Functions of Emotions

What are some of the components of emotions?

*Cognitive appraisal: provides an evaluation of events and objects *Bodily symptoms: the physiological component of emotional experience *Action tendencies: a motivational component for the preparation and direction of motor responses. *Expression: facial and vocal expression almost always accompanies an emotional state to communicate reaction and intention of actions *Feelings: the subjective experience of emotional state once it has occurred

How does physiological arousal relate to emotions.

Adrenaline. Cognition + arousal.

What is an emotion?

Behaviour; just associated? Bodily responses; arousal without emotion. Feelings; what? Difficult to define. Emotion is often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. Can be differentiated from feelings, affect, and mood.

Describe Schacter's two factor theory of emotion.

Cognition + physiological arousal. Physical arousal is the same; not responsible alone. We must identify arousal to feed emotion. Stimulus > physical arousal > cognitive label > emotion. Epinephrone injection; told to test eyesight. Informed and not informed group. Euphoric or angry. Non informed felt what confederate felt.

Describe the work of Galati et al (2003).

Congenitally blind children; no exposure to facial expressions. Same expressions as sighted children.

Describe the social and cultural functions of emotions.

Cultural transmission of the meaning and information system to its members is, therefore, a crucial aspect of culture. One of the ways this transmission occurs is through the development of worldviews (including attitudes, values, beliefs, and norms) related to emotions (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013; Matsumoto et al., 2008). Worldviews related to emotions provide guidelines for desirable emotions that facilitate norms for regulating individual behaviors and interpersonal relationships. Our cultural backgrounds tell us which emotions are ideal to have, and which are not (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). The cultural transmission of information related to emotions occurs in many ways, from childrearers to children, as well as from the cultural products available in our world, such as books, movies, ads, and the like (Schönpflug, 2009; Tsai, Louie, Chen, & Uchida, 2007). Cultures also inform us about what to do with our emotions—that is, how to manage or modify them—when we experience them. One of the ways in which this is done is through the management of our emotional expressions through cultural display rules (Friesen, 1972). These are rules that are learned early in life that specify the management and modification of our emotional expressions according to social circumstances. Thus, we learn that "big boys don't cry" or to laugh at the boss's jokes even though they're not funny. By affecting how individuals express their emotions, culture also influences how people experience them as well. Because one of the major functions of culture is to maintain social order in order to ensure group efficiency and thus survival, cultures create worldviews, rules, guidelines, and norms concerning emotions because emotions have important intra- and interpersonal functions, as described above, and are important motivators of behavior. Norms concerning emotion and its regulation in all cultures serve the purpose of maintaining social order. Cultural worldviews and norms help us manage and modify our emotional reactions (and thus behaviors) by helping us to have certain kinds of emotional experiences in the first place and by managing our reactions and subsequent behaviors once we have them. By doing so, our culturally moderated emotions can help us engage in socially appropriate behaviors, as defined by our cultures, and thus reduce social complexity and increase social order, avoiding social chaos. All of this allows us to live relatively harmonious and constructive lives in groups. If cultural worldviews and norms about emotions did not exist, people would just run amok having all kinds of emotional experiences, expressing their emotions and then behaving in all sorts of unpredictable and potentially harmful ways. If that were the case, it would be very difficult for groups and societies to function effectively, and even for humans to survive as a species, if emotions were not regulated in culturally defined ways for the common, social good. Thus, emotions play a critical role in the successful functioning of any society and culture.

Describe the work of Averill (1974).

Draw a line between cognition and emotion. Long standing cultural theory of emotion. *Passive * Irrational * Involuntary * Animal

What are the interpersonal functions of emotions?

Emotional expressions provide information about the nature of the relationships among interactants. Some of the most important and provocative set of findings in this area come from studies involving married couples (Gottman & Levenson, 1992; Gottman, Levenson, & Woodin, 2001). In this research, married couples visited a laboratory after having not seen each other for 24 hours, and then engaged in intimate conversations about daily events or issues of conflict. Discrete expressions of contempt, especially by the men, and disgust, especially by the women, predicted later marital dissatisfaction and even divorce. To date, the strongest demonstration of social referencing comes from work on the visual cliff. In the first study to investigate this concept, Campos and colleagues (Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985) placed mothers on the far end of the "cliff" from the infant. Mothers first smiled to the infants and placed a toy on top the safety glass to attract them; infants invariably began crawling to their mothers. When the infants were in the center of the table, however, the mother then posed an expression of fear, sadness, anger, interest, or joy. The results were clearly different for the different faces; no infant crossed the table when the mother showed fear; only 6% did when the mother posed anger, 33% crossed when the mother posed sadness, and approximately 75% of the infants crossed when the mother posed joy or interest. Other studies provide similar support for facial expressions as regulators of social interaction. In one study (Bradshaw, 1986), experimenters posed facial expressions of neutral, anger, or disgust toward babies as they moved toward an object and measured the amount of inhibition the babies showed in touching the object. The results for 10- and 15-month olds were the same: anger produced the greatest inhibition, followed by disgust, with neutral the least. This study was later replicated (Hertenstein & Campos, 2004) using joy and disgust expressions, altering the method so that the infants were not allowed to touch the toy (compared with a distractor object) until one hour after exposure to the expression. At 14 months of age, significantly more infants touched the toy when they saw joyful expressions, but fewer touched the toy when the infants saw disgust.

