Emotion

1
Emotion

• Emotion is a response of the whole organism,
  involving
• physiological activation (heart pounding),
• expressive behaviors (quickened pace),
• conscious experience (thoughts and feelings).

• Emotion is at the heart of who we are as people. 
  It is a reflection of our mental state.

2
Emotion

• Anxiety, elation, love, anger, sadness are
  examples of emotions.
• Emotions are states of feelings.
• Emotions have biological, cognitive, and
  behavioral components.
• Strong emotions spark activity of the autonomic
  nervous system.
• Example when some extremely anxious, their heart
  races, they breathe quickly, sweat, and tense
  their muscles.

3
Concept of Emotion

• A class of subjective feeling elicited by stimuli
  that have high significance to an individual
• stimuli that produce high arousal generally
  produce strong feelings
• are rapid and automatic
• emerged through natural selection to benefit
  survival and reproduction

4

• Emotions
• The ancient Chinese believed that there are four
  inborn (instinctive) human emotions happiness,
  anger, sorrow, and fear.
• Psychologist Carroll Izard theorized that all
  emotions that people experience are present and
  distinct at birth (emotion is innate). But, they
  do not show up at once. They emerge as the child
  develops.

5
Arousal and Emotion -High Arousal

• Arousal response - pattern of physiological
  change that helps prepare the body for fight or
  flight
• muscles tense, heart rate and breathing increase,
  release of endorphins, focused attention
• can be helpful or harmful
• in general, high arousal is beneficial for
  instinctive, well-practiced or physical tasks and
  harmful for novel, creative, or careful judgment
  tasks

6
Yerkes-Dodson Law

• Some arousal is necessary
• High arousal is helpful on easy tasks
• As level of arousal increases, quality of
  performance decreases with task difficulty
• Too much arousal is harmful

7
Theories of Emotion

• Common sense might suggest that the perception of
  a stimulus elicits emotion which then causes
  bodily arousal

8
Jamess Peripheral Feedback Theory / James-Lange
Theory

• Perception of a stimulus causes bodily arousal
  which leads to emotion
• Our experience of emotion is our awareness of our
  physiological responses to emotion-arousing
  stimuli

9
Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

• The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus
  simultaneously triggers
• (1) physiological responses and
• (2) the subjective experience of emotion.
• Implies that your heart begins pounding as you
  experience fear one does not cause the other.

10
Schachters Cognition-Plus-Feedback Theory

• Perception and thought about a stimulus influence
  the type of emotion felt
• Degree of bodily arousal influences the intensity
  of emotion felt

11
Ekmans Facial Feedback Theory

• Each basic emotion is associated with a unique
  facial expression
• Sensory feedback from the expression contributes
  to the emotional feeling

12
Ekmans Facial Feedback Theory
Facial expressions have an effect on
self-reported anger and happiness
13
Ekmans Facial Feedback Theory
Facial expressions can produce effects on the
rest of the body
14
Brain-Based Theory of Emotions

• Amygdala
• evaluate the significance of stimuli and generate
  emotional responses
• generate hormonal secretions and autonomic
  reactions that accompany strong emotions
• damage causes psychic blindness and the
  inability to recognize fear in facial expressions
  and voice

15
Brain-Based Theory of Emotions

• Frontal lobes
• influence peoples conscious emotional feelings
  and ability to act in planned ways based on
  feelings (e.g., effects of prefrontal lobotomy)

left frontal lobe may be most involved in
processing positive emotions right frontal
lobe involved with negative emotions