10.1 What are emotions? Unit 4.1

Schachter-Singer theory

-a bodily response is labeled with an explanation, which leads to emotion "two-factor theory of emotion" a label applied to physiological arousal results in the experience of an emotion --holds that emotion results from feeling nonspecific arousal and then attributing a cause to that arousal

Schachter and Singer experiment

-all male participants injected with either a stimulant or placebo -some participants were told that drug they took would make them feel aroused, other participants were told nothing about the drugs effects -each participants was left to wait with a confederate of the experimenter who was also male, and behaved according to the research plan -in the euphoric condition each participant was exposed to a confederate who was in a great mood - in the angry condition each participant was seated with a confederate both were asked to fill a long questionnaire that asked very intimate personal questions -when people knew why their hearts were pounding, they did not look for a label to attribute to the arousal and therefore they felt less excited -participants that did not know they had been given adrenaline showed more anger in upsetting situations

emotion

-an immediate, specific negative or positive response to environmental events or internal thoughts -interrupts what is happening or triggers changes in thought and behavior -encompasses a physiological process, a behavioral response, and a feeling based on the situation and the physical response

mood

-are diffuse, long-lasting emotional states that do not have an identifiable object or trigger -does not interrupt what is happening but influences thought and behavior -refer to people's vague senses that they feel certain ways

Cannon-Bard theory

-bodily response and emotion are experienced separately and simultaneously information about emotional stimuli is sent simultaneously to the cortex and the body and results in emotional experience and bodily reactions respectively

circumplex model

-emotions can be categorized by valence (neg-pos) and by level of arousal (low-high) -arousal (describes physiological activation or increased autonomic responses) -very useful to classify most mood states -doesn't represent all range of emotions

James-Lange theory

-holds that bodily arousal in specific patterns causes us to feel emotions people perceive specific patterns of bodily responses, and as a result of that perception they feel emotion

slow path

-leads to more deliberate and more thorough evaluations -sensory material travels from the thalamus ato the cortex (the visual cortex or the auditory cortex) where the info is scrutinized in greater depth before it is passed along to the amygdala -confirms the existence of a threat -causes us to reassess a loud sound as a firework

fast path

-processes sensory info nearly instantaneously -sensory info travels quickly to through the thalamus directly to the amygdala fro priority processing -primes us to respond to a threat -info is directly sent from the thalamus to amygdala -causes us to jump if we hear a loud explosive sound

amygdala

-processes the emotional significance of stimuli -it generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions -involved in deciphering emotional content of facial expressions -responsible for classically conditioned fear response -especially sensitive to facial expressions of fear -important for emotional learning

insula

-receives and integrates somatosensory signals from the entire body. -involved in the subjective awareness of bodily states such as sensing heartbeat, feeling hungry, or needing to urinate -active when people experience disgust , or observe facial expressions of disgust in others --anger, guilt and anxiety

excitation transfer

-similar form of misattribution -residual physiological arousal caused by one event is transferred to a new stimulus -people label their emotions based on what they think caused them, people can be wrong about what emotion they are feeling

primary emotion

are innate evolutionary adaptive and universal -anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, and contempt

secondary emotion

blends of primary emotions -remorse, guilt, submission, shame, love, bitterness, and jealousy

misattribution of arousal occurs, what happens?

is caused by people trying to explain a physiological response based on the situation -they will experience increased heart rate and sweaty palms due to the ride -they will be more likely to find one another attractive -they will attribute their physical arousal to their emotions ---eventhough their physical arousal has to do with the ride and not with each other.

feeling

is the subjective experience of the emotion (such as ______ scared) but not the emotion itself -based on cognitive appraisal of the situation and interpretation of bodily states