PSYC18 2009 – Psychology of Emotion

1. PSYC18 2009 – Psychology of Emotion Professor: Gerald Cupchik Office: S634 Email: cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca Office Hours: Thursdays 10-11; 2-3 Phone: 416-287-7467 TA: Michelle Hilscher Office: S142C Email: hilscher@utsc.utoronto.ca Office Hours: Thursdays 10-11 am Course website: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik/psyc18.htm Textbook: Oatley, Keltner & Jenkins (2006, 2nd Ed.) Understanding Emotions.

2. Grasping the Phenomenon Overview There are three parts to today’s lecture: 1. Account of process and theory. 2. Everyday and classroom application. 3. Background of these ideas.

3. Process and Theory • We need a way to approach everyday life: • - Descriptive natural history • - Theoretical account of process • Narrative accounts of life experiences in episodes and situations. • Two fundamental themes in life episodes: • - Action – survival and adaptation; planning for the future • - Meaning – attempting to understand particular events; understanding the past

4. What makes a lived episode coherent for the person within the episode and others outside of it? • - What makes an episode memorable? • The role of feelings and emotions as a binding glue in an episode. • - The episode is about something important and has emotion at its core. • An episode becomes meaningful when it can be placed in a context. • - Of course there are many viewpoints and contexts within which to interpret it. • What is the role of psychology in addressing life episodes? • - There is unity in the experience of meaningful life episodes. • - Meaning of the event lies in our history with prior events like it…

5. - Psychology is about conditions that shape the emergence of meaning. - Psychology takes experiences and places them in a context. It focuses on the situation. Psychology looks beneath the surface of an event. It goes from the manifest to the latent. Psychology is about layers: Mind and body Perception, cognition, affection, emotion, action Mind and body are linked. Thought is associated with feeling or emotion. Feelings in action episodes. Emotion in reaction episodes.

6. Application - We need to begin with rich accounts of life experiences. - What is implicated in these experiences? - Picking a topic. - Diversity of topics. - Personal relevance of topics. - Acts of noticing: Lived-world and the Plane of Observation

7. - Collecting life episodes. - Interpreting life episodes. - Similarities and differences across life episodes. - What to avoid: Francis Bacon: biases, dogma, pet hypotheses. - Deductive (we have anticipations, having picked the topic and therefore noticed or focused on it in everyday life) - Inductive (open to the unexpected) - Evaluation of this teaching method.

8. Background - Relation of theory to phenomena - Gestalt psychology and “the situation” - Gestalt and figure/ground relations in terms of topic and the search for a relevant context. - Tradition of Natural History… observation and collection of richly described instances. - Naturwissenschaft and Geistwissenschaft

9. Goethe Dilthey Husserl Cassirer Lewin