Chapter 12

1. Chapter 12 Emotions, Stress, and Health

2. Emotion: Arousal, Behavior, and Cognition Someone cuts you off on the road. You may feel the emotion of anger. Emotions are a mix of: How do these components of emotion interact and relate to each other? • Do our thoughts trigger our emotions, or are they a product of our emotions? • How are the bodily signs triggered? • How do we decide which emotion we’re feeling? Expressive behavior: yelling, accelerating Bodily arousal: sweat, pounding heart Conscious experience: (thoughts, especially the labeling of the emotion) What a bad driver! I am angry, even scared; better calm down. An emotion is a full body/mind/behavior response to a situation.

3. Theories of Emotion: The Arousal and Cognition “Chicken and Egg” Debates • Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Or did they evolve together? • Which happens first, the body changes that go with an emotion, or the thoughts (conscious awareness and labeling of an emotion), or do they happen together? James-Lange Theory: • body before thoughts Cannon-Bard Theory: • body with thoughts Singer-Schachter/Two-factor theory: • body plus thoughts/label Zajonc, LeDoux, Lazarus: • body/brain without conscious thoughts

4. James-Lange Theory:Body Before Thoughts William James (1842-1910): “We feel afraid because we tremble, sorry because we cry.” The James-Lange theory states that emotion is our conscious awareness of our physiological responses to stimuli. • Our body arousal happens first, and then the cognitive awareness for the feeling: “I’m angry.” • According to this theory, if something makes us smile, we may then feel happy.

5. Cannon-Bard Theory: Simultaneous Body Response and Cognitive Experience The Cannon-Bard theory asserts that we have a conscious/cognitive experience of an emotion at the same time as our body is responding, not afterward. • Human body responses run parallel to the cognitive responses rather than causing them.

6. Schachter-Singer “Two-factor” Theory:Emotion = Body Plus a Cognitive Label The Schachter-Singer “two-factor” theory suggests that emotions do not exist until we add a label to whatever body sensations we are feeling. • I face a stranger, and my heart is pounding. Is it fear? Excitement? Anger? Lust? Or did I have too much caffeine? The label completes the emotion.

7. Robert Zajonc, Joseph LeDoux,and Richard Lazarus:Emotions without Awareness/Cognition Theory: some emotional reactions, especially fears, likes, and dislikes, develop in a “low road” through the brain, skipping conscious thought. In one study, people showed an amygdala response to certain images (above, left) without being aware of the image or their reaction.

8. When Appraisal Affects Emotion Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer highlighted the role of appraisal in labeling consciously experienced emotions: “this agitation is fear.” Richard Lazarus noted that even in emotional responses that operate without conscious thought, “top-down” cognitive functions such as appraisal of stimuli (is that a threat or something I would enjoy?) can be involved.

9. Summary: Theories of Emotion

10. Embodied Emotion:How Do Emotions Differ in Our Brain? A general brain pattern: hemispheric differences Positive“approach” emotions (joy, love, goal-seeking) correlate with left frontal lobe activity. Negative “withdrawal” emotions (disgust, fear, anger, depression) correlate with right hemisphere activity.

11. Gender and Emotional Expression and Detection • Women seem to have greater and more complex emotional expression. • Women are also more skilled at detecting emotions in others. • However, this is an overgeneralization. People tend to attribute women’s emotionality to their dispositions, and attribute men’s emotions to their circumstances. We also see some emotions as being more “male,” changing our perception of a gender-neutral face based on the emotion (below): How about now? Male or female?

12. Culture and Emotional Expression:Are There Universally Recognized Emotions? • There seem to be some universally understood facial expressions. • People of various cultures agree on the emotional labels for the expressions on the faces on the right. • People in other studies did have more accuracy judging emotions from their own culture.

13. Can Money Buy Happiness? Money seems to buy happiness when it lifts people out of extreme poverty. Otherwise, money doesn’t seem to help our mood much. • The average level of income (adjusted for inflation) and purchasing power has increased in the United States. • The percentage of people feeling very happy, though, has not followed the same trend of improvement.

14. Correlates of Happiness There are behaviors that seem to go with happiness. Whether they are the cause or the effect of happiness is not clear, but it can’t hurt to try them.

15. Health Psychology • Emotions, as well as personality, attitudes, behaviors, and responses to stress, can have an impact on our overall health. • Health psychology studies these impacts, as part of the broader field of behavioral medicine.

