5. Emotions
1. Situation Selection
Approaching or avoiding certain people, places or objects; choose environments to control range of contextual event
What is emotion?
"Conscious evaluative reaction to some event." Brief event (3-5 seconds) with three components: Physiology Facial/Body Expression Phenomenology
What is the positivity ratio?
>2.9 <11.6 (Flourishing) 2.9 < Languishing. And too much positive are not flourishing either
Evolutionary Perspective
Agree that emotions: Solve problems Are differentiated by appraisals and action tendencies Focus: Goals that are evolutionarily adaptive (survival/reproduction) Basic emotions Evidence: Facial expressions across species Physiology: motivates large muscle movements
Six Basic Emotions
Anger Fear Disgust Surprise Happiness Sadness
What is affect?
Automatic response General feeling that something is Positive or Negative
Functions of Specific Emotions
Basic Emotions Coping with physical environment to promote goals Social Emotions Coping with social environment to promote goals
May some of the social emotions be innate? Pride and Shame in Paralympic Games
Blind individuals showed pride after success and shame after failure. Culture moderated things - it moderated the shame response. The North Americans and Eurasia had less of a shame response only among the sighted athletes.
Are there cultural differences in the connection between physiological activity and phenomenology?
Chinese, Asian-American, and Caucasian-American participants viewed compassion and admiration inducing videos in the fMRI scanner No differences in the magnitude of AI activation in response to stimuli and no differences in reported strength of feelings There were differences in the relation between brain activation and reported feeling strength: Chinese group - feeling strength associated with vAI activiation In cultural groups that value calmness, people learn that the mechanisms of autonomic modulation provide more important clues Caucasion-Am. - feeling strength more associated with dAI activation In more expressive cultures, people learn to rely more heavily on smatosensory processing mechanisms in deciding their strength of feelings Asian-Am. - in between the two "Culture may influence the process by which individuals construct conscious experiences of social emotions, even though...we found no evidence that culture influences basic interoceptive processing" p. 10
Attentional Deployment
Control focus of attention on the contextual event to reduce or enhance the emotion
Response Modification
Directly influencing physiological, experiential or expression: Meditation, medication
Are facial expressions innate or learned?
Do blind babies have emotional facial expressions like sighted babies? Yes - especially smiling As time goes on, blind people make fewer facial expressions of emotion (except happiness), and are not as good at posing facial expressions
Social Emotions
Embarrassment Guilt Shame Pride Social Anxiety (shyness) Gratitude
Where is this happening in the brain?
Dorsal posterior insula - interoception - engenders distinct and highly resolved feeling from the body (pain, temperature, heart rate, hunger, thirst, muscular sensations, etc.) Anterior insula (AI) - maps visceral states and active during emotional experiences Ventral AI - evolutionarily old sector involved in autonomic modulation /regulation and emotion processing Dorsal AI - evolutionarily newer sector and more visceral somatosensory related. Has been implicated in cognition and in interoceptive and emotional awareness
Social Emotions
Embarrassment: non violation, appease, avoid social banishment Guilt: immoral behavior repair Shame: immoral self avoid Pride: Met standards, approach, mark status Jealousy: what you have is threatened-protect Envy: others have something you want-Approach (J & E optimize resources and reproductive opportunities)
a. Emotion as Information
Emotional expression helps others know emotions, beliefs, and intentions. In the absence of speech... Facial expressions of emotion are used to interpret how another is feeling and thinking
b. Emotions as Reinforcers
Emotional expression reinforce behaviors
Gratitude: A positive moral emotion Emmons et al., 2001
Emotional response to another person's moral actions on one's behalf. Three moral functions: Moral Barometer (how am I doing?) Moral Reinforcer (positive reinforcement) Moral Motive (makes me want to act prosocially)
Action Readiness Perspective
Emotions are characterized by specific action tendencies Wanting to approach, pursue, be energetic Wanting to avoid, resist, inhibit activity Evidence: Physiology: motivates large muscle movements Surveys find actions differentiate emotions: Both happiness and anger promote approach behavior, though with different intents
Appraisal Theories
Emotions signify appraisals of the current situation that have implications for goals: pleasantness, certainness, attention etc. Evidence: Surveys of these aspects vary reliably with different emotional experiences Example: Fear and Anger Both: low pleasantness, high attention Anger > Fear in certainty about eliciting event
Measuring emotion:
Facial Expression - FACS coding Physiology - ANS arousal skin conductance, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, general somatic activity Phenomenology - Self-report ratings
How do basic Emotions provide information and prepare us for action to solve problems of survival. Fear = ?
