Text in black is from the DD303 course book. Text in blue is from Clore, G.L. and Huntsinger, J.R. (2007). How emotions inform judgment and regulate thought. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 393–9. 14.1Introduction ●
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Humans are different to computers, robots etc. because as well as processing information we show pleasure, frustration, empathy etc. Emotion has not been studied scientifically or in psychology as widely as might be expected ○ Effect of behaviourism (only study external behaviour, not internal ‘mental’ process); ○ Need for empiricism and objectivity (feelings could only be accessed using introspection); ○ Seen as immature (childish) response, or even an “impediment to rational thought”. Now seen as an important subject to study because ○ it’s so interwoven with how we behave and why; ○ recent technology enables psychophysiological techniques (EEG, MEG etc.) and neuroimaging (PET, fMRI etc.) to provide much more objective data than before. 14.1.1 Components of emotion ●
Three components of emotional response: ○ behaviour (facial expression, laughter etc.) ○ bodily responses (physiology, breaking into a cold sweat etc.) ○ feelings (how the emotion makes you feel ­ happy, sad etc.) 14.1.1.1 Emotional behaviour and expression
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Observable, easy to study but can’t be linked directly to emotion as they: ○ can be faked, suppressed (false laugh, suppressing anger); ○ can be affected by cultural norms (e.g. what emotion is considered appropriate to display in public varies between cultures, e.g. grief/stoicism at a funeral); Outward display of emotion. especially facial expressions, can be used to communicate feelings to others, express happiness, appreciation etc. 14.1.1.2 Bodily responses
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These have been refined through evolution, particularly to help deal with situations such as threats ○ Example: fight­or­flight responses cause blood to be diverted to the brain and muscles away from less immediately important functions, levels of glucose and clotting agents are increased in the blood. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is concerned with managing levels of biological activity in the body: ○ The Sympathetic ANS deals with heightening arousal, e.g. stimulating release of adrenalin to increase respiration and heart rate, while reducing digestion for example; ○ The Parasympathetic ANS is responsible for reducing activity such as this, such as restoring the body after heightened arousal or reducing activity during sleep. ●
Emotional response can be studied by measuring physiological responses: ○ Skin conductance and resistance to electrical current (the GSR ­ galvanic skin response used in lie detectors, and in the various studies on perception of targets in unattended material described in the Attention chapter); ○ Heart and respiratory rate; ○ Levels of stress hormone (cortisol) in the blood; ○ Skin temperature (related to blood vessel dilation/constriction); ○ Muscle tension (e.g. in facial muscles, measured using electromyography). 14.1.1.3 Feeling emotions
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Feelings (emotional states) can be positive or negative; They correlate with other emotional indicators but tend not to be researched in cognitive psychology as much as the processes associated with them; ●
A problem researching emotion is how to elicit “real” emotions in the lab: Page 2 ●
○ There are ethical considerations to making people feel extreme negative emotions; ○ it’s just hard to manipulate onset and duration of strong emotions. Consequently most emotion research tends to study mild emotional states. 14.2 Different emotions ●
Emotions can be classified in terms of: ○ a discrete set of basic emotions or ○ a spectrum/dimension of emotions. 14.2.1 Basic emotions ●
Argues that all emotions can be created by combinations of basic ones: ○ Example: joy + acceptance = friendship (Plutchik) ●
Classifying emotions as mixtures of a basic set is similar to colour detection ­ we only have three types of cone cell but combinations give a range of colours, textures etc. ●
Challenges to this approach: ○ hard to find evidence that there is a discrete set of emotions; ○ difficult to agree on the particular set that can combine to create all emotions ●
A Big Five of emotions has been proposed: Anger, Fear, Sadness, Disgust, Happiness Page 3 ●
Different types of evidence have been proposed that suggests these may be universal: 1. Cross­cultural: a. Eckman (1988): i.
Showed pictures of facial expressions to people in different cultures, recorded the labels they chose to describe them; ii.
Found high consistency of report in recognition of expressions. b. Eckman (1969) also showed evidence that production of expressions was universal: i.
Asked people from a non­literate, previously isolated (never met anyone outside their social group or seen pictures) group in New Guinea to make expressions for different emotions; ii.
