Emotion Lecture Objectives 1 What is emotion What is mood What is affect What are the differences between these three terms Emotion how you consciously feel about a specific event Ex I was angry when he called me an idiot A full blown conscious state that includes an evaluative reaction to some event A reaction to something Mood how you consciously feel in general not linked to a specific event Ex I was in a good mood May not know why you re in a good bad mood but you know that you re in a good bad mood Affect automatic response that something is good or bad may or may not be consciously aware of feelings Ex subliminal priming with angry faces produces negative affect Positive affect encompasses all good emotions joy bliss love and contentment Negative affect encompasses all bad emotions anger anxiety fear jealousy and grief 2 What is the difference between conscious emotion and automatic affect Conscious emotion powerful and unified feeling state Automatic affect initial liking or disliking of something of good and bad feelings toward something Automatic affect can influence conscious emotion Conscious processes can override automatic ones 3 How is emotion modeled in the following three theories of emotion James Lange theory Cannon Bard theory and Schachter Singer theory How are they different from each other James Lange theory held that the subjective feeling of emotion was a result of the physical response but the Cannon Bard theory proposed that the feeling and the physical responses are parallel effects and processes James Lange theory physiological arousal precedes emotional experience the bodily processes of emotion come first and then the mind s perception of these bodily reactions creates the subjective feeling of emotion Emotional stimulus hearing footsteps behind you produces physiological arousal increased heart rate which then produces experienced emotion fear Weaknesses Similar patterns of arousal with different emotional states Different reactions to similar stimuli 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 and frowning makes you sad Pen in lips frown teeth smile and rate cartoons rated as funnier when pen in teeth Cannon Bard theory Thalamus sends two simultaneous messages to produce emotional experience and physiological arousal heart rate breathing rate etc Emotional stimulus information from the emotional stimulus goes to the thalamus hearing footsteps behind you then the information is relayed both to the cerebral cortex which produces the experience of emotion fear and to the hypothalamus and autonomic nervous system which produce the increase in physiological arousal increased heart rate Schachter Singer theory The emotional stimulus hearing footsteps behind you produces physiological arousal increased heart rate and a cognitive label which produces an experienced emotion fear Emotion has two components Bodily state of arousal and cognitive label specifying the emotion Emotional stimulus Physiological arousal similar in all emotions Cognitive label different for each emotion 4 What are Dutton Aron 1974 arguing in their article How did they test for this in their first study How does this research support the Schachter Singer theory Arguing for excitation transfer 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 Tested Scary bridge versus 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 fear bridge No differences between conditions when approached by a male experimenter Schachter Singer theory allows for arousal states to be mislabeled or relabeled 5 What is excitation transfer How is it related to the Schachter Singer theory Excitation transfer the idea that arousal from one event can transfer to a later event An arousal may arise for one reason but get another label thereby producing different reaction When an arousal state is created Ex drinking caffeine but not knowing it the mind then searches for a label to make sense of the emotional state If something frustrating happens someone who has this extra unexplained arousal may get much angrier than they would otherwise The arousal from the first event drinking caffeine transfers to the second event frustration 6 What is happiness How do social psychologists define it the book gives three different definitions Which of the objective predictors have a negative impact on happiness and why What causes happiness Why is happiness important Happiness refers simply to feeling good right now Affect balance frequency of position 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 Negative impact on happiness Couples with children are less happy than couples without children People with strong social connections are happier than those who are alone Possibly because parents do not want to believe they made a mistake by having children and they also want to rationalize the efforts and sacrifices they have made Cultures encourage people to have children and toward that end they help promote the idea even when false that having children will make you happy because the culture will increase in population Happiness appears to lie more in our outlook and personality than in our circumstances Remains the same across time because it s rooted in one s outlook and approach to life Stable within individuals and level of happiness doesn t change much over time 7 What is the hedonic treadmill A theory proposing that people stay at about the same level of happiness regardless of what happens to them 8 What is anger What causes anger to occur What are the three different ways to deal with anger Anger emotional response to a real or imagined threat or provocation Causes reaction to perceived wrongdoing and or anger is greater if one sees the other person s behavior as a very harmful b random or arbitrary c deliberately cruel Dealing with anger Hide it conscious override some evidence of harmful health effects Vent it Catharsis theory Healthy
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