Emotion and electronic media
What is emotion?
• Robert Masters makes the following distinctions
between affect, feeling and emotion: "As I define
them, affect is an innately structured, noncognitive evaluative sensation that may or may
not register in consciousness; feeling is affect
made conscious, possessing an evaluative
capacity that is not only physiologically based,
but that is often also psychologically (and
sometimes relationally) oriented; and emotion is
psychosocially constructed, dramatized feeling.“
• Source: Wikipedia
• Emotions are physical expressions, often
involuntary, related to feelings, perceptions or
beliefs about elements, objects or relations
between them, in reality or in the imagination.
• In the Triune brain model, emotions are defined
as the responses of the Mammalian cortex.
Emotion competes with even more instinctive
responses from the Reptilian cortex and the
more logically developed neocortex.
What defines which emotion we are
feeling?
• Miron: The dedicate neural pathway that is
being stimulated.
– Different pathways are excited depending
upon the emotion in question. However,
some are quite similar and therefore have to
be defined by the individual as one emotion
rather than another (anger v. fear)
Why haven’t emotions been replaced
with higher order thinking?
• Miron, etc.: Survival value maintained
anger, sorrow, love, fear, etc. until
civilization, etc. There are still advantages
for several of the emotions in that they
provide coherence of thought, feeling and
action in regards to general situations—
anger for frustration, love for sexuality and
nurturance, fear for self-preservation in the
face of a threat.
Where do they come from?
• Are they innate or are they learned?
•Yes!!!
Innate emotions
• There are said to be a few emotions that
are hard-wired into our brains. The socalled “fight or flight” reactions are
considered by most to be “basic”
– Fear
– Anger
• Adaptive in that they provide a burst of
energy and quick reaction to threat or
frustration
Social emotions
• Emotions that allow you to interact with
others effectively and to maintain social
bonds
– Love
– Friendship
– Empathy
• Learned early through the positive
relationships between mom and food, etc.
• Located in higher mammalian brain
The experience of emotion
• Psychophysiological effects are often
“autonomic” in that they do not require thinking
– Often override more logical, evaluative brain functions
when the emotional intensity is high
– Feelings are learned along with situations, people,
etc.
– Similar people or situations may bring about the same
feelings and the same feelings may bring about
memories of the situations or people they were
encoded with
• The body frequently responds to Shame by warmth in
the upper chest and face, Fear by a heightened
heartbeat, increased "flinch" response, and increased
muscle tension. The sensations connected with anger
are nearly indistinguishable from fear. Happiness is often
felt as an expansive or swelling feeling in the chest and
the sensation of lightness or buoyancy, as if standing
underwater. Sadness by a feeling of tightness in the
throat and eyes, and relaxation in the arms and legs.
Desire can be accompanied by a dry throat and heavy
breathing.
• Source: Wikipedia
• Ekman found that at least some facial
expressions and their corresponding emotions
are not culturally determined, but universal to
human culture and thus biological in origin, as
Charles Darwin had once theorized. Ekman's
finding is now widely accepted by scientists.
Expressions he found to be universal included
anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise.
Findings on contempt are less clear, though
there is at least some preliminary evidence for
its being universally recognized.
Universal facial expressions of
emotions
• Ekman et al. (1972; see PIP p.146) suggests six
emotions can be detected in faces:
• Happiness.
• Surprise.
• Anger.
• Sadness.
• Fear.
• Disgust/contempt.
Abraham Maslow
Why are we drawn to emotional
content?
• Miron: All arousal (emotions have a component
that is arousal) is inherently pleasurable
– The main driving force for human action is to seek
pleasure and avoid pain
• Zillmann: We enjoy watching the good guys
rewarded and the bad guys punished. The
enjoyment is enhanced by the wrong thing
happening prior to an appropriate conclusion
Why are we drawn to emotional
content?
• Some emotions generate positive feelings
through natural ‘drugs’ (dopamine) released as
part of emotional processing
• Emotions are encoded along with cognitions,
perceptions, behaviors and outcomes. When
the outcomes are rewarding, the emotions
become tied to them and are called up at
appropriate future times—especially when a lack
of some important condition is identified (food,
warmth, sex)
• Freud: Sublimated base drives continually
emerge from unconscious, can better be
played out in observing others engaging in
animalistic behavior—you don’t risk the
societal consequences yourself
Okay, so why would simply watching
someone else stir my emotions?
• Empathy
– Zillmann: An understanding of the
constraints/conditions of another leads to
sympathy for them
– XXXX: Place yourself in the position of the
character and imagine the conditions
happening to you
– Mirror neurons —you don’t know the
difference between yourself acting and
another acting
What parts of a presentation have
an effect on my emotions?
• Snakes, spiders, attacking wild animals, etc.
• Faces—just as they are universal, faces are also
especially compelling in generating an emotional
effect
• Action
• Voice
• Music
• Loss—especially of a loved one (even when
depicted)
Major emotions
• Sadness/sorrow
– Sources:
• Loss of significant other/love/affiliation
• Empathy for those in pain/poor circumstance
• Anger
– Frustration
– Control by outside force
• Fear
– Threat
• Darkness, snakes and spiders
• Socially-learned fears