Psychology 202Chapter 10: Emotion and MotivationTuesday, January 15, yPsychology 202Chapter 10: Emotion and Motivation How Do We Experience Emotions?-Emotions are immediate, specific responses to environmental events• Typically interrupt whatever is happening or they trigger changes in thought and be-havior -Moods are diffuse long-lasting emotional states• Influence thought and behavior • Refers to peoples vague senses that they feel certain ways -Emotion: Feelings that involve subjective evaluation, physiological processes, and cognitive beliefs-In exploring emotion, there are three primary components:• Subjective experience — The feelings that accompany an emotion• Physical changes — Increases in heart rate, in skin temperature, and in brain acti-vation• Cognitive appraisals — People’s beliefs and understandings about why they feel the way they doEmotions Have a Subjective Component-We know we are experiencing emotions because we feel them-Thus why we refer to our emotions as “feelings”-The intensity of emotional reactions vary1Tuesday, January 15, y-People who are overemotional or under-emotional tend to have psychological prob-lems -Some suffer from mood disorders, such as depression or panic attacks• Can become immobilized from such strong emotions-Alexithymia — The disorder causes people to not experience the subjective compo-nents of emotion• One cause of alexithymia is that the physiological messages associated with emo-tions do not reach the brain centers that interpret emotion • Damage to the prefrontal cortex is associated with loss of emotion’s subjective componentsDistinguishing Between Types of Emotions-Theorist distinguish between primary and secondary emotions-Primary emotions: Emotions that are evolutionary adaptive, shared across cultures, and associated with specific physical states; they include anger, fear, sadness, dis-gust, happiness, and possibly surprise and contempt-Secondary emotions: Blends of primary emotions; they include remorse guilt, submis-sion, and anticipation-Circumplex model — emotions are arranged in a circle on a circumplex map. • At the center of the circle is the intersection of two core dimensions of affect:-Valence indicates how negative or positive emotions are -Activation indicates how arousing they are or increased in autonomic responsesNegative Affect and Positive Affect2Tuesday, January 15, y-Neurochemical evidence supports the idea that positive affect and negative affect are independent-Positive activation states appear to be associated with an increase in dopamine, whereas negative activation states appear associated with an increase in norepineph-rine-Both states can produce crying-Researchers have no discovered the function of crying-Crying results mainly when negative events leave us unable to respond behaviorally to the emotions we are feeling-Crying may relieve stress through activation of the parasympathetic nervous systemEmotions Have a Physiological ComponentJames-Lange Theory-James-Lange Theory: According to this theory, bodily perception comes before the feeling of emotion. For example, when a grizzly bear threatens you, you begin to sweat, experience a pounding heart, and run. There responses generate in you the emotion of fear-According to scientific evidence, physical reactions are not specific enough to fully ex-plain the subjective experiences of emotion-Recent studies have shown that different primary emotions produce different patterns of brain activation3Tuesday, January 15, y-These results support James-Lange TheoryFacial Feedback Hypothesis-Facial Feedback Hypothesis: According to this hypothesis, a person’s facial expres-sion triggers that person’s experience of emotion. Even the forced alteration of a per-sons facial expression can change that persons experience of emotion.-Facial expressions trigger the experience of emotions, not the other way around (James-Lange Theory)Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion-Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion: According to this theory, emotion and physical re-action happen together. For example, when a grizzly bear threatens you, you simulta-neously feel afraid, begin to sweat, experiencing a pounding heart, and run.-The human mind and the human body do not experience emotions at the same speed-The mind is quick and the body is slow-As a result, we experience two separate things at roughly the same time: am emotion and a psychical reactionThe Amygdala-The Amygdala — Processes the emotional significance of stimuli and it generates im-mediate emotional and behavioral reactions-James Papez proposed that many subcortical brain reigns were involved in emotions. This area was later renamed the limbic system by Paul MacLean, who also ex-panded the list-We now know that many brain structures outside the limbic system are involved in emotion and that many limbic structures are not central to emotion4Tuesday, January 15, y-Hippocampus = memory-Hypothalamus = motivation-For understanding emotion, the two most important brain regions are the amyg-dala and the prefrontal cortex-According to Joseph LeDoex, the processing of emotion in the amygdala is a circuit that has developed over the course of evolution to protect animals from danger-LeDoux established the amygdala as the brain structure most important for emotional learning, as in the development of classically conditioned responses-People with damage to the amygdala show fear when confronted with dangerous ob-jects, but they do not develop conditioned fear responses to objects associated with dangerous objects -Information reaches the amygdala along two separate pathways• The first pathway is a “quick and dirty” system that processes sensory information nearly instantaneously • Sensory information travels quickly through the thalamus to the amygdala for prior-ity processing• The second pathway is somewhat slower, but it leads to more deliberate and more thorough evaluations • Along this slow path, sensory material travels from the thalamus to the cortex wherethe information is scrutinized in greater depth before it passed along to the amyg-dala-Emotional events are especially likely to be stored in memory5Tuesday, January 15, y• Emotional events are more likely to increase activity in the amygdala and that in-creased activity is likely to improve long-term memory for the event -Amygdala is also involved in the perception of social stimuli, as hen we decipher the emotional meanings of