What’s appraisal?
- Richard Lazarus claimed that a stimuli has to be processed cognitively before it could create emotions, and this is what he called appraisal.
- Although Lazarus believed that the appraisal process didn´t necessarily happen consciously, others disagree that such a process takes place at all.
- Robert Zajonc claimed that emotions came first, in what he called affective primacy. This is based on studies such as a study where participants who weren´t fluent in Chinese where supposed to guess if Chinese symbols had positive or negative meanings. The participants were shown either angry or happy faces right before they saw the symbols, the faces were shown so fast that they didn´t know that they had seen faces. Those who had seen the happy faces before ended up guessing that the symbols had positive meanings. This disproves appraisal, since they weren´t aware of what they had seen before it affected their emotions.
What’s an emotion?
An emotion is a limited episode that’s triggered by either inner or outer events/signals that are relevant for the goals of the organism.
Mood
Mood can vary in strength and is typically more long-lasting than an emotion. A mood is not necessarily rooted in a specific situation.
Empirical evidence:
Moods can influence how we think. In a study where participants were supposed to evaluate different alternatives, it was shown that our mood influences how we evaluate. One group was put in a better mood (were given a gift or shown a fun movie) while the other group was put in a bad mood (e.g. shown a sad movie).
Those in a good mood were satisfied earlier and didn’t spend too much time evaluating other options.
Those in a bad mood spent more times evaluating different options, and were not satisfied easily.
The bad mood will contaminate the emotions the emotions that come up under evaluation, and make it so we keep thinking, and we’re not satisfied.
What does an emotion do?
- Emotions prepares the organism to deal with an event.
- Emotions influences the bodily functions so that they can respond effectively.
- Emotions are closely related to motivation. The emotion of longing will motivate us to get closer to who or what we’re longing for.
The emotion of anger will motivate us to hurt or lash out at what or who we´re mad at. The fact that we can be motivated by several things does complicate things.
Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis are the researchers behind cognitve behavioural therapy.
- CBA: best documented psychological treatment
- Our values and “truths” can effect whether we develop depression or not
- Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis are the men behind cognitive behavioural therapy which has become the most effective method to treat depression. Behaviour cognitive therapy is an approach to depression that focuses on maladaptive thinking habits and biases. To say it in another way, it´s focused on the way we think about our life events and how that in itself can cause depression.
- According to Ellis´s ABC concept we experience an activating event (A) which we interpret, based on our interpretation we develop a belief (B) and then experience the emotion consequences of that belief (C). The error happens when we infer that it was A alone taht led to C instead of recognising that our belief B led to the emotional consequence C.
- Depressed people have this kind of maladaptive thinking generally. Beck proposed that this thinking applies to the self, the immediate world and the future. This pattern was called the depressive cognitive triad.
- Beck developed CBT to treat depression by challenging maladaptive thinking.
- According to Beck, depressive thoughts are schema-driven, the world is seen through a depressive schema.
Phineas Gage
Phineas Gage:
- Got a iron rod through his eye socket which went all the way through, and gave him a frontal lobe injury.
- The injury changed the value the patient gave future events. These values determine the choices we make.
Emosjoner etter skade på prefrontal (frontal lobe injury)
- Typisk i ventromedial prefrontal/orbitofrontal cortex
- Phineas Gage: Got a iron rod through his left eye socket and damaged the frontal cortex.
- Changes to personality, temperament, social behaviour amnd descion making.
- Korttenkt, egoistisk, forhastede slutninger.
Grunnleggende endringen er at han begynner å ta UHELDIGE VALG. Skal man dømme etter IQ-tester så er det ikke grunnet dumhet, men at emosjoner ikke påvirker valgene på samme måte som før.
Somatic marker
Damasios begrep “somatisk markør” (somatic marker) beskriver emosjoner som resulterer fra en simulering av hva som ville skje hvis vi gjorde et bestemt valg.
- Den somatiske markøren er å ligne med en prislapp som forteller om den emosjonelle verdien til en hendelse vi forestiller oss.
Affective primacy?
Affective-primacy: Zajonc´s theory:
- Emotion first: cognition is not necessary for emotion.
- Argued for the primacy of affect. An automatic affective judgement could be made without cognition.
- Mere exposure effect: people prefer things they´ve been repeatedly exposed to
Participants were exposed to happy or angry faces before being shown chinese characters. The pictures were shown for a very short time, so they couldn´t know what they had seen. They were then asked to guess whether the symbol symbolised something positive or negative. The effect disappeared when they were shown the pictures for long enough to be aware of them. When they were shown symbols after seeing a happy face, they guessed that the symbol had a positive meaning.
Emotion VS feeling?
An emotion is unconscious while a feeling is something we’re conscious of.
ABC method
According to Ellis´s ABC concept we experience an activating event (A) which we interpret, based on our interpretation we develop a belief (B) and then experience the emotion consequences of that belief (C). The error happens when we infer that it was A alone taht led to C instead of recognising that our belief B led to the emotional consequence C.
The depressive cognitive triad
Depressed people have this kind of maladaptive thinking generally. Beck proposed that this thinking applies to the self, the immediate world and the future. This pattern was called the depressive cognitive triad.
