Nature & Function of emotions

Question 1

What are emotions?

Answer 1

What are emotions?
- Positive or negative affective states
- Pattern of cognitive (thoughts), physiological (physical) & behavioural reactions to events
Link between motivation & emotion
- React emotionally when goals are gratified, threatened, or frustrated
Strong reaction to important goals

Question 2

Adaptive value of emotions

Answer 2

- Direct attention – Arousal system
Negative emotions (ex. Fright)
- Narrow attention – increased physiological activation
Positive emotions (ex. Love)
- Broaden thinking – exploration & skill learning
Social Communication
- Information about internal site
Influence others’ behaviour towards us

Question 3

Behavioural Component

Answer 3

Instrumental behaviours
- Directed at achieving a goal
Emotions – Behaviour
Calls to action
- Engage in instrumental behaviour

• Yerkes-Dodson Law: relationship between arousal & performance
• Can enhance performance for simple motor tasks

Can interfere with complex mental & physical tasks

Question 4

Theories of emotion

Answer 4

• Common sense – Stimulus-emotion-bodily reaction
• Stand-up comedian-amusement-laughter
• James Lange (1884-1885): Conscious experience of emotion results from perception of the autonomic response
• Body informs mind
• Physiological reactions determine emotions
• Stimulus-bodily reaction-emotion
  Problems
• Autonomic arousal without emotion (ex. Working out)
• Different emotions have almost identical patterns of autonomic arousal (ex. Fear, anger, anxiety, anticipation)
• Cannon-Bard (1927, 1934): Thalamus sends parallel signals to the cortex (conscious experience) and autonomic nervous system (visceral arousal)
• Conscious feeling and autonomic arousal occur simultaneously
• Stimulus – Brain stimulates autonomic/muscular activity (arousal/action) + cognitive activity (experience of emotion)
• Ex. The comedian makes me laugh and amused
• Schachter’s Two Factor Model (1962): Experience visceral arousal, see situational cues, combine pattern of arousal with external cues, label emotions
• Physiological arousal + cognitive labelling determine emotion
• Physiological around = how strongly we feel (factor 1)
• Labelling= what we feel (factor 2)
  Ex. I label my laughter as amusement (instead of nervousness) because the comedian is funny

Question 5

Detecting Deception

Answer 5

Truth bias: assumption that people are honest
- Makes us poor detectors of lies (base rate fallacy)
People can correctly detect lies around 50% of the time
Confidence in truth detection ability
Not related to accuracy rates!

Question 6

Lying and Lie Detection

Answer 6

Polygraph tests
- Based on idea that lying is associated with certain autonomic arousal (Pinocchio response)
- Main flaw- High # of false positives – the test incorrectly labels innocent individuals as guilty at a high rate
- Truth serum- barbiturates (similar to being more truthful when really drunk)
- Detect lying using micro- expressions
Facial expressions