Week 8 - emotion Flashcards
What is linked with emotion?
Reason and emotion are linked. Without emotion we have reduced capacity to make rational decisions.
Phiness Gage in emotion
Explosion sent iron rod through skull
General function ok
Personality and emotional changes
Elliott and emotion
Brain surgery to remove a frontal lobe tumour
Elliott was “different” after the operation
Elliott seemed to be devious of emotion and made foolish decisions
Define emotion
Evaluative response positive/negative) usually includes
- physiological arousal
- subjective experience
- behavioural/emotional expression
Emotion:Define affect
A pattern of behaviours that express emotions
Emotion: Define mood
A more general emotional state that may or may not be externally expressed
Emotion: Define expression
Overt signs of emotion
Emotional valence
Emotions can be classified according to their valence
Positive: pleasant emotions
Negative: unpleasant emotions
But what about anger? Positive/negative aspects?
Emotional valence can impact on behaviour
Positive affect associated with pleasure seeking approach oriented behaviour (left frontal lobe)
Negative affect related to avoidance behaviours (right frontal lobe)
Discrete emotions theory
Humans experience a small number of distinct emotions
These emotions
- serve distinct evolutionary purposes
- have distinct physiological responses
- are universal across cultures
- occur before thought
Discrete emotions theory (evolutionary perspective)
Darwin: emotions serve adaptive purpose -> increase chances of survival
- innate motor programs (postural, facial)
- similar across cultures (and even species)
- how do they help survival (social communication, internal motivator eg fear, fight or flight)
Examples of the adaptive value of emotional responses (evolutionary discrete emotions theory)
Disgust: less likely to consume toxic substance
Fear: eyes widen to recognise danger
Anger: fists clenched and teeth bared ready to fight
Jealousy: need to secure resources
Discrete emotion theorists propose there are seven primary emotions
What are the seven proposed primary emotions (discrete emotions theory)
Anger Fear Disgust Surprise Happy Sad contempt
Discrete emotions theory (secondary emotions)
Combining two or more primary emotions results in secondary emotions
Discrete emotions theory (culture and emotion)
Cross cultural studies have found the seven primary emotions are universally recognised and expressed
Pride, awe, shame, embarrassment and interest may also have universal facial expressions?
But different cultures give different weight to emotions
Tahitian - 46 words for anger, but none for sadness
Some African cultures - same work for anger and sadness
Some words can have complex emotional meaning (eg the German word “Schadenfreude”)
When someone’s being obnoxious and something bad happens to them and you feel good
Display rules in the discrete emotions theory (culture and emotion)
Cultures have different rules about how and when to express emotions
- greeting people in Australia vs Europe
- Japanese less likely to display disgust, anger than US Americans or Canadians
- collectivist cultures less likely to display emotion than individualistic cultures
Discrete physiological responses (discrete emotions theory)
Some emotions have different physiological responses
-anger/fear: both increase heart rate, but digestive system speeds up/slows down
Some emotions can be distinguished by brain activity
- fear -> amygdala
- disgust -> insula
But, not always the case, and many brain regions involved
Cognitive theories of emotion (James Lange theory)
Emotion inducing stimulus -> behavioural and bodily responses-> subjective interpretation of arousal as emotion
Evidence for this theory:
-Hopman (1966) higher spinal damage associated with reduced subjective emotion
Evidence against:
- emotional responses can be faster than physiological
- we are not always aware of bodily reactions