PSY100 Emotion Lecture

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• PSY100 Emotion Lecture
• Emotion Overview of Theories
• Emotion Happiness
• Are there Sex Differences in Sexuality?

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Emotion What are emotions? Typical emotions are
anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. These
emotions are sometimes called basic emotions.
Emotions are states that are generated by
evaluations or appraisals of the environment (Is
this event/object good or bad for me?) Emotions
differ from other feelings such as moods or
bodily sensations. These other feelings are not
elicited by appraisals.
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• Components of Emotions
• Emotions have several components
• Experiences (I feel )
• Physiology changes (bodily changes, neurological
  processes)
• Behavior and Expression (facial expressions,
  actions)
• Although all components are present during
  intense emotional experiences, components can
  occur without other components.

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• Physiological Responses
• Older emotion theories (James-Lange theory)
  assumed that different emotions have distinct
  patterns of physiological responses.
• Evidence shows that most emotions activate the
  sympathetic nervous system, leading to increased
  heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance
  (sweaty hands).
• Only sexual arousal has a distinct physiological
  response.

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• Skin conductance and Lie-Detection
• The skin conductance response is used for
  lie-detection.
• However, it does not reflect lying.
• Rather, skin conductance is activated by
  relevant stimuli.
• For example, if the murder weapon is a knife,
  skin conductance will increase more in response
  to the word knife than to other potential weapons
  (gun, ax, poison).
• This is true, even when people tell the truth.

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• Emotion in the Brain
• One area of the brain that is frequently linked
  to emotion is the amygdala (see textbook for
  picture).
• Animal studies suggest that the amygdala is
  particularly responsive to threatening stimuli.
• However, in recent years it has become possible
  to study activity in the amygdala of human
  participants while watching emotional pictures.
• These studies show that the amygdala is
  activated by both negative (angry faces) and
  positive (erotica) stimuli.

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• Mood and the Brain
• Moods are pleasant and unpleasant states that
  are not directly related to events.
• Tremendous progress has been made in
  understanding the biological processes underlying
  moods.
• Many legal (Prozac) and illegal (ecstasy) drugs
  influence moods because they influence the
  communication between neurons by increasing the
  amount of neurotransmitters (serotonine,
  dopamine).

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• Prozac and Ecstasy
• Although Prozac and Ecstasy both influence
  serotonine, they do so differently.
• Prozac helps to keep normal amounts of
  serotonine available for a longer time.
• Ecstasy releases abnormally high levels of
  serotonine and depletes neurons of serotonine.

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• Facial Expressions and Emotions
• Darwin already postulated a set of universal
  facial expressions.
• Research over the past decades confirmed that
  six emotions are associated with distinct facial
  expressions, which are more or less universally
  recognized across different cultures.
• Lets see whether you can identify the correct
  emotion based on facial expressions.

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The six emotions that are well recognized in
facial expressions are Happiness Surprise Fear An
ger Sadness Disgust
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• Facial-Feedback Theories
• Facial-feedback theories assume that facial
  expressions are closely related to other
  components of emotions.
• Indeed, the theories assume that feedback from
  the facial muscles generates emotional
  experiences.
• That is, you feel happy because you smile rather
  than you smile because you feel happy.
• Although popular for many years, empirical
  support for facial-feedback theories is weak.

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• Peripheral versus Central Theories of Emotions
• Facial feedback-theories are a special case of
  theories, which assume that emotional experiences
  are based on feedback from peripheral
  physiological changes (James-Lange theory,
  Schacter and Singer)
• However, evidence for these theories is also
  weak. Most researchers assume that emotional
  experiences are directly generated in the brain.
• Sometimes peripheral feedback may intensify
  emotional experiences.

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• Cognitive Theories of Emotions
• Cognitive theories of emotions assume that
  emotions are elicited by appraisals of the
  environment.
• Cognitive theories explain why the same event
  (e..g, getting a B in an exam) can lead to
  different emotions.
• For some students getting a B will exceed
  expectations, leading to happiness. For other
  students, a B will be below expectations, leading
  to negative emotions (disappointment, sadness,
  anger).

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• Person-Situation Interaction
• One important implication of cognitive theories
  is that we need information about the situation
  and the person to predict an emotional response.
• For example, to predict fear-responses to snakes
  and spiders, we need to know whether the stimulus
  is a snake or a spider, and whether an individual
  is spider-phobic or snake-phobic.
• Different situations make different people feel
  good or bad.

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• Emotion and Happiness
• Emotion research has important implications for
  our happiness.
• Over the past 20 yeas, Ed Diener and colleagues
  have studied the factors that make some people
  happier than others.
• I have worked in Ed Dieners laboratory for 2
  years and I have published several articles with
  Ed Diener on this important topic.

