Emotions

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Emotions and Health
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EMOTIONS
Distinct Emotions Approach 10 Basic emotions
Joy, Interest/excitement, Surprise, Sadness,
Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Fear, Shame, Guilt
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You arrive home late, tired and slightly
irritated after a hard day of work. You flip on
the lights in your bathroom and glance downward
at your green toothbrush. There, nestled in the
slightly frayed bristles, lies a cockroach,
reluctant to move, the insect waves its feelers
at you
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Disgust
Highly adaptive, often food-related
Marked by aversion towards something distasteful
Ensures people select reject appropriate food
Facial expression wrinkling nose gaping
expression
But psychology of disgust extends beyond role in
food recognition gt model for acquisition of
values
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Would you use toothbrush again?
.even if it was dropped into boiling water
sterilized?
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Paul Rozin
Thirsty subjects would not drink glass of juice
with sterilized cockroach in it
But some people even refused to drink other juice
poured into a different glass after witnessing
this.
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Sympathetic magic
People believe that when two objects come into
contact they acquire like properties
Contagion
Not a conscious, rational processes
Fundamental, universal process (although some
disgust elicitors are cultural)
Dog Soup (Korea)
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Disgust Elicitors 4 broad categories
1. Core disgust elicitors
Objects potentially capable of contaminating foods
Roaches, flies, feces
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Disgust Elicitors 4 broad categories
2. Animal-reminder disgust elicitors
Reminders of animal origins gt threatens sense
of mortality Terror Management Theory
E.g., death, poor hygiene, bizarre forms of
sexual behavior
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Disgust Elicitors 4 broad categories
3. Sociomoral disgust
Emotional reaction due to moral sense
E.g., rape, violence, murder
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Disgust Elicitors 4 broad categories
4. Interpersonal disgust
From contact with someone of unsavory origins
E.g., would you wear sweatshirt that had been
worn by serial murder Jeffrey Dahmer
Caste system, in India 3,500-yr-old system based
on degrees of dirt and disgust.
Untouchables perform most disgusting tasks
(gravediggers, street sweepers)
Higher castes reluctant to eat food handled by
lower caste
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Fear
Adaptive response
Why so many fears?
can learn to fear almost anything e.g., cars,
flying, failure, mice
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Fear
Susan Mineka Learning by observation

• Wild monkeys afraid of snakes
• lab monkeys NOT afraid of snakes

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Fear
Predisposed to some fears
Snakes, spiders, cliffs
But NOT cars, electricity, bombs
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Components of emotions
E.g., Fear (experience) associated with
increased heart rate (among other things) wide
eyes, clenched teeth, etc.
E.g., Happiness (experience) associated with
decrease in heart rate (decreased
arousal) smile
Butwhat comes first?
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Do we smile because we are happy or are we happy
because we smile?
Three theories of emotion provide different
answers.
All agree that emotions related to autonomic
nervous system body in general
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1. James-Lange Theory
Interpretation of event evokes autonomic changes
in bodygtemotion arises from perception of these
changes
contrasts with common sense view!
e.g,. We decide we are sad because we cry,
smiling makes us happy
Different patterns of autonomic response elicit
different emotions (e.g., butterflies
anxiety)
But is this plausible?
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2. Cannon-Bard Theory

• Emotion-arousing stimuli simultaneously trigger
• physiological responses
• subjective cognitive aspects of emotion

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3. Schacter-Singer two-factor theory
Schacter-Singer Experiment
 injected student volunteers with hormone
epinephrine (mimics effects of arousal for 20-30
mins.)
     subjects told either o    would have
physiological effect o    would not have
physiological effect
     subjects in either o    euphoria conditon
(playful confederate) o    anger condition
(insulting questionnaire) which member of your
immediate family does not bathe or wash
regularly with how many men (other than your
father) has your mother had extramarital
relationships? 4 or fewer, 5-9, 10 or more
     subjects not warned about physiological
arousal attributed it to either euphoria or anger
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3. Schacter-Singer two-factor theory
Situation determines cognitive appraisal, which
determines the emotion
Physiological arousal determines intensity of
emotion
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Dutton Aron, 1974
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Condition 1 High bridge
Condition 2 Low bridge
39 called woman
9 called woman
Implications for horror movies, amusement-park
rides, etc.
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Facial Feedback Theory (Ekman)
Subjects directed to pose expressions
Sensory feedback from the expression contributes
to the emotional feeling
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Facial expressions effect self-reported anger and
happiness
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Facial expressions affect the rest of the body
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What are Emotions?

• What are emotions?
• A motivated state consisting of
• Physiological arousal
• Expressive behaviors
• Cognitive/Conscious Experience
• Nature and Nurture side
• Everyone has emotions ? Nature side
• Culture affects how we express them ? Nurture side

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The 10 Basic Emotions

• Joy
• Surprise
• Anger
• Contempt
• Shame

• Interest Excitement
• Sadness
• Disgust
• Fear
• Guilt

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Biopsychology of Emotion

• The Brain Key Areas
• Limbic System
• Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding, Mating
• Important Parts
• Hypothalamus Changes in breathing/heart rate
  during fight-or-flight
• Amygdala Fear and Rage
• Septum Thin membrane in center of ventricle
• Suppresses negative emotional states (e.g., fear)
• Also Frontal Lobe brake system for amygdala

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Biology Emotion

• With Arousal
• Autonomic NS kicks in and
• Sympathetic NS activated
• Epinephrine and Norepinephrine are released
• Heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar rise,
  preparing us for fight or flight
• When we can calm down, parasympathetic NS kicks in

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Interesting Facts

• Positive emotions activate the left hemisphere
  more, while negative emotions activate the right
  hemisphere more.
• Arousal and stress can actually help us, up to a
  certain point.
• After we reach that point, performance declines
• The point is different for easy and difficult
  tasks

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Yerkes-Dodson Curve
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More Cool Facts

• Body language can convey a lot of information!
• Body language and gestures mean different things
  in other cultures
• Eye contact
• thumbs up in Australia, Ghana ?Up yours
• OK sign in Brazil ? Obscene
• Facial expressions are similar all over the world
  Nature component

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Health

• How do our emotions affect our health?