Americans consistently recognised the emotions portrayed. 2. Rating of spontaneous displays of emotion in different cultures: a. Measurement of facial movement distances (this is quite an objective measure) ­ found to be consistent; b. Infants from different cultures ­ showed similar responses and important as not influenced by social norms; c. Blind children ­ shows the basis for emotional display may be biological and not social; ●
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Infants and blind children showing consistent facial expressions suggests a genetic basis for emotion: ○ may result from evolutionarily ancient subcortical structures (the ‘reptilian brain’); This is supported by neuroimaging studies (PET, fMRI): ○ Example: the amygdala is always involved in emotional processing ○ Example: the insula and basal ganglia are always active when disgust is reported as being felt ●
Cognitive neuropsychological studies have found that people with damage to the insula and basal ganglia don’t report feelings of disgust (Calder, 2000); ●
Evidence from neuroimaging and CNP helps to identify the brain regions involved in emotion and is also highly objective. Page 4 14.2.2 Verbal labels ●
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Scherer (1986) analysed 37 languages and found all had words that described seven of the ‘basic emotions’; Emotion words other than these were classified as modal emotions that cluster together in themes according to each individual’s concepts of emotion (so potentially differ between people); ●
There were also cross­cultural differences: ○ Different triggers for emotion (what emotions looking at a woman’s face triggers according to social expectation, from politeness to anger); ○ Different rules for what emotions are socially acceptable to display in different situations. 14.2.3 The dimensional approach ●
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Ortony and Turner (1990) questioned the basic emotions approach on the basis that it seems very unclear what these are, or what feelings are considered emotions while others are not (interest, desire); Dimensional approaches locate emotions in terms of how they are made up of other factors: ○ Example: Lang et al. proposed an Affect Grid based on Valence (how pleasant/unpleasant the emotion feels) and Arousal (how aroused/excited the person with the emotion feels); ■ High valence/high arousal: enjoyable, stimulating emotions; ■ High valence/low arousal: pleasant but unexciting emotions; ■ Low valence/high arousal: fearful or disgusting (“run away”) emotions; ■ Low valence/low arousal: not pleasant but unexciting emotions. ●
This approach has the advantages that it: ○ Captures the relations between emotions; ○ Suggests how different cultures might have arrived at words for a common subset of emotions. Page 5 ●
It has the disadvantages that: ○ some emotions seem to incorporate values from opposite ends of a dimension: ■ Example: nostalgia combines happy memories of being with someone (positive valence) with sadness that it’s not possible to be with them now (negative valence), thrill­seeking activities combine pleasure and fear (positive and negative valence); ○ the dimensions that enable all emotions to be mapped are not clear: ■ Example: is “dominance” (how in control someone feels when experiencing the emotion) a better dimension than “valence” ? ○ it’s not clear how many dimensions are needed: ■ Would a 3D model with Valence/Arousal/Dominance be even better ? or a 4D model ? 14.3 The functions of emotions ●
It has been suggested that emotions serve a number of purposes, including: ○ notifying us of external information, ○ changing our physiological state to respond to situations, ○ communicating our feelings and mental states to others, ○ acting as input to help our decision­making. 14.3.1 Emotions alter goals ●
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Oatley and Johnson­Laird (1987) suggest that emotion is an evolutionary adaptation that tells us when we need to change current behaviour to meet a new goal: ○ Example: anxiety/fear tells us to stop planting seeds and run away from the approaching tiger; ○ Example: sadness at a loved one’s death tells us to change our life goals to accommodate the fact they’re not here. Their theory suggests that emotional events require us to make cognitive re­adjustments but doesn’t specify the underlying cognitive processes. Page 6 14.3.2 Emotions mobilize physiological resources ●
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Physiological reactions are useful when behaviour change is needed ­ e.g. fight­or­flight; Sometimes less rather than more action is required ­ e.g. quickly make small movements of the steering wheel to avoid a road accident, not wild swings ! Some anxiety is good for triggering the right physical response and can be energising, too much anxiety can impair performance (too worried to act, too stressed to revise for the exam !) The converse is true ­ not enough arousal doesn’t get us moving either (lack of motivation). ●
Yerkes and Dodson (1908) formulated the Yerkes­Dodson Law: ○ Performance improves with arousal up to a point, with too much arousal performance declines; ○ We need to be more highly aroused to achieve high performance in easy tasks compared to harder ones. 14.3.3 Emotional expressions as communication ●
