Issues in the Study of Emotion

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Issues in the Study of Emotion

• Elizabeth A. Phelps
• New York University
• Outline of slides

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Issues in the Study of Emotion

• Defining Emotion
• Manipulating Emotion
• Measuring Emotion
• General concerns

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Defining Emotion(adapted from Scherer, 2000)

• Emotion a relatively brief episode of
  synchronized responses (that can include bodily
  responses, facial expression, and subjective
  evaluation) indicating the evaluation of an
  internal or external event as significant
• Mood a diffuse affect state that is most
  pronounced as a change in subjective feeling

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Defining Emotionsome common distinctions

• Basic Emotions
• Based on universal facial expressions
• Happy, Sad. Fear. Anger, Surprise, Disgust

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Defining Emotionsome common distinctions

• Dimensions of Emotion
• Circumplex model assessment of emotional
  reaction
• Valence
• Arousal

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Defining Emotionsome common distinctions

• Dimensions of emotion
• Defining emotion by motivation
• Approach emotions
• Happy, Surprise, Anger
• Withdrawal emotions
• Fear, Disgust, Sad

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Defining Emotioncomplex emotions?

• Love
• Empathy
• Moral emotions
• Aesthetics

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Manipulating Emotions Presentation of
emotionally evocative stimuli

• Pictures and Words International Affective
  Picture System (IAPS or Lang Pictures), Affective
  Norms for English Words (ANEW)
• Issues
• Equating non-emotional components
• Pictures Presence of people, complexity of
  details
• Words frequency, semantic similarity
• Equating arousal for positive and negative
  valence
• Validity of ratings, or re-rating, for population
  tested
• Subjective vs. Objective measures of arousal

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Manipulating Emotions Presentation of
emotionally evocative stimuli

• Faces
• Issues
• Limited stimulus set of facial expressions (Ekman
  Friesen)
• Effectiveness of posed expressions (sets other
  than Ekman Friesen)
• Appropriate baseline
• Other facial signals of emotion
• Race
• Trust
• Personal attachment

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Manipulating Emotions Presentation of
emotionally evocative stimuli

• Aversive (punishing) Stimuli
• Issues
• Shock/Thermal Heat/Cold Pressure
• Ethical constraints
• Work-up procedure
• Safety issue
• Delivery in MR environment
• White noise
• Habituation
• Effectiveness in noisy
• Social punishments
• Isolation/disapproval

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Manipulating Emotions Presentation of
emotionally evocative stimuli

• Appetitive (rewarding) stimuli
• Issues
• Money
• Secondary reinforver
• Calibrating effectiveness
• Expense
• Deception
• Food/Drink
• Calibrating effectiveness
• Delivery in MR environment
• Constraints on subjects behavior outside study
• Social rewards
• inclusion/opportunity to punish

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Manipulating Moods

• Techniques Music, films, memory
• Issues
• Difficulty with induction in scanner environment
• Design issues
• Alteration of mood within scanning session
• Between subjects manipulations
• Assessing Mood
• Maintaining mood

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Measuring Emotions

• Physiological Measures
• Issues
• Skin Conductance
• Measurement in the MR environment
• Constraints on design due to timing of assessment
• Heart rate
• Interpretation of measurement
• Constraints on design
• Pupil dilation
• Techniques for measurement
• Rarely used, lack of literature on use

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Measuring Emotions

• Subjective ratings
• Issues
• Likert scale
• limited range due to response constraints
• Fluid assessments joy stick. dial ratings
• Interpretation of measurement
• Impact of explicit assessment on emotional
  response
• Top down modulation of emotion
• Demand characteristics

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Measuring Emotions

• Other responses
• Issues
• Reaction time facilitation or inhibition
• Interpretation of significance
• Impact of additional task on emotional response
• Choice among options assessment of preferences
• Effect of judgment on future preference

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General Concerns

• Ethical Constraints
• Ecological validity of laboratory manipulations
• Existence proof
• Interpretation of emotion from BOLD response
  pattern?
• Baseline tasks
• Are you isolating emotion?
• Technical limitations in imaging neural systems
  of emotion
• Amygdala and Orbitofrontal Cortex