Emotions

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Emotions
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What is an Emotion?

• There are two key perspectives.
• The James-Lange Theory of Emotions
• The Two-Factor Theory of Emotions

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James-Lange Theory of Emotions

• Emotions are our physiological responses to
  stimuli in our worlds.
• These responses are products of our autonomic
  nervous system.
• Emotions are the physiological sensations that
  come bundled with our thoughts. If we didnt
  have such sensations, we would feel emotionless.

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Two-Factor Theory of Emotions

• Schacter and Singer argued that emotions were our
  interpretations of our physiological responses.
• Usually it is clear what caused our physiological
  responses, and this is why the interpretation
  part often doesnt seem necessary.
• But sometimes the source of our feelings isnt so
  clear to us. In these situations there is
  evidence for the Two-Factor theory.

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Capilano Suspension Bridge Study

• Young male participants were approached by either
  an attractive female research assistant or an
  average-looking male research assistant, either
  just as they stepped off of the Capilano
  Suspension Bridge, or when they were standing on
  the wooden platform at the base of the park.
• They were asked to complete a questionnaire.
• One of the dependent measures was the percentage
  of participants who later called up the research
  assistant, apparently to find out the results of
  the study (see Dutton Aron, 1970).

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Percentage Calling up Research Assistant

• Male participants were especially likely to call
  back the RA if she was female and they had met
  her on the bridge.
• Apparently, the men misattributed their arousal
  from the bridge to be due to their attraction to
  the RA.
• The same physiological arousal can be interpreted
  to indicate two very different emotions.

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• If one focuses on the physiological sensations
  associated with emotions, there is much
  similarity across cultures.
• However, if one focuses on the interpretations of
  those sensations, there is more evidence for
  emotional variability across cultures.

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Facial Expressions of Emotions

• What facial expressions correspond with what
  emotions?
• Originally Darwin noted that facial expressions
  from other animals seemed to parallel those made
  by humans (i.e., people living in Victorian
  England).

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In a placid condition.
Head of a snarling dog.
Disappointed and sulky.
When pleased by being caressed.
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• Paul Ekman and colleagues explored how similarly
  people made facial expressions for emotions
  around the world.
• They initially found much similarity across
  industrialized countries with how people
  recognized posed facial expressions.
• However, it was important to test people from a
  culture with almost no interaction with
  Westerners. They went to investigate the Fore of
  New Guinea.
• Participants were asked to show their expressions
  imagining if a number of different events had
  happened to them.

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Your child has died and you are sad.
Your friend has come and you are happy.
You are angry and about to fight.
You see a dead pig that has been lying there for
a long time.
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• Ekman proposed that there are a set of basic
  emotions which are reflexively reproduced and
  recognized for all humans.

• Happiness
• Fear
• Sadness
• Surprise
• Disgust
• Anger

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Toshiro Mifune(1920-1997)
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Anger
Fear
Disgust
Sadness
Happiness
Surprise
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Keanu Reeves(1964-present)
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Anger
Fear
Disgust
Sadness
Happiness
Surprise
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• Some other emotions are considered by some
  researchers to also have universal expressions,
  although the international evidence is not yet as
  compelling.
• Contempt
• Shame
• Interest

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• Jessica Tracy proposes that there is a
  universally recognized expression of pride.
• Rather than being restricted to the face, the
  pride pose involves much of the body.

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• In sum, the pride expression is universally
  recognized and produced around the world, even
  among those born blind.
• Expressions of some emotions are not confined to
  the face, but can involve bodily posture as well.

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• Although facial expressions of the basic emotions
  are universally recognized, there is also some
  important cultural variation.
• Cultures vary in terms of display rules of
  emotional expressions.
• Cultures vary in terms of the intensity of their
  expressions, as well as a number of ritualized
  displays - that is, expressions that are not
  made universally.

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• People are considerably more accurate at
  recognizing facial expressions made by people
  from their own culture than made by those from
  other cultures.
• About 58 of recognition of facial expressions
  reflects culturally universal expressions,
  whereas about 9 reflect culturally specific
  expressions.
• Even very subtle emotional accents are evident
  in comparisons of quite similar cultures (e.g.,
  Marsh Ambady, 2005).