Darwin (1872) suggested that emotional expressions (body language, “facial” expressions) enable animals to communicate their intent to other animals, but that this is an evolutionary relic in humans, i.e. no longer used for the same purposes, such as an animal snarling and a person sneering ! ●
But humans can use emotional expression to communicate in a number of ways: ○ Honest communication ­ show others you’re genuinely happy or sad; ○ Deceptive communication ­ communicate a feeling that is not genuine, e.g. pretend to be sad to gain sympathy/reward; ○ For politeness ­ part of social interaction to “fit in” or put others at their ease (mild deception maybe !). Page 7 14.3.4 Emotions as information ●
Emotional feedback can shape our response to others and help in our decision­making: ○ People with Capgras delusion feel that a person who is well­known to them has been replaced by an imposter because they fail to make them feel how they expect to when they meet ­ due to brain damage the expected emotional response is either not generated, not detected or both; ○ Damasio (1996) showed that emotional response affects our decisions: ■ Conditioned participants by asking them to choose cards from four decks, and manipulating the game so they won marginally more from two of the decks, but not enough to consciously realise; ■ Found that they eventually did choose more often from the “winning” decks so that their winnings accelerated; ■ Suggested that: ● Participants developed emotional responses to winning and losing that he called somatic markers, which represent cumulative positive emotions of wins and negative ones of losses; ● When the participant is forming a decision as to which deck to chose from, the somatic markers associated with each trigger a physiological response that acts as input to the decision, making positive ones more likely. ■ Claimed that this shows emotion is used to inform future actions. ●
Clore and Huntsinger (2007) proposed the “affect (emotion/mood) as information” hypothesis: ○ How we think and what we think are affected by our mood (happy/sad), maybe because it affects the value we place on the thought. ○ As a result being happy can increase the value we place on objects we judge/behaviours to chose between etc.,, not because of the happiness itself, but because of the information the mood adds to the decision. ○ These affective influences can be neutralised by manipulating the perceived cause of the mood: ■ participants gave lower life satisfaction ratings on rainy days, but the effect disappeared if they were asked questions about the weather first. ○ Emotional information can affect many areas including judgement, cognitive processing, global­local focus, stereotyping, relational/item­specific processing, and false memory rate. ●
Other explanations for how we might use emotion as information include: ○ Memory priming (mood primes mood­congruent memories to inform and underpin judgements) ○ Semantic processing (positive mood affects the thought process/neurotransmitter levels/mental representations activated) Page 8 ○
Motivation and attention (positive mood encourages approach judgements/behaviours, negative encourages avoidance judgements/behaviours). 14.3.5 What is the function of emotional feelings? ●
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Emotional behaviours caused by physiological response (e.g. fight or flight) are probably adaptive, but what is the purpose of the associated emotional feelings ? What benefit does having the feeling as well as making the response confer ? ○ Example: fear can cause a reaction such as running away. What is the additional purpose of the unpleasant feeling ? An explanation is that consciousness is needed to actively change behaviour or override prepotent response. ○ Example: suppressing anger or frustration in the course of a debate. The problem with this explanation is it explains why we might need consciousness, not why we need to experience the emotional feeling. The real answer is we don’t know yet ... more research needed. 14.4 Emotion influences cognition ●
Question: does how we feel affect how we think or vice versa ? Answer: they interact, each can affect the other. 14.4.1 Some important concepts 14.4.1.1 State and trait emotion
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State emotion: how you feel right now ­ your current emotional state ○ Often measured using self­report but other methods also apply (psychophysiological, behavioural methods); Trait emotion: how you usually feel, or feel most often (“an angry/impulsive/happy/anxious person”) ○ Linked to stable personality characteristics; Page 9 ○
High­trait people will tend to have an associated emotional/mood state more often, e.g. high­trait anxious individuals will feel anxious more often than low­trait anxious people. 14.4.1.2 Processing vs manifestation of emotion
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Manifestation of emotion means the actual feeling of an emotion, the “hot” component of emotion; Processing of emotion means the series of cognitive steps we take to process this feeling ­ the “cold” component; ○ This is similar to how you might feel when describing hypothetically how you might feel about a situation, without actually having the emotional experience; Obviously these can occur together ­ an interaction of cognition and emotion ­ feeling an emotion while having to deal with it/process it. ●
