HOW ARE
YOU
FEELING
TODAY?
EMOTIONS, STRESS &
HEALTH!
Ch. 12
Emotions
 Name
as many emotions as you can:
Excitement
Anger
Fear
Happiness
Surprise
Disgust
Shame
Sadness
Contempt
Guilt
Physiology of Emotion
 Emotions
cause an aroused physiological
state: automatic/sympathetic nervous
system.
 Glucose released
 Respiration increased
 Blood clotter released
 Adrenaline: epinephrine, norepinephrine
 Blood pressure up.
Stress
 Creates
the aroused
physiological state for an
extended period of time, reeking
havoc on the immune system and
other brain/body systems, leading
to anxiety and/or depression.
Arousal and Performance
 Arousal
theory states that with
easy and well-learned tasks,
arousal enhances performance.
 With difficult or unrehearsed tasks
arousal hurts performance.
Arousal and emotion
 It
is very difficult to tell the
difference between aroused
emotional states: anger, fear, lust:
although the behavioral look of
each is distinct.
 This implies a cognitive
component.
Emotion and the Brain
 Different
emotions flow through
different brain circuits.
 Disgust and sadness tends to
trigger right brain circuits.
 Happiness and other positive
emotions tend to be left frontal
lobe activities.
Expressing Emotion

