Arousal, Behavior, and Affective Tone

1. Arousal, Behavior, and Affective Tone Chapter 6

2. I. Arousal and Performance • A. An Analogy for Arousal • Arousal: mobilization or activation of energy for and during behavior. • Arousal increases the vigor of behavior and affects the efficiency.

3. I. Arousal and Performance • B. Categories of Arousal • 1. Physiological Arousal • Changes in sympathetic nervous system, e.g., heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, and perspiration. • 2. Brain Arousal • Positron emission topography and magnetic resonating imaging measure blood, glucose use, and oxygen flow in active brain areas. • 3. Psychological Arousal • Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List measures the degree of energetic (tired-lively) arousal and tense (calm-anxious) arousal. • Energetic is highest midday and lowest early morning and night.

4. I. Arousal and Performance • C. Source of Arousal • 1. Stimuli • Cue function determines type of response. • Arousing function determines intensity of response. • 2. Collative Variables • Stimulus novelty, complexity and incongruity determine arousal. • 3. Incentives • They energize approach/avoidance behavior and heighten arousal. • 4. Tasks • Person becomes aroused to perform a task based on need, value of task incentive, and likelihood of success.

5. I. Arousal and Performance • D. Arousal within and among Individuals • Stimulation increases arousal. Individuals vary in degree of increase. • E. Dimensionality of Arousal • Unidimensionality: arousal is a single dimension that ranges from sleep to excitement. • Directional fractionation of response: arousal varies along several dimensions that do not all correlate with one another.

6. I. Arousal and Performance • F. Arousal and Behavior • 1. Inverted-U Relationships • As stimulation or arousal increases, performance increases, levels off, and then declines. • Trait anxiety: personality trait to perceive environment negatively. • State anxiety: situation evokes apprehension or tension. • 2. Yerkes-Dodson Law • Arousal interacts with task complexity: low arousal for best performance on difficult tasks; high arousal for best performance on easy tasks. • 3. Zones of Optimal Functioning • Individual inverted-U curves each with a zone of optimal arousal where an athlete performs best.

7. I. Arousal and Performance • G. Explanations for Arousal-Performance Relationships • 1. Arousal as Response Magnifier • Arousal increases strength of all responses, both correct and incorrect.

8. I. Arousal and Performance • 2. Cusp Catastrophe Model • Cognitive and physiological arousal interact: at higher levels of cognitive, increases in physiological produces optimal performance (cusp), further increases shatters performance (catastrophe). • 3. Cue Utilization Hypothesis • With increased arousal, less attention is given to problem cues. • 4. Arousal and Memory • As arousal increases, there is better recall of central detail and a decline in recall of peripheral detail. • 5. Cool and Hot Memory Systems • Cool memory in hippocampus works best under low arousal and hot memory (amygdala) works best under high arousal.

9. II. Arousal and Affective tone • A. Variation in Affective Tone • Arousal may be tinged with positive or negative affect. • 1. Optimal Level of Stimulation Theory • As arousal increases, the degree of pleasantness of affective tone increases, levels off, and then decreases in an inverted-U fashion. • 2. Arousal Regulation via the Negative Feedback Loop • A person maintains a desired level of arousal by changes in behavior. • Arousal model of interpersonal intimacy: people adjust their behavior (eye contact) with others to maintain a comfortable level of arousal.

10. II. Arousal and Affective tone • A. Variation in Affective Tone • 3. When Arousal Is Too Low • Sensory deprivation: reducing sensory stimulation from touch, sound, and light to lowest level possible. Situation is boring and aversive. • B. Arousal, Stimulus Complexity, and Preference • Intermediate complexity is preferred over lesser or greater complexity. • Repeated exposure decreases perceived stimulus complexity. • This results in decreased liking for simple stimuli and increased liking for • complex stimuli.

11. II. Arousal and Affective tone • C. Incongruity-Resolution and Affect • 1. Schemas, Assimilation, and Accommodation • Schemas: knowledge structures of environmental regularities. • Assimilation: new information is integrated into an existing schema. • Accommodation: schema is modified to assimilate new information.

12. II. Arousal and Affective tone • 2. Schema Incongruity Model • Successful assimilation and accommodation of information yields positive affect. Unsuccessful accommodation yields negative affect. • 3. Incongruity Resolution, Arousal, and Humor • A punch line is resolved when it is assimilated into an alternative schema imbedded in the joke stem. This resolution triggers humor. • 4. Arousal-Safety Model of Laughter • Incongruities judged safe trigger humor; judged dangerous trigger fear

13. II. Arousal and Affective tone • D. Music • 1. Music Regulates Arousal • Music alters arousal and induces positive or negative affect. • 2. Incongruity Resolution and Appreciation of Music • The enjoyment of music comes from assimilating pieces of music into activated musical schemas. • 3. Musical Complexity • As musical complexity increases, liking of the music increases, levels off, and then decreases (inverted-U relationship).

14. II. Arousal and Affective tone • D. Music • 4. Musical Complexity and Experience • With experience, complex music is enjoyed more and simple music is enjoyed less. • `Musical grammar processor: it assimilates musical notes into a primitivemusical grammar processor that works the same way each time and is sealed off from memory.