W1 Emotion Flashcards
What is Emotion?
intense, short-lived lived affective condition which involves taking an evaluative position with respect to an intentional object/event (e.g. Anger, disgust, surprise)
What is Mood?
Usually less intense and longer lasting affective state, which is not directed at any specific object, reflecting more diffuse and generalized evaluative processes (e.g., Calm, Tense, Drowsy).
What is Affective?
Any mental state involving and evaluative relationship with the environment. Important subcategories are emotion and mood.
What is Affective Well-being?
Generalized evaluation of affect that is more enduring than mood. Severely impaired affective well-being is a feature of affective disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety).
Emotion 1884 James
Bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.
Emotion 1954 Arnold and Gason
The felt tendency towards an object judged suitable, or away from an object judged unsuitable, reinforced by bodily changes.
Emotion1991 Lazarus
Organized psycho-physiological reactions to news about ongoing relationships with the environment.
Emotion 2013 Keltner, Oatley and Jenkins
Multifaceted responses to events that we see as challenges or opportunities in our inner or outer world, events that are important to our goals - particularly our social goals.
Emotions are made up of what?
Reaction to a stimulus(= Physiological response, attentional orientation)
Appraisal (= relevance to goals, evaluation of meaning),
Organization of response (=overt action, facial expression).
Discrete/categorial Model
a set of basic and fundamental emotions exists = innate, universal, irreducible and correspond to specific neurophysiological systems (= facial expressions).
6 basic emotions (now 7: contentment)
Evidence for basic emotion (Discrete/Categorical Model)
Ekman et al. 1972
Tribe in New Guinea who had never been exposed to Western cultures, imagine how they would feel in a certain situation and their facial expressions.
Their facial expression were then shown to American students, they were able to identify the emotions.
Evidence against basic emotions (Discrete/Categorical Models)
Facial expression don’t reflect the emotion, they’re a social tool to communicate emotions. Context is important. Facial expression of the valence of the emotion (positive or negative) but less so on the individual basic emotion were universal.
Dimensional Models = The circumplex model of affect .
Emotions arise from two dimensions: Pleasure and Arousal. Each emotion is the linear combination of these two dimensions. Happiness = high pleasure and moderate arousal. Anxiety= low pleasure and high arousal. (+)
Dimensional Models = Darwin’s Theory (evolutionary adaptations)
Emotions are innate, unlearned, biological responses consisting of a complex set of movements.
Emotions evolved because they allowed humans and animals to survive and reproduce. Universal and important to understand other species emotions to our survival.
Dimensional Models = James-Lange Theory (bodily response)
Emotions = the experience of the sets of bodily changes that occur in response to emotive cues in the world. Event happens = brain reactions = emotions as feedback.
1- Emotion producing situations elicit appropriate set of physiological responses (trembling, sweating) and behaviours (clenching of the fists).
2- Brain receives sensory feedback from muscles and organs producing these responses.
3- Feelings of emotions consist of this feedback.
Critical evaluation of James-Lange Theory by CANON
Activity does not differentiate all emotion states. The same bodily changes occur in non-emotional states (fever, exposure to cold) Separating organs from brain in animals does not impair emotion behaviour. Body changes too slow to be a source of emotional feeling.
Dimensinal models = Cannon-Bard Theory = Thalamic theory of emotion (brain response)
The hypothalamus (involved in emotional response to stimuli).
Physiological changes in the body and the subjective experience of emotion occur simultaneously. Responses are inhibited by neocortical regions- removal of cortex allows uncontrolled emotion displays
Influenced by lesion studies = Decorticated cats had sudden and inappropriate anger outbursts
(Case of Phineas Gage injuries to prefrontal cortices - problems with emotional processing.)
Schachter & Singer theory (Biopsychosocial)
Physiological arousal alone does not explain all emotional reactions. Physiological arousal requires cognitive assessment to determine whether the state of arousal corresponds to anger, happiness, fear ect. Emotions determined jointly by perception of physiological responses + cognitive appraisal.
(Mis)Attributing the cause of emotion = wrongly attributed to different aspect of situation (Dutton and Aron bridge + male participants arousal)
Social factors implicated in emotions how?
Social direction (what is the emotion directed to?), Appraisal of emotions depends on social factors (presence of others), our emotions affect other people, emotions elicit soical sharing of emotions, regulation of emotion due to their impact on other.
Emotion contagion (Hatfield et al. 1994)
The tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations postures, and movements with those of another person’s and, consequently, to converge emotionally.
Function of emotion contagion (Hazy & Boyatzis, 2015)
Enable emotional understanding and identification with others.
Provide a proto-organizing state that enables or prevents cooperative responses.
Emotion contagion Home
Joiner (1994) showed that individuals living with a depressed roommate were more likely to become depressed themselves.