Lecture 9: Chapter 10 - Emotion and Cognition

Question 1

Define Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 1

Yerkes-Dodson Law: hypothesis that attention, learning, and other aspects of cognition are at their best when arousal is at an intermediate level
- Not too low to cause sleepiness, not too high to elicit
panic
- Moderate emotion can help reasoning, but extremes
can hurt it
- Often accompanied with autonomic NS arousal

Question 2

Strong emotions (e.g. anger) increases overall attention by increasing ____ and ______

Answer 2

Arousal and alertness

Question 3

Harris and Pashler (2004) presented number-word-number combos on screen (E.g. 5 chart 8, 4 kill 9). Words were either neutral or emotional words. Had to press key if both numbers were even or odd, otherwise don’t press → selectively attending to a certain condition. What were the results and what do they suggest?

Answer 3

• Found the emotional words (although irrelevant) distract attention, slowing key responses for numbers those combinations
• Idea is that even if something is irrelevant, if it’s emotional, it will instinctively drive your selective attention

Emotional stimuli will draw selective attention to itself at the expense of other stimuli

Question 4

Any stimulus that is related to a __________ attracts attention (so the ability to attract attention is not unique to emotional stimuli). Also, emotional stimuli attract attention not only because of their emotional content, but also because they are ____________

Answer 4

A topic of interest, distinctive or unusual

Question 5

Using EEG/fMRI, will find that ___ faces attract immediate eye movements more often than other faces do, evoking greatest cortical arousal. ______ ______ pictures also capture attention, even in vision’s periphery

Answer 5

Angry,
Threatening/highly distressing pictures (e.g. starving child, dead body, fear conditioned image)

Question 6

Attention attractions effects tend to be ____

Answer 6

Small

• People look left to right, and top to bottom naturally
• Eye-tracking detects occasional exceptions, looking at reverse pattern when the stimuli at the right/bottom are very salient
• IOWS, you will see slightly more increased deviations of the natural eye patterns

Question 7

Prolonged viewing indicates the viewer finds the stimulus ______

Answer 7

Interesting

• Those with major depression do not have their attention captured from unpleasant images any faster than nondepressed people
• However, depressed people continue to stare at unpleasant image for longer, instead of looking away and trying to cheer themselves up

Question 8

What is another limitation of measures of attention?

Answer 8

Tend to have low reliability, fluctuating greatly between tasks and trials

Question 9

According to the broaden-and-build hypothesis of positive emotions, positive emotions _________________

Answer 9

Expand the focus of attention
- Helping one survey the environment broadly, appreciate opportunities one would overlook otherwise

Question 10

Happy people tend to focus on ____ patterns rather than _____, this is known as the ____ ______ ______

Answer 10

Global patterns rather than small detail
Global precedence effect
- Ex: “Seeing the forest before the trees”

Question 11

What is the Novan task?

Answer 11

Novan task: classic study that tries to measure global precedence effect
- Present a stimulus that could be attended to both globally (to provide unique information) and locally (to provide unique information)
- Stimuli: consistent, neutral, or conflicting

Question 12

In the Novan task, for stimuli that is consistent, _____ _____ and _____ ____ are the same thing

Answer 12

Global feature and local features are the same thing
- Ex: Globally, you can see a big T, and the T is made up
of small Ts

Question 13

In the Novan task, when the task could be “only focus on the global feature”, or showing one small T and asking “identify the local feature”, what type of stimuli is this?

Answer 13

Neutral

Question 14

In the Novan task, when the global feature is represented as a T and local feature represented as an S this type of stimuli is _______. Could ask either “what is the global feature” or “what is the local feature” and try to see if

Answer 14

Conflicting
The local feature interferes with global perception and if the global feature interferes with local perception

Question 15

In the Novan task, it is typically found that the global precedence effect occurs in general → if told to focus on the S (“what is the local feature?”) the global feature will slow you down. Moreover, this process is exacerbated by ______ _______?

Answer 15

Exacerbated by emotional processing → happy = bigger GPE, sad = smaller GPE

Question 16

In the Novan task, responding faster when the correct letter is the larger stimulus indicates _____ attention, responding slower indicates ______ attention (and vice-versa)

Answer 16

Broadened attention, narrowed attention

Question 17

Sadness tends to broaden attention like happiness, while anger narrows attention and highly appetitive positive emotion (e.g. ice cream) narrows attention. What does this suggest?

Answer 17

• Not clear than emotional valence alone determines attention
• Suggests that approach motivation vs. passively attending stimuli makes one more detailed oriented

Question 18

Emotion affects memory through _____, by making emotional stimuli more salient for encoding. Although extreme arousal bordering on panic interferes with memory storage, a ____ ____ __ ______ improves memory storage.

