Chapter 6: Emotion and affect - Emotion and affect o Influence actions and decisions o Prepare us to Face threats – anger & fear Make friends – loneliness Find a mate – romantic & sexual arousal Maintain relationships – guilt, shame, embarrassment, jealousy - Ex. Typically feel guilty when participate in action that would hurt the other person in the relationship and we will try and repair the damage that has been done - Emotion, mood & affecto Emotion How you consciously feel about a specific event Full-blown, conscious state that includes an evaluative reaction to some event Ex. “I was angry when he called me an idiot”o Mood How you consciously feel in general (not clearly linked to a specific event) Ex. “I was in a good mood”o Affect Automatic response that something is good or bad May or may not be consciously aware of feelings Positive affect: encompasses all good emotions, such as joy, bliss, love and contentment Negative affect: encompasses all bad emotions, such as anger, anxiety, fear, jealousy and grief Ex. Subliminal priming with angry faces produces negative affect ** Some researchers argue that positive and negative affect are separate dimensions not opposite ends of the same dimension- Emotion and affecto The duplex mind Conscious emotion - Powerful and unified feeling state Automatic affect - Initial liking or disliking of something - Liking or disliking, of good and bad feelings toward something o Interaction Automatic affect can influence conscious emotion Conscious processes can override automatic ones o Demonstration Write down as many emotion words as you can think of Count the number of good and bad emotions More focus on bad emotions than good emotions This is the study of emotional language - 62% of emotion words refer to bad - 74% emotional traits were negative - Of 12 most common emotions listed 11 are negative - Emotional arousal o James-Lange theory of emotion Physiological arousal precedes emotional experience Bodily processes of emotion come first, and then the minds perception of these bodily reactions creates the subjective feeling of emotion. When something happens, your body and brain supposedly perceive it and respond to it, and these physiological events form the basis for the emotion you feel Emotional stimulus-> physiological arousal -> experienced emotion Weaknesses:- Similar patterns of arousal with different emotional states - Different reactions to similar stimuli o Facial feedback hypothesis Feedback from face muscles evokes or magnifies emotions because the brain reacts to what the facial muscles are doing Smiling makes you happy, frowning makes you sad Pen in lips/teeth; rate cartoons (Strack et al., 1988) Rated as funnier when pen in teeth **Several studies habe found support for this hypothesis o Canon-Bard theory of emotion Thalamus sends two simultaneous messages to produce emotional experience & physiological arousal Proposed that the feeling and the physical responses are parallel effects and processes o Schacter-Singer theory of emotion Emotion has two components - Bodily state of arousal (physiological arousal)o Similar in all emotions- Cognitive label specifying the emotion o Different for each emotion Both of these components together specify the emotion ***Key issue of all three of these theories is how the mind deals with the body’s arousal state. Sometimes the mind might not realize that the body is aroused or why - Misattribution of arousal o Dutton & Aron (1974) Arguing for excitation transfer - Excitation transfer: The idea that arousal from one event can transfer to a later event Hypothesized that people who were put into a fear-inducing situation and immediately saw an attractive individual would find that individual more attractive, compared to a non-fear scenario Scary bridge vs. normal bridge Attractive female vs. male interviewer Asked participant to fill out some questionnaires (TAT: arousal) Interviewer gave participant their phone number When approached by a female experimenter:- More arousal on TAT when on the fear bridge - More likely to call the experimenter on the fear bridge No differences between conditions when approached by a male experimenter Second study:- Ran to address population concerns - Found the same results Study three:- Conducted in the lab - Looking to demonstrate that the effect was due to being in an arousal-inducing situation, not because the female was “in distress”- Told participants they were going to be shocked - Had a partner who was an attractive female/male- Only when in the high shock condition did they express attraction to the female confederate - Higher arousal in high shock condition How is this related to the Schachter-Singer theory of emotion?- Misattribution of arousalo Relabeling arousal Ex: development of public speaking ability - Relabel arousal o From nervousness/fearo To excitement/enthusiasm - Two dimensionso Emotions can be classified using 2 dimensions Valence: pleasant/unpleasant (+/-)- Arousal: high/low - New learning objectiveo What is the broaden-and-build theory of emotion> according to this theory, what are the benefits of positive emotions, and what is the ratio of positive-to-negative emotions necessary to experience these benefits?- Negative vs. positiveo Negative emotions narrows focus and ideas about possible actions to take in a situation o Positive emotions: “broaden-and-build”o Broaden one’s viewpoint Think of more ideas, both qualitatively and quantitatively See images more abstractly (think bigger picture) Self-views affected such that they see that they have more in common with another person o Also builds one’s resources: Psychological (optimistic, resilient, open, accepting, driven by purpose) Mental (able to consider multiple paths) Social (builds and strengthens social ties) Physical (lower levels of stress and healthier) o Ratio of positive-to-negative necessary to get the benefits: 3-to-1- Specific emotionso Happiness Measures of happiness- Simply feeling good right now (form of happiness that human beings and many animals share)- Affect balanceo Frequency of positive minus frequency of negative emotions - Life satisfaction (most complex form)o General evaluation of one’s life and how it compares to some
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