General Psychology: Emotion

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EmotionChapter 11
William G. Huitt
Last revised May 2005
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Summary

• A human being is inherently
• biological.
• conditioned by the environment.
• gathering data about the world through the senses
  and organizing that data

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What and Why of Emotions

• A subjective sensation experienced as a type of
  psycho-physiological arousal
• Result from the interaction of
• perception of environmental stimuli
• neural hormonal responses to perceptions
  (feelings)
• a cognitive appraisal of the situation arousing
  the state
• an outward expression of the state

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What is the Value of Emotion?

• Emotions
• determine personal viability
• prepare us for action
• shape our behavior (emotions are reinforcing)
• regulate social interaction
• facilitate communication nonverbally
• facilitate adult-child relations and thus
  development
• make life worth living by adding value to
  experience
• allow us to respond flexibly to our environment
  (approaching good, avoiding bad)

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What is the Value of Emotion?

• Emotions
• largely a conscious phenomena
• involve more bodily manifestations than other
  conscious states
• vary along a number of dimensions intensity,
  type, origin, arousal, value, self-regulation,
  etc.
• are reputed to be antagonists of rationality.
• have a central place in moral education and moral
  life through conscience, empathy, and many
  specific moral emotions such as shame, guilt, and
  remorse inextrictably linked to moral virtues

See de Sousa, R. (2003). Emotion. The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http//plato.stanfor
d.edu/entries/emotion/
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Theories of Emotions

• Theories of emotion
• James-Lange theory of emotion
• The theory that emotional feelings result when an
  individual becomes aware of a physiological
  response to an emotion-provoking stimulus

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Theories of Emotions
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Theories of Emotions

• Theories of emotion
• James-Lange theory of emotion
• The theory that emotional feelings result when an
  individual becomes aware of a physiological
  response to an emotion-provoking stimulus
• Requires separate and distinct physiological
  activity for each emotion

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Theories of Emotions

• Theories of emotion
• Cannon-Bard theory of emotion
• The theory that an emotion-provoking stimulus is
  transmitted simultaneously to the cortex,
  providing the feeling of emotion, and to the
  sympathetic nervous system, causing the
  physiological arousal

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Theories of Emotions
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Theories of Emotions

• Theories of emotion
• Cannon-Bard theory of emotion
• The theory that an emotion-provoking stimulus is
  transmitted simultaneously to the cortex,
  providing the feeling of emotion, and to the
  sympathetic nervous system, causing the
  physiological arousal
• Cognitive labeling and action would follow
  consciousness of feeling and physiological arousal

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Theories of Emotions

• Theories of emotion
• Schachter-Singer theory of emotion
• A two-stage theory stating that for an emotion to
  occur, there must be (1) physiological arousal
  and (2) an explanation for the arousal

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Theories of Emotions
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Theories of Emotions

• Theories of emotion
• Schachter-Singer theory of emotion
• A two-stage theory stating that for an emotion to
  occur, there must be (1) physiological arousal
  and (2) an explanation for the arousal
• Accounts for subjective interpretation
• Does not account for specific physiological
  states associated with some emotions

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Theories of Emotions

• Theories of emotion
• Lazarus theory of emotion
• The theory that an emotion-provoking stimulus
  triggers a cognitive appraisal, which is followed
  by the emotion and the physiological arousal
• Three aspects of appraisal
• Primary (relevance)
• Secondary (options)
• Reappraisal (anything changed)

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Three Ways to Measure Emotion

• Body/Physical
• blood pressure
• heart rate
• adrenaline levels
• muscle activity when smiling, frowning, etc.
• neural images
• posture
• tears,
• perspiration
• lie detector readings

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Three Ways to Measure Emotion

• Thoughts (observed indirectly through)
• spoken and written words on rating scales
• answers to open-ended questions on surveys and
  during interviews
• responses to projective instruments, sentence
  stems, etc.
• self-assessments or perceptions regarding the
  behavior and intentions of others
• other cognitive operations such as
  rational/logical thinking

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Three Ways to Measure Emotion

• Behavior
• facial expressions
• activity level
• alertness
• screaming
• laughing
• smiling

• aggression
• approach/avoidance
• attention/distraction
• insomnia
• anhedonia

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Emotion and the Brain

• Emotion associated with the limbic system
• The brain structure most closely associated with
  fear is the amygdala
• When the emotion of fear first materializes, much
  of the brains processing is nonconscious

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Emotion and the Brain

• Researchers using electro-encephalographs to
  track mood changes have found that reductions in
  both anxiety and depression are associated with a
  shift in electrical activity from the left to the
  right side of the brain

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Basic Emotions

• Paul Ekman and Carroll Izard
• Insist that there are a limited number of basic
  emotions
• Basic emotions
• Emotions that are found in all cultures, that are
  reflected in the same facial expressions across
  cultures, and that emerge in children according
  to their biological timetable
• Ekman
• Suggested considering emotions as families
• The anger family might range from annoyed to
  irritated, angry, livid, and, finally, enraged
• If perceived as a family, anger should also
  include various forms of its expression

