Human Motivation: Chapter 11: Nature of Emotion - Five Perennial Questions

Benefit of sadness

Indirectly facilitates the cohesiveness of social groups by motivating the individual to initiate whatever behavior is necessary to alleviate the distress-provoking circumstances before they occur

Emotions from a biological approach by Jack Panksepp: 4 views

1) fear 2) rage 3) panic 4) expectancy

Emotion's role in development

Emotions facilitate and fuel cognitive development. Sadness, Shame, guilt, sympathy and empathy are emotional ingredients in the development of prosocial behavior. Shame and guilt make it painful to violate social rules (shame) and moral standards (guilt). Shame tells the self that one is acting in a way that is inadequate or unacceptable to others. Guilt tells the self that a moral standard is being violated and therefore motivates reparative behaviors that help maintain our relationships with others. Interest arises from environmental novelty and complexity. Without interest, the person would lack an internal motivation to explore her surroundings. Anger helps foster a sense of self reliance. Without anger, imagine how people would react to goals blocks or obstructed. He would have little motivation to engage in the thinking and problem solving necessary for figuring out how to cope best to reverse and overcome obstacles. Without smiling, you would not have the means of gaining a steady stream if stimulation and challenge from others that is necessary for optimal cognitive development, perspective taking and rule internalization.

Why we have emotions

Life is full of challenges, stresses, and problems to be solved. Emotions exist as solutions to these challenges, stresses and problems. Emotions establish our position via a vis our environment and equip us with specific, efficient responses that are tailored to problems of physical and social survival. Emotions affect the way we think, feel and behave. So the question hinges on whether emotions are adaptive and functional or whether emotions are maladaptive and dysfunctional.

Sadness or distress

Most negative emotion and is from separation or loss and failure. Its motives are to restore the environment

Positive Affect

The everyday, low-level, general state of feeling good. This lack of awareness of the positive affect stands in contracts to the more intense attention-grabbing positive emotions such as joy. The purpose of an emotion is to capture attention and direct coping behavior (so the person can adapt to situational demands effectively. Positive affect is more subtle. It affects neither attention nor behavior. Instead, positive affect subtly influences the information-processing flow: what we think about the decisions we make, creativity, judgments and so on.

5 Emotion families listed by Paul Ekman

1) anger 2) fear 3) disgust 4) sadness 5) enjoyment

Emotions from a biological Perspective by Carroll Izard: 10 emotions

1) anger 2) fear 3) distress 4) joy 5) disgust 6) surprise 7) shame 8) guilt 9) interest 10) contempt

5 Emotion families listed the dictionary

1) anger: includes hostility, rage, fury, outrage, annoyance, resentment, envy and frustrations 2) fear 3) sadness 4) joy: amusement, relief, satisfaction, contentment, and pride 5) love

Emotions serve social functions

1) communicate our feelings to others 2) influence how others interact with us 3) incite and facilitate social interaction 4) create, maintain and dissolve relationships

What is the difference between emotion and mood?

1) Different antecedents: emotions and moods arise from different causes. Emotions emerge from significant life situations and from appraisals of their significance to our well being. Moods emerge from processes that are ill defined and are oftentimes unknown 2) different action specificity: emotions mostly influence behavior and direct specific courses of action. Moods mostly influence cognition and direct what the person thinks about. 3) different time course:emotions emanate from short-lived events that last for seconds or minutes whereas moods emanate from mental events that last for hours or perhaps even days. Hence, moods are more enduring than are emotions.

Functional vs dysfunctional

Emotions exist as both a masterpiece of evolutionary design or excess baggage in the age of reason. Human Motivation operates within a two system design. The biological core of the emotion system is one that humans share with other animals and this part of the emotion system that evolved to solve fundamental life tasks. For emotions to be adaptive across many different situations, emotions need to be regulated and controlled. Today's threats are on a smaller scale and therefore do not require the same sort of massive mobilization of our emotional systemZ. Becoming competent in regulating one's emotions generally improves with experience, it constitutes a lifelong undertaking. In the end, whether emotions serve us well depends on how able we are to self regulate our emotion systems such that we experience regulation of emotion rather than regulation by emotion.

Social Functions

Emotions serve social functions: 1) communicate our feelings to others 2) influence how others interact with us 3) invite and facilitate social interaction 4) create, maintain and dissolve relationships Emotional expressions are potent, nonverbal messages that communicate our feelings to others. Emotional displays influence how people interact, as the emotional expression of one person can prompt selective behavioral reactions from a second person. The emotional expression nonverbally communicates to towhee what one's probable forthcoming behavior is likely to be. If the toy is taken away, the anger-expressing child communicates a probable forthcoming attack, whereas the sadness expressing child communicates a probable barrage of tears. The signal that one is likely to attack or cry often succeeds in regaining the lost toy or preventing the toy from being taken in the first place. Hence, in the context of social interaction, emotions serve multiple functions, including informative and directive. Emotional expressions communicate social incentives (joy, smile), social deterrents (angry face) and unspoken messages (embarrassment face) that smooth and coordinate social interactions. Many emotional expressions are socially, rather biologically motivates. People frequently smile even when they do not feel joy. Instead people frequently smile when they wish to facilitate social interaction. Smiling is socially, rather emotionally friendly.* The idea that a smile can be socially motivated leads to the question of whether Simi king is typically an emotional expression of joy or a social expression of friendliness.

Fear and anger review

Fear essentially motivates protective behavior, it also readies is for additional and more flexible actions including preventing the dangerous recent from occurring in the first place or suppressing activity until the threat passes. Anger essentially motivates destructive action, but it also prepares us to enforce social. Irma or to discourage anger-causing events before they occur (e.g. Discourage injustice, restraint, and insults with preparatory behavior like negotiating rules. This increase led flexibility is important because it makes it clear that emotional responses are more flexible than are reflexes.

