Week 11 - Emotional Behaviour Flashcards

1
Q

Describe the meaning of emotions, moods, and motivation?

A

Emotion: temporary changes in feelings and behaviours, elicited by particular events/memories
Moods: longer-term patterns of behaviour or feelings without an obvious external trigger
Motivation: why? influences by moods and emotion, but motivation is the main driver for behaviour.

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2
Q

Explain emotions from an evolutionary perspective, and why it is important to look at emotions through this lens? *

A

Without it considering why emotions may have evolved, and how they might work (evolutionary), it is difficult to understand: motivated behaviour, and emotion processing for survival and reproduction

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3
Q

Outline some of the non-evolutionary theories of emotions and why they are limited? *

A

Circumflex model and other variations - characterise emotions as points on some kind of continuum/emotional space. They don’t do anything but captures the real variance of emotional states/experiences- only coincidental/made-up, doesn’t capture function of emotions.

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4
Q

Explain Ekman’s 6 ‘basic’ emotions? *

A

Anger, Sadness, Happiness, Fear, Disgust, and Surprise, where each of these discrete, unlearned (1) basic emotions have an associated characteristic facial expression. Or (2) complex (by combining them). But in reality, there are many more that can be debated (where does the distinction lie). This ideas is cross culturally consistent.

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5
Q

Explain the feelings (bodily responses) that are associated with emotions? Explain the difference in James-Lange and Cannon-Bard theories of emotions, and the evidence they support then?

A

Emotions involve bodily responses, caused by activation of the autonomic NS (tears), probably actual motor response (relaxed spread out, scared pull in)…

Explanation: James-Lange (fear and joy feel different because they have different physiological arousal patterns) and Cannon-Bard (Tried to analyse the brains role in emotional responses using cats, thalamus to cerebral cortex (feeling) and hypothalamus - bodily response). The theories emphasise emotion eliciting stimuli directly produce the appropriate responses - both differed in the way emotion feelings are generated.

But, Both forget a functional aspect, saying the actual feeling (physiological response) is not associated with the response behaviour, only stimuli).

James-Lange: predicts different emotional states should have different physiological states associated with them. Support for this theory includes study on spinal cord damage and emotional experiences, because emotion depends on bodily feedback (It was shown it does). Also forcing muscle movements (pen in mouth making a smile), effects positive ratings of picture (whilst holding a fake smile).

Cannon-bard: Does not, physiological arousal is just physiological arousal, emotional states is due to attribution (this events caused this, so I must be happy/sad).
Support for this theory: Injecting people with epinephrine (like adrenaline), and a saline (placebo). Then used confederates to falsely act (euphoric or angry) towards to subject - thus attributing their happiness/physiological state towards that stimuli (angry/happy confederate)..

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6
Q

Outline the areas of the brain that are involved in emotion? Explain how emotion is lateralised within the brain?

A

Limbic System: emotional regulation/experience (Detecting, producing, responding). But, many other brain areas are used in emotions.

(1) Insula cortex processes disgust, where damage here causes a disgust-specific deficit, and you don’t respond to smells and pictures that would normally warrant response, and also to pictures of someone portraying the emotion of disgust (emotional and moral disgust responding). For example, someone previously found homosexuals disgusting, now they don’t (evidence). Disgust is a functional emotion, as expels things from the mouth as well (as seen in babies).
(2) Lateralised (one sided favour) emotional cortical processing (parts of cortex), right is more important than left for emotions. The right puts the Prosody in language (different emotion into sentences, like rhythm, as seen in poetry)
(3) Chimeric faces; right hemisphere bias in processing emotions creates a left visual field bias for processing expressions (left-face bias, smirk and smile confusion).

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7
Q

Outline why emotion and motivation should not be separate for cognition?

A

there is a tendency to separate emotion and motivation, but Cognition must be functional in some way, may be influenced by emotional (or motivational) states.

Emotions play an important role in moral decision, contemplating difficult dilemmas activates prefrontal lobes cingulate cortex, and amygdala (emotional centres), and damage to these areas make illogical decision for moral dilemmas. E.g. trolley dilemma, damaged brains makes decision quickly, without emotion.

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8
Q

Explain a Behavioural System approach to understanding emotion?

A

A perspective that looks at what the emotional mechanisms are used for, as cognition and emotion as components make up the whole functional purpose - surviving and reproducing.

(1) Anger, helps defend territories, win mates and food, climb social hierarchies. The amygdala is important to generate the aggressive behaviour. There is genetic effect on aggression, where aggression and childhood abuse correlate, as well also MAOA activity. There are also hormonal effects on aggression (testosterone, and low levels of serotonin turnover - become aggressive towards everything - monkeys).
(2) Safety (fear?): avoiding dangers and threats, and deal with them adaptively. Startle response, due to spinal cord reflex, is designed to protect you from danger. Amygdala is central to fear responding and learning. Fearfulness has been shown to relate amygdala activity.

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