Emotion

1. Emotion By: Jordan, Matt, Doug, and Jordan

2. What is Emotion? • Emotion- a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. • People can’t always say what an emotional experience feels like, they can just simply compare it to another experience they’ve already had that is similar. • Example: “Love is more like happiness than like anger.”

4. What is Emotion? (cont.) • People’s emotions can be categorized by their valence, and by their arousal. • Valence- How positive or negative the experience is. • Arousal- How active or passive the experience is. • For example, somebody that has both a positive valence and a high arousal can experience happy thoughts and/or be excited. Whereas somebody experiencing negative valence and low arousal will feel sad, depressed, gloomy, and even boredom.

5. The Emotional Body • The Emotional Body • James-Lange Theory- Stimuli triggers activity in the autonomic nervous system (physiological arousal), which produces an emotional experience. *(Specific physiological arousal)* • - States that the physiological arousal hits a certain state before an emotion is had. • Each emotion has its own degree of arousal • Cannon Bard Theory- An emotional experience and a physiological response happen at the same time • - Conflicts with James-Lange theory, stating that emotional responses often happen more quickly than arousal of the body has taken affect. • - Something like blushing long after you’re embarrassed, they happen at the same time, but the autonomic nervous system is much slower to react.

6. The Emotional Body (Cont.) • Two-factor Theory- Emotions are an inference about physiological arousal *(general physiological arousal)* • - Similar to the James-Lange theory • - The body will become physiologically aroused and we determine/infer the arousal to be a certain emotion depending on the situation. • - Research disagrees that all emotional experience is not different interpretations of the same bodily state.

8. The Emotional Brain • • Amygdala- Plays role in regulating emotions such as fear • • Appraisal- An evaluation of the emotion-relevant aspects of a stimulus • • A stimulus takes two routes simultaneously • • Amygdala is the gas pedal that increases our emotions • • Cortex is the brakes that slows our emotions down and allows time for our brain to figure out what is taking place

10. The Emotional Brain (Cont.) • Regulation of Fear • • Emotional Regulation- the cognitive and behavioral strategies people use to influence their own emotional experience • • Reappraisal- changing one’s emotional experience by changing the meaning of the emotion eliciting stimulus • • When reappraising, our brain turns down the amygdale action to consciously change an experience by accessing the cortex • • “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” • -- Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius

11. The Regulation of Emotion • Emotion Regulation- the cognitive and behavioral strategies people use to influence their own emotional experience. • *9 out of 10 people attempt to regulate their emotional experience at least once a day. • Reappraisal-changing one's emotional experience by changing the meaning of the emotion (eliciting stimulus). • *Appraisal- an evaluation of the emotion (relevant aspects of the stimulus).

12. Communicative Expression • Communicative Expression- is being able to communicate usually through emotional facial or body expressions. Such as if a gorilla grits his teeth, he’s may be trying to say “I’m angry at you”, or when a dog growls he’s (non-verbally showing) his warning toward his focused subject. • Emotional expressions are like the words of a nonverbal language. • The context in which a facial expression occurs often tells us what that expression means.

13. Communicative Expression (Cont.) -Notice the Communicative Expressions shows that the gorilla is angry as opposed to being happy or satisfied.

14. Deceptive Expression • Your expressions are moderated by your knowledge that is permissible to show contempt for your peers, but not for your superiors. • Display Rules- normalities for the control of emotional expression. • Research has shown that many aspects of our verbal and nonverbal behavior are altered when we tell a lie. • One of the tell-tale signs of a liar is that their performances tend to be just a bit too good. A liar's speech lacks the detailed imperfections that a person telling the truth typically occurs, such as superfluous speech, spontaneous correction and expressions of self-doubt.

15. Test Question! • Question: What is Emotion? • Answer: a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

16. Sources • Emotional Wheel Picture: http://fullfeminine.com/ • (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions_in_Man_and_Animals) Mental • qualities are determined by the size, form and constitution of the brain: and these are • transmitted by hereditary descent. George Combe (1828) The Constitution of Man Considered • in Relation to External Objects. • (http://psychophysiolab.com/uhess/pubs/HT09.pdf) Darwin’s basic message was that emotion • expressions are evolved and (at least at some point in the past) adaptive. For Darwin, emotion • expressions not only originated as part of an emotion process that protected the organism or • prepared it for action but also had an important communicative function.