Emotion and electronic media

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Emotion and electronic media
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What is emotion?

• Robert Masters makes the following distinctions
  between affect, feeling and emotion "As I define
  them, affect is an innately structured,
  non-cognitive evaluative sensation that may or
  may not register in consciousness feeling is
  affect made conscious, possessing an evaluative
  capacity that is not only physiologically based,
  but that is often also psychologically (and
  sometimes relationally) oriented and emotion is
  psychosocially constructed, dramatized feeling.
• Source Wikipedia

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• Emotions are physical expressions, often
  involuntary, related to feelings, perceptions or
  beliefs about elements, objects or relations
  between them, in reality or in the imagination.
• In the Triune brain model, emotions are defined
  as the responses of the Mammalian cortex. Emotion
  competes with even more instinctive responses
  from the Reptilian cortex and the more logically
  developed neocortex.

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What defines which emotion we are feeling?

• Miron The dedicate neural pathway that is being
  stimulated.
• Different pathways are excited depending upon the
  emotion in question. However, some are quite
  similar and therefore have to be defined by the
  individual as one emotion rather than another
  (anger v. fear)

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Why havent emotions been replaced with higher
order thinking?

• Miron, etc. Survival value maintained anger,
  sorrow, love, fear, etc. until civilization, etc.
  There are still advantages for several of the
  emotions in that they provide coherence of
  thought, feeling and action in regards to general
  situationsanger for frustration, love for
  sexuality and nurturance, fear for
  self-preservation in the face of a threat.

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Where do they come from?

• Are they innate or are they learned?
• Yes!!!

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Innate emotions

• There are said to be a few emotions that are
  hard-wired into our brains. The so-called fight
  or flight reactions are considered by most to be
  basic
• Fear
• Anger
• Adaptive in that they provide a burst of energy
  and quick reaction to threat or frustration

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Social emotions

• Emotions that allow you to interact with others
  effectively and to maintain social bonds
• Love
• Friendship
• Empathy
• Learned early through the positive relationships
  between mom and food, etc.
• Located in higher mammalian brain

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The experience of emotion

• Psychophysiological effects are often autonomic
  in that they do not require thinking
• Often override more logical, evaluative brain
  functions when the emotional intensity is high
• Feelings are learned along with situations,
  people, etc.
• Similar people or situations may bring about the
  same feelings and the same feelings may bring
  about memories of the situations or people they
  were encoded with

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• The body frequently responds to Shame by warmth
  in the upper chest and face, Fear by a heightened
  heartbeat, increased "flinch" response, and
  increased muscle tension. The sensations
  connected with anger are nearly indistinguishable
  from fear. Happiness is often felt as an
  expansive or swelling feeling in the chest and
  the sensation of lightness or buoyancy, as if
  standing underwater. Sadness by a feeling of
  tightness in the throat and eyes, and relaxation
  in the arms and legs. Desire can be accompanied
  by a dry throat and heavy breathing.
• Source Wikipedia

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• Ekman found that at least some facial expressions
  and their corresponding emotions are not
  culturally determined, but universal to human
  culture and thus biological in origin, as Charles
  Darwin had once theorized. Ekman's finding is now
  widely accepted by scientists. Expressions he
  found to be universal included anger, disgust,
  fear, joy, sadness and surprise. Findings on
  contempt are less clear, though there is at least
  some preliminary evidence for its being
  universally recognized.

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Universal facial expressions of emotions

• Ekman et al. (1972 see PIP p.146) suggests six
  emotions can be detected in faces
• Happiness.
• Surprise.
• Anger.
• Sadness.
• Fear.
• Disgust/contempt.

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Abraham Maslow
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Why are we drawn to emotional content?

• Miron All arousal (emotions have a component
  that is arousal) is inherently pleasurable
• The main driving force for human action is to
  seek pleasure and avoid pain
• Zillmann We enjoy watching the good guys
  rewarded and the bad guys punished. The
  enjoyment is enhanced by the wrong thing
  happening prior to an appropriate conclusion

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Why are we drawn to emotional content?

• Some emotions generate positive feelings through
  natural drugs (dopamine) released as part of
  emotional processing
• Emotions are encoded along with cognitions,
  perceptions, behaviors and outcomes. When the
  outcomes are rewarding, the emotions become tied
  to them and are called up at appropriate future
  timesespecially when a lack of some important
  condition is identified (food, warmth, sex)

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• Freud Sublimated base drives continually emerge
  from unconscious, can better be played out in
  observing others engaging in animalistic
  behavioryou dont risk the societal consequences
  yourself

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Okay, so why would simply watching someone else
stir my emotions?

• Empathy
• Zillmann An understanding of the
  constraints/conditions of another leads to
  sympathy for them
• XXXX Place yourself in the position of the
  character and imagine the conditions happening to
  you
• Mirror neurons you dont know the difference
  between yourself acting and another acting

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What parts of a presentation have an effect on my
emotions?

• Snakes, spiders, attacking wild animals, etc.
• Facesjust as they are universal, faces are also
  especially compelling in generating an emotional
  effect
• Action
• Voice
• Music
• Lossespecially of a loved one (even when
  depicted)

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Major emotions

• Sadness/sorrow
• Sources
• Loss of significant other/love/affiliation
• Empathy for those in pain/poor circumstance

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• Anger
• Frustration
• Control by outside force

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• Fear
• Threat
• Darkness, snakes and spiders
• Socially-learned fears