Quiz 3 Flashcards
What is the facial expression of anger?
- Skin of forehead is pulled tight by action of the muscles that lower the brows
- Brows are drawn sharply downward and inward, creating a bulge above nasal root
- Eyes appear narrow or widened but brows are lowered (eyes hooded)
- Raising mound of chin and lower lip
- Tightly closed mouth (U-shape)
Why does an angry face look the way it does?
- B.c look more maturity and its associated with dominance and higher status
Is anger a negative state?
- Subjective experience of anger is negative
- May be positive, anger is correlated with being active, strong, determined = PANAS scale and has to do with attacking (approach motivation)
What is the prototypical cause of anger in appraisal research?
- Things are not being the way they ought to be
- Harmon-Jones: is the appraisal of cause actually preceding anger or does it follow it (someone is warm, sees person come in room, may start getting angry for no reason-find reason/cause to be angry)
What is instrumental behavior?
- Instrumental behavior: the goal is to change the situation or to reduce emotional distress
What are the different action tendencies in instrumental behavior?
- Action tendency: aggression against instigator (direct psych. aggression and somewhat direct physical aggression
- Action is controlled: people inhibit direct physical aggr the most then direct psych. and indirect aggression the least
- Action: in half cases people report engaging in direct psych. aggr. in 1/3 indirect aggression, 1/10 direct physical aggr.
What are the reported expressive reactions and physiology of anger?
- General tension, feeling restless, frowning, flushing or rise temperature
- Less common: shaking, cracking voice, crying, nervous laughter
What is the reported reassessment when it comes to anger (most to less likely)?
- See other as less important, reduce importance of event, see ones own role in incident, see other motives in a more positive light
When does reassessment occur?
- Occurs most often when instigator is loved one or is someone of higher authority
- Occurs the least when instigator is stranger
How is reassessment useful?
- Reported anger is less intense
- Reported anger episodes is shorter in duration
How do people perceive anger as beneficial?
- Get other person to change attitude or behavior
- Increased mutual understanding
- Increased self-understanding on part of angry person (own strength and weaknesses)
- Release of tension
How do people perceive anger as maladaptive?
- In 1/4 of cases
- Did not get expressed right way but only later
- Did not have desired impact
- Was itself an unpleasant situation
- Worsened the ongoing situation
In what situation would it be good to be angry?
- If they think it may help them get their way
- I.e: being psyched up (deliberately) getting angry when there’s a competition (video game study)
Who is more likely to express anger high or low status?
- High status bc. anger is seen as more powerful and associated with action
- May associate anger with higher social status
How does anger affect the attentional scope?
- It narrows the attentional scope
- Tested using anger evoking image and then a Navon letter (big F composed of small H)
- SS responded faster to local than global targets
Where does the visual attention go when angry?
- Tested SS rewarding image = found angry SS focused more on rewarding image, excited SS focused same thing as angry, fear SS did not differ from control
- Threatening image = angry and excited SS focused on image as much as control, fearful focused more on image than control
- Therefore, anger influences visual attention and increases attention to rewarding but not threatening info
When angry how do you see others in contrast to sadness?
- See others as causing the event
- When angry at someone or something you see the person as the cause (not circumstance or chance)
- Sadness: sad people are more likely to see events as being caused by circumstances
How do angry people perceive risk vs people who are fearful?
- Angry people see negative events as predictable under human control and caused by others
- Fearful people see negative events as unpredictable and determined by different situations people are in
How is anger effective in negotiations?
- Effective when the other person has poor alternatives
- Comments: expressing anger may backfire and escalate another persons anger, might be aversive and lead to avoidance, good only for short and single shot negotiations
What are the differences between sadness and grief?
- Sadness: part of grieving, takes less time to heal (time), one and related emotion, specific based tied to sense of loss (cognitive representation), coping is more limited in scope
- Grief: Felt when someone you love dies, takes longer to heal (time), multiple and conflicting emotions, profound and broad assessment of world and yourself (cognitive representation), multifaceted coping
How does grief include positive emotions?