Answer 18

Attention
Moderate degree of arousal

Question 19

Bradley and colleagues (1992) had participants rate everyday items and intense emotion-eliciting stimuli (e.g. dangerous animals) on two dimensions: Level of pleasantness/unpleasantness and how calm/aroused it made them feel. What were their findings?

Answer 19

Found that it didn’t matter what the pleasantness was, what determined whether something was remembered or not was the level of arousal
- People were more likely to remember images that they rated as arousing vs. calm, regardless of level of pleasantness
- More likely to remember intense arousing stimuli a
year later

Question 20

Greenwald, Cook, & Lang (1989) found in a similar study that highly arousing stimuli also had stronger skin conductance responses. What does this suggest?

Answer 20

Not just subjective feeling, but physiological as well

Question 21

*Describe the methods of Cahill et al.’s (1994) study

Answer 21

Had participants either take a beta-blocker (reduces sympathetic. NS activity) or a placebo while either watching a slide show (depicted wrecked cars, emergency room, brain scan and surgery)

One of two descriptive stories heard:
1. Arousing: boy is hit by car on way to visit dad, rushed to hospital, has a brain scan that shows his brain is bleeding badly, undergoes surgery
2. Neutral: boy walks by junkyard, looks at wrecked cars, goes to hospital where dad works, looks curiously at brain scans, watches a surgical team doing a practice drill

One week later, ps asked to answer 80 MCQ about slides & stories told

Question 22

*What were the 4 conditions of Cahill et al.’s (1994) study?

Answer 22

(1) Arousing/placebo
(2) Arousing/beta-blocker
(3) Neutral/placebo
(4) Neutral/beta-blocker

Question 23

*What do the findings from Cahill et al.’s (1994) study suggest?

Answer 23

Suggests that interrupting the arousal associated with strong emotion will disrupt the effect of emotion on memory

Question 24

Emotions evolved to enhance ____ ____, since events that produce emotion are usually more important than others

Answer 24

Memory formation

Allows you predict important events and improve the outcome the next time you face a similar situation

Question 25

When we retrieve memories from storage, we can ______ them in the process, altering what goes back into storage for the future. We often will embellish (ex: emotional events) for emphasis or leave out details that seem unimportant. What phenomena does this explain?

Answer 25

Change

Explains why most people remember the emotion they felt when thinking about 9/11 but the underlying details of the event get altered much easier

Question 26

• Describe the methods of Nairne, Pandeirada & Thompson’s (2008) study

Answer 26

Gave 3 versions of instructions for participants viewing long list of objects (e.g. blanket, box, binoculars, string, knife):
1. Simply read and remember list
2. Read each item and rate their usefulness when moving between towns
3. Imagine yourself stranded in wilderness, rate the usefulness of each item

Question 27

• For those instructed to simply read and remember the list what were the results?

Answer 27

Will forget most of items within minutes

Question 28

• For those instructed to read each item and rate their usefulness when moving between towns, what were the results?

Answer 28

Better recall, helps relate each item to one’s own needs

Question 29

• For those instructed to imagine themselves stranded in wilderness, and rate the usefulness of each item, what were the results?

Answer 29

Better recall
- Imagine danger at a distance produces state of more awareness
- Characterized by decreased heart rate, decreased
muscle activity, and focused attention
- The more the heart decelerates, the better the
recall (because you are devoting more energy
and resources to memory encoding w/out going
into full blown panic)

Question 30

Consolidation is the _________ of a memory during a period _____ its formation

Answer 30

Strengthening, after

Question 31

What are two processes that facilitate the consolidation of memories?

Answer 31

1. Sleep helps consolidate memories, weakening irrelevant synapses and enabling strengthened ones to stand out by contrast
2. Emotional arousal

Question 32

Describe how emotional arousal helps memory persist (2)

Answer 32

1. Via activation of amygdala
2. Via activation of the locus coeruleus
   - Emotionally arousing events activate the locus
   coeruleus
   
   • Will then send messages via long branches axons to
     cortex through norepinephrine release
     
     • Norepinephrine magnifies response of neurons
       already active, while suppressesing the response
       of those less active
       - Leads to increased attention and memory
       about important info

Question 33

Emotional excitement increases release of epinephrine and cortisol from adrenal gland. How does such lead to the improvement of the consolidation of a memory?

Answer 33

Both hormones also act on vagus nerve, exciting amygdala, improving the consolidation of a memory

• Injection of low/moderate amount of epinephrine and cortisol strengthens memory of an event
  
  • Homone injection can be effective even right after
    event occurred

Question 34

• Why did we evolve in such a way that arousal even after the event can help us remember it? One proposal is the synaptic tag-and-capture hypothesis, which states that when a memory is formed, the brain _______________?

