Functions of Emotion

1
Functions of Emotion

• Emotions assist us in dealing (coping) with
  fundamental life tasks
• Eight Functions of Emotion (Plutchik)
• Protection
• Destruction
• Reproduction
• Reunion
• Affiliation
• Rejection
• Exploration
• Orientation

2
Social Functions of Emotion

• Communicating our feelings to others
• Regulating how others respond to us
• Inviting facilitating social interaction
• Creating, maintaining, dissolving interpersonal
  relationships

3
Five Biological Aspects of Emotion

• Autonomic Nervous System
• arousal regulation of the heart, lungs,
  muscles
• Endocrine System
• activation of glands, hormones, organs
• Neural Brain Circuits
• limbic brain structures such as the hypothalamus
• Rate of Neural Firing
• how quickly information is processed
• Facial Feedback
• patterns of facial musculature

4
James-Lange Theory

• Two assumptions
• the body reacts discriminately to different
  emotion-eliciting stimuli
• non-emotional stimuli do not elicit bodily
  change
• Cannons Criticism
• bodily changes augment rather than cause emotion

5
The Contemporary Perspective

• A few emotions have distinctive patterns of
  physiological activity, but most do not.
• Distinctive patterns of ANS activity associated
  with anger, fear, disgust, sadness
• Distinctive patterns of CNS activity associated
  with joy, fear, rage, anxiety

6
Neural Activation

• different emotions are activated by different
  rates of neural firing, and whether the rates are
  increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant
  (Tomkins)
• the rate is largely dependent upon environmental
  events

7
Facial Feedback Hypothesis

• Emotions arise from
• movements of the facial musculature
• changes in facial temperature
• changes in glandular activity in the facial skin

8
Can we voluntarily control our emotions?

• Biological interpretation
• emotions are governed by subcortical structures
  pathways, so they are largely beyond our control
• Cognitive interpretation
• emotions are governed by thoughts, beliefs, and
  ways of thinking, so they can be controlled to a
  great extent
• An integrative interpretation
• the onset of emotion is difficult to control, but
  we can control the rise, fall, and intensity of
  our emotions

9
Differential Emotions Theory (Izard)

• Motivation arises from ten discrete emotions,
  each of which is defined in terms of its
• unique subjective feeling
• facial expression
• rate of neural firing
• behavioral consequences
• Emotions are motivational systems that prepare us
  to act in adaptive ways

10
What about other emotions?

• Emotion families exist, so many emotions are
  simply derivatives or combinations of basic
  emotions
• Many emotion terms really describe moods,
  attitudes, personality traits, and disorders.

11
Cognitive Theories of Emotion

• Emotions only occur with an antecedent appraisal
  of a stimulus event
• The appraisal, not the stimulus event, causes
  emotion

12
Appraisal of Emotion (Arnold)

• Emotion results from the interaction of
  cognition, neurophysiology, and arousal
• Emotion has both directional force (from the
  tendency to approach or avoid) and energy (from
  physiological changes)

13
Primary Secondary Appraisal (Lazarus)

• Primary Appraisal - automatic evaluation of the
  relevance of an event
• Secondary Appraisal - assessment of how to cope
  with emotion-generating event

14
Emotion Knowledge

• Experience leads to an understanding of different
  variations of emotions
• The number of emotions that we can distinguish is
  dependent upon this experience
• Knowledge also informs our primary secondary
  appraisals

15
Emotion and Attribution

• Primary Secondary appraisals are made following
  outcomes (Weiner)
• Primary
• was outcome good or bad?
• leads to basic emotion of happiness or sadness.
• Secondary
• what is outcome attributed to?
• differentiates emotional reaction into more
  specific secondary emotions

16
Social Cultural Construction of Emotion

• Most emotions originate in social interaction
• Appropriate or expected emotions are defined by
  social situations
• Emotional Contagion
• Emotional Socialization
• Managing Emotions