Week 5 Flashcards
How to characterize emotions
- brief, specific psychological and physiological responses that help people meet goals
Give 3 characteristics of emotions
- SPECIFC - respond to specific stimuli
- BRIEF
- PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE
Define moods
- things that may not have a clear or specific reason.
What are emotional disorders?
- often stem from biological underpinnings that have little to do with a specific target.
Why do we have emotions
- help us interpret our environment
- a situation can be construed in different ways and elicit different behaviours
How do emotions prompt us to act? (3)
- gratitude motivates us to reward other for good actions
- anger motivates us to right social wrongs
- guilt motivates us to make amends.
How have emotions changed throughout history?
- society used to be wary of emotions around 2000 years ago
- attitudes have shifted toward viewing emotions as opportunities to respond effectively to situations.
Describe the evolutionary approach to emotion
- human emotional experience comes from patterns of behavior that are beneficial for our evolutionary predecessors.
What is the difference between universality vs cultural specificity?
- idea that some emotions are universal and innate
- but some emotions are specific - cultures have emotional accents or display rules
What are the 6 universal emotions?
- happiness
- sadness
- surprise
- anger
- fear
- disgust
How are our emotional expressions similar to those of other animals?
- expressions of anger resemble threat displays and attack posturing used by other mammals
- ‘open mouth pant-hoot’ in chimps - predecessor of human laughter
- non human primates showing a silent bared teeth similar to our smile.
Describe the conclusion made by Tracy and Robins
- people who are blind from birth show the same expressions as sighted people
How do emotions come to be?
- they are encoded, not learned
Define focal emotions
- emotions that are especially common in a given culture
- eg Japan: modesty
- interdependant cultures: shame and embarrassment
What are idea emotions?
- cultures differ in the emotions they value more.
- Eg in the US: excitement
What are display rules?
- cultural rules that govern how, when, and to whom people express emotion.
Which 2 muscles can stimulate an actual smile?
- zygomatic major
- orbicularis oculi
What is the role of emotions in social relationships?
- non verbal language that helps in social interactions
- help soothe a crying child, reconcile, flirt etc.
- promote commitment through motivation and signaling
Describe study by Hertenstein et al
- 2 pps sat at a table with a black curtain was in front of both
- the pps put their hands through the curtains to a common area
- one pp was instructed to convert a particular emotion by touching the other pps forearm for 1 second
- other pp had to identify which emotion was being represented, by selecting it from a list
How can emotions help us socially?
- can help us feel a part of larger social groups
- rely of emotional expression to signal status in hierarchies, eg anger can signal dominance
Give a few examples in how emotions can help us in social relationships.
- non verbal language, eg soothing a crying child, promoting commitment (signaling, motivation)
How can emotions promote commitment?
- parts of the nervous system (eg oxytocin), related to love, relationships, child bonding etc
What is the finding by Ditzen et al
- couples solved their conflicts more constructively when they inhaled oxytocin.
How can emotion promote confidence and cooperation? (Study example)
- students who were touched we more likely to go to the blackboard to solve a difficult problem
- pro basketball teams that high fives, fist bumped cooperate better and played better)
How can emotions influence perception? (Study example)
- perceive events in ways that are consistent with the emotions we feel in that moment
- eg: pops listen to uplifting music by Mozart, sad music by Mahler
- pps in positive mood more quickly recognized positive words vs negative ones and vice versa.
Broaden-and-build Hypothesis
- positive emotions broaden thought and action repertoires, helping people build social resources.
How can positive emotions broaden our thoughts and actions?
- enabling more creative thought patterns
- helping us build emotional and intellectual resources.
Describe the method and results of the Bridge study by Dutton and Aron
- female exp approached men in 2 situations: crossing a dangerous/safe bridge.
- men filled out a survey, and at the end, the experimenter gave them her number.
- more men on the dangerous bridge called the female exp, misattributed their increased heart rate to the woman.
Social intuitionist model of moral judgement
- people have automatic emotional reactions to moral situations which guide moral reasoning.
How can emotions influence moral judgements?
- to the point of moral dumbfounding (occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide a reason for this judgment)
Define morality
- regulating behavior to fit in with society
Describe the process of social intuitionist model or moral judgment.
- people first experience automatic emotional reactions
- people then use deliberative processes (cost/benefit assessment, causal attributions, norms etc)
Moral foundations theory dimensions (5)
- harm/care
- fairness/cheating
- loyalty/betrayal
- authority/subversion
- purity/degradation
What are the 2 components of happiness?
- life satisfaction - how well you think your life is going
- subjective wellbeing - peoples cognitive and affective evaluations of their lives
Affective forecasting
- predicting future emotions such as whether an event will result in happiness, or anger or sadness and for how long.
-tend to overestimate how much a romantic breakup would diminish their life satisfaction.
Why are we so bad at affective forecasting?
- immune neglect
- focalism
Immune neglect
- end envy to underestimate our resillience during negative life events, eg more painful experiences are often less upsetting than we expect them to be.
Focalism
Tendency to focus on only one aspect of an experience or event when trying to predict future emotions.
- even if one bad/good thing happens, there are still lots of things going on that can influence your happiness.
Duration neglect
- length of emotional experience has very little influence on our overall evaluation of the experience.
What are the most powerful sources of happiness?
- social relationships
How is happiness good for marriages?
- 5-to-1 ratio: partners need to express 5 positive emotions to 1 every negative one to have a successful marriage
- marriages with higher ratios are more likely to last.
