Chapter 12: Emotion

1. Chapter 12: Emotion Jacquelyn Eisen and Maya Strauss

2. Emotions: Humans vs. Animals • Fear • Anger • Sadness • Joy • Love

3. Physiological Responses • Challenges: • Heart races • Pace quickens • Senses on high alert

4. More Physiological Responses • Getting Good News: • Eyes tear up • Exuberance • Newfound Confidence

5. Defining Terms: • Emotions: Response of the whole organism involving physical arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience

6. Sight of oncoming car (perception of stimulus) Pounding heart (arousal) Fear (emotion) • James-Lange Theory: Experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

7. Pounding heart (arousal) Sight of oncoming car (perception of stimulus) Fear (emotion) • Cannon-Bard Theory: Emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion

8. Pounding heart (arousal) Sight of oncoming car (perception of stimulus) Fear (emotion) Cognitive label “I’m afraid” • Two-Factor Theory: Experience emotion one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal • Two Factor Theory: Stanley Schacter and Jerome Singer

9. More About Theories • William James: We don’t cry because we’re sad, we’re sad because we cry because we’re sad.

10. Walter Cannon: Body’s responses are not distinct enough to evoke different emotions.

11. Theories of Emotion

12. Autonomic Nervous System • Sympathetic  sympathizing with the plight of your body • Parasympathetic  decrease in emotional arousal

13. Arousal

14. Barrett 2006 • Fear, anger, and sexual arousal do not have distinct biological signatures. • They feel/look different, but have similar brain patterns.

15. Autonomic nervous system controls physiological arousal Sympathetic division (arousing) Pupils dilate Decreases Perspires Increases Accelerates Inhibits Secrete stress hormones Parasympathetic division (calming) Pupils contract Increases Dries Decreases Slows Activates Decreases secretion of stress hormones EYES SALIVATION SKIN RESPIRATION HEART DIGESTION ADRENAL GLANDS • When you think happy, you smile. • If you think scared, your pulse quickens.

16. The amygdala is most active when viewing fearful faces. • Emotions in the right hemisphere are disgust. • Emotions in the left hemisphere are happy. People more speedily detect an angry face than a happy one (Ohman, 2001a)

17. Positive personalities: More activity in left frontal lobe. • Negative personalities: more activity in right frontal lobe. • Dopamine: left frontal lobe, supports happy

18. Defining Terms • Spillover Effect: puts things on something that it didn’t originate on. • Ex: Play tennis bad  upset  still upset when doing homework

19. Polygraph: (lie detector) measures physiological responses accompanying emotion (sweat, breathing changes)

20. Questioning • Control Question: aim to make you a little nervous • Critical Question: If the response is less than the control’s response, it is inferred to be true. Critical > Control  Lie

21. Respiration Perspiration Heart rate Control question Relevant question Control question Relevant question (a) (b) Polygraph issues • Physiological Arousal is the same from one emotion to another • Tests err about one third of the time.

22. More Polygraph Issues • Adrich Ames was a Russian spy in the CIA that passed all the polygraph tests.

23. Polygraph Replacement • Guilty Knowledge Test is more effective because only someone who knows information would react to details.

24. Liar, Liar Brains On Fire • Anterior cingulate cortex and left prefrontal cortex light up when lying.

25. Shortcuts • It skips the cortex, and goes from thalamus to the amygdala

26. Emotional before intellect intervenes. • Some emotional responses have no thinking. • Thinking occurs after the fact.

27. Reading Facial Expressions • Possible to tell what mood someone is in. • Look at: • Eyebrows • Eyes • Cheeks

28. Downside of Computer Communication • Downside to computer communication: • No tone of voice • No gestures • No facial expressions

29. Number of expressions Women Men Sad Happy Scary Film Type Women’s Intuition • Nonverbal sensitivity gives them an edge in spotting lies • Greater emotional responses in both negative and positive situations.

30. “For news of the heart, ask the face” • Faces show feeling.

31. Movies and Emotion • Judge feelings/emotions of characters based off the situation. • Soundtracks are used to amplify emotions.

32. Cultural Differences • Dominant religion varies between nations.

33. 3 Things That Influence Emotion (PBS)

34. Feedback • Facial Feedback: Use muscles and enhances mood • Behavior Feedback: Acting silly so you feel better.

35. Ten Distinct Emotions • Joy • Interest • Excitement • Surprise • Sadness • Anger • Disgust • Contempt • Fear • Shame • Guilt

36. Positive valence pleasant relaxation joy Low arousal High arousal fear anger sadness Negative valence Two Dimensions of Emotion

37. What is A Phobia? • Phobia: intense fear of a specific object to the point where you are unable to cope. • Heritable – there is a gene that influences amygdala’s response

38. Experienced Emotion • Catharsis:Emotional release • Catharsis Hypothesis: “releasing” aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges • Feel-good, do-good phenomenon: people’s tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood

39. Experienced Emotion • Moods across the day

40. Two Routes to Emotion

41. Experienced Emotion • Subjective Well-Being: self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. • used along with measures of objective well-being • physical and economic indicators to evaluate people’s quality of life

42. Experienced Emotion • Changing materialism

43. $20,000 $19,000 $18,000 $17,000 $16,000 $15,000 $14,000 $13,000 $12,000 $11,000 $10,000 $9,000 $8,000 $7,000 $6,000 $5,000 $4,000 Average per-person after-tax income in 1995 dollars 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Percentage describing themselves as very happy Personal income Percentage very happy 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 Year Experienced Emotion • Does money buy happiness?

44. 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 -0.2 -0.4 Importance scores Money Love 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 Life satisfaction Experienced Emotion • Values and life satisfaction

45. Experienced Emotion • Adaptation-Level Phenomenon: tendency to form judgments relative to a “neutral” level • Ex: • brightness of lights • volume of sound • level of income • defined by our prior experience • Relative Deprivation: perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself

46. A Cancer Patient: (Before & After Finding Out Cancer Free) • Upset  Elated  Back to Normal

47. “I Cried Because I had No Shoes...Until I met a man who had no feet”

48. However, Happiness Seems Not Much Related to Other Factors, Such as Age Gender (women are more often depressed, but also more often joyful) Education levels Parenthood (having children or not) Physical attractiveness Researchers Have Found That Happy People Tend to Have high self-esteem (in individualistic countries) Be optimistic, outgoing, and agreeable Have close friendships or a satisfying marriage Have work and leisure that engage their skills Have a meaningful religious faith Sleep well and exercise Happiness is...