Fear: Danger, avoid, protect Disgust: Poison, avoid, protect Anger: Offense, attack, protect Sadness:Loss, approach/avoid, prevent Surprise: Novelty, Look and learn Happy: Pleasure, approach reward
What is true in men and women and Emotions?
In young children there are more emotionality in boys. Men may be slightly more emotional, but women are more willing to report emotions
Gratitude as an Emotion
Information provided: Received a benefit Who cares for me? Action Readiness: Approach Thank Reciprocate Evolved: Builds stronger bonds and social networks
Impact of Suppression
Long term. suppress both negative and positive emotions. Bad overall effect.
What is mood?
Longer lasting feeling state that is not clearly linked to a specific event
Results of the study with couple and emotional same page
Longer periods of relative constancy and positive affect during such periods predicted staying together Inconsistency in the length of relative constancy periods and negative affect during those periods predicted braking up. Longer the synchrony between the emotional experiences of the two people, the more likely they would be together a year later.
Situation Modification
Modify or change a situation to alter its emotional impact; change an aspect of the contextual event
Early development of basic emotions:
Newborns: Disgust expression to sour taste Meaningful displays in first year: 2 months - Anger: Lack of expected reward 3 months - Smiles: Invitations to play, affection 10 months - Fear: "Visual Cliff"
Do social emotions have universal expressions?
No evidence for recognizable facial expressions But some evidence for bodily expression as recognizable across cultures Ex: Pride cannot be recognized based on the facial expression alone.
Does Each Emotion Have a Distinctive Physiological Pattern?
Not in an absolute sense (between-persons) But within and individual, yes: Heart Rate Acceleration anger, fear, and sadness > disgust anger, fear > happiness Skin Conductance fear, disgust > happiness
What is the study on Gratitude and Moral Motivation?
Not only did participants spend more time helping someone who helped them, but they also spent more time helping a stranger in the gratitude condition (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006)
Universality of Emotions
Paul Ekman FACS Coding
Emotion Regulation Definition:
People regulate their emotions when they influence: Which emotions they have When they have emotions How they experience emotions How they express emotions
Undoing Hypothesis
Positive emotions help people to recover from the stress to bring you back to physiological baseline
Why do we regulate?
Prefer feeling good to feeling bad: suppress negativity Display rules: maintain social relationships Two directions of regulation: Inhibition/suppression Enhancement/inflation
Cognitive Change
Reappraisal of event, cognitively change the emotional meaning of the event
Misattribution of arousal
Schacchter & Singer, 1962 Participants told studying the effect of vitamin injections on visual skills Conditions: Received injection: adrenaline or placebo Informed or uninformed of shot side effects Exposed to confederate who acted happy or annoyed When participant received adrenaline and told adrenaline had no side effects, they "caught" the confederate's emotion
5 Regulation Strategies
Situation selection Modification of the situation Deployment of attention Change of cognitions Modulation of responses
Microexpressions
Small expressions that you can barely notice
c. Emotional Reciprocity
Sometimes, emotion is contagious..."catch" the same emotion. The shared experience creates social bonds and breeds intimacy. But other times emotion evokes reciprocal emotion in others. This facilitates interactions: Embarrassment, guilt/remorse, grief... ...evoke sympathy in others Anger... ...sometimes evokes anger ...but often evokes fear
Emotions help us achieve goals and solve problems...
Three main theories: Appraisals Action Readiness Evolutionary
To summarize, why are these 6 emotions "basic"?
Universal - recognized and produced cross-culturally Develop very early in children Considered evolutionarily selected
Schachter-Singer Theory of Emotion
emo stim leads to (phy arousal and cog label) then ends at emo experienced
Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion
emotional stim leads to both (emo experience and physiological arousal)
James-Lange Theory of Emotion
emotional stimuli, physiological arousal, experienced emotion
Suppression
inhibit emotion so that emotions are hidden from others. decrease in facial expression, somatic activity, heart rate. Increase GSR and Blinking.
Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions
suggests that positive emotions (viz. enjoyment/happiness/joy, and perhaps interest/anticipation)[2] broaden one's awareness and encourage novel, varied, and exploratory thoughts and actions. Over time, this broadened behavioral repertoire builds skills and resources. For example, curiosity about a landscape becomes valuable navigational knowledge; pleasant interactions with a stranger become a supportive friendship; aimless physical play becomes exercise and physical excellence.