Responding to Emotion

Question 1

If emotion expressions are adaptations, what is their function?

Answer 1

For many expressions, apparent links between action tendency / function of emotion and facial movements of expression.

Question 2

Anger:

Answer 2

Action tendency = attack; facial movement looks like a snarl

Question 3

Disgust:

Answer 3

Need to avoid or expel toxic substances; facial movement closes nasal passage and pushes objects out of mouth

Question 4

Fear:

Answer 4

Need to detect threats in environment and signal fear to group members; wide eyes are recognisable and increase visual field; flared nostrils increase air capacity

Question 5

Facial expressions:

Answer 5

reflect both internal feeling states and the social intentions / motivations of the expresser

Question 6

Prosody:

Answer 6

refers to the nonverbal components of speech that convey information, particularly emotion information.

To a large extent, affective signals in the voice are uncontrollable.

Question 7

Voice expression:

Answer 7

Voice primarily conveys the degree to which a person is physiologically aroused, but nothing about specific emotion states (Bachorowshki, 1999).

E.g. anger and joy involve increases in pitch and loudness (both high-arousal states)

Question 8

Key acoustic properties of emotion:

Answer 8

• Pitch
• Loudness
• Rhythm and tempo
• Breathiness
• Nasality
• Glottal excitation (e.g., different vowels and consonants)

Question 9

Attention refers to

Answer 9

a cluster of processes that focuses awareness on to a particular part of your experience.

Question 10

Emotional faces capture attention…

Answer 10

• Particularly those that communicate threat (anger, fear expressions)
• Even when presentation is brief (20 ms)

Question 11

Broaden-and-build theory predicted…

Answer 11

broadening of attention during positive emotion state

Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005

Question 12

Whole-person emotion expression is…

Answer 12

contributed to by face, the body and voice emotion signals

Question 13

Emotions hold…

Answer 13

our attention, making it more difficult to disengage from object

Question 14

Suggested level of arousal, rather than valence, determines…

Answer 14

narrowing of attentional scope

Question 15

Weapon focus

Answer 15

(Loftus et al., 1987)

Witnesses to a crim are in a state of heightened arousal, and scope of attention narrows to threatening stimulus (like a gun). This reduces the amount of extraneous information they can take in, like an accurate description of the suspect’s clothing.

Question 16

Emotion-Congruence hypothesis…

Answer 16

• Predicted by associate network models
• Objects and events with same emotional significance as current emotion state will be perceived, processed, and categorised more efficiently.

Question 17

Emotion-congruence hypothesis is tested using…

Answer 17

lexical decision task.

• Faster to correctly identify strings of letters as words when the words’ meaning matched their current affective state (happy participants recognised GLEE as a real word faster than sad participants).
• Emotion category specific (happiness does not facilitate processing of words related to other positive emotion states).

Question 18

Memory is…

Answer 18

active, constructive process

Question 19

Emotions influence what we remember…

Answer 19

how and when we are most likely to retrieve memories

Question 20

What is the key predictor of how well an event is remembered?

Answer 20

Arousal

Question 21

Mood-dependent memory

Answer 21

Better retrieval during a specific emotional state of any information that was learned during that same state.

Question 22

Information Processing vs Heuristic Cues:

Answer 22

People vary in how deeply and analytically
they process and evaluate incoming information vs. relying on heuristic cues

Happiness makes people less likely to be influenced by the arguments contained
in a persuasive message and more likely to be influenced by heuristics (compared
to sad people)

Question 23

Appraisal Tendency Framework…

Answer 23

can also explain these results: high certainty
emotions should be associated with more superficial processing because person feels in control and believes they understand environment

Question 24

Hedonic View:

Answer 24

Individuals seek to experience and maintain positive affective states.

Happy people will avoid engaging in any task that could alter their positive state.

Negative affective states want to change what they are feeling and will therefore process information in a careful manner to find a way to change their emotional
state (Isen, 1987).

Question 25

Informational Models:

Answer 25

Positive state informs person that the environment is secure, and no action is needed, so no need to engage in careful processing.

Negative state indicates problem in environment, so resources should be
invested to resolve it (Bless et al., 1990)

Question 26

Somatic Processing:

Answer 26

Different choices in a decision are “marked” by a particular emotional expectation stored in memory (Damasio, 1994)

Bodily feedback, such as increased arousal, occurs in response to particular choices, signaling to the person that it is risky or undesirable

Question 27

Emotion regulation…

Answer 27

Ways people influence the intensity, duration, and
type of emotions they do/do not experience,

the situations under which they experience a given
emotion, and how and whether they eventually
express those emotions (Gross, 1999).

Sometimes regulation either intentional or automatic

Emotions are sometimes undesirable because they are unpleasant or inconsistent with social norms

Question 28

Hedonic motives:

Answer 28

Current emotion state is psychologically unpleasant

Question 29

Instrumental motives:

Answer 29

Believe current emotion is inappropriate to the task you need to perform

Question 30

Pro social motives:

Answer 30

Want to protect the feelings of others

Question 31

Self protection motives:

Answer 31

Protect personal safety, avoid negative consequences, or elicit reaction from another

Question 32

Impression Management motives:

Answer 32

Wanting to express or experience an emotion

that is prescribed as appropriate for a given context

Question 33

Emotion regulation strategies… Antecedent focused emotion regulation:

Answer 33

Attempts to control or

modulate emotion before it has been elicited

Question 34

Emotion regulation strategies… Response focused:

Answer 34

Modification of the expressive, subjective, or

physiological aspects of an emotion that is already occurring