PSYC18 Psychology of Emotion

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PSYC18 - Psychology of Emotion Lecture 8
Professor Gerald Cupchik cupchik_at_utsc.utoronto.ca
S-634 Office Hours Thurs. 10-11, 2-3
T.A. Michelle Hilscher hilscher_at_utsc.utoronto.ca
S-150 Office Hours Thurs. 10-11, 2-3
Course Website www.utsc.utoronto.ca/cupchik
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More About Ekman and Friesen Darwin had proposed
that facial expressions would be universally
recognized so Ekman and Friesen tried to
demonstrate this. Their argument is that if
emotional expressions are subject to evolution by
natural selection, members of the same species
must exhibit the same emotional expressions and
people should be able to recognize them. Ekman
and Friesen studied people who were visually
isolated from the West (the Fore in New Guinea).
They used pictures of facial expressions
involving happiness, surprise, fear, anger,
disgust, and sadness. Subjects could discriminate
between facial expressions representing these
emotions but there was some confusion between
fear and surprise.
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More About Ekman and Friesen 1. Emotional
expressions represent a basic, primary, or
fundamental list of wired-in emotions. 2. These
basic emotions are essential to survival and have
correlated facial expressions which others can
decode. Culturally Defined Display Rules
Patterns of expression management learned while
being socialized in a particular culture (e.g.,
American students felt it was more appropriate to
display sadness to ones friends and family than
did Japanese students.) Non-Verbal
Leakage Emotion escapes through a non-monitored
channelsuch as nervous tapping of feet at a job
interview. You did not realize you were doing it
and so did not intentionally bring it under
control.
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Spontaneous versus Posed Facial Expressions This
discussion has focused on spontaneous facial
expressions but posed ones should be considered
too. Are you going to feel the same emotional
experience if you are faking a smile? Pure
Expressions of Emotion and Affect Blends Affect
blends are combinations of primary affects in
response to particular situations. 1. There are
no pure facial expressions! 2. The role of
context in the interpretation of affect blends
is fundamental!
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Carroll Izard Dimensional and Category
Approaches to Facial Expressions Dimensional
Approach This approach assumes that emotion is
not a special state and can be related to
behaviour in general. It essentially reflects
bodily states and activity. This underlies the
Action Theory perspective. Spencer (1890)
differentiated between agreeable and disagreeable
feelings (or pain versus pleasure) as sensory
experiences. Wundt (1896) also distinguished
three dimensions of affective experience 1.
Pleasant - Unpleasant 2. Relaxation - Tension 3.
Calm - Excitement
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Category Approach This approach postulates basic
or primary affects which form the basis for
emotion. Emotional experience is affected by
facial expressions and neural patterning. This is
more perceptual and experience oriented. Izard
associates emotion categories with 1. Innately
determined neural substrates 2. Characteristic
facial expressions 3. A distinctive subjective or
phenomenological quality Izards list of
emotions Interest, joy, distress, anger,
contempt, fear, shame and guilt
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Schlosberg (1954) distinguished three dimensions
of facial expression 1. Pleasant -
Unpleasant 2. Attention - Rejection 3. Sleep -
Tension Osgood (1954) distinguished three
dimensions of connotative meaning in words using
the Semantic Differential 1. Evaluation
(pleasant-unpleasant) 2. Activation
(relaxed-tense) 3. Potency (weak-powerful) Anothe
r Way to Think About Dimensions 1. HAPPINESS
versus SADNESS and FACIAL FEEDBACK 2. FEAR versus
ANGER and VISCERAL FEEDBACK 3. INTEREST versus
DISGUST
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THE CENTRAL POINT IS THAT EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE IS
SHAPED BY BODILY FEEDBACK FROM THE FACE AND
VISCERA! A FEEDBACK SYSTEM REQUIRES TIME AND SO
EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES BUILD UP OVER TIME ...AND
HAVE A HOLISTIC STRUCTURE!!