How do emotions influence thoughts?

Emotions are also connected to thoughts and memories. Memories are not just facts that are encoded in our brains; they are colored with the emotions felt at those times the facts occurred. Thus, emotions serve as the neural glue that connects those disparate facts in our minds. That is why it is easier to remember happy thoughts when happy, and angry times when angry. Emotions influence our thinking processes, sometimes in constructive ways, sometimes not. It is difficult to think critically and clearly when we feel intense emotions, but easier when we are not overwhelmed with emotions.

How do emotions help us act quickly with minimal conscious awareness?

Emotions are rapid information-processing systems that help us act with minimal thinking (Tooby & Cosmides, 2008). Problems associated with birth, battle, death, and seduction have occurred throughout evolutionary history and emotions evolved to aid humans in adapting to those problems rapidly and with minimal conscious cognitive intervention. We can make rapid decisions. The emotion of disgust stops us eating things that are gone off and being sick. This is adaptive because it helps in our survival.

Describe the research of Ekman and Friesan (1969).

Facial expressions appear to be the same across cultures. Universal recognition. Actors produce basic emotion expressions. Shown and asked to identify. Another classic study found that when participants contorted their facial muscles into distinct facial expressions (e.g. disgust), they reported subjective and physiological experiences that matched the distinct facial expressions.

What are focal emotions?

Focal emotions are the more common emotions in the everyday lives of the members of a culture, presumably experienced and expressed with greater frequency and intensity (Mesquita, 2003). For example, for individuals from cultures that value honour, sexual and family insults are highly charged events and trigger higher levels of anger than in members of cultures that do not prioritize honour. Self-conscious emotions express modesty, an appreciation of others' opinions, and a sense of how the self is located within a social collective. These qualities of the self-conscious emotions are consistent with the core concerns in interdependent cultures—to maintain harmony and be mindful of others. We might therefore expect shame or embarrassment to be more focal emotions in more interdependent cultures, and that is what recent studies have revealed.

Are there cultural differences in emotion?

For example, the Inuit of Alaska were never observed to express anger (Briggs, 1960), and seventeenth-century Japanese wives of Samurai soldiers would smile upon receiving the news that their husbands had died nobly in battle. Emotional dialects are a highly stylised, culturally specific way of expressing particular emotions. In a study conducted in India and the United States, for example, participants were asked to judge two expressions of embarrassment (Haidt & Keltner, 1999). Members of both cultures interpreted the expression on the left (Western) but Indians also interpreted a tongue bite as showing embarrassment. Clearly there is cultural variability in emotion.

Basic emotions.

Fundamental and important. Discrete and measurable. Create other emotions. Anger, disgust, surprise, fear, sadness, and happiness. Not a universal agreement. Studies only show a link; not fundamental.

Criticism of the two factor theory.

Only partial replication/support. Some emotions experienced before cognition. Physiological differences between emotions (James Lange theory).

What did Robert Plutchik suggest about basic emotions?

Robert Plutchik agreed with Ekman's biologically driven perspective but developed the "wheel of emotions", suggesting eight primary emotions grouped on a positive or negative basis: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus distrust; and surprise versus anticipation.

Describe evolutionary theories of emotion.

The principle of serviceable habits. Darwin proposed his principle of serviceable habits, which maintains that expressions of human emotion that we observe today derive from habitual patterns of behavior that proved useful in the evolution of our primate and mammalian predecessors. This led to the hypothesis of universality of emotions. Darwin reasoned that because all humans have the same 30 to 40 facial muscles and have used these muscles to communicate similar emotions in the past, people in all cultures should communicate and perceive emotion in a similar fashion. A second prediction concerns the similarity between our emotional expression and that of our primate and mammalian ancestors. Darwin reasoned that because humans share an evolutionary history with other primates and mammals, our emotional expressions should resemble the emotional expressions of other species. In support of this thesis, Darwin drew fascinating parallels between human emotion and the expressions of animals in the London zoo as well as his favorite dogs at home. Finally, Darwin argued that blind individuals, lacking the rich visual input a culture provides in how to display emotion, will still show similar expressions as sighted individuals because the tendency to express emotions in particular ways is encoded in the human nervous system.

How do emotions prepare the body for immediate action?

When triggered, emotions orchestrate systems such as perception, attention, inference, learning, memory, goal choice, motivational priorities, physiological reactions, motor behaviors, and behavioral decision making (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Tooby & Cosmides, 2008). Emotions simultaneously activate certain systems and deactivate others in order to prevent the chaos of competing systems operating at the same time, allowing for coordinated responses to environmental stimuli (Levenson, 1999). For instance, when we are afraid, our bodies shut down temporarily unneeded digestive processes, resulting in saliva reduction (a dry mouth); blood flows disproportionately to the lower half of the body; the visual field expands; and air is breathed in, all preparing the body to flee. Emotions initiate a system of components that includes subjective experience, expressive behaviors, physiological reactions, action tendencies, and cognition, all for the purposes of specific actions; the term "emotion" is, in reality, a metaphor for these reactions. Emotion prepares the body for action, but whether people actually engage in the behaviour depends on many factors including the context, the target and so forth.