Answer 34

Puts a tag on it for potential consolidation later

Question 35

• With respect to the synaptic tag-and-capture hypothesis, when a memory is formed, the brain puts a tag on it for potential consolidation later. Such is aided by increase in ________, particularly the release of _______ and _______

Answer 35

• Aided by increase in sympathetic NS activity, particularly the release of epinephrine and cortisol

This is why when ppl were injected with cortisol even after the event they were able to remember that event more strongly

Question 36

*Dunsmoor et al. (2015) sought to illustrate the synaptic tag-and-capture hypothesis, describe their methods

Answer 36

• Had participants look at 60 pictures and classify them as either an animal or tool in the first stage of the experiment
• In the second stage, new set of animals or tools presented, with either animals or tools paired with electric shock
• In third task, hours later, were asked to examine pictures and remember which ones they had seen in earlier sessions

Question 37

*Dunsmoor et al. (2015) sought to illustrate the synaptic tag-and-capture hypothesis, describe their findings

Answer 37

• Remembered the ones paired with shock in second stage
• Remember the category in the first stage if it was shocked in the second stage
  
  • Even though, initially, they may have not considered
    the first set of tools important, because it has a tag
    on it, by doing the fear conditioning they have made
    the other tools that were initially neutral now more
    emotionally salient

Question 38

_____ emotions also modify what events are most likely to pull out of memory (retrieval).

Answer 38

Current

• People tend to remember events that resemble what they are doing/thinking at the moment (e.g. happy moments when happy, frightening moments when afraid)
• If you are in a strong mood because of something you have done, the effect on memory is stronger (labs can’t elicit this effectively)

Question 39

Keltner et al. (1993) had participants read situation: Invite romantic interest to party with housemates and tell housemates romantic interest is coming ahead of time. Romantic interest comes to party with date (date is friend of housemates). Housemate welcomes couple, romantic interest and their date are silent and feel awkward. What were the findings? What do they suggest?

Answer 39

• If previously imagining anger in a preliminary situation, would be more like to blame others (e.g. housemates) for circumstance rather than chance circumstances
  
  • Opposite is true if primed with sad situation

One’s current emotions affects how one interprets the facts of a situation

Question 40

___ and ____ imply some level of certainty, leading to confident, optimistic predictions about almost anything and a tendency to take risks. _____, ______, or _____ on the other hand, imply uncertainty, leading to low confidence, pessimism, and a tendency to avoid most risks.

Answer 40

Anger and happiness
Sadness, fear, or worry

Question 41

Define systematic cognition

Answer 41

Making decisions through careful evaluation of the available information
- E.g. critically looking at features before making car
purchase
- Can include emotional components when they are
relevant
- E.g. considering how much you would enjoy a car if
you bought it
- Not the same as buying a car because the
salesperson was smiling (this is heuristic)

Question 42

Define heuristic cognition

Answer 42

Making decisions based on simple shortcuts or rules of thumb, unrelated to the strength of evidence
- E.g. buying a product due to a celebrity endorsement

Question 43

People in ____ moods are more likely to use heuristic cognition, while ____ people are more likely to use systematic cognition

Answer 43

Happy, sad

Question 44

• Bless et al. (1990) sought to analyze the influence of systematic and heuristic cognitions on emotions and information processing. Describe their methods

Answer 44

• Had undergraduates randomly assigned to writing about either most pleasant or most unpleasant event that happened to them
  
  • To induce either happy or sad mood
• Students then listened to several strong factual arguments or several weak superficial arguments in favour of raising student fees at university

Question 45

• Bless et al. (1990) sought to analyze the influence of systematic and heuristic cognitions on emotions and information processing. Firstly, they found that the strong argument was more persuasive to those in a ___ mood than a ___ mood

Answer 45

Strong argument was more persuasive to those in a sad mood than a happy mood

Question 46

• Bless et al. (1990) sought to analyze the influence of systematic and heuristic cognitions on emotions and information processing. Secondly, they found that the weak argument was more persuasive for those in a ___ mood than a ___ mood

Answer 46

Weak argument was more persuasive for those in a happy mood than a sad mood

Question 47

• Bless et al. (1990) sought to analyze the influence of systematic and heuristic cognitions on emotions and information processing. Thirdly, they found that ___ students were equally persuaded by both arguments

Answer 47

Happy students were equally persuaded by both arguments

Question 48

• Bless et al. (1990) sought to analyze the influence of systematic and heuristic cognitions on emotions and information processing. Lastly, they found that ___ students were persuaded by strong arguments but not weak ones

