Week 2: Emotion and Motivation Flashcards
Define emotion
a temporary state that includes unique experiences and physiological activity, and that prepares people for action; includes mental and physical features
How do scientists map emotions?
Emotions are mapped on 2 dimensions: valence and arousal
Valence: how positive a feeling is
Arousal: how energetic the feeling is
Why do scientists map feelings rather than define them?
It is difficult to describe or define feelings, so instead scientists map them; they describe how close/far away they are to one another (ex. Excitement is closer to happiness than to anger)
What is appraisal?
conscious or unconscious evaluations and interpretations of the emotion-relevant aspects of a stimulus or event; we naturally appraise events on a number of dimensions, such as self-relevance, importance, our ability to cope with it, and our ability to control it
What is action tendency?
a readiness to engage in a specific set of emotion-relevant behaviours
What is the relationship between emotion, appraisal, and action tendency?
Appraisal leads to emotion, and
emotion leads to action tendency
(ex. something is appraised as repulsive -> emotion = disgust -> action tendency = avoidance)
What is the James-Lange theory of emotion?
Feelings are simply the perception of one’s own physiological responses to a stimulus
What 3 basic facts are at odds with the James-Lange theory of emotion?
- Some of our emotional responses happen before our bodily responses do (ex. You may feel embarrassed immediately after being pranked but your body may take 15-30 seconds to blush)
- Many things cause bodily responses without causing emotions (ex. Feeling warm makes your heart beat faster, but you aren’t afraid of being outside in the summer)
- Not every emotion has a unique set of bodily responses; different emotional experiences are sometimes associated with the same set of bodily responses, or the same emotional experience may have different bodily responses at times
What is the two-factor theory of emotion?
stimuli trigger a general state of physiological arousal, which is then interpreted as a specific emotion
What are the two different pathways that information about a stimulus travels to the amygdala?
- A “fast” pathway that goes from the eye to the thalamus and then directly to the amygdala
- A “slow” pathway that goes from the eye to the thalamus and then to the cortex and then to the amygdala
The cortex conducts a relatively slow, full-scale investigation of the information while the amygdala uses the information to determine if the stimulus is relevant to survival; if the amygdala does deem it relevant to survival, it helps produce a bodily response. Once the cortex has finished its investigation of the information it has received, it allows the cortex to downregulate the amygdala (reduce the amygdala’s activity)
When it comes to emotion, what are the amygdala and cortex responsible for?
Amygdala: creating emotion
Cortex: inhibiting emotion
What is emotional expression?
An observable sign of the emotional state
What is the universality hypothesis?
All emotional expressions mean the same thing to all people in all places and times
Which emotions are considered universal?
- Anger
- Disgust
- Fear
- Happiness
- Sadness
What is the difference between symbols and signs when it comes to emotion?
Symbols: arbitrary designations that have no causal relationship with the things (emotions) they symbolize (ex. Words, emoticons)
Signs: caused by the things (emotions) they signify (ex. Facial expressions; a smile is a sign for happiness)
The signs of an emotion can have multiple meanings (ex. Is this facial expression joy or sorrow?), so we use context to figure it out (is the person at a wedding or a funeral?)
What is the facial feedback hypothesis?
Emotional expressions can cause the emotional experiences they typically signify; may also extend to the rest of the body (ex. feeling more confident when holding your hands on your hips)
What is the benefit of mimicking others’ facial expressions, even if we don’t notice we are doing it?
helps us identify their emotion more easily; people who can’t mimic facial expression (ex. Due to paralysis or botox) and those who cannot feel certain emotions (ex. Due to damage to the amygdala) have a hard time identifying those emotions in other people
What is a display rule, and what are its four techniques?
a norm for the appropriate expression of emotion; obeying display rules requires using several techniques…
- Intensification: involves exaggerating the expression of emotions, as people do when pretending to be delighted by an unwanted gift
- Deintensification: involves muting the expression of one’s emotion, as athletes do when they lose their event but try not to look too disappointed
- Masking: expressing one emotions while feeling another, as a judge does when they try to seem interested in, rather than contemptuous of, a lawyer’s argument
- Neutralizing: showing no expression of the emotion one is feeling, as when a card player tries to keep a poker face
What are reliable muscles
Facial muscles that people cannot easily control; provide clues to the sincerity of an expression
What are some sincere facial expression features?
- Morphology: the use of reliable muscles (ex. eyes crinkling while smiling)
- Symmetrical expression
- Duration: lasting between 0.5 and 5 seconds
- Temporal patterning: starting and ending smoothly
What are some insincere facial expression features?
- Lack of eyes crinkling when smiling
- Asymmetrical expressions
- Too short or too long
- Abrupt onsets and offsets
What are some signs that someone is lying?
- Speaking more slowly
- Taking longer to respond to questions
- Responding with less detail
- A performance that is “too good” (speech lacks the small imperfections a truth-teller’s would contain)
- Less fluent, less engaging, more uncertain, and more tense
What are some signs someone is telling the truth?
- Superfluous details
- Correcting themselves
- Expressing self-doubt
What are two reasons that people are not very good at detecting lies?
- We have a tendency to believe others
2. People don’t know what to look for when trying to detect lies