Week 5

Question 1

How to characterize emotions

Answer 1

• brief, specific psychological and physiological responses that help people meet goals

Question 2

Give 3 characteristics of emotions

Answer 2

• SPECIFC - respond to specific stimuli
• BRIEF
• PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE

Question 3

Define moods

Answer 3

• things that may not have a clear or specific reason.

Question 4

What are emotional disorders?

Answer 4

• often stem from biological underpinnings that have little to do with a specific target.

Question 5

Why do we have emotions

Answer 5

• help us interpret our environment
• a situation can be construed in different ways and elicit different behaviours

Question 6

How do emotions prompt us to act? (3)

Answer 6

• gratitude motivates us to reward other for good actions
• anger motivates us to right social wrongs
• guilt motivates us to make amends.

Question 7

How have emotions changed throughout history?

Answer 7

• society used to be wary of emotions around 2000 years ago
• attitudes have shifted toward viewing emotions as opportunities to respond effectively to situations.

Question 8

Describe the evolutionary approach to emotion

Answer 8

• human emotional experience comes from patterns of behavior that are beneficial for our evolutionary predecessors.

Question 9

What is the difference between universality vs cultural specificity?

Answer 9

• idea that some emotions are universal and innate
• but some emotions are specific - cultures have emotional accents or display rules

Question 10

What are the 6 universal emotions?

Answer 10

• happiness
• sadness
• surprise
• anger
• fear
• disgust

Question 11

How are our emotional expressions similar to those of other animals?

Answer 11

• 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.

Question 12

Describe the conclusion made by Tracy and Robins

Answer 12

• people who are blind from birth show the same expressions as sighted people

Question 13

How do emotions come to be?

Answer 13

• they are encoded, not learned

Question 14

Define focal emotions

Answer 14

• emotions that are especially common in a given culture
• eg Japan: modesty
• interdependant cultures: shame and embarrassment

Question 15

What are idea emotions?

Answer 15

• cultures differ in the emotions they value more.
• Eg in the US: excitement

Question 16

What are display rules?

Answer 16

• cultural rules that govern how, when, and to whom people express emotion.

Question 17

Which 2 muscles can stimulate an actual smile?

Answer 17

• zygomatic major
• orbicularis oculi

Question 18

What is the role of emotions in social relationships?

Answer 18

• non verbal language that helps in social interactions
• help soothe a crying child, reconcile, flirt etc.
• promote commitment through motivation and signaling

Question 19

Describe study by Hertenstein et al

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

How can emotions help us socially?

Answer 20

• can help us feel a part of larger social groups
• rely of emotional expression to signal status in hierarchies, eg anger can signal dominance

Question 21

Give a few examples in how emotions can help us in social relationships.

Answer 21

• non verbal language, eg soothing a crying child, promoting commitment (signaling, motivation)

Question 22

How can emotions promote commitment?

Answer 22

• parts of the nervous system (eg oxytocin), related to love, relationships, child bonding etc

Question 23

What is the finding by Ditzen et al

Answer 23

• couples solved their conflicts more constructively when they inhaled oxytocin.

Question 24

How can emotion promote confidence and cooperation? (Study example)

Answer 24

• 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)

Question 25

How can emotions influence perception? (Study example)

Answer 25

• 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.

Question 26

Broaden-and-build Hypothesis

Answer 26

• positive emotions broaden thought and action repertoires, helping people build social resources.

Question 27

How can positive emotions broaden our thoughts and actions?

Answer 27

• enabling more creative thought patterns
• helping us build emotional and intellectual resources.

Question 28

Describe the method and results of the Bridge study by Dutton and Aron

Answer 28

• 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.

Question 29

Social intuitionist model of moral judgement

Answer 29

• people have automatic emotional reactions to moral situations which guide moral reasoning.

Question 30

How can emotions influence moral judgements?

Answer 30

• to the point of moral dumbfounding (occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide a reason for this judgment)

Question 31

Define morality

Answer 31

• regulating behavior to fit in with society

Question 32

Describe the process of social intuitionist model or moral judgment.

Answer 32

• people first experience automatic emotional reactions
• people then use deliberative processes (cost/benefit assessment, causal attributions, norms etc)

Question 33

Moral foundations theory dimensions (5)

Answer 33

• harm/care
• fairness/cheating
• loyalty/betrayal
• authority/subversion
• purity/degradation

Question 34

What are the 2 components of happiness?

Answer 34

• life satisfaction - how well you think your life is going
• subjective wellbeing - peoples cognitive and affective evaluations of their lives

Question 35

Affective forecasting

Answer 35

• 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.

Question 36

Why are we so bad at affective forecasting?

Answer 36

• immune neglect
• focalism

Question 37

Immune neglect

Answer 37

• end envy to underestimate our resillience during negative life events, eg more painful experiences are often less upsetting than we expect them to be.

Question 38

Focalism

Answer 38

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.

Question 39

Duration neglect

Answer 39

• length of emotional experience has very little influence on our overall evaluation of the experience.

Question 40

What are the most powerful sources of happiness?

Answer 40

• social relationships

Question 41

How is happiness good for marriages?

Answer 41

• 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.