Answer 48

Sad students were persuaded by strong arguments but not weak ones

Question 49

Park & Banaji (2000) found that stereotyping is also affected by emotions in a similar way that the other biases occur. Describe their findings and what they suggest

Answer 49

• People who watched a sad/neutral movie make fewer errors in name identification
• People in the humorous condition mistakenly pair Black names with basketball players or criminals, and White names with politicians

Thus, stereotyping is exacerbated the more careless or the more confident and happy you are

Question 50

_______ also help you follow a script of what you expect to occur

Answer 50

Heuristics

If you’re in an environment and you are happy, there is no risk to being careless, whereas when you’re sad you have to be very focused on the specific details of a certain situation because you instinctively feel some level of threat

Question 51

• Sad people interpret sadness as signal that they are in a dangerous situation calling for attentiveness and caution, while happy people infer from their mood that they are safe and can relax. Tiedens and Linton (2001) sought out to determine whether such is related to happiness and sadness or confidence and uncertainty. Describe their methods.

Answer 51

Had people elicit 4 types of emotions:
1. Contented – pleasant + confident
2. Surprised – pleasant + unconfident
3. Angry – unpleasant + confident
4. Worried – unpleasant + unconfident
- Participants were then asked to read an essay and were asked whether they agreed with its conclusions
- Told that essay was written by either a community
college student (lower prestige) or college professor
(higher prestige)

Question 52

• Describe the results for the participants in unconfident moods (surprised or worried) in Tiedens and Linton’s (2001) study

Answer 52

• Participants in unconfident moods (surprised or worried) were about equally persuaded in both cases
  
  • Suggests they evaluated the logic of the argument,
    regardless of prestige

Question 53

• Describe the results for the participants in confident moods (contented or angry) in Tiedens and Linton’s (2001) study

Answer 53

• Participants in confident moods (contented or angry) were more persuaded if they thought that a professor wrote the essay rather than the student
  
  • If you’re more confident, you’re more careless, and so
    you’re going to just assume the professor is making a
    better argument, even though the arguments can
    literally be the same

Question 54

• Tiedens and Linton (2001) found that it didn’t matter what the emotional valence was, but rather what the level of certainty was. Suggesting that the decisive factor is not ______ but ______

Answer 54

Happy/sad, confidence/uncertainty

Question 55

________ _______ is the hypothesis that sad or depressed people evaluate evidence more logically

Answer 55

Depressive realism

• Correctly estimate the accuracy of their opinions
• Recognize their lack of control in certain situations better than other people do

Question 56

To test the depressive realism hypothesis Lewicka (1997) had mentally healthy students and patients with major depression choose partners for an tedious 8-hour task. They were allowed to ask as many questions as they wanted before making a decision of who they wanted to be partners w/. What were their findings and what do they suggest?

Answer 56

• Depressed patients asked more total questions and more relevant questions
• However, depressed people were no more satisfied with their choices than the mentally healthy students
  
  • Both chose the candidate they were leaning towards
    from the start
  • Extra questions merely delayed choice made,
    depressed people more unconfident and indecisive
    Thus, it’s not necessarily that they are more logical, it could just be that they’re more indecisive and cautious

Question 57

To test the depressive realism hypothesis, particularly the component that, depressed people are more likely than average to recognize their lack of control over a situation, Alloy & Abramson (1979) had participants view green light blinks on a computer, and gave them varying degrees of control over the blinking. What were their findings and what do they suggest?

Answer 57

• When both depressed and nondepressed people are given 50% and 75% control, they estimate level of control fairly accurately
• When no control, nondepressed felt they had 40% control, depressed estimated 15%

Once again, this kind of suggests that they are more logical, but is it really more logical or is it a product of the behaviour of someone who is depressed?

Question 58

Isen et al. (1987) had participants watch either a funny or emotionally neutral clip and then asked them how to affix a candle to corkboard on the wall so that it would burn without dripping wax onto table/floor. What were the results and what do they suggest?

Answer 58

People who watched the funny clip vs. neutral clip were more likely to solve the problem

Happy mood frees people to see new possibilities and to be more creative

Question 59

Most studies show sadness/anxiety to either inhibit or have no correlation with creativity, however, ____ has mixed results depending on the circumstances.

Answer 59

Anger

• E.g. Yang & Hung (2015) found that in a group situation, hostility toward other people’s suggestions may facilitate generation of your own ideas
• Thus, if you are competing w/ someone to be creative that energy can be devoted to boost creativity

Question 60

The Affect infusion model states that _________ influences our judgements and decisions

Answer 60

The current emotion felt

• With greater influences the more complicated and unanticipated situations become (i.e. the more cognitive processing is required)
• Positive moods lead to positive evaluations, negative moods lead to negative evaluations (independent of target evaluated)

Question 61

The fact that stock prices slightly go up on sunny vs. rainy days supports which model?

