THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTION

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTION
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Emotions
Just how many emotions are there?
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Emotion Triggered by Behavioural
response Anger Being prevented from Destroy the
thing doing something you in your
way want Fear Any threat or danger Protection
often through freezing so you
are not noticed Sadness Loss of
something Search for help important
and comfort Disgust Something gruesome,
Reject or push away the awful
thing that is revolting Surprise A
sudden unexpected Focus on the new thing,
event wide eyes take in
as much as possible  
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What Exactly are Emotions?

• An emotion involves physiological arousal,
  expressive behavior and conscious experience
• What psychologists do agree on is that emotions
  contain both a cognitive and physiological
  element
• What they do not agree on is, which comes first?
  When we encounter a situation that scares us, do
  we become aroused and from this state of arousal
  deduce that we are scared? Or do we decide
  mentally that the situation is scary, which then
  causes our physiology to react?

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Basic Characteristics of Emotions

• Pure emotions do not last long and have a short
  duration. Mood, on the other hand, tends to last
  longer
• Emotional experience can act as a motivation for
  action. The disgusted diner, for example, sending
  his uncooked steak back to the chef and putting
  his coat on to leave the restaurant. Where
  motivations are internal stimuli, emotions are
  reactions (responses)
• Emotional experience is elicited in part by
  conscious mental assessments. Such perceptual
  assessment can lead to very different emotional
  expressions. So getting an annual bonus might
  bring joy, which might turn to anger when you
  learn your co-workers all got bigger bonuses than
  you. Therefore cognitive appraisal is central to
  emotional experience
• Emotional experience is either positive or
  negative, pleasant or unpleasant to us

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What are the Functions of Emotions?

• They are a source of information
• They prepare us for action
• They help us communicate with others, e.g. facial
  expressions and attachment  
• They regulate social behaviour
• They can create cognitive bias and maintain
  self-esteem

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Basis of Emotional Experience Physiology or
Cognition?

• At one extreme, emotions can be seen as
  biological responses to situations over which we
  have little control
• At the other extreme, there are psychologists who
  define emotions more by the conscious experience
  rather than by the biological response (Lazarus,
  1991)

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Biological Explanations of Emotion

• Theorists such as William James and Carl Lange
  suggest that emotional experience is a direct
  result of physiological arousal
• For some, physiological arousal is seen to cause
  the emotion (James Lange) while for others,
  such arousal is a signal system for the brain to
  act and produce emotions (Cannon)

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James-Lange Somatic Theory of Emotions

• The body informs the mind (we know we are sad
  because we cry)
• Distinctive body changes/symptoms are accompanied
  by different emotions
• Perception of these changes/symptoms determines
  the experience of emotion
• Differences between emotions are a direct result
  of the different patterns of physiological
  response associated with them

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Evidence for the Physiological Basis of Emotion

• Levenson, Ekman Friesen (1990) reported
  distinctive patterns of autonomic nervous system
  (ANS) activity for anger, fear and disgust
• Rimm-Kaufman Kagan (1996) have reported that
  hand and face temperatures were different in a
  sample of females viewing different film clips
• facial feedback hypothesis of emotion (Davis
  Palladino, 2000)

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Challenges to the James-Lange Theory

• Cannon (1927) emotional encounters are emergency
  situations which directly trigger a central brain
  process in the thalamus. Which lead to two
  simultaneous but independent outcomes
• heightened arousal system which prepares the body
  to cope with the emergency
• the conscious experience of the emotion is
  registered in the cortex

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• Cannon argues the James-Lange theory is too slow
  in accounting for instantaneous emotional feeling
• Yet his own theory also contains a flaw. If the
  brain decides upon emotional experience based
  upon physiological arousal, then individuals who
  receive no physiological arousal signals should
  not experience emotion
• Chwalisz et al. (1988) reported that people who
  had sustained spinal injuries do experience them!

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Can we Judge our own Arousal?

• Two other theories of emotion point to how
  inaccurate we are at our levels of physiological
  arousal
• False autonomic feedback (Valins, 1966)
• Excitation transfer theory (Zillman, 1978)
• Both theories suggest that there has to be more
  to emotional experience than mere physiological
  arousal

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Evaluation of the Biological Basis of Emotion

• For example feeling nervous often feels similar
  to excitement
• One major criticism we are not very good at
  detecting our levels of physiological arousal
• Cognition should play a major role in emotions
  too, as we appraise situations

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Cognitive Explanations of Emotional Experience

• Suggest we recognise different emotions because
  of our mental evaluations of our current
  situation
• Schachter Singer (1962, 1964) two-factor theory
  
• Emphasised the importance of both physiological
  and situational factors in determining emotion.
  They called this the two-factor theory of emotions

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• The basis of the theory suggested that autonomic
  arousal provided the energy and intensity of an
  emotion
• In other words physiological arousal by itself
  could determine the quantity but not the quality
  of arousal
• Schachter and Singer proposed an element of
  cognitive attribution as the critical factor in
  emotional experience
• We evaluate the situation in terms of recognising
  what emotion we should be experiencing

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Comparison of the Theories of Emotion
Theory Initial reaction Secondary reaction
JamesLange Physical reaction Emotion
occurs CannonBard Emotion occurs at the same
time as the physical response SchachterSinger
Physical and Situationsearch emotional
environment reactions occur at the same time
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Cognitive Appraisal Model Lazarus

• Cognitive appraisal of the situation determines
  the level of physiological arousal and the
  specific type of emotion to be experienced
• We learn what to expect from stimuli from
  previous experience with it
• e.g. phobias

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Measurement of Emotions

• Physiological events such as heart rate,
  breathing, electro-dermal activity and muscle
  tension, have all been used as physiological
  indicators of emotional arousal. Many of these
  are measured by a polygraph
• The problem here is that we cannot deduce easily
  what the emotion is being experienced from the
  physiological arousal input. All we can do is
  look at the levels of general arousal

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• self-report questionnaires are a more specific
  way to measure the nature of the emotional
  experience
• Examples of questionnaires
• Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)
• Problem how do we know people are
• Aware what they are feeling accurately
• Being honest with their answers!