Chapter 11 Psychology Notes Emotion and Motivation Levels of Analysis Biology Behavior Cognition Social Interaction Where do emotion and motivation fit in Emotion and motivation can be studied at the entry level Emotion is complex but one of the most interesting topics in psychology What is emotion Components of Emotion Mental state or feeling associated with our evaluation of our experiences As with many textbook definitions the question arises What does that even mean 1 Usually a physiological state associated with emotion 2 Usually encourages or inhibits a behavioral responses Both conscious and unconscious 3 With people there is often a labeling of emotion What am I feeling Is this good or bad The problem with a single definition Not all of these things are always present Sometimes people report emotion without an obvious pattern of arousal Sometimes we repress or avoid behaviors The question of whether evaluation is necessary or what evaluation means is fuzzy Why are you sad dog sad I m sad because I didn t have emotions since I can t evaluate experiences through linguistically based recognition Yet Many Researchers Agree Animals Have Emotions So what does evaluation mean How do animals evaluate their subjective experiences What We re Left With Emotions are Adaptive Emotions are Communicative Emotions seems to me to be a collection of bodily responses and mental but not necessarily conscious or language based processes that interact to guide our behavior by affecting how we feel There is probably no single definition that captures everything it is or does Fear forces you to avoid or battle a danger Romantic love makes you pursue mates Happiness helps create social bonds and positively reinforces pursuing things that make you fell good Paul Ekman found that there are several basic facial emotions that are recognizable across cultures happiness sadness surprise anger disgust fear and contempt Primary vs Secondary Emotions Display Rules Although the primary emotions are recognized across cultures many emotions are combinations of primary emotions Alarm is a mixture of fear and surprise There are also cultural rules about what emotions are appropriate to display and when it is appropriate to display them Example Russians greet people by kissing them on the lips and I our culture that would be very awkward and uncomfortable Example Cajun Funerals are displayed with a celebration and loud music and in our culture we display funerals with black quiet and sorrow Example in the NFL players have to show they are tough by playing with injuries and broken arms and when they get home they can cry or show emotion Theories of emotion James Lange Theory of Emotion One of the early proponents of the idea that emotion is adaptive was William James James thought psychology should focus on the function of behavior emotions and thought We experience an event then we have a physiological and behavioral response to the event Finally we label the response to explain our behavior Example Eliciting Stimulus is a bear Aggressive state of arousal causes heart and body to go into fight or flight mode then conscious emotion of fear Cannon Bard Theory of Emotion A problem with the James Lange theory is that physiological responses can be slower than the experience of emotions They suggested emotion and physiological responses are separate and triggered simultaneously The Two Factor Theory of Emotion 1 An Emotionally provoking event causes a state of undifferentiated arousal 2 We search our environment to find an attribution of this arousal Maturation of Arousal 1 The Adrenaline Study o One half of the participants were injected with a placebo and the other half was injected with the adrenaline drug without knowing and then a experimenter ask some questions and when the experimenter seemed happy when asking the questions the participants who had the drug seemed to behave the same as the experimenter did and the other participants that received the placebo did seem to care how the experimenter acted o They did a study where half of the male participants had to walk across a normal bridge where there was an attractive women handing out a survey and then she gave them her 2 The bridge study number and said if you have any questions call this number and the other half of the male participants had to walk across a shaky and rocky bridge to get to the attractive women with the survey and they were most likely to call for follow up questions and some even asked her out on a date because they assimilated there arousal of emotion with the attractive lady The Somatic Marker Hypothesis Our physiological responses such as heart rate sweating breathing etc helps guide our decisions This experiment is where Decks A and B are bad decks and decks C and D are good decks and we assimilate our arousal of sweaty palms with nervous and bad so before we are consciously aware of which decks are bad and which are good we have a sense of arousal that lets us know What happens when emotions are diminished by brain damage People with diminished emotional responses frequently make poor decisions Adults use more emotion based gist than teens when making risky decisions In other words Mere Exposure Effect Emotion is often important when trying to make rational choices The more we are exposed to a stimulus the more we like it Perceptual fluency Stravinky riot http www youtube com watch v G3V Happiness and Positive Psychology Money Kind of Buys Happiness There is a movement that promotes studying happiness and the effects of happiness What has research shown When you are financially insecure you are likely to be less happy After an income of about 75 000 money stops predicting happiness Some people experience no more good or bad life events on average than other people We Get Happier as We Get Older As people age they tend to reflect on positives more Could also be due to age related changes in the brain We are overestimate how happy good things will make us and how sad things will make us over Affective Forecasting the long run Self Esteem There was a pop psychology self esteem movement that believed that self esteem was very important for psychological health Now it s claimed too much self esteem is bad and we were all ruined by soccer trophies Are either of these things true Self esteem is correlated with happiness social connectedness and resilience But it doesn t really predict success Self esteem only seems harmful if it is high