Chapter 6 Emotion and Affect Emotion A conscious evaluative reaction to some event Mood a feeling state that is not clearly linked to some event Affect the automatic response that something is good or bad Two different phenomena dealing with emotion mood and affect Conscious Emotion a powerful and clearly unified feeling state such as anger or joy Automatic Affect a quick response of liking or disliking toward something Conscious emotion Unconscious affect Emotions have both mental physical aspects Arousal a physiological reaction including faster heartbeat and faster or heavier breathing linked to most conscious emotions James Lange Theory of Emotion the proposition that the bodily processes of emotion come first and the mind s perception of these bodily reactions then create the subjective feeling of emotion When something happens your body and brain perceive it and respond to it and these physiological events form the basis for the emotion you feel Different emotions arise from different bodily responses Data shows that the body s response seemed to be very similar for different emotions Ex tears can be happy or sad any type of intense feeling Researchers have been trying to prove this theory for many years and have been largely unsuccessful This theory did lead to more research on emotions and lead to Facial Feedback Hypothesis the idea that feedback from the face muscles evokes or magnifies emotions This occurs because the brain reacts to what the facial muscles are doing holding a pen in teeth vs holding a pen with lips holding with lips resembles a frown and therefore people were more harsh with their judgments Cannon Bard Theory of Emotion the proposition that emotional stimuli activate the thalamus which then activate both the cortex producing an experienced emotion and the hypothalamus and autonomic nervous system producing physiological arousal Alternate theory to Lange If you are walking down a dark alley in a dangerous part of town you hear footsteps according to this theory the thalamus will send 2 messages at the same time one message that makes you feel afraid and another messages that produces an increase in physiological arousal heart rate breathing rate Schachter Singer Theory of Emotion the idea that emotion has two components a bodily state of arousal and a cognitive label that specifies the emotion Contains two components Physiological arousal is similar in all emotions The cognitive label is different for each emotion In this theory arousal is something like a television program the on off switch and volume control which determines that there is going to be an emotion and how strong the emotion will be The cognitive label is the channel switch dictates which emotion will be felt This theory allows for arousal states to be mislabeled or relabeled arousal may arise for one reason but get another label which in turn produces another reaction drinking caffeinated coffee when you believe that you have decaf Excitation Transfer the idea that arousal from one event can transfer to later event Some Important Emotions Happiness this term is used in different ways to refer to slightly different phenomena we refer to happiness as feeling good right now Affect Balance the frequency of positive emotions minus the frequency of negative emotions Life Satisfaction an evaluation of how one s life is generally and how it compares to some standard the most complex form of happiness Hedonic Treadmill a theory proposing that people stay at about the same level of happiness regardless of what happens to them like a person on a treadmill you can take 100 steps forward but always remain in the same place Ex people who win the lottery people who become paralyzed will be happier unhappier for a year or so afterwards and then go right back to the level of happiness that they were at before Happiness appears to lie more in outlook and personality than in our circumstances some people are born happy whereas others remain grumpy and miserable regardless of what happens Recently the positive psychology movement has been trying to come up with ways to increase overall happiness forgiving others expressing gratitude counting up good things that have happened recently regularly practicing a religion Anger an emotional response to a real or imagined threat or provocation a blow to the ego or they can be stressors such as frustration physical pain or discomfort caused by heat crowding noise or foul odors Emotions can be grouped on two important dimensions 1 Unpleasant vs Pleasant 2 High vs Low Arousal Causes of Anger people perceive their anger as a reaction to someone else s wrongdoing anger is greater if one sees the other person s behavior as very harmful random or arbitrary or deliberately cruel many people choose to hide their anger especially to relationship partners Hiding vs Showing Anger a standard approach in many societies is to never show your anger long term concealed anger can be destructive to the person Catharsis Theory the proposition that expressing negative emotions produces a healthy release of those emotions and is therefore good for the psyche studies have shown that unfortunately venting one s anger does not seem to have positive value Venting may be used to help your anger for a short period of time but in the long run it just feeds the flame and induces further anger Guilt an unpleasant moral emotion associated with a specific instance in which one has acted badly or wrongly an emotion well suited to cultured animals that will feel deep sorrow for loosing doing someone wrongly Guilt is especially associated with acts that could damage a relationship about which one cares because you feel bad about your wrong actions Normally constructive motivates people to do good acts apologizing Survivor Guilt an unpleasant emotion associated with surviving a tragic event involving much loss of life emerged after world war II Shame a moral emotion that like guilt involves feeling bad but unlike guilt spreads to the whole person Normally destructive Disgust a strong negative feeling of repugnance and revulsion different from anger in that anger motivates people to approach rather than avoid things whereas disgust is a strong cue to avoid something Women seem to have stronger disgust reactions than men males being socialized to do dirty jobs also could have to do with the fact that women are needed for reproduction Disgust can be considered part of a behavioral immune system that
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