadening is useful over time to build resources
- Resources gained are durable - outlast the transient emotional state, and can be drawn on later
12
Q
How does Broaden and Build affect emotion influence reasoning? (experiment)
A
- Five video clips: designed to emit positive, negative or neutral expressions
- Ppts were then asked to do 2 tasks: breadth of attention task = indicate which figure is more similar to standard figure
- Neg states = narrow scope of attention = local interpretation of task
- Pos states = broaden scope of attention = broader interpretation of task
- Second task was thought-action: ppts asked about the strongest emotion they felt in the film
- Asked to list all the things they want to do in the moment based on that feeling
- Pos emotions = global selection (bigger picture) = sig higher than neutral/neg = changes breadth of attention and action urges
13
Q
What did the broaden and build do overall?
A
- Tested hypothesis that positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and cognition
- Support for both low arousal and high arousal positive emotions
- Implications for wellbeing and physical health: physiological undoing: watching a positive film after a fear-eliciting one lead to a quicker cardiovascular recovery than sad or neutral
14
Q
What is social referencing?
A
- Facial expression as behavioural regulator
- Stimuli of maximal ambiguity most likely to elicit social referencing
15
Q
How was social referencing tested?
A
- Visual cliff paradigm: 30cm drop off = ambiguous
- Mother’s expression affected crossing
- Stranger danger: Caregivers either stern or cheery when greeting stranger & vocalisations affected behaviour
16
Q
What are the benefits of fear?
A
- Personal benefit of eye-widening:
- People displayed a fearful expression and had to discriminate the orientation of Gabor patches at different eccentricities (distances and widening)
- Enhanced peripheral detection with fear expression vs neutral or disgust
- Helps us detect things in the env
- Interpersonal benefit of eye widening:
- Faster gaze direction if fear
- Faster target detection if eyes looked left/right when fearful regardless of inversion
17
Q
Why do babies cries show communication?
A
- Emotion as a signalling system
- Mothers observed in fMRI scanners: audio clips of infant cries, while noise, or neutral infant sounds
- Neural circuitry for empathy activated
18
Q
What are the benefits of sadness?
A
- Signals a call for help, elicits concern for expressor but not in all circumstances
- Motivating withdrawal and recovery from life = communicative
- STUDY: Sadness in business: concede more in a negotiation to a sad expresser only when perceived as low power and anticipated a future interaction
19
Q
What is the communication of smiling? (functional roles)
A
- Reward: reinforce behaviour that led to the smile
- Affiliation: openness - spontaneously or when they are embarrassed
- Dominance: superiority, and signalling disapproval, signal asymmetrical relationship
- Not mutually exclusive: can have more than one type in a smile, but the dominant emotion will show
20
Q
Communication: Beyond face and voice?
A
- Asked ppts to watch a video and identify when these emotions are conveyed through touch and not speech/facial expressions = basic emotions were detected through body language and touch
- Emotions can be reliably conveyed and detected, using touch
21
Q
What is social co-ordination?
A
- Group formation
- Positive feelings facilities group bonds = feelings of cohesion
- Positive mood associated with better team performance = looked at bank branches, when people respond positively when asked about their job, there was a better team performance = led from perceived support
22
Q
What is affective diversity?
A
- Group governance: When people in the group experience different emotions
- Took 2 high status and 2 low status people from american frat, and got to tease each other = Low status teasers did so more pro-socially (flattery and achievements) and were amused and embarrassed about them getting teased
- High status showed dominant reaction, and facial hostility = provide norms to the group
- Complex tasks: if there are no perspectives/opinions = not beneficial for the groups success