Benefits of feeling good

People exposed to conditions that allow them to feel good are more likely to help others, act sociably, express greater liking for others, be more generous to others and to themselves, take risks, act more cooperatively and less aggressively, solve problems in creative ways, persist in the face of failure feedback, make decisions more efficiently, and show greater intrinsic motivation on interesting activities. Positive affect facilities our willingness to help others. It facilitates cognitive flexibility and creative problem solving. Being in a mood rather than an emotion, positive affect influences cognitive processes such as memories, judgements and problem solving strategies. It therefore influences the contents of working (short term) memory by boasting what the individual thinks about and what memories and expectations come to mind. With happy thoughts and pleasant memories salient in one's mind, people show increased creativity, help others more, show persistence in failure, make decisions efficiently, show high intrinsic motivation. This helps explain why short term positive affect helps people be successful in a wide range of areas in their lives including marriages, friendship, income, health etc.

Everyday Mood

People have 1000 minutes in their day but only a few of these activities include prototypical emotion such as anger, fear or joy. In contrast, the average person generally experiences an ever-present stream of moods or affect. Though emotions are relatively rare in daily experience, people are always feeling something. What they typically feel is a mode, a way of feeling that often exists as an aftereffect of a previously experienced emotional episode. Mood exists as a positive affect state or as a negative affect state (good or bad mood). They are not opposite ways of feeling. They are independent. For example, during a job interview, people often report feeling both positive and negative affects simultaneously.

Conditions that make us feel good

People have difficult times explaining why they feel good. Consider these positive affect-inducing experimental manipulations of a small gain, amusement or pleasure. Unexpected gains or pleasures. We lose our positive mood by engaging in neutral and aversive events (e.g. Boring work, congested traffic).

Positive vs negative affect

Positive affect reflects pleasurable engagement. It exists as a person's current level of pleasure, enthusiasm, and progress toward goals. People who feel high positive affect typically feel enthusiastic and experience energy, alertness, and optimism whereas those who feel low positive affect typically feel lethargic, apathetic and bored. Negative affect reflects unpleasant engagement. People who feel high negative affect typically experience dissatisfaction, nervousness and irritability whereas those who feel low negative affect are calm and relaxed. These feelings of alertness vs boredom and irritability vs relaxation rather than prototypical emotional states such as joy and fear constitute the essential nature of everyday, ongoing affective experience, our everyday mood. Positive and negative affect pertain not only to moods. It also to broad cognitive, motivational, biological and behavioral systems. Positive affect reflects a reward driven, appetitive motivational system. Positive affect and a good mood support approach behavior while negative affect system supports withdrawal. The positive affect system has its own neural substrate, dopaminergic pathways. These pathways are activated by pleasurable events. The negative affect system has serotnergic and noradrenergicnpathways. These pathways are activated by the expectancy of negative outcomes. Therefore, positive and negative affects are more independent ways of feeling than they are emotional or neural opposites.

Different time course

Emotions come from short-lived events that last seconds to minutes. Moods come from mental events that last hours to days.

Basic emotions

8 basic primary emotions meet the following criteria: are innate rather than acquired or learned through experience or socialization. Arise from the same circumstances for all people. Are expressed uniquely and distinctively. Evoke a distinctive and highly predictable physiological patterned response.

Biological view

A biological view emphasizes primary emotions and downplays the importance of secondary or acquired emotions. Primary emotions: anger, disgust; sadness, surprise, fear, Acceptance, Joy and anticipation. Can tell from baby faces in all cultures. Researchers agree that a small number of basic emotions exist (8). Basic emotions are universal to all humans and animals. Basic emotions are products of biology and evolution.

Significant situational event

A) cognitive processes B) biological processes 1) feelings: joyful, happiness 2) sense of purpose: relatedness 3) bodily arousal: anxiety, can't sleep, diet changes 4) social-expressive: what does it look like? Smiling, jumping

Why fear?

Activated coping efforts and facilities the learning of adaptive responses. It arises from a person's interpretation that the situation he faces is dangerous and a threat to one's well being. It motivate defense and the flight part in the fight flight response. Escape or withdrawal.

Encountering a significant event

Activates cognitive and biological processes that collectively activate the critical components of emotion, including feelings, bodily arousal, goal directed purpose, and expression

What are emotions (summary)

Agents of purpose. For example, anger creates a motivational desire to do what we might not otherwise do

Biology and cognition

Argue for cognition first-individuals cannot respond emotionally unless they first cognitively appraise the meaning and personal significance of an event. If you take away the cognitive processing, the emotion disappears. Lazarus stated that it is the person's cognitive appraisal of the meaning of an event, rather than the event itself that sets the stage for the emotional experience. Attribution theory: judgments about yourself. If you think, you will feel

Why anger?

Arises from restraint, as in the interpretation that one's plans, goals, or well being have been interfered with by some outside forth (barrier, obstacle). Also arises from a betrayal of trust, being rebuffed, receiving unwarranted criticism, a slight, and cumulative annoyances.

Cognitive Perspective

Asserts grimy that human beings experience a greater number of emotions than the 2-10 highlighted by the biological tradition. Cognitive theorists grant that there are only a limited number of neural circuits, facial expressions, and bodily reactions (e.g. The fight or flight reaction). They point out, however, that several different emotions can arise from the same biological reaction. Human beings experience a rich diversity of emotion because situations can be interpreted so differently and because emotion arises from a blend of cognitive appraisal,* language; personal knowledge, socialization history, and cultural expectations. How the cognitive theories of emotion differ is in how they portray the way people generate and interpret the meaning of a situation. The situation can provide the context to interpret one's aroused state and people can be socialized to interpret their aroused state. Emotional experiences are embedded deeply within language, socially constructed ways of acting, and social rules such as cheerleader and bully.

Why sadness?

Because it feels so aversive, it motivates the individual to initiate whatever behavior is necessary to alleviate the distress provoking circumstances before they occur again. It motivates the person to restore the environment to its state before the distressing situation. Following separation, the rejected lover apologizes. Following failure, a performer practices to restore confidence and to prevent the reoccurrence of a similar failure. That is, because we feel sad, we are more likely to apologize and to offer reparations. Unfortunate many separations and failures cannot be restored. Under hopeless conditions, the person behaves not in an active, vigorous way but in an inactive, lethargic way the essentially leads to withdrawal.

