PSY 394 F Psychology and Physiology of Emotion Introduction Lecture

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PSY 394 FPsychology and Physiology of Emotion
IntroductionLecture 1 September 15, 2004

• Instructor Chris Bassel

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Counseling / Crisis Resources

• Counseling and Learning Skills Services,
  416-978-7970
• Psychiatric Services, 416-978-8070
• Both provide free confidential counseling for
  students in crisis, or those experiencing
  distress as a result of a critical incident.
• Counselor, International Student Centre,
  416-978-8774 offers counseling, information and
  education on issues and concerns related to
  culture and ethnicity.
• Gerstein Centre, 416-929-5200, offers free,
  voluntary and confidential crisis intervention 24
  hours a day.
• Distress Centre, 416-598-1121, 24-hour telephone
  crisis hotline.

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Emotion and Social Sharing

• Research of Bernard Rimé, past president of
  International Society for Research in Emotion
  (ISRE)
• Emotion involves a social sharing process in
  which the subject communicates about emotional
  experience.
• Enhances exposure to social supports
• Engenders a better emotional-symbolic
  representation of the event and a more cohesive
  subjective / experiential world (repairs rupture
  in symbol system).

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• Social sharing is predicted by the intensity of
  the emotional event, and is inversely related to
  shame, guilt and appraisal of personal
  responsibility.
• Non-shared events involve greater search for
  meaning and efforts to understand what happened
  (Finkenauer Rimé, 1998).
• This emotion sharing process is emotion-inducing
  (Veronique Rimé, 2001), and listener later
  engages in social sharing with other persons the
  emotional narrative heard (secondary social
  sharing).
• A social means of communication of (personally)
  relevant issues.

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Emotions Temporal Spectrum

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Emotional Intelligence

• In the 90s this concept made the front cover of
  Time magazine, and was featured on Oprah
• EI originated in the concept of social
  intelligence described by Thorndike in 1920.
• In contemporary terms, advanced by Mayer and
  Salovey in two 1990 papers, and later taken up by
  Daniel Goleman in his 1995 best selling book.

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Emotional Intelligence

• According to Salovey and Mayer (1993) Emotional
  Intelligence is a type of social intelligence
  that involves the ability to monitor ones own
  and other emotions, to discriminate among them,
  and to use the information to guide ones
  thinking and actions Encompasses five domains
• Self awareness observing yourself and
  recognizing a feeling as it happens.
• Managing emotions handling feelings so that they
  are appropriate realizing what is behind a
  feeling finding ways to cope with fears, anger,
  sadness
• Motivating oneself channeling emotions in the
  service of a goal emotional self-control
  delaying gratification and stifling impulses
• Empathy Sensitivity to others feelings and
  taking their perspective
• Handling Relationships managing emotions in
  others social competence

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How do we measure emotion ?

• Cornelius makes the point that the method chosen
  to measure emotion reflects the theoretical
  perspective of the investigator.
• Thus Researchers who work within Darwinian /
  evolutionary perspective may measure facial
  expression through coding systems, or through
  surface EMG measurement. While researchers
  working within the cognitive tradition will be
  more inclined to measure self-reported cognitions
  that lead to the elicitation of an emotion
  episode.

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Measurement of emotion

• Facial Action Coding System (FACS)
• Electrophysiological reactions
• Perceptual judgments (e.g. facial expression)
• Behaviour / Instrumental actions (e.g.
  retaliation against confederate).
• Verbal self-report

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Problems with self-report

• Verbal reports may be deliberate attempts to
  deceive another person.
• Verbal reports of emotions may be distortions or
  partial truths for conscious or unconscious
  reasons.
• Reports of emotion depend on an individuals
  facility with words / language.
• Retrospective and thus depend on memory and are
  subject to reconstruction and leading
  questioning.
• There may be no way to symbolize certain aspects
  of emotional experience (esp. qualitative)

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How Do We Elicit Emotion in Order to Study it
Experimentally

• Schacter Singer (behaviour of confederate)
• Velten procedure
• Exposure to actual eliciting conditions (e.g. a
  study by Ax which exposed subject to threat of
  physical harm.
• Guided imagery (neuroimaging)
• Facial Contractions (Schiff et. Al., 1989)
• Covert means (Strack Stepper)