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One person is Japanese and the other is
Japanese-American
B
A
Which one is Japanese-American?
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One person is Australian and the other is American
B
A
Which one is American?
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One person is Japanese and the other is
Japanese-American
B
A
Which one is Japanese-American?
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One person is Australian and the other is American
B
A
Which one is American?
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One person is Japanese and the other is
Japanese-American
A
Which one is Japanese-American?
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One person is Australian and the other is American
B
Which one is American?
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• Cultures also appear to vary in the aspects of
  the face that they most consider when judging
  anothers emotion.
• For example, in Japan, cultural display rules
  more often require that people conceal
  potentially disharmonious emotions.
• Because it is more difficult to control the
  muscles around your eyes than it is around your
  mouth, Japanese are more likely than Americans
  are to judge peoples emotions by looking at
  their eyes.

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• Japanese and American participants were shown
  photos of people expressing emotions. They were
  asked to guess the targets emotion (Yuki,
  Maddux, Masuda,2007).
• The researchers swapped the eyes and mouths from
  photos of different expressions, so that the eyes
  sometimes conveyed different emotions from the
  mouth.

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• Japanese viewed the targets emotion as happier
  than Americans if the eyes were expressing a
  happier emotion than the mouth. In contrast, the
  Americans judged the target to be happier if the
  mouth was expressing a happier emotion than the
  eyes.

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• To summarize all of the cross-cultural facial
  expression research, there is good evidence that
  facial expressions are largely universal with a
  smaller culturally-learned component.
• However, when we consider the experiences of
  emotions there is more evidence for cultural
  variability.

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• Cultures vary in the intensity with which they
  report experiencing emotions.
• For example, people from a variety of East Asian
  cultures report experiencing emotions less
  intensely, and for shorter periods of time than
  do Westerners.
• One study conducted at UBC compared how
  Chinese-Canadians and Euro-Canadians responded to
  an anger provocation (Anderson Linden, 2006).

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• Participants were run through an anger
  paradigm, while their blood pressure and heart
  rate were assessed.
• The experimenter was very unprofessional, showed
  up late, and rudely badgered them while they had
  to do a tedious task.
• All participants showed physiological responses
  consistent with anger (their systolic blood
  pressure increased), but the experimenters were
  interested in seeing how quickly the
  participants anger would dissipate.

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• The Chinese-Canadians systolic blood pressure
  returned to baseline levels after the anger
  induction more quickly than did the
  Euro-Canadians.
• This suggests that the Chinese-Canadians
  experienced their anger less intensely.

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Emotion and Language

• There is tremendous diversity in emotion terms
  around the world.
• English has the most - over 2000 words - whereas
  the Chewong of Malaysia only have 8 words.
• The words that various cultures have for emotions
  dont always map on to the basic emotions
  identified by Ekman. For example, Polish does
  not have a word that directly corresponds to the
  basic emotion of disgust.
• Many languages have emotion words that are absent
  in other languages. Example, iklas in Javanese
  refers to a pleasant feeling of frustration, and
  liget refers to a feeling of frothy anger and
  passion among the Ilongot.
• Do you think you would experience the emotions of
  iklas and liget in the same way that Javanese and
  Ilongot speakers do?

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Culture and Happiness

• Is the pursuit of happiness universal?
• Some date the beginning of this pursuit in the
  West to the Enlightenment, from the 18th century,
  when the world became seen to be a more
  predictable and rational place.
• There are substantial cultural differences in
  terms of the average levels of happiness that
  people report.

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Ranking of Countries by Subjective Well-Being
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Does Money Make you Happy?
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• Curiously, national differences in happiness are
  mirrored by ethnic differences in happiness
  within the US (Rice Steele, 2004).
• The correlation of the rank order of happiness
  among ethic groups in the US is r .62 with the
  rank order of happiness among countries.
• This suggests that there exist cultural attitudes
  towards happiness that vary, and persist across
  generations.

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• Cultures vary in terms of the importance that
  they ascribe to happiness.
• Consider the question of why is it that you
  choose what you do? Did you choose your major,
  or choose this course, because you believe that
  youll be happier for doing so? Or did you make
  these choices for other reasons?
• This question was explored at UBC by Carl Falk,
  Liz Dunn, and Ara Norenzayan.