Two systems view

Buck stated that people have two synchronous systems that activate and regulate emotion. First system is an innate, spontaneous, physiological system that reacts involuntarily to emotional stimuli Second system is an experienced based cognitive system that reacts interpretively and socially Biological and cognitive emotion systems interact

Feedback loop

Change in the cognitive appraisal from "this is beneficial" to "this is harmful" and emotions will change

Cognitive Perspective

Cognitive activity is a necessary prerequisite to emotion. Take away the cognitive processing and the emotion disappears Lazarus argues that without an understanding of the personal relevance of an event's potential impact on personal well-being, there is no reason to respond emotionally. The individual's cognitive appraisal of the meaning of an event (rather than the event itself) sets the state for emotional experience.*. The emotion-generating process begins not with the event and not with one's biological reaction to it, but instead with the cognitive appraisal of its meaning.*. Wiener concentrates on the information processing that takes place after life events occur. That is, attribution theory focuses on the thinking and personal reflection we engage in following life's successes and failures. Following a success believing it was caused by the self produces one emotion (pride) while believing that same success was caused by a friend proxies a different emotion (gratitude). Notice that both the outcome and the life event might be the same but if the attribution is different then so is the emotional experience.*. The attribution event or the outcome gives life to the emotion.

Dalai Lama's teachings

Craving, agitation, and hatred are the most destructive emotions. 1) turn craving into contentment 2) turn agitation into calmness 3) turn anger and hatred into compassion 4) turn resentment to love and respect

Anger's purpose

Destroy barriers in the environment and can energize vigor, strength, and endurance in our efforts to cope productively as we change the world around us into what it should be

Chicken and egg problem

Emotion is a process Emotions are involved in a feedback loop. Depends on experiences. Feedback on how others deal with it. Cognition, arousal, preparation for action, feelings, expressive displays and overt behavioral activity constitute the total experience that causes, influences and regulates emotion.

Development

Emotions fuel cognitive development. Emotional experiences contribute motivationally to adolescents construction of the self concept, discovery of meaning, consideration of ideal versus possible selves and abstract thinking

Essence of anger

The belief that the situation is not what it should be, that is the restraint, interference, or criticism is illegitimate.

Threat and harm

The family of emotions: fear, anger, disgust and sadness work together to provide the person with an emotional system to deal effectively with all aspects of threat and harm.

What good are the emotions?

Who wants to feel sad, angry, or jealous. Charles Darwin wrote the Expression of emotions in man and animals. He argues that emotions helped animals adapt to their surroundings. Displays of emotion help adaptation much in the same way that displays of physical characteristics (height) do. The dog baring its teeth in defense of its territory helps it cope with hostile situations. Such expressiveness is functional and emotions are therefore candidates for natural selection.

Emotions from a Biological Perspective by Robert Plutchik: 8 views

1) anger 2) disgust 3) sadness 4) surprise 5) fear 6) acceptance 7) joy 8) anticipation Because each one corresponds to an emotion-behavior syndrome common to all living organisms (e.g. Fear corresponds to protection)

Emotions from a biological perspective by Jeffrey Gray: 3 views

1) behavioral approach: joy 2) the fight or flight system: anger or fear 3) behavioral inhibition system: anxiety

Significant situational event

1) cognitive processes 2) biological processes Feelings, sense of purpose, bodily arousal, social-expressive

Emotions from a biological Perspective by Paul Ekman: 6 views

1) fear 2) anger 3) sadness 4) disgust 5) enjoyment 6) contempt Because he finds that each of these emotions is associated with a corresponding universal (cross cultural) facial expression

Emotions serve at least 8 distinct purposes

1) fear: protection (stimulus is threat) 2) anger: destruction (stimulus: obstacle) 3) joy: reproduction (stimulus: potential mate) 4) sadness: reunion (stimulus: loss of a valued person) 5) acceptance: affiliation (stimulus: group member) 6) disgust: rejection (stimulus: gruesome object) 7) anticipation: exploration (stimulus: new New Territory) 8) surprise: Orientation (stimulus: sudden novel object)

Emotions from a biological approach by Nancy Stein and Tom Trabasso: 4 views

1) happiness 2) sadness 3) anger 4) fear Because these emotions reflect reactions to life's essential pursuits: 1) attainment (happiness) 2) loss (sadness) 3) obstruction (anger) 4) uncertainty (fear)

Emotions from a biological Perspective by Silvan Tompkins: 6 views

1) interest 2) fear 3) surprise 4) anger 5) distress 6) joy Because he finds six distinct patterns of neural firing produces these different emotions

8 functions of emotion

1) protection (fear) 2) destruction (anger) 3) reproduction (joy) 4) reunion (sadness) 5) affiliation (acceptance) 6) rejection (disgust) 7) exploration (anticipation) 8) orientation (surprise)

Four components of emotions due to a life event

1) subjective experience 2) biological: bodily arousal 3) purposive: goal directed 4) social-expressive: social communication, facial expression, vocal expression

A cognitive view

Acknowledges the importance of the primary emotions but it stresses that a lot of what is interesting about emotional experiences comes from individual, social and cultural experience. People experience a limitless number of emotions. Different emotions can arise from the same biological reactions. This view tells us why polygraphs are not admissible in court.

Fear

An emotional reaction that arises from a person's interpretation that the situation he faces is dangerous and a threat to one's well-being. Perceived dangers and threats can be psychological or physical. The most common fear activating situations are those rooted in the anticipation of physical or psychological harm, a vulnerability to danger, or an expectation that one's coping abilities will not be able to match up to forthcoming circumstances. The perception that one can do little to cope with an environmental threat or danger is at least as important a source of fear as is any actual characteristic of the threat/danger itself. Fear is therefore mostly about a perceived vulnerability to being overwhelmed by a threat or danger.*

Why anger?

