Emotion

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Emotion

• The nature and functions of emotions A brief
  tour through the literature on emotion

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1 Elements

• Emotions involve a number of different elements
• Bodily feelings
• Behaviours
• Facial Expressions
• Appraisals of situations (good or bad)
• Cultural Interpretations
• Display rules
• Neural and brain structures (limbic system)

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2 The Old Guys Thought

• Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza
• Emphasis on emotions as appraisals, way of
  assessing situations
• Passiveness (passion) or emotions as reactions
• Hume, Empiricists
• Emphasis on bodily feelings, basis for morality
• Darwin
• Continuity with animals
• Adaptively serve BASIC biological functions
• Facial expressions

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3 Response or Feeling First?

• William James (1884) asked
• Do feelings cause emotional responses or
  responses cause feelings?
• Traditional view
• Stimulus ? Feeling ? Response
• (Bear) (Fear) (Run)
• James view
• Stimulus ? Response ? Feeling
• (Bear) (Run) (Fear)
• Feedback from response determines feelings

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4 The Big Guns Critique

• Walter Cannon (1920) studied
• Sympathetic nervous system, part of ANS
• Believed function of sympathetic nervous system
  was preparation for fight or flight
• The physiological response accompanying different
  emotions will be the same no matter what the
  emotion
• Physiological response gives urgency and
  intensity but brain differentiates emotion

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5 Bodily Feedback

• Many attempts to test James and Cannon-Bard
  theories
• Social Psychologists and the role of social cues
  (Schachter Singer, and others) confabulation
  rather than introspection
• Spinal Injuries, locked-in syndrome and reduced
  emotional experience
• Facial and bodily expressions and induced
  emotions (pen in teeth/lips amusement)

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6 Rogers Hammerstein on induced emotion

• Whenever I feel afraid
• I hold my head erect
• And whistle a happy tune
• So no one will suspect Im afraid
• The result of this deception
• is very strange to tell

• For when I fool the people I fear
• I fool myself as well
• Make believe youre brave
• And the trip will take you far
• You may be as brave
• As you make believe you are.
• (From The King and I)

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7 Passion and Reasons

• Behaviorists (1920 ? 1960)
• Emotions are (learned e.g., Little Albert) ways
  of acting in certain situations
• Magda Arnold (1960) revives Aristotle
• emotions are appraisals of situations
• Schachter Singer (1962)
• Undifferentiated bodily response (adrenalin)
• Situationally interpreted (stooges behaviour)

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8 The Cognitive Approach

• Sequence
• Situation ? Basic Appraisal (good, bad) Arousal
  ? Cognition ? Refined Emotion Action Tendency
• Emotions are introspectable, people can
  understand the causes of emotions
• Richard Lazarus, Bernard Weiner (attribution
  dimensions)

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9 The New Look Perception

• Jerome Bruner others in late 1940s
• Unconscious influences on perception, emotion
  (close gap with Psychoanalysis)
• Demonstrations that emotionally charged stimuli
  can unconsciously influence perception
• Perceptual defence dirty words have to be
  shown on a screen for longer times before being
  recognised
• Bruners study of the perceived size of coins by
  poor and rich people
• Rejected by dominant Behaviourists

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10 Preferences need no inferences

• Robert Zajonc (Zy-unce) (1980)
• Preferences (simple emotional reactions) can be
  formed without consciousness
• Emotion thus MORE than cognition, recognition
  not essential to emotion
• Ss reliably tend to prefer subliminally
  pre-exposed stimuli to other stimuli (The mere
  exposure effect)
• Need for nonverbal research techniques
• Increasing research program into the emotional
  unconscious

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11 Poor Spock Couldnt Decide!