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• They asked UBC students to make some choices
  between alternatives.
• In one of their studies participants were asked
  to decide between two computer puzzle games.
• One of the games was described as fun, but not
  very useful, whereas the other game was described
  as kind of dull, but would improve their thinking
  skills.

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Which Game to Choose?

• Euro-Canadians showed an overwhelming preference
  for the fun game over the useful one.
• Among Asian-Canadians the decision was much
  closer. Although they also preferred the fun
  game, many also chose the useful game.
• Similar findings emerged for studies where people
  chose some hypothetical university courses.

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What Makes Life Satisfying?

• One study compared dozens of countries on a few
  different measures the countrys level of
  individualism, the countrys overall life
  satisfaction scores, the countrys overall
  positive affect, and the extent to which people
  felt they were living up to cultural norms (Suh
  et al., 1998).
• In the most individualistic countries, life
  satisfaction was more strongly predicted by
  peoples overall level of positive affect.
• In the least individualistic countries, life
  satisfaction was more strongly predicted by the
  extent to which people felt they were living up
  to cultural norms.

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• There are two very different ways we can consider
  happiness 1) The sum total of all the
  happy feelings that you have.
  2) How you retrospectively evaluate your
  happiness.

• Colonoscopy patients either had the colonoscope
  removed quickly at the end of the procedure,
  thereby quickly ending their pain. Or, they had
  the colonoscope removed slowly, thus increasing
  the total duration of the pain, but making it
  such that the pain slowly diminished towards the
  end of the procedure (Redelmeier
  Kahneman,1996).
• Patients who had the slow removal (with more
  total pain) viewed the procedure as overall less
  painful than those who had the quick removal.

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• A comparable study was done with Asian-American
  and Euro-American ratings of their satisfaction.
  
• They rated both their satisfaction as it happened
  on a regular basis on a PDA, and then they also
  rated their satisfaction retrospectively,
  describing what their past week had been like
  (Oishi, 2002).

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Two Kinds of Satisfaction

• There were no cultural differences in actual
  daily reports of satisfaction.
• However, there were pronounced cultural
  differences in peoples retrospective reports.
• Retrospective accounts are influenced largely by
  peoples theories of what they think their life
  is like.
• Euro-Americans are more likely than
  Asian-Americans to possess a theory that they are
  happy, even when their daily reports might not be.

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What Kind of Happiness Would you Prefer?

• Cultures also differ in the kinds of positive
  emotions that people want to pursue - ideal
  affect.
• Cultural variation is more pronounced for the
  kinds of affect that people want to have than for
  their actual affect.
• East Asians prefer low arousal positive states
  (e.g., calm, relaxed, peaceful) compared with
  North Americans, who tend to prefer high arousal
  positive states (e.g., enthusiastic, excited,
  elated see Tsai, 2006).

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• Music East Asians prefer music with slower
  tempos than Westerners.

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• Leisure Activities East Asians say they prefer
  more passive activities (e.g., sightseeing,
  hanging out, picnicking) and Westerners prefer
  more active ones (e.g., running, rollerblading).

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• Drug Use East Asians use more drugs that elicit
  calm states (e.g., heroin and opium) Westerners
  use more that elicit excited states (e.g.,
  cocaine and amphetamines).

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• Childrens books in the US include bigger and
  more excited smiles than those in Taiwan.
• When kids from the two cultures were shown either
  exciting or calm storybooks, they subsequently
  chose activities that were either exciting or
  calm. The books appear to socialize kids into
  preferring different affective states.

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• Western self-help books encourage more high
  arousal positive states than East Asian self-help
  books, where calmness is emphasized more.
• Christian religious texts encourage more
  energetic states than do Buddhist religious
  texts, which encourage more calm states.

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• Chinese magazines contain ads with more calm
  smiles and fewer excited smiles than American
  magazines.

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• In sum, there is pronounced variation in levels
  of happiness across cultures.
• There are some things that universally appear to
  predict happiness, such as a minimum level of
  wealth, human rights, and income equality.
• On the other hand, there is important cultural
  variability in the pursuit of happiness. People
  from different cultures are not all striving for
  the same kinds of good feelings.