Anger often clarifies relationship problems, energizes political agendas; and spurs S culture to change for the better as occurred with the civil rights movement, the woman's suffrage movement and America's response to 9/11. In all of these cases, anger serves a positive function. It is almost always the assertive, nonviolent expression of anger that pays off rather than its violent expression because anger can serve an important alerting function. Anger is not only the most passionate emotion, it is also the most dangerous as its purpose is to destroy barriers in the environment. About 1/2 of anger episodes include yelling or screaming and about 10% lead to aggression.

What good are emotions?

Darwin argued that emotions help animals adapt to their surroundings. Coping functions: functional view: emotions evolved because they helped animals deal with fundamentals life tasks. Emotion and emotional behavior provides animals with imagined and automated ways for coping with the major challenges and threats to their welfare.

What causes joy?

Desirable outcomes related to personal success and interpersonal relatedness are essentially the opposites of the causes of sadness (undesirable outcomes related to failure and separation/loss). How joy affects us also seems to be the opposite of how sadness affects us. When sad, we feel lethargic and withdrawn. When joyous, we feel enthusiastic and outgoing. When sad, we are often pessimistic; when joyous, we turn optimistic.

What is an emotion?

Different aspects of experience complement and coordinate with one another. Relationship between emotion and motivation. Emotions are one type of motive. Can energize and direct behavior. Some researchers argue that emotions constitute the primary motivational system. Emotions serve as an ongoing progress report to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. Positive emotions reflect our successful adaptation to situations we encounter. Joyful and excited. Negative emotions reflect our unsuccessful adaptation such as anger and sadness. These continuing emotions are unsuccessful adaptations.

Integrated view

Different perspective. Group of emotions. Each basic emotion is not a single emotion but rather a family of related emotions. Each member of the family shares many characteristics of the basic emotion. 5 families of emotion exist. Anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and enjoyment.

Chicken-and-egg problem

Emotion should not be conceptualized as cognitively caused or as biologically caused. Rather emotion is a process, a chain of events that aggregate into a complex feedback system. The elements in Plutchik's loop are cognition, arousal, feelings, preparation for action, expressive displays and overt behavioral activity. The Feedback system begins with a significant life event and concludes with emotion. Mediating between event and emotion is a complex interactive chain of events. To influence emotion, one can intervene at any point in the feedback loop. Change the cognitive appraisal from "this is beneficial" to "this is harmful" and the emotion will change. Change the quality of the arousal and the emotion will change. Change bodily expression (facial musculature, bodily posture) and the emotion will change. Plutchick's solution to the cognition-biology debate enters into the complex world of dialectics, in which each aspect of emotion is both cause and effect and the final outcome is due to the dynamic interplay among the 6 forces in the figure. The most important theme to extract from a chicken and egg analysis is that cognition do not directly cause emotions any more than biological events do. Together, cognition, arousal, preparation for action, feelings, expressive displays and overt behavioral activity constitute the cauldron of experience that causes, influences and regulates emotion. Others echo this emotion as a process view by emphasizing that all emotional experiences exist as episodes that occur over time, as the different components continually rise and fall and exert influences on one another.

Joy

Emotional evidence that things are going well. Opposite of sadness and we feel enthusiastic and outgoing versus lethargic and withdrawn as we do with sadness.

Argue for biology first

Emotional reactions do not necessarily require cognitive evaluations. Instead, neural activity and spontaneous facial expressions activate emotions. Infants, because they are biologically sophisticated but cognitively limited, can respond emotionally Emotionally experience can be induced through electrical stimulation if the brain or activity of facial muscles

Different antecedents (causes)

Emotions and moods come from different causes. Emotions come from significant life situations and from appraisals of their significance to our well being. Moods come from processes that are not well defined.

Comprehensive-Biology-Cognition Model: feedback loop

Emotions are complex and interactive phenomena. It makes sense to work on one piece of the puzzle at a time. Significant stimulus event: 1) arousal 2) cognition 3) overt behavioral activity 4) expressive displays 5) feelings 6) preparation for action Emotion

Basic Emotions

Emotions can be conceptualized at a general level such as a family or prototype (e.g. Anger) or a situation-specific level (e.g. hostility, envy, and frustration). The so-called basic emotions are those that meet the following criteria: 1) are innate rather than acquired or learned through experience or socialization 2) arise from the same circumstances for all people (personal loss makes everyone sad, irrespective of age, gender or culture) 3) are expressed uniquely and distinctively (eg universal facial expression) 4) evoke a distinctive and highly predictable physiological patterned response 6 basic emotions:* 1) fear 2) anger 3) disgust 4) sadness 5) joy 6) interest

Emotion as Motivation

Emotions constitute the primary motivational system. For 100 years, the thought was physiological drives such as air deprivation caused motivation. Being deprived of air generates a physiological drive that can capture the person's full attention, energize the most vigorous of action and direct behavior accordingly toward a single purpose. Accordingly, it seems logical to conclude that air deprivation produces a potent and primary homeostatic motive for taking whatever action is necessary in gaining the air needed to reestablishing homeostasis. This reasoning; this apparent truism, is a radical error. Really the loss of air produces a strong emotional reaction, one of fear or terror. It is the terror that provides the motivation to act. Thus, the Terri, not the air deprivation or the bodily threat to homeostasis is the causal and immediate source of the motivated action that follows. Take away the emotion, and you take away the motivation.

Coping Functions

Emotions do not just occur out of the blue. They occur for a reason. From a functional point of view, emotions evolved because they helped animals deal with fundamental tasks. To survive, animals must explore their surroundings, vomit harmful substances, develop and maintain relationships, attend immediately to emergencies, avoid injury, reproduce, fight and both receive and provide caregiving. Each of these behaviors is emotion produced and each facilitates the individual's adaptation to changing physical and social environments. Fundamental life tasks are universal human predicaments, such as loss, frustration and achievement. The emotion during life tasks energizes and directs behavior in adaptive ways (e.g. After separation, crying for help proved more effective than did other courses of action). That is emotion and emotional behavior provide animals with ingrained and automated ways for coping with major challenges and threats to their welfare.

