Emotion

Let’s think about this:

 Take out a scrap sheet of paper

 Make a list of all of the emotions you can
think of in 2 minutes
 On your mark…get set…go
 Now group similar emotions into
categories
 Basic Emotions
Primary Secondary
Tertiary emotions
emotion emotion

Adoration, affection, love, fondness, liking, attraction,

Affection
caring, tenderness, compassion, sentimentality
Love
Lust Arousal, desire, lust, passion, infatuation
Longing Longing
Amusement, bliss, cheerfulness, gaiety, glee, jolliness,
joviality, joy, delight, enjoyment, gladness,
Cheerfulness
happiness, jubilation, elation, satisfaction, ecstasy,
euphoria

Zest Enthusiasm, zeal, zest, excitement, thrill, exhilaration

Joy
Contentment Contentment, pleasure
Pride Pride, triumph
Optimism Eagerness, hope, optimism
Enthrallment Enthrallment, rapture
Relief Relief
 More Basic Emotions
Surprise Surprise Amazement, surprise, astonishment

Aggravation, irritation, agitation, annoyance,

Irritation
grouchiness, grumpiness

Exasperation Exasperation, frustration

Anger, rage, outrage, fury, wrath, hostility,

Anger Rage ferocity, bitterness, hate, loathing, scorn,
spite, vengefulness, dislike, resentment

Disgust Disgust, revulsion, contempt

Envy Envy, jealousy

Torment Torment
 More Basic Emotions
Suffering Agony, suffering, hurt, anguish
Depression, despair, hopelessness, gloom,
Sadness glumness, sadness, unhappiness, grief, sorrow,
woe, misery, melancholy
Disappointment Dismay, disappointment, displeasure
Sadness
Shame Guilt, shame, regret, remorse
Alienation, isolation, neglect, loneliness,
Neglect rejection, homesickness, defeat, dejection,
insecurity, embarrassment, humiliation, insult
Sympathy Pity, sympathy
Alarm, shock, fear, fright, horror, terror, panic,
Horror
hysteria, mortification
Fear
Anxiety, nervousness, tenseness, uneasiness,
Nervousness
apprehension, worry, distress, dread
Volunteers:

 Role play
 Take a card
 Act out the emotion
 Class can you guess what the emotion
displayed was?
Theories of Emotion
Emotions are a mix of 1) physiological
activation, 2) expressive behaviors, and 3)
conscious experience.
Theories of Emotion

 Does your heart pound

because you are afraid...
or are you afraid because you
feel your heart pounding?
Controversy

 Does physiological arousal precede or follow

your emotional experience?

 Does cognition (thinking) precede emotion

(feeling)?
 Common Sense View
When you become happy, your heart starts
beating faster. First comes conscious
awareness, then comes physiological activity.

Bob Sacha
 James-Lange
Theory of Emotion
 Experience of emotion is awareness of
physiological responses to emotion-
arousing stimuli
Sight of Pounding Fear
oncoming heart (emotion)
car (arousal)
(perception of
stimulus)
 Cannon-Bard
Theory of Emotion
Pounding
heart  Emotion-arousing
(arousal)
Sight of stimuli simultaneously
oncoming
car trigger:
(perception of
stimulus)  physiological
responses
Fear  subjective experience
(emotion)
of emotion
 Schachter-Singer Two-
Factor Theory of Emotion
Pounding
heart  To experience
(arousal)
Sight of Fear emotion one
oncoming
car
(emotion)
must:
(perception of
stimulus)
 be physically
aroused
Cognitive  cognitively
label label the
“I’m afraid” arousal
 Embodied Emotion

We know that emotions involve bodily

responses. Some of these responses are very
noticeable (butterflies in our stomach when fear
arises), but others are more difficult to discern
(neurons activated in the brain).
Emotion and Physiology
Autonomic nervous system controls
physiological arousal
Sympathetic Parasympathetic
division (arousing) division (calming)
Pupils dilate EYES Pupils contract
Decreases SALIVATION Increases
Perspires SKIN Dries
Increases RESPIRATION Decreases
Accelerates HEART Slows
Inhibits DIGESTION Activates
Secrete stress ADRENAL Decreases
hormones GLANDS secretion of
stress
hormones
Arousal and Performance

 Performance
peaks at
lower levels
of arousal for
difficult tasks,
and at higher
levels for
easy or well-
learned tasks
Compare to motivation
Physiological Similarities
Physiological responses related to the
emotions of fear, anger, love, and boredom are
very similar.