Answer 61

The Affect infusion model

• Not only that if you’re in a happy mood that you will look at your environment positively, you’re environment (if pleasant) also influences your mood and vice versa
• Sunny vs. rainy day effect goes away if consciously aware of the weather’s effect on you

Question 62

Lerner, Small & Loewenstein (2004) asked people to estimate value of a pen, gave it to them, and then asked if they would be willing trade the pen in for the valued monetary amount. What were their findings and what do they suggest?

Answer 62

• Those in a neutral/happy mood refuse, but those in a sad mood accepted
• When we feel good, what we are contemplating is good/valuable so we don’t want to lose it
• When we feel bad, we assume what we are thinking about is also bad

Question 63

Describe the somatic marker hypothesis

Answer 63

We make a decision by imaging the emotional consequences of various possible choices, and then selecting the choice with the best outcome
- Somatic marker refers to the brain’s representation of the physiological response you would feel in each possible outcome
- E.g. choosing to illegally park car to get to lecture
hall/exam
- Getting parking ticket vs. making it on time vs.
getting car towed vs. failing exam
- The option that elicits the strongest emotional
physiological response would be prioritized

Question 64

Sinacuer et al. (2005) asked people if they would decrease their consumption of beef if they thought it had a small chance of contamination of “mad cow disease” vs. “bovine spongiform encephalopathy”. Mad cow disease sound scarier (both are the same), so more people expressed avoidance for that phrasing. What does this suggest with respect to the somatic marker hypothesis?

Answer 64

• One implication of the somatic marker hypothesis is that your emotional reaction might change your decision, even when the actual outcome would be the same
• Outcomes are the same, but if one feels/sounds better to you emotionally you will bias yourself to pick that decision

Question 65

Sometimes ________ aids in making a choice

Answer 65

Following gut instinct
What is considered a good value judgement is often requires some evaluation of emotions

Question 66

• Wilson et al. (1993) conducted a study to evaluate choices based on preferences and values. Describe their methods

Answer 66

Had each participant sit in front of several posters
- Half wrote about what they liked/dislike about the
posters
- Other half spent time writing about why and how
they chose their major (neutral task)
- Experimenters invited each participant to take one of the posters home as a gift
- 3 weeks later, experimenter contacted participants and asked how much they liked the posters

Question 67

• Wilson et al. (1993) conducted a study to evaluate choices based on preferences and values. Describe their findings for those that analyzed the pros/cons of posters and what they suggest

Answer 67

Those that analyzed the pros/cons of posters were less satisfied than the control group

• When people spend time debating a choice, they become more aware of pros/cons of each possibility, and worry later about whether they made the wrong choice
• If you list pros/cons, you focus on features easy to put into words than how you feel about possibilities
  
  • E.g. Thinking about how posters would fit on wall vs.
    how aesthetically pleasing they are

Question 68

The effect from Wilson et al’s (1993) study was also seen by Dijksterhuis & van Olden (2006). They gave choice of posters/other prizes to participants but had them either take time to make choice or spend time doing a distracting task. Describe their findings

Answer 68

Found that distracted group liked their choice better, suggesting that unconscious thinking better
- However, results had small sample size and were not replicable at larger ones

If anything may suggest one should not overthink choices too much

Question 69

Trolley Dilemma: pull a lever to kill one person, but save 5 people from a broken trolley Footbridge Dilemma: push someone off a footbridge to kill them, but save 5 people from a broken trolley.
Even though logically it is the same one person dying, which do people expect to feel more guilty from?

Answer 69

People expect to feel more guilty for pushing rather than pulling lever

• People feel more guilt after committing harm by commission than harm by omission
  
  • Likely means they would be more comfortable not
    pull lever at all and letting 5 people die

Question 70

What is a downside of relying on emotions?

Answer 70

Emotions are especially misleading when we don’t know or pay attention to the probabilities of possible outcomes

• E.g. Most ppl would be more willing to risk $1 for a 1% chance to win $100 rather than $1 for a 50% chance to win $2
  
  • Both have same statistical probability of the same
    pay out, but the bigger reward is more emotionally
    rewarding

Question 71

After watching favourite sports team win game, people are more willing to make risky investment. What model is this finding consistent with?

Answer 71

Consistent with affect infusion model because if you feel happy and the environment feels less threatening you’re going to be more willing to take the risk