Lecture 5- Emotions

Question 1

What is the cognitive definition?

Answer 1

representations of knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs,
and the processes by which these representations are acquired and
manipulated.

Question 2

What is affect?

Answer 2

General term for entire range of feeling states

Question 3

What is preferences?

Answer 3

(evaluations, attitudes): subjective responses to

people, objects, or events

Question 4

What are moods?

Answer 4

Chronic, non-specific feeling states

Question 5

What is the definition for emotions?

Answer 5

specific, transient feeling states

Question 6

What is the basic emotions theory? Who came up with it?

Answer 6

Basic emotions: discrete states that evolved to mobilize the organism to deal with fundamental life tasks. There are certain emotions that are the ‘core’ emotions that have been selected for by evolution
Paul Ekman

Question 7

What are supposedly the basic emotions according to Paul Ekman?

Answer 7

happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise

Question 8

What is the coding system for the basic emotions?

Answer 8

The idea is that these emotions produce distinct facial expressions which are universal. Therefore, to tell what emotion is being felt you can code the muscles invovled.

Question 9

What is an application of the Ekman facial coding system?

Answer 9

Micro expressions, thought to be able to tell when someone is lying for cues in their facial expressions.

Question 10

How does cross-cultural agreement provide evidence for basic emotions?

Answer 10

Western and eastern (across cultures) can understand facial expressions. They are universal .

Question 11

Explain the idea that emotions are adaptions?

Answer 11

Ekman proposed that basic emotions were selected for in evolution (they were beneficial). Thought that emotions are vestiges in functional behaviour from our past e.g. barring teeth in anger used to have a function of scaring things of and now what’s left is the emotion

Question 12

What are some possible ideas for where the other emotions (aside from basic) came from?

Answer 12

• Emotion families: they are grouped, all other emotions came from the original basic ones
• Emotion blends: other emotions are simply combinations of the basic ones
• Emotion plots / complex emotions / social emotions: basic emotions have stories/ plots laid on top of them. e.g. jealously is anger in a particular situation/ experience
• More emotion words than emotions: it is an illusion how many emotions we actually experience.

Question 13

What study works against the idea of basic emotions being universal?

Answer 13

Take the basic emotions that Ekman said everyone should be able to understand and copy pasted them onto bodies doing different incompatible or compatible emotions. e.g. when anger face is on top of body doing angry action we think its anger but when its on top of a person expression sadness we are just as happy to think the person is sad. We confuse the faces based on context therefore this would suggest like are not distinct states like Ekman believes.

Question 14

What is the idea of dimensional models and how does it work against the basic emotion theory?

Answer 14

A cross with arousal to quiet and negative to positive
We have simply assigned words into areas of that emotion space but really there is nothing special about them they are not distinct basic emotion states they just exist on a scale.

Question 15

Explain the idea of emotions just being pure physiological arousal and how that works against the idea of basic emotions?

Answer 15

-James-Lange: physiological responses cause emotion (“we are afraid
because we run away”). Its the opposite to what we think where our emotions cause actions.
-“Embodied emotion” (Niedenthal): Emotion concepts are grounded in
bodily simulations. Comes from a study where participants held a pen in their mouth- when biting it with teeth it produces a smile and that causes them to find comics funnier/ feel happier.

Question 16

What it is Schacter and Singer’s (1962) two-factor theory of emotions? What experiment explores this idea?

Answer 16

2 -factor theory:

(1) Awareness of unexplained arousal
(2) Interpretation of the arousal

Experiment:
(1) Awareness: participants given epinephrine with correct or incorrect
information
(2) Interpretation: confederate acts euphoric or angry

Results were that it’s only when participants are given incorrect information that they are influenced by confederate/ environment. This means it is only when we have unexplained arousal that they search for a reason from the environment/ confederate

Question 17

What is misattribution? What experiment by Dutton + Aaron shows this?

Answer 17

• Attributing your arousal to the wrong cause
• Carried out in 1974, participants are either at the end or middle of swing bridge. If interviewed in the middle they more likely to ask experimenter for date cause misattribute arousal (from fear) to be for the girl. This shows people have a hard time portioning out their emotions and works against the theory of basic emotions. It backs up the idea that things feel the same but what we experience is down to how we attribute the cause.

Question 18

What is Love according to misattribution theory?

Answer 18

Misattributing arousal to someone who happens to be in a heightened experience with you.

Question 19

What is the idea of emotions being pure attribution? What is the other name for this?

Answer 19

• Known as appraisal theories. What causes the emotion is how you think and interpret the cause of the event not the actual subjective feeling state.
• Weiner: locus, stability, controllability

-Smith and Lazarus (1990) believe it is a two step process
Primary appraisals: relevance, valence (fast response)
Secondary appraisals: accountability, coping ability, stability

Question 20

What is mood congruence as a theory?

Answer 20

There is a processing advantage for stimuli that are consistent in meaning with
one’s current emotional state e.g. When you are in a positive mood you are more likely to process positive stimuli/ things matching this state.

Question 21

What is the affect infusion model (Forgas, 1995)?

Answer 21

Works alongside the idea of mood congruence looking at the extent to which mood influences processing.

Four types of social judgements:

• Direct access for attitudes that you can call to mind instantly
• Motivated processing means there is a desire/ mindset that directs + biases our social judgements
• Heuristics processing utilizes shortcuts and schemas
• Substantive processing means you conduct judgements from the ground up particular when judgements are important, have time, using as much data as you can (opposite to heuristic, is slow)

The extent to which emotions are going to infuse in and influence your judgements depends on how substantive your processing is. Direct access is hard to influence slower processing leaves more room for emotions to bias/ creep in.