M. Grecco/ Stock Boston

Excitement and fear involve a similar
physiological arousal.
Physiological Differences
Physical responses, like finger temperature and
movement of facial muscles, change during fear, rage,
and joy.

More dopamine receptors:

nucleus accumbens
The amygdala shows differences in activation during
the emotions of anger and rage. Activity of the left
hemisphere (happy) is different from the right
(depressed) for emotions.
Cognition and Emotion

What is the connection between how we think

(cognition) and how we feel (emotion)?

Can we change our emotions by changing our

thinking?
 Cognition Can Define
Emotion
An arousal response to one event spills over into
our response to the next event.

AP Photo/ Nati Harnik

Reuters/ Corbis
Arousal from a soccer match can fuel anger, which
may lead to rioting.
 Cognition and Emotion
Sens
 The brain’s shortcut for emotions route
ory i
nput
d m
amyg directly ay be
d t
thala ala (via o the
m th
insta us) for a e
n n
react t emotion
i a
corte on or to t l
x for h
analy e
sis
 Emotion: Lie Detectors

 Polygraph
 machine commonly used in attempts to
detect lies
 measures several of the physiological
responses accompanying emotion
 perspiration
 cardiovascular
 breathing changes
Emotion--A Polygraph
Examination
Emotion—
Lie Detectors

 Control Question
 Aim to make anyone nervous (baseline)
 Up to age 18, did you ever physically harm
anyone?
 Relevant Question
 Did [the deceased] threaten to harm you
in any way?
 Relevant response greater than control
response  Lie
Emotion--
Lie Detectors
Respiration

Perspiration

Heart rate

Control Relevant Control Relevant

question question (a) question question (b)
 Emotion--
Lie Detectors
Percentage
80
 50 Innocents
70
 50 Theives
60

50
 1/3 of innocent
40 declared guilty
30
 1/4 of guilty
20
declared
innocent (from
10

0
Innocent
people
Guilty
people
Kleinmuntz &
Judged innocent by polygraph Szucko, 1984)
Judged guilty by polygraph
Emotion-- Lab

Lie Detectors
 Is 70% accuracy good?
 Assume 5% of 1000 employees actually
guilty
 test all employees
 285 will be wrongly accused
 What about 95% accuracy?
 Assume 1 in 1000 employees actually guilty
 test all employees (including 999 innocents)
 50 wrongly declared guilty
 1 of 51 testing positive are guilty
 Expressed Emotion
 How do we decipher people’s emotions?
 body language
 tone of voice
 facial expressions
 Are these behaviors culture, gender
bound?
 How good are we in detecting true or
false emotions?
Nonverbal Communication
 People more speedily detect an angry face
than a happy one
 Nonverbal Communication
 We read fear and anger mostly from eyes,
happiness from the mouth
 Experience influences how we perceive
emotions
 physically abused children are quicker to pick out
the angry face than non abused children
 At what point does the person morph into
fear?
 Gender Differences
 Women generally surpass men at reading
people’s emotional cue
 Spotting lies
 Greater emotional literacy
 Greater emotional responsiveness to positive
and negative situations
 More empathic…more likely to express
empathy
 Expressed Emotion:
Gender Differences
 Gender and expressiveness
16
Number
14
of Men Women
expressions 12

10

0 Sad Happy Scary

Film Type
 UNIVERSAL FACIAL
EXPRESSIONS
 Definition
 number of specific inherited facial patterns or
expressions that signal inherited facial patterns or
expressions that show specific feelings or
emotional states, such as a smile signaling a happy
state
 Number of expressions (seven)
 Cross culture
 Anger, sadness
 Happiness, fear
 Surprise, disgust
 Contempt
 Detecting Emotions