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• Scientific Definition of Happiness
• Scientists like Ed Diener think that the term
  happiness is too ambiguous for scientific
  research.
• They prefer to call happiness subjective
  well-being.
• Subjective well-being has two components - a
  cognitive component - an affective (emotional)
  component

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Cognitive Component of SWB Life-Satisfaction 1.
In most ways my life is close to ideal. 2. The
conditions of my life are excellent. 3. I am
satisfied with my life. 4. So far I have gotten
the important things I want in my life. 5. If I
could live my life over, I would change almost
nothing. Do you recognize these items?
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Life-Satisfaction around the World(Diener and
colleagues 2001 survey) Happy Nations Not so
Happy Nations Canada 28.0 Uganda 15.5Switzerlan
d 27.2 China 16.0Netherlands 24.7 Cameroon 17.2
USA 24.4 Egypt 18.0Germany 24.4 Georgia 18.
5UTM-2000 24.1 Nepal 18.9UTM-2002 23.5 Japan
19.2 S.Korea 20.0
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• The Affective ComponentAmount of Positive and
  Negative Feelings
• Positive Affect How often do you feel happy,
  cheerful, joy, pride, etc.
• Negative Affect How often do you feel unhappy,
  sad, down, tense, etc.
• Hedonic Balance Positive Affect Negative
  Affect.
• Happiness is to experience a lot of Positive
  Emotions and few Negative Emotions.

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Hedonic Balance around the World(Diener and
colleagues 2001 survey) Canada 3.27 Uganda 1.54
Switzerland 2.47 China 1.17Netherlands 2.17 Ca
meroon 1.82USA 2.17 Egypt 1.22Germany 2.00
Georgia 1.63 Nepal 1.55 Japan 0.58
S.Korea 1.70 UTM data are not comparable because
I used a different scale to measure hedonic
balance.
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• Affective and Cognitive Well-Being are related.
• Countries with high satisfaction also tend to
  have high hedonic-balance.
• Countries with low satisfaction also tend to
  have low hedonic balance.
• This fact can be captured in a correlation
  Life-satisfaction and hedonic balance are highly
  correlated (r .68).

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Why are cognitive and affective well-being
related? Why are they not identical? These
questions were examined in an article by
Schimmack, Diener, and Oishi (2002).
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• Students completed the five-item SWLS.
• Afterwards they answered questions about the
  information that they used to answer the SLWS
  items.
• For example Yes/No
• Did you think about the weather?
• Did you think about your past emotions?

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What do students think about to answer
life-satisfaction judgments? Academic
Performance 89 Romantic Relationship 82 Family
Relationships 80 Health 77 Hedonic
Balance 73 Weather 8
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• Conclusion
• People rely on their past emotional experiences
  to judge life-satisfaction.
• Hedonic Balance is the strongest predictor of
  life-satisfaction.
• However, in addition people also consider
  satisfaction in important life domains (romantic
  satisfaction, academic satisfaction).
• Satisfaction in these domains does not
  necessarily increase hedonic balance (e.g.,
  studying hard to get good grades).

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Sex Differences in Sexuality This section is
based on one of my most popular lectures in my
PSY230 course, Introduction to Personality
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Do men on average have more sexual partners than
women? What does your textbook have to say about
this question? Survey inquires about adults
actual sexual histories also indicate that men
engage in sex with a larger number of partners
than women do, on the average (Janus Janus,
1993). Does this finding provide conclusive
evidence that men have more sexual partners than
women?
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2 2 2 2 3
5 1 3 1 1
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• Conclusion
• It is logically impossible for men to have more
  sexual partners than women.
• Sex differences in the reported number of
  partners in surveys must be due to self-report
  biases.
• For example, for men it is acceptable or even
  desirable to have many partners and they may
  provide inflated estimates.
• For women it is less acceptable to have many
  partners and they may underestimate.

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However, it is still possible that men would like
to have more sex than women. Are there sex
differences in sexual desire? Many studies
suggests that this is the case. ROP students in
my lab conducted a study that examined this issue
during the past semester. Some of you may
actually have participated in this study. If
not, you still have a chance to sign-up for the
Emotion and attention study this semester.
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In the study, students had to solve easy math
problems. They had to compare two single-digit
products. For example, which product is
larger? 3 x 5 ltgt 8 x 6 Left product larger
Right product larger
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The math problem was presented in front of
pictures. Participants had to ignore the
pictures. However, emotionally relevant stimuli
automatically attract attention. Hence,
participants should need more time to respond
when the math problem is presented in front of an
emotional picture. Question Would men be more
distracted by pictures of attractive women, than
women by pictures of attractive men?
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Study Participants. 123 women, 62 men. Materials.
Pictures of attractive models.
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Difference to neutral pictures (milliseconds)
SF Same-sex face SB same-sex facebodyOF
Opposite-sex face OB opposite-sex fb
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• Conclusion
• Men and womens attention is automatically
  attracted by pictures of attractive members of
  the opposite sex.
• The effect is significantly stronger for men
  than for women.
• Even pictures of attractive faces produce the
  effect, although pictures of attractive faces and
  bodies have a stronger effect.
• Women, but not men, also show a slight tendency
  to respond to same-sex pictures.

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• General Conclusion
• Emotions are an important topic of psychological
  research.
• Positive and negative feelings (emotions, moods)
  are a fundamental component of happiness.
• To help people lead happier lives, psychologists
  study the determinants of positive and negative
  feelings.
• People respond differently to different
  situations. Hence, different situations make
  different people happy.