Emotions and Health EMOTIONS Distinct Emotions Approach 10 Basic emotions Joy Interest excitement Surprise Sadness Anger Disgust Contempt Fear Shame Guilt 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 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 model for acquisition of values Would you use toothbrush again even if it was dropped into boiling water sterilized 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 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 Disgust Elicitors 4 broad categories 1 Core disgust elicitors Objects potentially capable of contaminating foods Roaches flies feces Disgust Elicitors 4 broad categories 2 Animal reminder disgust elicitors Reminders of animal origins threatens sense of mortality Terror Management Theory E g death poor hygiene bizarre forms of sexual behavior Disgust Elicitors 4 broad categories 3 Sociomoral disgust Emotional reaction due to moral sense E g rape violence murder 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 Fear Adaptive response Why so many fears can learn to fear almost anything e g cars flying failure mice Fear Susan Mineka Learning by observation Wild monkeys afraid of snakes lab monkeys NOT afraid of snakes Wild reared Lab reared Fear Predisposed to some fears Snakes spiders cliffs But NOT cars electricity bombs 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 But what comes first 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 1 James Lange Theory Sight of oncoming car perception of stimulus Pounding heart arousal Fear emotion Interpretation of event evokes autonomic changes in body emotion 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 2 Cannon Bard Theory Pounding heart arousal Sight of oncoming car perception of stimulus Fear emotion Emotion arousing stimuli simultaneously trigger physiological responses subjective cognitive aspects of emotion 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 3 Schacter Singer two factor theory Situation determines cognitive appraisal which determines the emotion Physiological arousal determines intensity of emotion Dutton Aron 1974 Misattribution of arousal Condition 1 High bridge 39 called woman Condition 2 Low bridge 9 called woman Implications for horror movies amusement park rides etc Facial Feedback Theory Ekman Subjects directed to pose expressions Sensory feedback from the expression contributes to the emotional feeling Facial expressions effect self reported anger and happiness Facial expressions affect the rest of the body 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 The 10 Basic Emotions Joy Surprise Anger Contempt Shame Interest Excitement Sadness Disgust Fear Guilt 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 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 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 Yerkes Dodson Curve Performance level Difficult tasks Low Easy tasks Arousal High 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 Health How do our emotions affect our health Stress Stressor event or stimulus that threatens an organism s physical or psychological wellbeing Coping mechanism response by the threatened organism to minimize or avoid the effects of
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