Feeling emotion and expressing emotions are
two very different things.
 Much of communication is nonverbal: body,
face and gestures. Staring into eyes can give
good “love” information.
 People are very good at reading nonverbal
cues. You can tell a happy face from 100 yds.
 Angry faces tend to leap out of the crowd at
you.
Reading Emotions
 Introverts
are better at reading
nonverbal cues, extroverts are
better at expressing them.
Expressiveness and Culture
 Cultures
vary in the emotions that they
express and the intensity in which they
express it. However, facial expressions for
various expressions are universal.
 For instance, Japanese rarely show selfaggrandizing and negative emotions, but
likely to show happiness, as means of
social glue.
Expressiveness
 Expressions
not only
communicate emotion, but they
also regulate it.
 Smiling will make you happier.
 Walking boldly will make you
more confident.
 Pull up on your desk, push down
on it, which feels better?
Experiencing emotion
Emotions can be categorized in three
different ways:
 Pleasant vs. unpleasant
 Intense vs. sleepy
 Long-lasting vs. brief: which lasts longer?
Sadness lasts longer than grief/anger.
Concealing emotions
 Humans
are also good at
intentionally concealing emotions.
 Studies show that only those highly
trained for looking for deceit are
good at it, even law enforcement
officers rarely do better than
random guessing.
 However, without intentional
deception, even the very young can
read emotions with great accuracy.
Fear
 Controlled
by the amygdala located at
the ends of the hippocampus in the
Limbic system of the lower brain.
 Fear is adaptive to fight/flee from
dangerous events. We can learn to fear
just about anything, but we fear some
things easier than others: heights,
spiders, snakes.
Figure 13.5 The brain’s shortcut for emotions
Myers: Psychology, Eighth Edition
Copyright © 2007 by Worth Publishers
Fear
 Humans
can learn to fear
embarrassment and social
situations which can become
maladaptive when extreme.
 Chronic anxiety (fear) of social
events can have devastating
effects on your immune system and
other mood systems
(depression/anxiety disorders).
 Extreme fear of a specific trigger is
called a phobia.
Thresholds of Fear
 Peoples’
triggers for fear vary.
Some are not easily fearful: test
pilots, serial killers, type B
personalities; while some are
anxious/nervous almost all the
time.
 Tranquilizers operate on this
brain/body system.
Happiness
 One’s
mood colors everything else:
memories, assessments of relationships,
relative well-being (ratio of positive thoughts
versus negative or as a sense of life satisfaction),
thoughts of the future.
 Feel Good, Do Good Phenomena: one of
the most consistent findings in Psych: The
happier you are the more likely you are to
help others.
Happiness
 People
have a happiness set point
(50% heritable). In general happiness
hovers in a range around that point
independent of life circumstances. If
something extremely bad happens or
extremely good , you eventually
rebound back to your range.
 Two years later, the relative happiness
of accident paraplegics and lottery
winners is the same.
Money and Happiness
 Money
does not buy happiness. There is
no relationship between money and
happiness, with the exception of the
desperately poor in impoverished
countries.
 Money only buys a temporary surge of
happiness.
Adaptation-Level Principle
 The
tendency to judge various
stimuli relative to our previous
experiences.
 If circumstances change, within
months you recalibrate your
level and then emotionally
judge experiences relative to
the new circumstance.
Adaptation-Level Principle
 So,
for material wealth to increase
relative-well being would require
an-ever increasing abundance.
 Think about the Amish; never
had, never missed.
Relative Deprivation Principle
 Not
only is happiness relative to our
own previous experiences, but we
compare ourselves to others just above
and just below us.
 So, if everyone gets an A, we’re not as
happy as if we got the only A. If you’re
GPA is 3.0, you’ll be happier comparing
yourself to 2.0s than 4.0s. Basically
someone is always above and always
below.
Get Happiness!!!!(within your
inherited range)
 Most
derived enjoyment from becoming
engrossed in interesting meaningful
work and play (the less expensive, the
better): Get flow.
 Form close meaningful relationships
with others.
 People who feel an internal locus of
control report being happier.
 Have faith in something larger than
themselves.
What are emotions?
 The
interplay of physiological
arousal, expressive behavior and
conscious experience.
James-Lange Theory
 Says
that emotions are
experienced AFTER physiological
arousal occurs and the brain
reads the response.
Cannon-Bard Theory
 Disagreed
with James-Lange, says that
emotions occur SIMULTANEOUSLY in the
brain and body. The brain routes the
sensory message to both at the same
time.
 Cannon-Bard’s theory explains how the
same physiological arousal can cause
different emotions.
Schacter’s Two-Factor Theory OR
Schacter-Singer 2-Factor Theory
 Combines
the other two.
 Says that the physical arousal is the fuel
that intensifies the emotion.
 However after arousal occurs, the brain
then puts a label on through cognition,
deciding what the emotions should be.
 Epinephrine experiment with college
students. Their experience of emotion
depended on what they believed.
Opponent Process Theory of
Emotion
 When
you feel one emotion (fear of
public speaking), you will feel the
opposite feeling when resolved (feeling
elated afterward).
 But when the first emotion is repeated, it
is less intense and the opponent feeling
becomes stronger. (So next less afraid
of public speaking, but the elation is
stronger when done.)
Opponent Process Theory
of Emotion

Examples: Do drugs, feel good, come down,
get depressed. Do more drugs, not as high,
come down harder.

Exercise hard, causes pain, stop exercise,
feel sense of well-being, exercise again, little
easier, stop-- well-being is even better.

Moral: Do painful/difficult/disciplined stuff
(studying) as primary emotion, because the
reward is more pleasurable.
Anger
 Most
people report becoming at least
mildly angry several times a week.
 Generally triggers are perceived
misdeeds of friends and loved ones.
 Particularly anger-provoking when the
deeds are thought to be willful, unjustified
and avoidable.
Anger
 Anger
is adaptive for arousing
protective reactions, but
maladaptive when it fuels
behaviors we later regret.
Anger and Catharsis
 Displaying
anger is not
cathartic (cleansing)--it
increases anger.
 The immediate soothing effect it
causes becomes positively
reinforcing, building anger as
habitual response.
Dealing with Anger
 Calm
down first!!! Remember the fuel of
emotion is physical arousal, so when
you come back to homeostasis, you’ll
be more rational.
 Deal with issues, quickly and directly
(after calming down), so as not to
rehearse the anger-provoking incident.
 Aerobic exercise elevates mood, and
burns epinephrine and cortisol.