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Plutchik Three-dimensional Circumplex Model
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Protypical Behavior
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Expression of Emotion

• Range of emotion
• Ekman and Friesen
• Claim there are subtle distinctions in the facial
  expression of a single emotion that convey its
  intensity
• Development of facial expressions
• Like the motor skills of crawling and walking,
  facial expressions of emotions develop according
  to a biological timetable of maturation
• Consistency of emotional development across
  individual infants and across cultures supports
  the idea that emotional expression is inborn

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Expression of Emotion

• Universality of facial expressions
• Charles Darwin
• First to study the relationship between emotions
  and facial expressions
• Believed that the facial expression of emotion
  was an aid to survival because it enabled people
  to communicate their internal states and react to
  emergencies before they developed language
• Maintained that most emotions, and the facial
  expressions that convey them, are genetically
  inherited and characteristic of the entire human
  species
• Concluded that facial expressions were similar
  across cultures

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Expression of Emotion

• Universality of facial expressions
• Scherer and Wallbott
• Found very extensive overlap in the patterns of
  emotional experiences reported across cultures in
  37 different counties on 5 continents
• Also found important cultural differences in the
  ways emotions are elicited and regulated and in
  how they are shared socially

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Expression of Emotion

• Cultural rules for displaying emotion
• Display rule
• Cultural rules that dictate how emotions should
  be expressed and when and where their expression
  is appropriate
• Often, a societys display rules require people
  to give evidence of certain emotions that they
  may not actually feel or to disguise their true
  feelings
• Cole
• Found that 3-year-old girls, when given an
  unattractive gift, smiled nevertheless
• They had already learned a display rule and
  signaled an emotion they very likely did not feel

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Expression of Emotion

• Cultural rules for displaying emotion
• Davis
• Found that among first to third graders, girls
  were better able to hide disappointment than boys
  were
• Not only can emotions be displayed but not felt,
  they can also be felt but not displayed
• Most of us learn display rules very early and
  abide by them most of the time

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Experiencing Emotion

• Facial-feedback hypothesis
• Sylvan Tomkins
• Claimed that the facial expression itself that
  is, the movement of the facial muscles producing
  the expression triggers both the physiological
  arousal and the conscious feeling associated with
  the emotion
• Facial-feedback hypothesis
• The idea that the muscular movements involved in
  certain facial expressions trigger the
  corresponding emotions

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Experiencing Emotion

• Facial-feedback hypothesis
• Ekman and colleagues
• Documented the effects of facial expressions on
  physiological indicators of emotion using 16
  participants
• Reported that a distinctive physiological
  response pattern emerged for the emotions of
  fear, sadness, anger, and disgust, whether the
  participants relived one of their emotional
  experiences or simply made the corresponding
  facial expression
• Researcher found that both anger and fear
  accelerate heart rate, but fear produces colder
  fingers than does anger

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Experiencing Emotion

• Facial-feedback hypothesis
• Izard
• Believes that learning to self-regulate emotional
  expression can help in controlling emotions
• Proposes that this approach to the regulation of
  emotion might be a useful adjunct to
  psychotherapy
• Gender differences in experiencing emotion
• David Buss
• Has reported that women are far more likely to
  feel anger when their partner is sexually
  aggressive
• Men experience greater anger than women when
  their partner withholds sex

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Experiencing Emotion

• Gender differences in experiencing emotion
• Research by evolutionary psychologists also
  suggests clear and consistent differences between
  the sexes concerning feelings of jealousy
• Men, more than women, experience jealousy over
  evidence or suspicions of sexual infidelity
• A women is more likely than a man to be jealous
  of her partners emotional attachment and
  commitment to another and over the attention,
  time, and resources diverted from the relationship

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Experiencing Emotion

• Emotion and cognition
• Emotion allows us to detect risk more quickly
  than we could with rational thought alone
• It is possible that the anger-optimism link
  arises from confidence, whether justified or not,
  in concrete measures directed towards people who
  are perceived as potentially threatening

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Fostering Emotional Functioning

• Emotional understanding
• discern ones own emotional states
• discern others emotional states
• properly use emotional vocabulary.

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Fostering Emotional Functioning

• Emotional expression
• use of gestures to display emotional messages
  nonverbally
• demonstrate empathy by connecting ones emotions
  to those of others
• display both self-conscious as well as complex
  social emotions
• Distinguishing between experiencing an emotion
  and action

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Fostering Emotional Functioning

• Emotional regulation and management
• coping with both pleasurable and
  aversive/distressing emotions
• regulation of those situations that elicit
  emotions
• ability to use an experience to strategically
  organize the experience in terms of setting goals
  and learning to motivate oneself and others

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Triangular Theory of Love

• Robert Sternbergs theory that three components
  intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment
  singly and in various combinations produce seven
  different kinds of love
• Liking (I)
• Infatuated love (P)
• Empty love (C)
• Romantic love (I, P)
• Fatuous love (C, P)
• Companionate love (C, I)
• Consummate love (I, C, P)