Emotions
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- Created by: caitlyn.hole
- Created on: 20-01-19 13:59
What Are Emotions?
- Display of feelings
- Relatively brief
- Response to events having motivational relevance
- Overall subjective concept
Six Basic Emotions
- Disgust
- Fear
- Joy
- Surprise
- Sadness
- Anger
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Emotions & Evolution
Darwin
- Universally expressed and recognised
- If emotions are innate/biological then they will be recognised everywhere, regardless of culture
- Blind people can still express the six basic emotions but cannot learn from others
- Debate about whether emotions have evolved or are a psychological construct
- Emotions without clear facial expressions, e.g. boredom or guilt are ambiguous
- Evolutionary benefits to showing emotions, e.g. showing fear for a threat can help you to survive/overcome the threat
Families of Emotion
- Basic emotions - evolved, universally expressed and understood (the six basic emotions)
- Self-conscious emotions - e.g. shame, pride
- Moral emotions - e.g. empathy
Zelenski & Larson - Which Emotions are Common?
- Freud argues humans are naturally unhappy but it was found that Ps were 5x more often happy than sad
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Biology of Emotions: Amygdala
Amygdala
- Located in temporal lobe, part of lymbic system
- Important in the expression of conditioned emotional responses
- Focal point between sensory systems and systems for behavioural, autonomic and hormonal components
Damage to the Amygdala
- Linked to a lack of fear responses when presented with stimuli that should typically cause fear
- Link of thalamus and amygdala - carries emotional content of conditioning; 'quick and dirty'
- Link of thalamus to auditory/visual cortex to amygdala - carries sensory content of conditioning; further processing of the situation; e.g. initial fear that a long object could be a snake when in reality it's a stick
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Biology of Emotions: Orbitofrontal Cortex
OFC
- Located in top of frontal lobes
- Receives info from sensory systems and regions of the frontal lobes that control behaviour
- Communicates with the limbic system
Damage to the OFC
- Case of Phineas Gage - personality and emotional world changed after suffering damage to his frontal lobes
- Damage to OFC impairs inhibitions and self-concern, and results in difficulties with social behaviour
- Idea that connections between somatic states (e.g. sweaty palms) and an appreciation of them are missing - struggle to link bodily states with emotions
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Facial Feedback Hypothesis
Strack et al
- Ps held pen in mouth in either sucking (preventing a smile) or teeth (smile) conditions
- Ps read and rated cartoons
- Found that teeth condition resulted in cartoons being rated as more funny compared to the sucking condition
- Supports the idea that our facial expressions can influence our feelings
Effects of Botox
- Botox on the brow paralyses muscles needed to frown
- Preventing people from frowning impacts the emotion of anger, supporting facial feedback hypothesis
- Slower to evoke the emotion of anger
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Theories of Emotion: James-Lange v Cannon Bard
James-Lange Theory
- Do we cry then know we feel sad, or do we feel sad and then cry?
- Behavioural link to emotion
- Stimulus (e.g. growling dog) leads to perception/interpretation, triggering a unique pattern of autonomic arousal
- This is a somatic state of the body that is unique to particular stimulus, e.g. heart beating faster/breathing hard when seeing a growling dog, which leads to the expression of a particular emotion
Cannon-Bard Theory
- Counter to James-Lange theory
- Emotional and physiological responses are separate but both happen in response to the stimulus
- Same physiological reactions for different emotions, e.g. increased heartbeat and sweaty palms can be the same reaction for both feelings of fear and excitement
- A stimulus triggers both an emotional and physiological response
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Theories of Emotion: Two Factor Theory
Schachter & Singer
- Hybrid of James-Lange and Cannon-Bard
- Emotions jointly determined by the perception of physiology and cognitive assessment of the situation
- Ps given adrenaline shot - looked at how they interpret arousal in the context they were in
- 3 conditions - Ps told that the adrenaline would have either: no effect; make them tremble and increase their heart rate (true); or that they would experience symptoms not associated with adrenaline, e.g. feeling numb
- Found that conditions 1 and 3 felt happy around happy confeds and angry around angry confeds
- Found that the emotions of Ps in condition 2 were unaffected by the confed - correctly attributed arousal symptoms to emotion/injection
Misattribution of Arousal Paradigm - Dutton & Aron
- Related to Schachter & Singer
- Ps either crossed a wobbly or stable bridge, then asked to rate how attractive a particular person was
- Found that Ps who crossed the wobbly bridge rated the person as more attractive than the stable bridge condition
- This is because they were more aroused and misattriubuted the physiological arousal to physical attraction
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