16. Stress: A Focus of Health Psychology • Many people report being affected by “stress.” • Some terms psychologists use to talk about stress: • a stressor is an event or condition which we view as threatening, challenging, or overwhelming. • Examples include poverty, an explosion, a psychology test, feeling cold, being in a plane, and loud noises. • appraisal refers to deciding whether to view something as a stressor. • stress reaction refers to any emotional and physical responses to the stressor such as rapid heartbeat, elevated cortisol levels, and crying. Stress refers to the process of appraising and responding to events which we consider threatening or challenging.

17. Appraisal:Choosing How to View a Situation Questions to ask yourself when facing a possible stressor: Is this a challenge, and will I tackle it? Is it overwhelming, and will I give up? There are few conditions* that are inherently and universally stressful; we can often choose our appraisal and our responses. *extreme, chronic physical threats or challenges (such as noise or starvation)

18. Beneficial and Harmful Stress Effects A brief experience of stress can be beneficial: • improving immune system response • motivating action • focusing priorities • feeling engaged, energized, and satisfied • providing challenges that encourage growth, knowledge, and self-esteem Extreme or prolonged stress, causes problems: • mental and physical coping systems become overwhelmed and defeated rather than strengthened • immune functioning and other health factors decline because of damage The key factor is whether there is a chance for recovery and healing.

19. Stressors There may be a spectrum of levels of intensity and persistence of stressors. We can also see stressors as falling into one of four* categories: • catastrophes. • significant life changes. • chronic daily hassles. • low social status/power. Stressors refer to the events and conditions that trigger our stress response, because they are perceived/ appraised as overwhelmingly challenging, threatening, and/or harmful. *the text focuses on the first three.

20. Catastrophic Events/Conditions • Appraisal is not essential in a catastrophic event. Most people agree that the event is harmful and overwhelming • Examples include earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, war/combat, and wildfires. • It can be one single event or chronic harmful conditions. • Short-term effects include increased heart attacks on the day of the event • Long term effects include depression, nightmares, anxiety, and flashbacks. • Bonding: both the trauma and the recovery are shared with others.

21. Major Life Events/Changes • Even supposedly “happy” life changes, such as marriage, starting college or a new job, or the birth or adoption of a child, can bring increased challenge and stress. • Change is often challenging. • New roles, new priorities, and new tasks can put a strain on our coping resources. • The challenge, and the negative impact on health, increases when: • the changes are painful, such as a death in family, loss of job, or heart attack. • the changes are in a cluster, and there are too many at once.

22. Chronic Daily Difficulties Daily difficulties can be caused by facing too many tasks, too little time, and too little control. Daily difficulties can be caused by the lack of social power and freedom: • being bullied • living in poverty • living under oppressive political conditions

23. General Adaptation Syndrome [GAS](Identified by Hans Selye):Our stress response system defends, then fatigues.

24. Effects of Prolonged Stress • Repeated and prolonged stress, with too much Phase 3 time, leads to various signs of physical deterioration and premature aging: • the production of new neurons declines • neural circuits in the brain break down • DNA telomeres (chromosome tips) shorten,  cells lose ability to divide,  cells die,  tissue stops regenerating,  early aging and death

25. Female and Male Stress Response • In response to a stressor such as the death of a loved one, women may “tend and befriend”: nurture themselves and others, and bond together. • The hormone oxytocin may play a role in this bonding. • Women show behavioral and neurological signs of becoming more empathetic under stress. • Men under stress are more likely to socially withdraw and numb themselves with alcohol. • Men are also more likely to become aggressive under stress. • In either case, men’s behavior and brains show LESS empathy and less tuning in to others under stress.

26. Studying the Stress-Illness Relationship • How does stress increase our risk of disease? • This is the subject of a new field of study: psycho-neuroimmunology, the study of how interacting psychological, neural, and endocrine processes affect health. • Psychologists no longer use the term “psychosomatic” because it has come to mean an imagined illness. • We now refer to psychophysiological illness, a real illness caused in part by psychological factors such as the experience of stress.

27. Stress Increases The Risk of Illness Here we see psycho-neuroimmunology in action: • psychological factors, such as appraisal, thoughts, and feelings. • neurological factors, such as brain signals engaging the stress response system. • immunology, such as stress hormone exposure which suppresses the immune system.

28. Psychoneuroimmunology Example:The Impact of Stress on Catching a Cold In a group exposed to germs, those experiencing stress were more likely to catch a cold. This tradeoff between stress response and immune response may help our bodies focus energy on managing stress.