Why we have emotions?

Emotions exist as solutions to life's challenges, stresses and problems. Some researchers state that emotions disrupt ongoing activity, disorganized behavior and rob is of our rationality and logic. For emotions to be adaptive across situations, they need to be regulated and controlled. Emotions often serve is well when we are able to self regulate our emotion systems so that we regulate emotions and not the opposite. Development research shows this.

Emotions benefit

Emotions help animals and humans adapt to their environment. Emotions occur for a reason. They evolved because they helped animals deal with fundamental life tasks.

Different action-specificity

Emotions mostly influence behavior and direct specific courses of action. Moods mostly influence cognition and direct what the person thinks about.

Emotion as Readout

Emotions read out the person's ever-changing motivational stares and personal adaptation status. Positive emotions signal that all is well reflect the involvement and satisfaction of our motivational states, and evidence our successful adaptation to what is going on around us; negative emotions act as a warning signal that "all is not well," reflect the neglect and frustration of our motivational states, and evidence our unsuccessful adaptation to what is going on around us. From this point of view, emotions are not necessarily motives in the same way that needs and cognition are, but instead reflect the satisfied vs frustrated status of other motives. Consider sexual motivation and how emotion provides an ongoing progress report that facilitates some behaviors and inhibits others. During attempts at sexual gratification, positive emotions such as interest and joy signal that all is well and facilitate further sexual contact. Negative emotion such as disgust, anger and guilt signal that all is not well and inhibit further sexual conduct. Positive emotions (interest, joy) during motivated action provide a metaphorical green light for continuing to pursue that course of action. Negative emotions (disgust, guilt) during motivated action, on the other hand, provide a metaphorical red light for stopping the pursuits of that course of action.

Relationship between Emotion and Motivation

Emotions relate to motivations in two ways. First, emotions are one type of motive. Like all other motives (e.g. Needs, cognitions), emotions energize and direct behavior. Anger, for instance, energized subjective, physiological, hormonal, and muscular resources (energizes behavior) to achieve a particular goal or purpose (e.g. Directs behavior), such as overcoming an obstacle or righting an injustice. Second emotions serve as an ongoing "readout" system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. Joy signals social inclusion and proofread toward goals, whereas distress signals social exclusion and failure.

Purposes of Emotion

Emotions serve at least 8 distinct purposes: protection, destruction, reproduction, reunion, affiliation, rejection, exploration, orientation. For the purpose of protection, fear energizes and directs the body for withdrawal and escape. To destroy some aspect of the environment, anger prepares the body for attack. To explore the environment, anticipation sparks interest and readies the body for investigation. For every major life task, human beings evolved a corresponding, adaptive emotional reaction. The function of emotion is therefore to prepare us with an automatic, very quick and historically successful response to life's fundamental tasks.

Social functions

Emotions serve to communicate our feelings to others. Influence how others interact with us. Invite and facilitate social interaction. Create, maintain and dissolve relationships.

Threat and harm

Emotions such as fear, anger, sadness work collectively to endow the individual with an emotional system to deal effectively will All aspects of threat and harm

Five Questions

Emotions typically arise as reactions to important life events.*. Once activated, emotions generate feelings, arouse the body to action, generate motivational stares, and produce recognizable facial expressions. This chapter discusses the nature of emotion while Chpt 12 focuses on understanding the emotional events and processes that occur within that split second between life event and emotional response. This chapter discusses and answers the following five questions: 1) what is an emotion? 2) what causes an emotion? 3) how many emotions are there? 4) what good are the emotions? 5) what is the difference between emotion and mood?

Why fear?

Fear motivates defense*. It functions as a warning signal for forthcoming physical or psychological harm that manifests itself in autonomic nervous system arousal (as in the flight part of the fight or flight response). The individual trembles, perspires, looks around and feels nervous tension to protect the self. It is through the experience of fear that our emotion system tells us of our vulnerability (often in no uncertain terms). Protection motivation manifests itself either through escape or withdrawal from the objects. Fleeing puts physical or psychological distance between the self and that which is feared. If fleeing is not possible, fear motivates coping as by being quiet and still. Fear can provide the motivational support for learning new coping responses that remove the person from encountering danger in the first place.* Fear activates coping efforts.*. Fear facilitates the learning of adaptive responses.*

What is an Emotion?

Feelings are only part of an emotion. Emotions are multidimensional. They exist as subjective feelings, as they make us feel a particular way, such as angry or joyful. But emotions are also biological reactions, energy-mobilizing responses that prepare the body for adapting to whatever situation one faces. Emotions are also agents of purpose, much like hunger has purpose. Anger creates a motivational desire to do what we might not otherwise do, such as fight an enemy or protest an injustice. And emotions are social phenomena. When emotional, we send recognizable facial, postural, and vocal signals that communicate the quality and intensity of our emotionality to others. 1) subjective 2) biological 3) purposive 4) social There is simply more to an emotion than just a feeling or just an expression. Each of these four dimensions simply emphasizes a different aspect of emotion. To understand and to define emotion, it is necessary to study each of emotion's four Dimensions and how they interact with one another. Significant life event: 1) feelings: subjective experience, phenomenological awareness, cognition 2) Bodily arousal: Physiological activation, bodily preparation for action, motor responses 3) social-expressive: social communication, facial expression, vocal expression 4) sense of purpose: goal-directed motivation state, functional aspect When emotional, our body is prepared for action, and that is true in terms of our brain; physiology (heart rate, epinephrine) and musculature The purposive component gives emotion its goal-directed character to take the action necessary to cope with the circumstances at hand. The purposive aspect explains why people want to do what they do and why people benefit from their emotions. The person without emotions would be at a substantial social and evil Harkin art disadvantage to the rest of us. Imagine, the physical and social handicap of the person without the capacity for fear, embarrassment, interest or love. The social expressive component is emotion's communicative aspect. Through postures, gestures, vocalizations and facial expressions, our private experiences become public expressions. During the expression of emotion, we nonverbally communicate to others how we feel and how we interpret the present situation. For instance, as a person opens a private letter, we watch their face and listen to the tone of their voice to read their emotions. Emotions engage our whole person: our feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose and nonverbal communication.