• Making decisions requires both values and beliefs
  to choose appropriate actions
• Emotions are now thought to be essential for
  values and evaluating situations
• Antonio Damasio (1994) has studied this aspect in
  recent years
• Mere exposure effect and preference for people
  who had been kind in Korsokovs syndrome patient

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12 More Damasio Cases

• Inevitably emotions are inseparable from the
  idea of good and evil I.e., values
• Prefrontal brain damage impairs decision making
  leads to
• Loss of emotion (no enjoyment, no suffering)
• Can predict outcomes, but still cant decide!
• No impairment of intelligence
• Gambling task with high risk options Prefrontal
  damage means no learned risk aversion

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13 The Evolutionary Approach

• Darwin (1859) Origin of Species
• Traits, including behaviours, that are useful for
  the survival of a species become, over the long
  run, characteristics of the species
• The search for biological universals, basic
  emotions
• The study of Facial expressions (universal or
  cultural?)
• The search for the functions of emotions

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14 Darwin on Emotion

• Darwin (1872) Expression of emotions
• Expressive actions are inherited, adaptive
• Similarities between man, animals
• Urination when afraid, piloerection (goose
  bumps), snarling, etc
• Communicative function of emotions within and
  across species
• Emotional expression usually involuntary
• Some emotions have longer evolutionary histories
  (fear, rage) than other (suffering, grief)

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15 Basic Emotions

• Many (somewhat) different lists, based on
• Facial expressions (Paul Ekman)
• Surprise, happiness, anger, fear, disgust,
  sadness
• Global action tendencies (Robert Plutchik)
• Facial expressions become rarer down the
  evolutionary scale
• Kinds of words we have for emotions
• Philip Johnson-Laird Keith Oatley
• Responses to stimulation of rat brains (Jaak
  Panksepp)
• Panic, rage, expectancy, fear

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16 Plutchiks Basic Emotions

• Although a deer may run from danger, a bird may
  fly from it, and a fish may swim from it, there
  is a functional equivalence to all the different
  patterns of behaviour namely, they all have the
  common function of separating an organism from a
  threat to its survival
• Certain basic functions necessary for survival
  have been conserved throughout evolution in the
  form of basic emotions

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17 Plutchiks 8 Basic derived Emotions
Psycho-Socially Derived Emotions
Primary Dyads (mix of adjacent) Joy acceptance
friendliness Fear surprise alarm
Sadness
Disgust
Anger
Surprise
Secondary Dyads (once removed mix) Joy fear
guilt Sadness anger sullenness
Anticipation
Fear
Joy
Tertiary Dyads (twice removed mix) Joy surprise
delight Anticipation fear anxiety
Acceptance
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18 Culture Social Construction

• Emotions are products of society, not biology
• Evidence of diversity in emotions across cultures
• On being a Wild Pig (Gururumba of New Zealand)
  (James Averill)
• Amae desire to be a passive love object - in
  Japan (Japanese Psychologist Doi)

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19 Universal AND Cultural?

• Paul Ekman tries to account for diversity
• Basic emotions universal facial expressions
• Other culturally specific bodily movements
• Emblems (Head nodding or shaking) have verbal
  meanings and
• Illustrators (gestures etc, that accompany
  speech)
• Display rules
• Conventions, norms and habits for managing
  emotional expression

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20 Display Rules

• Mark Twain on grief hierarchy
• Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend
  should choke up, a distant acquaintance should
  sigh, a stranger should merely fumble with his
  handkerchief
• Observed and unobserved Japanese people watching
  emotional films inscrutable only when observed

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21 Conclusions

• Emotion is
• a crucial part of conscious experience but
  conscious reports not always reliable
• hard to define need for many approaches
• Biologically based brain structures,
  physiological feedback facial expression
• Functional adaptive action, decision making,
  having values and motives
• Influenced by influences thought, culture

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22 Some Sources

• Damasio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens
  Body and emotion in the making of consciousness.
  New York Harcourt Brace and Company.
• Harré, R. Parrott, W. G. (Eds) (1996). The
  emotions Social, cognitive and biological
  dimensions. London Sage Publications.
• LeDoux, J. (1998). The emotional brain. London
  Phoenix Books.