A typical experimental paradigm for testing the effect of emotion on cognition might be: ○ Present a list of negative and neutral words (IV = valence or pleasantness/unpleasantness); ○ Ask participants to recall what they were shown (DV = recall rate of each type); ○ Typically this will show a positive bias (most people will recall more neutral than negative) but clinically depressed people tend to show a negative bias; ●
When both hot and cold emotional components are present, the processing may be affected by the emotional state, which prompts questions such as: ○ How do people process emotional material ? ○ Is this affected by their mood states and traits ? e.g. do high­trait anxious people process threatening words in the same way as low­trait anxious individuals ? 14.4.2 Memory 14.4.2.1 Mood congruent memory (MCM) - mood and material match at encoding
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Evidence suggests (Bower et al., 1981) that we remember more of events with particular emotional content if it matches our mood: ○ Happy participants recall more of a happy story than sad ones; sad participants remember more of a sad story than happy ones ! ○ Mood was induced using hypnosis ­ possible ethical considerations to consider (at least positive mood induction afterwards !) This is a robust effect, and has inspired research into how problems such as depression affect memory. Page 10 ●
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Positive bias findings in “normal” individuals suggest this may be adaptive ­ keeps us “always looking on the bright side of life” (whistle along if you like ...) People with clinical or subclinical (low mood but undiagnosed) depression tend to have a negative bias ○ Evidence includes recall testing as above, picking self­descriptive adjectives, picking words/sentences out of texts, recalling autobiographical memories; ○ Stronger effect with more emotionally negative material (unsurprisingly) and when participants know what is being tested; This could lead to a vicious circle ­ depressed mood biases memory for emotionally negative items which increases depressed mood etc.so if we can break the cycle it might stop the depression (Teasdale, 1988) ○ An example of a cognitive treatment for depression is Mindfulness­based cognitive therapy (MBCT) by Segal et al. (2002) 14.4.2.2 Mood dependent memory (MDM) - mood matches at encoding and retrieval
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Mood dependent memory is more controversial ­ claims that recall improves if mood at recall matches mood at encoding ○ This suggests you’ll remember more of a heated argument if you can get worked up again while recalling ! ○ Tested using mood induction ­ induce a mood, learn neutral words then later have either the same mood or a different one induced and recall the words. Higher recall rate in matching mood conditions compared to mis­matched will support the MDM hypothesis. Bower (1981) carried out a number of mood induction based tests for memory dependence: ○ Participants in different moods (induced artificially) learnt different word lists, then sat recall tests in the same mood or a different one. When learning and recall moods matched, recall rates were higher. ○ Bower proposed a semantic network theory: ■ emotions could be represented by nodes in a network, connected to words/concepts/memories/knowledge, other emotions, behaviour and unconscious bodily (autonomic nervous system) responses; ■ Nodes in the network are activated and inhibited by external or internal stimuli ­ classic IAC network. ■ Those nodes that achieve a threshold level of activation become accessible to conscious awareness ­ i.e. we have the associated thoughts or feelings. ○ He suggested that this explains MDM: ■ when a word is learnt in a particular mood, a link is formed between the word node and the mood/emotion node; ■ if the participant is in the same mood (mood node highly active) when recalling, spreading activation from the emotion node will mean that the connected word nodes start with a higher level of activation too, so don’t need as much further activation to become consciously aware. ■ if they’re in a different mood, those words will not be activated (may even be inhibited), so harder to recall. ○ However replications have not always been successful, so MDM does not seem to be a robust effect. Page 11 ●
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■ It’s affected by strength of mood induced and what is to be recalled (autobiographical memories give good results !) Eich and Metcalfe (1989) claim the replications failed because the measurement methods were flawed, and that MDM is real. Either way, Bower’s studies have been influential in cognitive/emotion research. 14.4.3 Attention ●
