Emotions involves changes in:
- physiology
- conscious experience
- motivation
- behavioural changes
Physiological changes
autonomic nervous system
- sympathetic nervous system
- parasympathetic nervous system
hormones
muscular responses
Emotions of Valence
positive: joy, contentment, calm
negative: fear, anger, disgust, sadness
Emotions of Arousal
High: fear, anger, joy, desire
Low: arousal, contentment, calm, sadness, boredom
Emotions of Direction
Approach-related: anger, joy, desire
Avoidance-related: fear, disgust
James-Lange Theory
Stimulus → physiological arousal → emotion
- perception of responses = emotional feeling
- physiological reaction happens before the emotion is recognised
Cannon’s Criticisms of James-Lange Theory
- Bodily responses are not necessary
- Responses are same for all emotions
- Insensitive internal organs & feedback
- Responses are too slow to cause feeling
- Artificial inducement of arousal does not cause feeling
Cannon’s Emergency Theory
- Emergency reaction to need for energy
- Flight or fight
- Body’s role less important than in James-Lange Theory
Cannon - all emotions have same physio
- Body changes occur simultaneously with emotional experience
- Thalamic processes contribute to feeling
Perceived external stimulus → physiological arousal and emotion same time (Cannon-Bard)
Two-Factor Theory (Schachter/Singer)
- physiological arousal
- cognitive labelling (arousing –> interpret external cues –> label emotions)
- Physiological arousal and cognitive labelling essentially co-occur
- Have the same pattern of physiological arousal regardless of the emotion (like Cannon)
Excitation Transfer
→ when arousal occurs, it takes time to decay
→ during decay, person may incorrectly identify source of arousal, and transfer arousal to another source
→ misattribution of arousal to incorrect source
→ transfer occurs when persons are less aware of arousal
Primacy Debate: Appraisal or Emotion
Lazarus: appraisals determine feelings
Zajonc: emotional experience may occur before appraisal
Autonomic Nervous System Arousal with Different Emotions
- Emotional facial expressions cause subjective experience of emotion
- Heart rate was more accelerated with anger, fear and sadness than with disgust and surprise
- Happy accelerated HR more than surprise
- Skin conductance – fear and disgust were larger than happy and surprise
- Finger temp – anger greater than fear
- Higher quality voluntary facial configurations associated with stronger autonomic faces
- Self-reported emotion not necessary for autonomic differences
Neural Pathways of Fear
emotional stimulus –> sensory thalamus –> sensory cortex high or low road to amygdala
—> emotional responses
Amygdala Influence of Emotional Responses
projects to other parts of the brain that influence these responses
To:
- Neocortex
- Hipp
- Monoamine System
- Bodily Responses
both direct and indirect consequences of amygdala activation
Facial Feedback Hypothesis (Laird)
- The facial expression of an emotion may produce congruent emotional experience
- E.g. posing an angry facial expression may create or intensify the feeling of anger
- Several studies revealed that posing a facial expression of a discrete emotion created/ intensified the emotional experience
- Posing facial expressions of discrete emotions also influenced judgements of other stimuli
- “Smiling” caused cartoons to be rated as more humorous compared to frowning
Behavioural Factors of Emotion
Families of Emotion
- classes of emotion states that share characteristics in terms of subjective feelings
- subtle differences within family/class
- anger: linguistic exemplar of irritation, rage, fury
Hormones and Human Emotion
Oxytocin - involved in affiliation, trust
Testosterone - angry aggression, low empathy
Cortisol - involved in stress, anxiety
Rarely 1-to-1 relationship between psychological & physiological variables
- oxytocin does not only cause affiliation
- affiliation is caused by more than oxytocin
Sociocultural Factors of Emotion
- Basic emotion expressions are universally recognised
- Basic emotion expressions are innate (blind, children)
- Display rules vary across cultures
