Hi all,
Here are some notes from one of our students in PSYC18. They have kindly donated
their notes so feel free to take a look!
Michelle
LECTURE 07











For behaviourists emotions = cognition + arousal (which gives energy to focus).
“Undifferentiated arousal”  not looking inside to see sadness or anger. It is just
a general arousal with no known cause.
You are moving along with some action plans and something stops it 
environment is giving information about situation.
How well do we read our body?
o Arousal becomes a cue that wakes you up and tells you to analyse cues
around you. Cues orient you to trouble shooting, action plans, etc.
Magda Arnold
o Perception (noticing stimulus)  appraisal (assessing event)  emotion
(ready for action). This sequence occurs very quickly because emotions
are about survival.
Drive Reduction Model: you feel tension in uncertain situations  after you get
over it (action), tension is reduced.
Nico Frijda
o Sets the stage for emotional theories in Europe.
o Event coding  what is going on?
o Feeling of action tendency is emotions  just like what behaviourists
said.
Richard Lazarus
o In his experiment “intellectualization” means provide distance from film
and think logically.
o Hypothesis: Appraisal (how you see or approach film will determine your
emotional reactions).
o Primary appraisal  situational cues, good for me or bad for me?
o Secondary appraisal  deal with and evaluate coping response 
personal.
o Results:
 If intellectualization or denial is given, you wont be affected as
much by the film  found film less stressful.
 If they focused on trauma, then negative emotional reactions
increase.
 The way we look at situation determines our emotional reaction.
Eponymy  a phenomenon is associated with a person. That is, something is
named after you.
Emotions prepare us; tune us to our world  evolution oriented analysis.
Oatley and Johnson-Laird



o Brain has organizing modules that communicates and is responsible for
our behaviour.
o Intrasystemic communication  communication in my brain about action
and between two of us about action.
o If you are a super planner or super coping person  we have to be action
oriented and strategic. You think about arousal but not our happiness or
sadness. We bury our emotions.
Extroverts  respond to rewards, they burn out quickly.
Introverts  respond to fear of punishment. Slow and steady brain. Move at even
pace.
Social constructionist perspective:
o We help to create situations around us.
o We can be selfish and not think about being selfish.
o We create meanings in our world and this meaning serves as a kind of
social regulation.
o Passion  its happening to you and the world did it to you (more
religious).
o Cultures have meanings and meanings shape our emotions.
o Some cultures emphasize some emotions and others don’t. The entire
culture can also have an emotion (social emotions). Emotions also play a
vital role in sustaining a culture.
o We remember the passions (what YOU did to me) but not what we did to
set up the situation.
o Active vs. passive  we actively create situation but we don’t realise it.
Passively, we know we are recipients of other person’s emotions.
o Maturation  accepting responsibility.
o This view focuses on social goals rather than personal goals.
LECTURE 08





Intentional emotions are planned but spontaneous emotions are immediate,
unplanned.
Social aspect to the emotion of fear/guilt  depends on religion. For e.g. one
thing in one religion produces guilt but not in others.
Action guys are very Darwinian (more biologically determined) whereas
experience guys are about meaning of emotional experience.
Emotions are multilayered and they exist in time and have structure. Emotions
start early on in childhood.
The aesthetics of action theory:
o If you’re bored then you want to watch an action movie, if you need
warmth you’ll watch a sentimental movie. Our needs and goals become
attached to particular stimuli that direct our behaviour.
o Talks about affective co variation between stimulus and response. Also
closely related to action theory. I’m picking a goal to change in mood state
 manipulate my reaction.















Early in life, we have experiences that act as paradigms so later on in life the dim
memories get activated and you have an emotional episode.
Body has visceral system (heart rate, breathing, etc.) and expression system
(muscular reactions to emotions).
Feelings of body states are incorporated into the emotion.
For action guys: stimulus  appraisal  coping action.
James: event  a lot of bodily changes  emotions. Feedback from bodily
changes (propioceptive feedback) changes our emotional reaction.
Happiness and sadness are muscular reactions. E.g. a hug is comforting because
your body state is comforting.
Fear and anger are emotions of the gut.
Interest is engagement with world and disgust is rejection of world.
You be to read your visceral and sensitive to satiety cues when you are dieting.
Sometimes we are over come by external stimulus. (e.g. when you see a chocolate
cake).
Centralist approach:
o At all levels of biology, there are two models: facilitation (experience
model) and inhibition (action model  don’t overreact, it’ll get in your
way of coping).
o Mind does the planning and body provides energy.
o Centralist approach  in brain.
o Peripheral approach (James)  visceral activity shapes emotions.
Some people are very expressive while others don’t show it. Facial feedback
hypothesis  feedback from facial expressions shape our emotional experiences.
People who are hard to read, its confusing to understand what they are feeling.
We can try to control facial expressions but the spontaneous expressions cant be
controlled.
Non-verbal leakage  you think your emotional state is in control, but its not.
Your speech may be under control but you nervous leg jiggles aren’t.
In real life, no pure expressions exist, the affect blends depending on the situation.
Facial expressions alone (without information situation) are enough to judge the
emotions.
Emotions like contempt; shame and guilt reflect social pressures and are very
situational based. To what extent are these emotions wired in and to what extent
do situations add a nuance to it.
LECTURE 09





