Tripartite division of mental faculties
Kant
Human mental faculties can be divided into 3 elements
- pure reason
- -> congtiion/intellect - Practical reason
- -> will/action - Judgment
- -> feeling pleasure or pain
BUT: these 3 combined together to form a unitary psychological experience
Zajoncs view on the relation between affect and cognition
Thought that affect can be independent of cognition but not always the other way round
- the affective tone of a stimulus is identified within the first secs when you register the stimulus
- it is assessed prior to cognitive processing
- -> “primacy of affect”
THUS: our affective + evaluative reactions to particular objects are usually remembered much longer and more rapidly
Mere exposure effect
Developing a preference for things, just because they are familiar to us
–> evidence for primacy of affect (Zajonc)
Lazarus view on the relation between cognition and affect
Argued that cognition is necessary for emotion
–> “primacy of cognition”
Lazarus counterarguments to primacy of affect
- Mere exposure effect doesn’t represent evidence for it, because a preference is not = affective reaction
- Cognitive appraisals are cumuli for determine the type + intensity of affective response
Damasios view on the relation between cognition and affect
Affect is an integral part of cognition
–> since affective processes can modulation info processing in a number of way
e.g. attention, reasoning, decision making
Appraisal-based models of affect
Suggest that the experience of emotion is determined to a large extent by the way in which a situation is interpreted by the individual
Process based models of affect
Suggests that appraisals can occur in parallel at multiple levels
–> ranging from very low action tendencies to high level conscious decisions
Information processing approaches
Designed to determine how people orient towards + remember different events and objects in the environment
–> focus on behavioral methods
BUT: exclude the role of affective states in the process
What are the advantages of info processing models
- Can examine whether biases are occurring at implicit levels due to use of behavioral paradigms
- Can provide like btw research at “lower” neurobiological level + “higher” social cognitive approaches in psychology
Current cognitive research on affect and cognition
Investigates
- how comprehensive mental representations of affect unfold over time
- Associated neural correlates
What are the results of current cognitive research on the relationship between affect + cognition ?
- Affective processing was there before more complex forms of cognitive processing
–> this is why complex forms of processing depend on the guidance of affective processing
THUS: Affect provides the cognitive system with a representation of the value of significance of a stimulus
Dynamic circle
A particular emotion is likely to induce a cognitive bias so that mood relevant material is then prioritized by the processing system
–> this in turn increases the propensity of experiencing related emotions (=circle)
Selective attention
Is needed to filter out non-relevant information
–> since we are constraint in out info processing capacities
Late vs early selection debate
Refers to the question of whether information is identified before or after the allocation of spatial attention
What makes an object actively significant ?
- Objects that are naturally prioritized by the attentional system
ex. snakes, spiders - Learning history
- Novelty of stimulus
Appraisal of valence hypothesis
The faster good + bad can be distinguished, the faster one can make an appropriate response
THUS: distinction should occur early in info processing and negative stimuli should be processed earlier than others
How did behavioral studies examine the relation btw affect + cognition ?
What was the result ?
- Visual search task to identify how quickly people are to detect a particular class of stimuli
–> indicating whether a particular object is present or absent
- Negative emotional stimuli interfere with performance
e. g. Stroop task
–> thus early bias towards negative stimuli
Threat superiority effect
People are faster to pick out angry expression relative to happy expression
What did brain imaging studies show about the relation btw affect + cognition ?
Amygdala activity correlates with enhanced activity of neurons in the extra striate cortex in the presence of emotional stimuli
–> since extra striate cortex is there for sensory processing, one can say emotional stimuli boost sensory processing
THUS: cortical activity occurring in the presence of affective stimuli can be modulated by the activation of the amygdala
What is evidence for the fact that there is faster processing of negative stimuli ?
C1 component is the earliest response in V1 to a stimulus
–> there is enhanced responding of C1 for fearful relative to happy faces
Emotion
Is an event-focused process that consists of a specific elicitation mechanism based on relevance of a stimulus that shape an emotional response across several organismic subsystems, including
- motivational changes
- physiological changes
- changes in motor expression and in subjective feeling
Component process theory
Organizes appraisal into four sequential objectives that help us to adaptively react to salient events
- Relevant
- Implications
- -> what are the consequences of this event ? - Coping potential
- -> how well can i cope or adjust to the consequences ? - Normative significance
- -> how significant is the event with respect to my self-concept + social norms ?
THUS: the outcome of the process drives physiological reactions but also cognitive function
Endogenous intention
Important stimuli are selected by voluntary top down control