 Facial muscles
reveal signs of
emotion.
 Difficult to detect
expression of
deceit
 Absence of verbal
or emotional cues
makes detection
Which smile is feigned, which is natural?
difficult
How can you tell?
 Expressed Emotion
 Culturally universal expressions
 Emotions are Adaptive
Darwin speculated
that our ancestors
communicated with
facial expressions in
the absence of
language. Nonverbal
facial expressions led
to our ancestor’s
survival.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

 Analyzing Emotion
Analysis of emotions are carried on different levels.
 Feedback Hypotheses
 Facial feedback hypothesis
 Expressions amplify our emotions by activating
muscles associated with specific states
 If we smile, we’ll feel happier
 Behavior feedback hypothesis
 If we move our body as we would when
expressing some emotion we are likely to feel
that emotion to some degree
 Shuffling feet with downcast eyes feel sad
 Experienced Emotion
 Infants’ naturally occurring emotions a. Joy
b. Anger
c. Interest
d. Disgust
e. Surprise
f. Sadness
g. Fear
Dimensions of Emotion
People generally divide emotions into
two dimensions.
Experienced Emotions: Fear
 We learn specific fears through
conditioning and observational learning
 Biologically prepared to learn certain fears
but not others
 Snakes, spiders, heights  Self preservation
 shared with prehistoric ancestors
 Fast driving, bombs, electricity  not
conditioned in “genetic” makeup  future
generations??
Experienced Emotion

 The
Amygdala--a
neural key to
fear learning
 Experienced Emotion: Anger
Frustrations, insults…evoke anger
Catharsis
emotional release
catharsis hypothesis
“releasing”, or venting, aggressive energy
(through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive
urges
Temporary relief  may actually amplify anger
Reconciliation better than retaliation in reducing
anger and its symptoms
 Experienced Emotions:
Happiness

 Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

 people’s tendency to be helpful when
already in a good mood
 More helpful to strangers, give money
and time
 Experienced Emotion

 Subjective Well-Being
 self-perceived happiness or
satisfaction with life
 used along with measures of
objective well-being
 physical and economic indicators
to evaluate people’s quality of life
 Experienced Emotion
 Moods across the day
 Experienced Emotion
 Changing materialism
 Experienced Emotion
 Does money buy happiness?
Average $20,000
per-person $19,000
$18,000
after-tax income
$17,000 100% Percentage
in 1995 dollars
$16,000 90% describing
$15,000 80% themselves as
$14,000 very happy
$13,000 70%
Personal income
$12,000 60%
$11,000
50%
$10,000
Percentage very happy 40%
$9,000
$8,000 30%
$7,000 20%
$6,000
10%
$5,000
$4,000 0%
1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year
 Experienced Emotion
 Values and life satisfaction
0.6

Importance
0.4 Money
scores
Love
0.2

0.0

-0.2

-0.4
1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00
Life satisfaction
 Experienced Emotion
 Adaptation-Level Phenomenon
 tendency to form judgments relative to a “neutral”
level
 brightness of lights
 volume of sound
 level of income
 defined by our prior experience
 Current level of happiness/satisfaction after awhile
may not be enough
 May want to increase level so strive to do something a little
more challenging (tied in with motivation)
 Relative Deprivation
 perception that one is worse off relative to those with
whom one compares oneself
 Happiness is...
Researchers Have Found That However, Happiness Seems Not Much
Happy People Tend to Related to Other Factors, Such as

Have high self-esteem Age

(in individualistic countries)

Be optimistic, outgoing, and agreeable Gender (women are more often

depressed, but also more often joyful)

Have close friendships or a satisfying Education levels

marriage

Have work and leisure that engage Parenthood (having children or not)
their skills

Have a meaningful religious faith Physical attractiveness

Sleep well and exercise