Disgust

Gets rid of a contaminated spoiled object. It's function is to reject.

Cognitive appraisals affect emotion

Human beings experience a rich diversity of emotion because situations can be interpreted so differently and because emotion arises from a blend of 1) cognitive appraisal 2) language 3) personal knowledge 4) socialization history

Emotions from a biological Perspective by Richard Solomon: 2 views

Identifies two hedonic, unconscious brain systems that exist such that any pleasurable experience is automatically and reflexively opposed by a counter-aversive experience (fear is countered and replaced by euphoria in sky diving)

Joy

Includes desirable outcomes related to personal success and interpersonal relatedness. Causes of joy are essentially the opposite of the causes of sadness. Joy facilitates our willingness to engage in social activities. Joy has a soothing function, it allows us to preserve psychological well being. Smiling can help facilitate joy.

Biological Perspective

Infants respond emotionally to certain events despite their cognitive shortcomings (smiles at a high pitched voice). By the time the child acquires language and begins to use sophisticated long-term memory capacities, most emotional events then involve a great deal of cognitive processing. Izard insists that much of the emotional processing of life events remains noncognitive-- automatic, Unconscious, and mediated by subcritical structures. Emotions have very rapid onsets, brief durations and can occur automatically/involuntary*. Emotions are biological because they involved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life tasks. Panksepp states that it is difficult to study the hidden recesses of brain circuits than it is to study verbally labeled feelings. He insists that brain circuits provide the essential biological underpinning for emotional experience. For instance; we inherit a brain-Anger circuit, a brain-fear circuit, a brain-sadness circuit etc. he believes: 1) because emotional states are often difficult to verbalized, they must therefore have origins that are noncognitive (not language based) 2) emotional experi nice can be induced by noncognitive procedures, such as electrical stimulation of the brain or activity of the facial musculature 3) emotions occur in infants and nonhuman animals

Positive basic emotions: motive involvement and satisfaction

Involvement and satisfaction are themes that unite the positive emotions of interest and joy. When a beneficial event related to our needs and well being is anticipates, we feel interest. If and when the event materializes into motivate satisfaction, we feel joy or enjoyment. Interest motivates the approach and exploratory behavior necessary for promoting contact with the potentially motive-satisfying event. Interest also prolongs our task engagement so we can put ourselves in a position to experience motive satisfaction. Joy adds to and somewhat replaces interest once motive satisfaction occurs. Joy then promotes ongoing task persistence and subsequent reengagement behaviors with the motive satisfying event. Together, interest and joy provide the emotional support to be fully and voluntarily involved in an activity.

Disgust

Involves getting rid of or getting away from a contaminated; deteriorated spoiled object. Just what that object is depends on development and culture. In adulthood, disgust storages from our encounters with any object we deemed to be contaminated in any way as in bodily contaminations, interpersonal contaminations, and moral contaminations.

Why interest?

It creates the desire to explore, investigate, seek out, manipulate, and extract information from the objects that surround us. Interest also underlies our desire to be creative, to learn, and to develop our competencies and skills. A person's interest in an activity determines how much attention is directed to that activity and how well that person processes, comprehends and remembers relevant information. Interest therefore enhances learning. It is difficult to learn a foreign language, allocate time to read a book, or engage in most any activity without emotional support from interest.*. When interested, students persist longer at learning activities, spend more time studying, read more deeply, remember more of what they read, and get better grades.

What is the function of joy?

It facilitates our silliness to engage in social activities. Smiles of joy facilitate social interaction. If the smiles keep coming, then they help relationships form and strengthen over time. Few experiences are as potent and as rewarding as are the smile and interpersonal inclusion. Joy is therefore a social glue that bonds relationships such as infant and mother, lovers, coworkers and teammates. Next, Joy has a soothing function. It is the positive feeling that makes life pleasant and balances life experiences of frustration, disappointment, and general negative affect. It allows us to preserve psychological well being, even in the face of the distressing effects of aversive emotions and when loved show affection to soothe away an otherwise conflicted exchange.

Outside benefits of sadness

It indirectly facilitates the cohesiveness of social groups. Because separation from significant people causes sadness and because sadness is such an uncomfortable emotion, its anticipation motivates people to say cohesive with their loved ones. If people did not miss others so much, then they would be less motivated to go out of their way to maintain social cohesion. Similarly, if the student or athlete did not anticipate the possibility of suffering failure-induced distress, she would be less motivated to prepare and practice. So while sadness feels miserable, it can motivate and maintain productive behaviors.

Interest

It is the most prevalent emotion in day to day functioning. Increases and decreases in interest usually involve a shifting of interest from one event, thought, or action to another. In other words, we typically do not stop and start our interest, but rather we redirect it from one object or event to another. The life events that direct our attention include those that involve our needs or well being. Other events that direct our attention are those that instigate a moderate increase in the rate of our cortical neural firings such as those associafed with stimulus change, novelty, uncertainty, complexity, puzzles and curiosities, challenge, thoughts of learning, thoughts of achieving and acts of discovery. Succinctly, what most people find interesting are those things they appraise as novel complex, though people additionally need to feel competent that they can eventually make sense of the newness, novelty and complexity that stands before them as with modern art or a class lecture.

How is anger positive?

It serves a positive function by serving an important alerting function. It is the most passionate emotion. It strengthens, increases sense of control and attunes us to the injustices in order to fight against illegitimate restraints

Why disgust?

Its function is disgust. It plays a positive motivational role in our lives. We wish to avoid contaminated objects and we learn the coping behaviors needed to prevent encountering (or creating) conditions that produce disgust. Therefore, because people wish to avoid putting themselves into disgusting situations; they change personal habits and attributes, discard waste, and reappraise their thoughts and values. They wash the dishes, takes showers and exercise to avoid an out of shape or disgusting body.

