Psy Exam 2 Flashcards
Emotions:
Physiological state that connects our concerns/goals to events of the world
Gives priority and urgency telling us what to focus on and how to navigate our social world
crossing the road and almost being ran over
This shows Fear as the motivator from getting hit
There’s a concern for self-preservation
Multiple Componenets:
Three domains: thoughts, biology/brain, behavior
Behavior means you can absorb it
Domains of Emotion:
Personality development
Judgment of self/others/world
Social behavior, communication, relationship
Morality
Mental well being
Affect/Affective science:
Umbrella term for describing feelings’
Anything to do with feelings
Emotions:
are brief/specific/and out in the world
mood
background/free-flowing
Waking up in a mood
Emotional disorders:
Longer duration
Can cause impairment by interfering with life
Personality traits:
Long term
example is being kind
It can last a lifetime
Noneverbal behavior:
gestures we do with our body language to communicate or make more vivid
Emblems:
Gestures that translate directly to a word or phrase
Peace, fuck you, Ok
Regulators
Gestures that coordinate conversation
Regulates who we are talking to
Initiating the conversation and negotiating the turn talking
Illustrators:
Gestures that accompany speech to enhance, make visual, or more vivid
EX Tap watch to emphasize “we need to go”
Self Adaptor
Random fidgeting behavior with no meaning
Releasing nervous energy
EX Twirling hair
Principle of serviceable habits:
Human expressions derived from deep evolutionary time
behaviors from past species
Principle of Anthisisis
Emotions that come from opposites
Emotions that mean the opposite thing but have opposite display
Ex: growing bigger when feeling pride or getting smaller when feeling shame
Principle of nervous discharge
Release nervous energy
Random jitter that does not mean anything but is still nonverbal behavior
Elkam’s study of the universality of emotional expression
There are six universal emotions
Anger, fear, surprise, disgust, sadness, and joy
Decoding hypthesis:
Ppl from diff cultures interpret expression in same way
Encoding hypothesis
Ppl from different cultures produce the same expression during the experience
Deeoding:
interpret
Decode:
To produce
Parasympathetic:
Rest and digest
Decrease heart rate and blood pressure but increase digestion
Top of spinal chord
Sympathetic
Fight or flight
Increases blood pressure and shuts down the digestive system
Located in the thoracic/lumbar or middle of the spine or below the neck
Amygdala:
Small almond shape structure in the limbic system
Critical appraisal mechanism in emotion
Quickly computes the emotional significance of events
Stores emotional events/memory/conditioning
Amygdala function
Input directly from visual and auditory systems via thalumus and cortex
low road:
for fast action from stimulus straight to amygdala
Sensory Cortext or High road:
where we can think about stimulus and we can relfect on it in the sensory complex
We can think abou the meaning/significance of an event
Secondary Appraisals
Secondary conscious analysis of the meaning of an event
Gives rise to positive and negative emotion
Think about event and why it matters to me
Related to goal and relationship to event
Different Conceptions of Secondary Appraisals
Different conceptions but main idea is that we process events and relate them to ourselves when we think about emotions
Tertiary appraisal
sharing/expressing/communicating our emotions by talking, writing,teaching
Externalysing emotion
Expressive writing
Writing in an uncensored way for 15 minutes
Expressive writing increases immune function, relieves depression, boosts grades, all by externalizing emotions
Who benefits from expressive writting
Healthy and sick
Young and poor, old an rich, eurpopeeans, americans, asians
Measuring subjective experience/phenomenology
Subjective but very real
rate pain using a number from 1 to 10
It’s not great but it does give an idea of how one feels
Rationalize
Discrepancies lead to dissonance
Cognitive dissonance
An uncomfortable mental state resulting from a contradiction resulting between two attitudes between an attitude and behavior
Examples of cognitive dissonance:
Smoking:
Smoking can kill me
How to reduce dissonance
Quit smoking
Question the evidence
Call on alternative reasoning
Postdecisional dissonance and example
Dissonance arises when a person holds positive attitudes about different options but has to choose between two choices.
An ex is choosing a college and then thinking positively about the one you choose and negative thoughts about the other school.
This happens automatically with minimal cognitive processing and happens with no warning
Justifying effort and example
When someone is put through pain or torture to join a group and the group turns out to be boring, they will experience dissonance
They’ll deal with dissonance by making it feel more important than it really is
Example: joining a frat
Self perception theory and example
Looking at behavior then analyising the attitude
If you eat six burgers you can infer that you were hungry
Self esteem is a shape of dissonance
We want to see ourselve in a positive light
We want to feel about what we do or went through
Affect/feeling
Feeling or how we feel about something or self
State self-esteem
How i feel right now
immediate/momentary
Will shift according to situationbs
Trait self-esteem
How do i typically feel about myself throughout situation
A kind of avareging
Narcissism epidemic
Between 1979 and 2006 there was a rise in narcissism among college students
What caused narcissism
Programs aimed at improving self esteem
Such as songs about how great you are
Grading practices where everyone gets an A
Making ppl feel extraordinarily capable even when not deserved
Social media
This is controversial bc not everyone agrees
Sociometer theory
Leary and colleagues’ findings
Self Esteem: is a mechanism for monitoring the likelihood of social exclusion
Sociometer
An internal monitor of social acceptance or rejection
When a person has on low probability of rejection, they will have higher self-esteem
When a person is high on probability of rejection they will experience low self esteem
Self Esteem and delinquency/crime
Feeling unaccepteed leeads to higher chances of crime
association/deliquent behavior
Joing a gang can raise self-esteem
Mental health condition mechanisms
ostracism/abandonment/rejection can cause emotional and behavior problems
A sociometer aspect
Terror management theory
Human cognittive capacities to know we will die
Our fear of death drive social behavior
Creates a sense of fear and terror
People’s beliefs need to be strengthened or protected when reminded of death
Example of terror management theory
Christians have normal attitude towards jews until reminded of death and then they become more hostile
Mortality Salience:
Led to more positive evaluations of the ingroup member
Led to more negative evaluations of outsid regroup member
Terror management and social identity
Through identification with social groups the person can feel like they will live on forever
The group becomes an immortal entity
Examples of terror management and social identity:
Donating to a school
Bearing children
Achirevment
Mimicry study
In a study a person mimics everything a test subject does and by end of study the subject likes the other person
Informational influence
Influence of other ppl results form taking their comments/actions as source of info about what is
correct/propper/effective
Auto kinetic solution
Using others for information
The sense that a stationary point of light in a darkened room is moving
In a test, one person said light was moving and they estimated how much it was moving, and as ppl gave estimates, they all eventually agreed on one speed creating a group norm
Normative influence
Doing what others think/do so we won’t be rejected/ostracized
The need to belong/be approved will make ppl conform
Asch Study
A test of two ppl giving wrong answer and the subject eventually ends up conforming with them
¾ of participants conform to the wrong answers
Obedience
When a person follows the orders of a person of authority
The Milgram experiment
An experiment that proved that ppl would do horrible things when instructed to do so by an authority figure
Individuals who are concerned about what others think of them are more prone to be obedient
Obedience deceereases with greater distance from authority
Ordered by authority to shock ppl doing test eventually leading to lethal charge
Stanford prison experiment
The students transformed into the sosocial roles they were playing
Students were put into roles of prisoner and officer and studets started acting like their role
This shows that situations can be powerful
Humans seem to innate tendecncie to comply with social influence