Experience is an organized system and it is constant (continuous) in time.
Objective approach  very restricted.
Ideographic  individual case
Nomothetic  laws, rules.
Emotions begin early on in life and evolve over tine. We see people symbolically
as a resonance in our early lives. Coping requires understanding of how our






















emotional experiences are related to the past. Psychodynamic theory is asking us
to look behind the manifest to find the latent content.
There is meaning behind our acts and we have to find that meaning. Actions have
meanings which cant be automatically interpreted.
Goal of psychodynamics  to understand events by open ended interpretation
which deals with individual cases and is not always clear to us.
Our emotional experiences happen very quickly in a situation and they are intense
because they are tied to instincts.
Emotional experience has a unique standing as a phenomenon.
A lot of part of our history is what we don’t know about. We can have implication
in our lives but we don’t know why. E.g. a student came to prof’s office and
started telling (unconsciously) because he had a fight with his father earlier.
From the psychodynamic viewpoint  we know why we are angry but its like an
iceberg, we see the top of it but the momentary emotion episode (now) is not the
true story. It echoes and resonates with powerful experiences of our lives which
we remember nothing about. E.g. feeling sexually inhibited is a conscious
response to some unconscious past experiences.
The episode/situation stands in relation to all situations in our lives and we don’t
know about it.
Goal: to unify a person with themselves (the part they don’t even know about).
o “Take the part of me that I don’t know and bring it out so I can unify with
myself”.
Homeostatic model  making up for what is missing.
Bodily excitation is the physical need without mental representation.
Body needs manifest themselves as wishes.
E.g. you have a need “not to be alone”. And if a relationship ends, you think and
feel the same about another person (which serves as a displaceable object), to
satisfy the need for not being alone.
We develop emotional attachments early on in life.
We can become fixated because early on in our life we can be deprived of money,
love ,etc. Things that are left empty in childhood are chasing you all your life.
Preconscious is something that is available when you search for it sometimes but
unconscious is not available because it was put there because focusing on those
emotions is too painful.
Ego defence helps us to keep emotions away so they can’t overwhelm us.
Repression  its an automatic process by which we push some events away
from the conscious. These repressed ideas may sneak out in dreams or fantasies.
Suppression  consciously/intentional pushing away of something.
“To shift cathexis”  shift the object of gratification.
When people are intimate, no need for love making.
Early on in life, we don’t have sophisticated ways of thinking. Therefore, when
we talk about early life experiences, we have to understand that we don’t have the
psychological tools to think rationally.
Secondary process thinking permits us to adapt and adjust.

Our dreams are filled with symbols and characters. One piece of symbol can
represent a while reality. For example, if you are sexually abused by your father,
in your dreams you may see a particular symbol (e.g. a tie) and that can symbolise
the entire experience for you.
LECTURE 10











Id driven behaviour is like a reflex which is more intrinsically based.
Past gratification  you have a memory of people taking care of you and loving
you. You take that past history and it guides your everyday life.
The ego helps with adaptation. It has coping and defence functions. It starts to
develop around 9 months of age.
Ego is a kind of transition to maturity. It is a challenge because you can no longer
work according to the wish fulfilment principle. Ego works on reality principle.
As we move forward in a secular society, the influence of society and family
decreases and importance of personal identity increases.
Superego  when you internalize moral values taught by society and other
factors. It has two parts:
o The conscience  what is good versus what is bad
o Ego ideal  what you should be, your ideal self
Ego is a collection of skills:
o Self  ego of which I’m aware of.
o Identity  ego that my self approves of. That is you’re matching your ego
ideal.
We have layers in our lives. In this layering, there can be pain and trauma. We
have different selves from different ages within us. And they are still in us, even
now.
Aesthetic experience  when people look at art, they see themselves in it. If you
feel a relationship with art work, it can open a door that permits us to indulge in
catharsis  letting emotions out.
Tip of the iceberg  when you have an emotion today, it is a reminder,
resonance and reassociation with all feelings you have had in the past.
Phenomenology  we are in our emotions. It is the science of experience and is
concerned with form and shape our experiences.
LECTURE 11

Our early life experiences are very powerful and leave a residual effect.















Events aren’t univocal  they can be interpreted in many different ways.
Cognitive psychology  objects have features; we see those features and make
interpretation or decisions. We assimilate experiences to our cognitive sets.
Apriori  in advance, ideas about things in advance.
Slide 5:
o Intuited  immediate answer.
o Data  physical details.
The more layers you see the more context you understand and the less gullable
you are to media socialization.
Accommodation  you make an adjustment to your ideal expectations or
existing schema.
R-S-R  for example, you turn on TV, watch a stimulus and then respond to it.
Existential movement  Its not enough to talk, you have to act. We define
ourselves by what we do.
Self conscious  see yourself as a person acting in your life in various situations.
Compartmentalization  you’re in compartments in your life. You’re with
friends, parents, teachers, etc.
Dehumanization  wealthy countries are dehumanizing poor societies. Modern
technology distances us a lot more.
Purpose of the course  to understand legitimacy of taking your emotions and
putting it on the table.
We have guilts of commission (I committed something) or guilt of omission (I
didn’t do something I should have).
Categorical phenomenology  what is the structure of your experience?
The more emotional you become, the more distorted you become with space and
time.