- Expressing positive emotions earlier in bereavement predicts long term adjustment
- Beneficial for social relationships and positive emotions regulate negative emotions
- Pendulum: up and down of emotions and with time this friction causes ups and downs to be less and so there is a stabilization of emotion
What are the most common and less common patterns of grief?
- 50-85% have moderate disruptions in initial months with an approx. return to normal by the end of the first year
- 15% show serious disruptions later
What are other varieties of grief experiences with minimal grief?
- 15-50% show little or no overt signs of disrupted functioning and there are no serious disruptions later on
- Hidden grief: pattern of emotions being upbeat but arousal reaction makes it seem that it is harder than what they are saying, show better function in long term than ones who are more openly distressed
What are the types of cognitive disorganization that happens with grief?
- Preoccupation and confusion
- Disturbances of identity
- Sense of disturbed future
- Long term search for meaning
- Dysphoria: negative emotions
- Pining or yearning
- Loneliness
What are the health deficits that come with grief experiences?
- Health complaints
- Immune functioning
- Mortality: Denmark study found for people who were 60yrs and older (natural causes)
In grief, what are the disrupted social and occupational functioning?
- Social withdrawal
- Negative impact on others
- Role disruptions
- Difficulties with new relationships
What are the positive aspects of bereavement?
- Laughter, positive emotions, appraisal and beliefs, and thoughts
What is the grief work theory?
- The assumptions is that the grieving person experiences great distress initially
- Goal is to detach oneself from the lost partner, give up the attachment bond with deceased
Does the grief work theory have enough evidence?
- Little evidence to support the theory
- Initial distress or symptoms depression may be mild or not occur
- absence of significant distress doesn’t indicate pathology
- Evidence that more preoccupation with the loss early on is often tied to more distress later
What is the stage theories of grief?
- People go through a standard set of stages when experiencing grief
- Kubler Ross stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance
- Little evidence of this theory
What is the attachment perspective?
- Grief is behavior that fosters proximity with the object of attachment
- Grief shows an initial protest response, followed by despair and disorganization once person realizes that deceased cannot return
- Stage model and doesn’t hold up but some is supported
What is the continuing bonds?
- People may maintain a positive bond with the deceased
- Allow for greater stability in their sense of identity
- Outside Western European cultures supports continued relationship with deceased
What is the useful contribution of attachment perspective?
- Focus on individual differences in attachment
- People develop and attachment style based on early experience with significant caregivers and carried forward into other close relationships
- The focus on ambivalence is relevant to grief
How is ambivalence relevant to grief?
- Involves both desire and rejection of loved one, with implication that they experience distress and difficulty coming to any sense of resolution of the loss
- People with more intense initial grief reactions become more ambivalent toward their partner over time and to remember the relationship less favorably
What is the definition of gratitude?
- Positive emotion that may be felt with the receipt of a gift
- Gift is perceived by recipient as positive, intentional and beneficial
- People feel gratitude for who a person is
Gratitude is greater if gift is more costly
What is the difference between state and trait gratitude?
- State: experienced in the moment by people who think about something or someone they are grateful for
- Trait: stable individual difference, disposition to be appreciative for perceived benefits or positive aspects of ones life (perceiving first then appreciating)
What is higher trait gratitude associated with?
- higher life satisfaction, low depression, more empathetic concern, more forgiveness, more religious and spiritually oriented, low neuroticism and high agreeableness
- Less materialistic (savor benefits of material and non material), less envious
What is reciprocity?
- About fair exchange between people
- Basic rule in social interaction and if not respected = punished or shunned by others
What are the 4 basic components of all social relationship?
- Communal sharing: sharing things in common and treating each other as equals
- Authority ranking
- Equality matching: even balance = in-kind reciprocity
- Market pricing: pay or exchange for commodities in proportion to what is received
How does gratitude relate to reciprocity?
- people who are grateful toward another are more likely to help that person in turn
- Encourage more give and take which establishes or strengthens relationships
What is compassion?
- Other oriented emotional state that arises in response to another’s suffering and motivates one to act in a prosocial manner to alleviate another suffering