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Psychodynamics the Experience Approach
Consider a contrast between the objective
subjective approaches in psychology. Positivism
goes hand in hand with an objective approach in
science. In language use, every word must have a
single meaning specified by an operation or
scientific definition. It is nomothetic or rule
oriented and searches for general
laws. Romanticism fits with a subjective
approach. We find the language of romanticism in
myths and in everyday speech. Precise and narrow
language cannot capture the complexities of
psychology and personal life. It is ideographic
and concerned with individual meanings in life.
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For psychodynamic theorists, behaviours in
everyday life can refer to many meanings at once.
People are understood as behaving in ways that
are intentional and purposive though this might
be unconscious. The goal of the psychodynamic
viewpoint is to interpret and not to predict. It
does not try to explain which is the goal of
mechanistic and behavioural psychology. Mapping
out the multiple referents of behaviour is
fundamentally different from identifying causal
or determining antecedents.
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) believed in the
Darwinian view of humans. The ultimate source of
human meaning lies in biological instincts
inherited through the process of natural
selection.
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From the Psychodynamic Viewpoint 1. Emotion is
a qualitatively different phenomenon from
thought. 2. Emotion is motivational in life and
is more powerful than thought most of the
time. 3. Emotion, more than thought, refers to
some additional invisible unconscious
processes. 4. Emotion expresses those aspects of
a persons fundamental nature that are not
readily apparent to the conscious mind.
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From the Psychodynamic Viewpoint So, every
emotion is the manifest content of a complicated
psychological process which is largely
unconscious. The unconscious origins of
emotion are the latent content. The manifest
content expresses the latent content in some
altered form.
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Emotion goes beyond the immediate situation.
People carry around with them latent concerns
from situation to situation.
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Emotion is NOT a behaviour which is a function
of the environment. Emotion is NOT quite what
it appears to be consciously. To understand an
emotion one must seek out the latent content of
the emotion and relate it to the fundamental
nature of the person. Freud worked with the
notion of instinct or drive. An instinct is
genetically determined and, when operative, it
produces a state of psychic tension or
excitation. This tension prompts the person to
act which leads to gratification and the
cessation of excitation.
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Homeostatic Model Tension --gt Motor Activity
--gt Cessation of Tension This model reflects the
deterministic philosophy that Freud was trained
in. The human organism is seen as a complex
energy system. It derives its energy from food
and expends it for various purposes including
circulation, respiration, perceiving, thinking
and remembering. Energy that was directed to
psychological work was called psychic energy. We
start with an absolute amount of psychic energy
which is given over to different activities.
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The instinct concept links psychology and
physiology. It is a psychological representation
of an inner somatic source of excitation. 1. the
bodily excitation is called a need 2. the
psychological representation is a wish
For example consider the state of hunger.
Physiological condition of nutritional deficit in
the tissues of the body leads to --gt Wish for food
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Four Characteristics of an Instinct 1. Source -
bodily condition or need 2. Aim - to abolish the
deficiency 3. Object - activity involved in
satisfying the need 4. Impetus - force or
strength determined by the intensity of the
underlying need This is an internal tension
reduction homeostatic model The source and aim
are constant throughout life but the objects or
means to satisfy the needs can change. This
implies that psychic energy is displaceable from
object to object.
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All adult interests, preferences, tastes and
habits are displacements of energy from original
object choices. The life instinct relates to
survival and the form of its energy is called
libido. Freud focused on the sexual aspect of
this instinct. The death instinct involves
aggressive drives and was described after World
War I. Freud arrived at his psychodynamic
approach based on evidence from hysterical
symptoms and actions performed under
post-hypnotic suggestion.
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Unconscious mental events can manifest
themselves in behaviour. Ideas can be unconscious
and very strong and this leads to the idea of
inadmissability to consciousness. Unconscious
ideas which can become conscious are called
preconscious ideas. Those denied access are
called unconscious.
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Repression Ideas charged with affect are
repressed and the idea and affect are
separated. The affect (1) can be inhibited, (2)
remain in consciousness but attached to another
idea or (3) it can undergo transformation into
anxiety. These repressed ideas become organized
into and expressed as fantasies. Consider the
contrast between PRIMARY and SECONDARY mental
processes.