Sadness

Or distress is the most negative, aversive emotion. It arises principally from experiences of separation or failure. Separation; the loss of a loved one, is distressing and we also experience separation from a place and from a valued job, position or status. Failure too leads to sadness as in failing an examination, losing a contest or being rejected from a group's membership. Even failure outside of one's volitional control can cause distress as in war, illness and economic depression.

Two-systems view

One answer to the "What causes emotion?" question is that both cognition and biology cause emotion. According to Buck, human beings have two synchronous systems that activate and regulate emotion. One system is an innate, spontaneous, physiological system that reacts involuntarily to emotional stimuli. A second system is an experience based cognition system that reacts interpretatively and socially. The physiological emotion system came first in humankind's evolution (i.e. The limbic system), whereas the cognitive emotion system came later as human beings because increasingly cerebral and increasingly social (i.e. the neocortex). Together, the primitive biological system and the contemporary cognitive system combine to provide a highly adaptive, two-system emotion mechanism. The lower system is biological and traces its origin to the ancient evolutionary history is the specifies. Sensory information is processed rapidly, automatically and unconsciously by subcortical (i.e. Limbic) structures and pathways. The second system is cognitive and depends on the unique social and cultural learning history of the individual. Panksepp adds that some emotions arise primarily from the biological system, whereas other emotions arise primarily from the cognitive system. Emotions such as fear and anger arise primarily from subcortical neural command circuits. Other emotions such as gratitude and hope, however, cannot be well explained Ng subcortical neural circuits. Instead, they arise chiefly from personal experience, social modeling and cultural contexts. This category of emotions arises primarily from appraisals, expectancies and attributions (from cortical structures and pathways in Buck's terminology.

Buddhist thought on emotion

Organizes itself around the goal of recognizing and then lessening destructive emotions, particularly the big three of craving, agitation and hatred.*. These emotions apparently are the most harmful to self and others. They have their place in survival and adapting to threatening situations, but since saber tooth tigers are no longer in the neighborhood, anger, fear, and the like may cost us at least much as they provide. Buddhist learn how to translate their craving into contentment, their agitation into calm, and even their hatred into compassion. In the West, people lessen their negative emotions mostly with medicines. In the East, those who practice meditation turn their negative emotions into positive ones, as anger can, potentially, be focused into compassion and resentment can be willed into love and respect for the other. Our biology has indeed prepared us to act emotionally to important life events, as everyone feels sad with loss and fear with threat. But a lot happens in the split second that occurs between the onset of a threat and the initiation of a constructive or destructive emotional response. Discovering what happens in this split second of time opens up the possibility of being able to translate a biologically destructive reaction into a more constructive way of coping.

Everyday mood

People generally experience a stream of moods. People are always feeling something. Mood exists as a positive affect state or as a negative affect state. Positive affect reflects pleasurable engagement. High: people feel enthusiastic. Low: people feel lethargic. Negative affect reflects unpleasant engagement. High experience dissatisfaction, irritability. Low: feel calm and relaxed. Negative affect and a bad mood support withdrawal.

What causes an emotion?

People's mind (cognitive processes) and body (biological processes) react in adaptive ways. That is, encountering a significant life event activates cognitive and biological processes that collectively activate the critical components of emotion including feelings, bodily arousal, goal-directed purpose and expression. Biology vs cognition debate. Are emotions primarily biological (neuroanatomical brain circuits) or cognitive phenomena (emanate from causal mental events such as subjective appraisals of what the situation means)..

Emotions serve 8 purposes

Protection, destruction, reproduction, reunion, affiliation, rejection, exploration, and orientation (searching out). The function of emotion is to prepare is with automatic, quick, and historically successful responses to life's fundamental tasks. All emotions are beneficial because they direct attention and channel behavior to where it is needed, given the situations we all face

Emotions overview

Researchers see all emotions as constructive responses to fundamental life tasks. Anger and fear might feel bad and they might sometimes lead to problematic ways of behaving, but even the hottest of emotions exists as a necessary tradeoff in human emotion-laden quest for survival.

Definition of Emotion

Short-lived, feeling aroused, purposive, expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. Because emotions arise in response to the significant events in our lives, there is a path from significant life event to emotion. It is more complicated than a sum of its parts definition. It is the psychological construct that unites and coordinates these four aspects (feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose; social-expressive) of experience into a synchronized pattern. This definition highlights how different aspects of experience complement and coordinate with one another. The way you move your face is coordinated with your physiological reactivity, such that lowering your brow and pressing your lips firmly together coincides with increased heart rate and a raised skin temperature. With the onset of sadness, the aversive feeling arises and influences and xo-occurs with lethargic bodily arousal, with a sense of purpose (overcome of reverse the separation or failure), and the distinctive sad facial expression. Hence emotions are the synchronized systems that coordinate feeling, arousal, purpose, and expression* so to ready the individual to adapt successfully to life circumstances. Emotion is the word psychologists use to name this coordinated, synchronized process.

Emotions exist as

Subjective, biological, purposive, and social phenomena Emotions are felt and experienced at the subjective level. The feeling aspect is rooted in cognitive and mental processes. The bodily arousal component includes our biological and physiological activities. The purposive component gives emotion its goal-directed motivational state to take the action necessary to cope with the circumstances causing the emotion. The social-expressive component is the way we nonverbally communicate with others. Sometimes we get in trouble.

Reconciliation

The debate centers on whether some emotions are more fundamental or more basic than are others. A middle ground perspective is to argue that each basic emotion is not a single emotion but rather a family of related emotions. Anger is a basic emotion but Anger is also a family of emotions that include hostility, rage, fury, outrage, annoyance, resentment, envy and frustration. At least 5 families emerge: 1) Anger 2) fear 3) sadness 4) joy 5) love People learn increasingly finer distinctions within the causes and consequences of these 5 basic emotions.