29. Stress, AIDS, and Cancer AIDS = Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Cancer: the stress link is not as clear • Because the stress response suppresses the immune response, exposure to stress obviously worsens the development of AIDS in those exposed to HIV. • Reducing stress slows the progression of AIDS. • Stress may weaken the body’s defenses against the replication and spread of malignant cells This does NOT mean that stress causes cancer or AIDS.

30. Stress and Heart Disease Many factors contribute to heart disease. • Biological: genetic predisposition to high blood pressure and high cholesterol • Behavioral: smoking, inactivity, and high-fat diet • Psychological: chronic stress, and personality styles that worsen the experience of stress In coronary heart/artery disease, the blood vessels that provide oxygen and nutrients to the heart muscle itself become clogged, narrowed, and closed. Clogging of the coronary artery

31. Type A PersonalityStressHeart Disease • Some personality traits tend to cluster into personality types. • People with a type A personality are impatient, verbally aggressive, and always pushing themselves and others to achieve. • People with a type B personality are more relaxed and go with the flow. • In one study, heart attacks ONLY struck people with Type A traits. Accomplishing goals is healthy, but a compulsion to always be working, with little time spent “smelling the flowers,” is not.

32. Pessimism and Heart Disease It can be helpful to realistically anticipate negative events that may happen, and to plan how to prevent or cope with them. Men who are generally pessimistic are more likely to develop heart disease within ten years than optimists. Pessimism refers to the assumption that negative outcomes will happen, and often facing them by complaining and/or giving up.

33. Depression and Heart Disease • Why does depression appear so often with heart disease? Does one cause the other? • One possible answer is that the two problems are both caused by chronic stress. • There may be an intervening variable: excessive inflammation.

34. Health Consequences of Chronic Stress: The Repeated Release of Stress Hormones • The stress hormone cortisol helps our bodies respond to brief stress. • Chronically high cortisol levels damage the body.

35. Coping with Stress Emotion-focused coping means reducing the emotional impact of stress by getting support, comfort, and perspective from others. Problem-focused coping means reducing the stressors, such as by working out a conflict, or tackling a difficult project. • Risk: magnifying emotional distress, especially if trying to change something that’s difficult to change (e.g. another person’s traits). • Risk: ignoring the problem. • We might focus on this style of coping when we perceive the stressor as something we cannot change.

36. Stress factor: Perceived Level of Control • Only the middle, subordinate rat had increased ulcers. • It is not the level of shock, but the level of control over the shock, which created stress. Experiment: the left and middle rats below received shocks. The rat on the left was able to turn off the shocks for both rats. Which rat had the worst stress and health problems?

37. Promoting Health: Social Support • Having close relationships is associated with improved health, immune functioning, and longevity. • Social support, including from pets, provides a calming effect that reduces blood pressure and stress hormones. • Confiding in others helps manage painful feelings. • Laughter helps too. “Well, I think you’re wonderful.”

38. Aerobic Exercise and Health Aerobic exercise refers to sustained activity that raises heart rate and oxygen consumption. • Aerobic exercise triggers certain genes to produce proteins which guard against more than 20 chronic diseases and conditions. • Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, cognitive decline and dementia, and early death. Ultimate Frisbee: you must run often to “get open” for a pass, then run more to cover the other team and block their passes.

39. Aerobic Exercise and Mental Health • Aerobic exercise reduces depression and anxiety, and improves management of stress. How do we know? • Aerobic exercise is correlated with high confidence, vitality, and energy, and good mood. • Is there causation? Perhaps depression simply reduces exercise. • One study establishing causation: mildly depressed young women randomly assigned to an exercise group showed reduced depression caused by exercise alone.

40. Lifestyle Modification • In one study, a control group was given diet, medication, and exercise advice. • An experimental group practiced lifestyle modification, a plan to slow down the pace of one’s life, accept imperfection, and renew faith. Result: modifying lifestyle led to reduced heart attack rates.

41. Relaxation and Meditation • Use of relaxation techniques can reduce headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia, and improve immune functioning. • People who meditate can learn to create a relaxation response: relaxed muscles, lower blood pressure, and slowed heart rate and breathing. • Meditation also increases brain activity associated with positive emotions. • Steps to get the relaxation response: focus attention on breathing, a focus word, and relaxing muscles from toes upward.

42. Religious Involvement and Health: Intervening Factors The health impact of religious involvement may be indirect. Health may improve because of the lifestyle and emotional factors associated with religious involvement, and not [just] the faith.