The Subjective and Physiological Nature of Emotions

1. The Subjective and Physiological Nature of Emotions Chapter 13

2. I. Emotions and Their Subjective Characteristics • A. Components of Emotion • The components are subjective affect, facial expressions, physiological arousal, associated behavior, and brain processes. • B. Methods for Uncovering Basic Emotions • 1. Category Analysis of Emotion Words • Analyses of the meaning of emotion words resulted in the formation of seven basic categories of emotion. • Emotion prototype: common meaning of all words in a category. • 2. Dimensional Analysis of Emotion Words • A valence dimension ranges from unpleasantness to pleasantness. • An intensity dimension ranges from low to high.

3. I. Emotions and Their Subjective Characteristics • 3. Evolution Theory • Emotions are classified by their ability to aid species survival. • 4. Facial Expressions • Each basic emotion is characterized by a unique facial expression. • 5. Conclusions on Categories of Emotion • Emotions in a category are qualitatively similar but differ in intensity.

4. I. Emotions and Their Subjective Characteristics • C. Analyses of Affect • 1. Describing Private Affective Experience • Qualia: primitive subjective experiences that are not fully describable. • It is difficult to describe affect to a person who is emotionally blind. • 2. Emotional Education • Through this process children learn to label their affective feelings. • 3. Emotion Words and Relationships or Causes • An emotion word describes the relationship between the person and the object that produce the emotion. • 4. Intensity and Duration of Emotions • Emotions can vary in intensity (e.g., anxiety vs terror) and in duration.

5. I. Emotions and Their Subjective Characteristics • D. Moods • 1. Differences between Moods and Emotions • Moods are of longer duration, of less intensity, and with less stimulus awareness than are emotions. • 2. An Analogy for Mood • Figure-ground relationship: emotion is to figure as mood is to ground. • 3. Time of Day, Day of Week, and Mood • Positive mood is higher midday and lower morning and night and increases from Sunday to Monday. Negative mood increases from Saturday to Monday and then decreases to Saturday. • 4. Seasonal Variation and Moods • Seasonal affective disorder: very low mood in winter and for some also in summer.

6. II. Arousal and Emotional Experience • A. Significance of Arousal • Arousal can be the source of emotional feeling, the impetus for attending to the environment, and the motivation for action. • B. James-Lange Theory • A specific emotion occurs when we become aware of our body's unique accompanying pattern of physiological arousal. • C. Cognitive Arousal Theory • Affect depends on the interpretation of one's physiological arousal based on information extracted from the situation. • D. Cannon’s Theory of Arousal • Physiological arousal indicates an organism's preparedness to make an emergency response, such as fight or flight response. Action readiness is the preparedness to execute a behavior associated with an emotion.

7. II. Arousal and Emotional Experience • E. Function of Psychological Arousal • 1. Physiological Variables • Variables that are associated with affect: heart rate, electrodermal responses, muscle activity, blood pressure, and skin temperature. • 2. Methods for Inducing Emotions • Real life manipulation: present actual stimuli to induce an emotion. • Directed facial action task: person moves facial muscles to produce a pattern that matches the facial expression of an emotion. • Relived emotions task: recall memories of previous emotion episodes.

8. II. Arousal and Emotional Experience • F. Arousal Specificity and James-Lange Theory • 1. Physiological Specificity of Emotion • Each unique affective experience has a hypothesized physiological response pattern. • 2. Research on Physiological Specificity of Emotion • Conclusion of this research is that discrete emotions cannot be differentiated on the basis of physiological response patterns alone. • 3. Emotions of Spinal Cord-Injured Individuals • Counter to predictions from the James-Lange theory, emotional experiences were equally intense before and after a spinal cord injury.

9. II. Arousal and Emotional Experience • G. Arousal and Cognitive Arousal Theory • 1. Excitation Transfer Experiments • Physiological arousal induced from one source influences emotional experience and behavior induced by another source. • 2. Emotion Stimulus as a Source of Arousal • Emotion stimuli (gun, snake, nude) produce physiological arousal.

10. II. Arousal and Emotional Experience • H. Action Readiness and Cannon’s Theory of Arousal • 1. Emergency Responses and Negative Emotions • Discrete emotions prepare us for specific emergency responses. • 2. Component Model of Somatovisceral Response Organization • Patterns of physiological arousal depend on action readiness, the situation, and cognitive demands required in the situation. • 3. Behaviors for Positive Emotions • Undoing hypothesis: the function of a positive emotion to undo or terminate the effects of a negative emotion.