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Stress

• Stressor event or stimulus that threatens an
  organisms physical or psychological well-being
• Coping mechanism response by the threatened
  organism to minimize or avoid the effects of the
  stressor
• Stressors may elicit the
• fight or flight repsonse

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General Adaptation Syndrome

• Alarm stage immediate emergency response
• Fight or flight
• Resistance stage prepared for longer attack
• Immune system increases to max capacity
• Exhaustion stage body systems fail
• Physiological and immune systems cannot maintain
  elevated response any longer
• Resistance drops below normal levels, leaving the
  organism very vulnerable

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Cortisol The Stress Hormone

• Cortisol produces many of the bodys
  physiological responses to stress
• Converts protein to glucose for energy
• Regulates inflammation from injury
• Activates sympathetic nervous system

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Stress

• Sex differences in response to stress
• Males fight or flight
• withdrawal
• Females tend and befriend
• nurturing

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Stress and Health

• Long term effects of stress
• Heart disease
• Immune deficiency
• Decreased sexual interest
• Growth problems
• Reduced bone density
• Reduced muscle mass
• Blood sugar imbalances
• Cancer
• Caused by chronically
• high cortisol levels

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How to Cope with StressBoosting Your Immune
System

• Get plenty of rest
• Exercise regularly, outdoors when possible
• At least 4 times a week for 30 minutes
• Practice meditation or yoga
• Laugh as much as possible
• Eat lots of fruits and vegetables
• At least one a day from each of the seven color
  groups
• One serving per 20 lbs of body weight

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Eat for Immunity

• Purple/Red Grapes, grape products (red wine,
  grape juice), prunes, cranberries, blueberries,
  blackberries, strawberries, red peppers, plums,
  cherries, eggplant, red beets, raisins, red
  apples, red pears
• Red Tomatoes, pink grapefruit, watermelon
• Orange Carrots, mangos, apricots, cantaloupes,
  pumpkin, acorn squash, winter squash, sweet
  potatoes
• Orange/Yellow Orange juice, oranges, tangerines,
  yellow grapefruit, lemon, line, peaches, papaya,
  pineapple, nectarines
• Yellow/Green Spinach, collard, mustard greens,
  turnip greens, yellow corn, avocado, green peas,
  green beans, green peppers, yellow peppers,
  cucumber, kiwi, romaine lettuce, zucchini,
  honeydew melon, muskmelon
• Green Broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage,
  cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, bok choi, kale
• White Bananas, garlic, onions, leeks, celery,
  asparagus, artichoke, endive, chives, mushrooms

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The Importance of Touch

• Evolutionary perspective
• Most primate species spend about 20 of their
  time grooming each other
• Hygienic and social functions

• In humans, language replaced grooming about
  50,000 years ago
• We spend 20 of our day talking

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The Importance of Touch

• Language is very recent the vast majority of
  human evolution occurred prior to the development
  of language
• Our immune systems (and endocrine systems)
  evolved in a context of constant contact with
  other (grooming)
• Touching other humans boosts the immune system
  (particularly skin to skin contact)
• Also regulates growth, hormones, and development

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The Importance of Touch

• Psychosocial dwarfism
• Failure to thrive
• Condition in which infants who are not touched
  and held fail to develop
• Orphanages
• Modern lifestyles
• Kangaroo care

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Touching and Psychological Health

• Societies which have higher levels of affection
  between parents and children and which do not
  punish premarital sex have much lower levels of
  violence than societies which are less
  affectionate and in which premarital sex is
  punished
• A study of 49 modern hunter-gatherer societies
  found that in 48 of them, the levels of violence
  and aggression could be accurately predicted by
  levels of affection and whether premarital sex is
  permissible
• Among industrialized nations, high touch cultures
  such as France have much lower violence/homicide
  rates than low touch cultures such as the United
  States
• The homicide rate in the U.S. is up to 22 times
  as high as the rate in France!

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Massage Therapy

• Reduces aggression, hostility, and anxiety
• Reduces chronic pain (back, legs, etc.)
• Improves attentiveness and cognitive performance
• Improves neuromuscular function
• Improves sleep patterns
• Improves immune system functioning
• Reduces the likelihood of relapse in cancer
  patients

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Why Massage Therapy Works

• Massage therapy helps regulate serotonin and
  dopamine levels
• Dopamine regulates motivation and pleasure
• Serotonin decreases substance P (pain) and
  regulates sleep and mood
• Massage therapy decreases cortisol levels
• High cortisol levels kill natural killer cells,
  the front line of the immune system
• Decreased cortisol ? increased natural killer
  cells ? better immune functioning

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What to focus on from Chapter 10

• How emotions are adaptive
• Facial expressions
• Theories of emotion
• Physiological and neurological components of
  emotions (sympathetic nervous system)
• Stress
• The immune system
• Behaviors affecting health (smoking, diet,
  exercise, etc.)

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