Positive affect

The everyday, low level, general state of feeling good. Positive feelings typically remain outside our conscious attention. When people feel good someone brings it to your attention then mood goes down. Conditions that make us feel good. People remain unaware of the casual source of their good moods. We often lose our positive mood by engaging in neutral or aversive events. Benefits of feeling good. Compared to people in a neutral mood, people who feel good are more likely to help others, be more generous to themselves and others and show greater intrinsic motivation.

Interest

The life events that direct our attention include those that involve our well being. It underlies our desire to be creative, to learn, develop our competencies

Sadness

The most negative, aversive emotion. Comes from the experiences of separation or failure. Sadness motivates people to restore the environment to its state before the distressing situation.

Interest

The most prevalent emotion in day to day functioning. It motivates our acts of exploration, creativity, and desire to learn.

Motive involvement and satisfaction

The theme that unite the positive emotions of interest and joy.

Negative basic emotions: threat and harm

The themes that organize the otherwise diverse emotions of fear, sadness, anger and disgust are threat and harm. When threatening or harmful events are forecast or anticipated, we feel fear. During the struggle to fight off or to reject the threat or harm, we feel anger and disgust. Once the threat or harm has occurred, we feel sadness. In response to threat and harm, fear motivates avoidance behavior, fleeing the threat. Anger motivates fighting and vigorous counter defense. Disgust motivates rejection of the bad event or object. Sadness leads to inactivity and withdrawal and is effective when it leads one to give up coping efforts in situations that he cannot flee from, reject, or fight against. Hence fear, anger, disgust and sadness work collectively to endow the individual with an emotion system to deal effectively with all aspects of threat and harm.*

Are emotions bad?

There is no such thing as a bad emotion. Joy is not necessarily good and anger and fear are not bad. All emotions are beneficial because they direct attention and channel behavior to where it is needed, given the circumstances one faces. In doing so, each emotion provides a unique readiness for responding to a particular situation. From this point of view, fear, anger, disgust, sadness and all other emotions are good. This is so because fear optimally facilitates protection, disgust repels contaminated objects; etc. emotions are positive, functional, purposive, and adaptive organizers of behaviors.

Joy

These events that bring this emotion include desirable outcomes: success at a task, personal achievement, progress toward a goal, getting what we want, gaining respect, receiving love or affection, receiving a pleasant surprise or experiencing pleasurable sensations. It is the evidence that things are going well (eg success, achievement, progress, respect, love).

Anger

This emotion is the emotion that most often comes to mind. It arises from restraint, as in the interpretation that one's plans, goals, or well-being have been interfered with by some outside force (e.g. barriers, obstacles, interruptions). Anger also arises from a betrayal of trust, being rebuffed, receiving unwanted criticism, a lack of consideration from others, and cumulative annoyances. The essence of anger is the belief that the situation is not what it should be; that is, the restraint, interference or criticism is illegitimate.*. Anger is the most passionate emotion. The angry person becomes stronger, more energized (as in the fight part of the fight-flight response). It increases people's sense of control. Anger makes people more sensitive and attuned to the injustices of what other people do and the fight and sense of control are directed at overcoming or righting the illegitimate restraint. The attack can be verbal or nonverbal and direct or indirect. Other common anger motivated responses are to express hurt feelings, talk things over or avoid the other person altogether. When people do act their anger, research shows a surprising success rate.

Biological Perspective

This perspective emphasizes primary emotions with a lower limit of two or three to an upper limit of 10. Richard Solomon identifies two hedonic, unconscious brain systems that exist such that any pleasurable experience is automatically and reflexively opposed by a counter-aversion experience, just as any aversive experience is automatically and reflexively opposed by a counter-pleasurable process (e.g. Fear is countered by and quickly replaced by the opponent process of euphoria as during sky diving). The behavioral approach system (joy), the fight-or-flight system (anger/fear) and the behavioral inhibition system (anxiety). Jack proposes four emotions: fear, rage, panic, and expectancy based on his finding of four separate neuroanatomical, emotion-generating pathways within the limbic system. Nancy Stein stresses the four emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear because these emotions reflect reactions to life's essential pursuits: attainment (happiness), loss (sadness), obstruction (anger), and uncertainty (fear). Six emotions: interest, fear, surprise, anger, distress, and joy because he finds six distinct pattern of neural firing produce these different emotions (e.g. Rapid increase in rate of neural firing instigates surprise). Paul Elkman proposes six emotions: fear, anger, sadness, disgust, enjoyment and contempt because he finds that each of these emotions is associated with a corresponding universal (cross-cultural) facial expression. Robert Plutchick lists eight emotions: anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, fear, acceptance, joy, and anticipation because each one corresponds to an emotion behavior syndrome common to all living organisms. Carroll Izard list 10 emotions; anger, fear, distress, joy, disgust, surprise, shame, guilt, interest, and contempt. Each agree that 1) a small number of basic emotions exists, 2) basic emotions are universal to all human beings and 3) basic emotions are produces

Biology and Cognition

Those who argue for the primacy of cognition contend that individuals cannot respond emotionally unless they first cognitively appraise the meaning and personal significance of an event. Is the event relevant to well being? Harmful? First; meaning is established and then Emotion follows accordingly. Appraisal of meaning causes emotion. Those who argue for the primacy of biology contend that emotional reactions do not necessarily require such cognitive evaluations. Events of a different sort such as subcritical neural activity or spontaneous facial expressions, activate emotion. For the biological theorist; emotions can and do occur without a prior cognitive event but they cannot occur without a prior biological event. Biology, not cognition; is therefore primary.

Feedback loop

To influence emotion, one can intervene at any point in the feedback loop. Change the cognitive appraisal from "this is beneficial" to "this is harmful" and the emotion will change.*

Aggression

When anger prompts aggression, it produces needless destruction and injury. An anger fueled temper increases the person's likelihood of a heart attack.

How is anger productive?

When it energized vigor, strength, and endurance in our efforts to cope productively as we change the world around us into what it should be. And people (eg politicians) who express anger generally get more respect and status following a wrong than do people who express sadness or guilt. When circumstances change from what they should not be (injustice) to what they should be (justice), anger appropriately fades away.