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Attention can be biased by mood ­ example the emotional Stroop test: ○ Participants are shown emotional (“DEATH”, “ANGER”, “HATE”, “FUNERAL” etc.) and neutral words (“BOTTOM”, “SHOE”, “CITRUS” etc.) and have to name the colour of the ink they are printed in; ○ Depressed participants tend to name the colour of the negative words more slowly than participants who are not depressed because of interference from the negative words. They also tend to name the colour of the neutral words more quickly than the negative ones. ○ Similar results are found for high trait anxious participants with anxiety­related words etc. ­ an example of anxiety­related attentional bias. McLeod et al. (1986) used a dot­probe or attentional probe task to investigate this bias: ○ Participants shown a fixation point, then two words side­by­side for 500ms, then a frame with a dot on either the left or right­hand side; The task was to indicate which side of the frame the dot was shown on as quickly as possible (so a reaction time task); ○ The words pairs included one threatening word and one neutral (e.g. “CANCER”, “MOTHER”); ○ Non­anxious participants were faster when positions of the dot and non­threatening word matched: ■ suggests they paid more attention to the neutral words; ■ this may indicate they tend to ignore minor, insignificant threats in everyday life which would be adaptive ○ Anxious participants were faster to respond when the dot and threat word positions matched ■ suggests they were paying more attention to the threat words. McLeod suggested the anxious patients had an attentional bias for threat, i.e. they paid more attention to potential threats in their environment, especially when these matched things they were specifically concerned about: ○ Phobias: such as spider phobics being more aware of spiders in the area; ○ PTSD: cues related to the traumatic event; ○ Generalised anxiety disorder: more attentionally biased towards threat stimuli (words/pictures/etc.) than normal. These biases were higher when state emotion and trait emotion coincided ­ i.e. when naturally anxious people felt anxious. Page 12 ●
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McLeod also suggested this could result in a vicious cycle like the mood congruent memory one: ○ Anxiety about particular threats makes you pay more attention to them in the environment, which makes them appear more common, which increases your anxiety. ○ This atypical level of hyper­vigilance for threats is currently seen as an indicator of clinical anxiety. They showed evidence for this by inducing positive and negative bias in non­anxious participants: ○ Inducing positive bias reduces anxiety levels in a moderately stressful situation, inducing negative bias increased anxiety levels; ○ Suggests that attentional bias causes anxiety and that training procedures can modify this bias thereby reducing anxiety. 14.4.4 Semantic interpretation ●
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Semantic interpretation indicates the initial meaning we tend to associate with a word ­ e.g. whether “batter” suggests assault or pancakes; Ambiguity occurs in words (homophones like “PAIN”/”PANE”) and in everyday situations ­ decoding people’s facial expressions, deciding what an odd noise in the house at night might be etc. ●
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Eysenck et al. (1987) presented high­trait and low­trait anxious participants with spoken homophones that had both a pleasant and an unpleasant meaning, and asked them to write what they heard; ○ Participants with higher trait anxiety chose more threat spellings, indicating an interpretative bias; ○ This method was criticised: participants may have been aware of both meanings, just chose the one they preferred, which would indicate a choice bias but not an interpretative one. This would mean the test tells nothing about bias in the interpretative cognitive process. Richards and French (1992) used homographs instead ­ words with dual meanings but same spelling (“BATTER”, “STALK” etc.) ○ Participants carried out a lexical decision task (given two rapidly presented words, is the second a real word or not ?); ○ Participants told the first word is a distractor ­ it’s really a prime ! This means the second word should be faster; ■ If participants process “BATTER”/”ASSAULT” faster than “BATTER”/”PANCAKE”, it suggests they interpreted “BATTER” in the sense of “ASSAULT”, so show a negative bias in interpretation; ■ Participants with higher anxiety did show faster reaction times on negative interpretations, implying higher negative bias; ■ Normal participants showed a positive interpretative bias (faster reaction times on positive primes); Other studies have used ambiguous sentences or text passages (“The men watched as the chest was opened”) ●
Attribution theory suggests that we attribute good things internally as being due to our own actions, under our own control but bad ●
Page 13 things to outside circumstances or other people. ○ “I did well because I studied all the right topics for the exam” vs “I did badly because the questions were unfair” ○ Also referred to as self­serving attribution bias; ○ Self­serving biases may have protective benefits in maintaining our self­image and keeping our mood positive for example ■ this may make our assessment of our own performance unrealistic ­ depressed people may assess their performance more accurately (depressive realism); ■ taken to extremes this could be maladaptive (we might think we control things we actually can’t and make decisions on that false assumption). 14.5 Does cognition influence emotion? ●
Do we feel emotion because of what we are thinking or does our cognitive process cause how we feel ? Page 14 14.5.1 A look at some historical answers James-Lange (1890s)
Cannon-Bard (1920s)
Schacter-Singer (1960s)
Assertions Behaviour precedes emotion (and causes it) and cognition We feel (cognition) fear (emotion) because we run away (behave), happiness because we laugh etc. A unique set of physiological responses causes each feeling of emotion (e.g. love vs fear) Physiological responses are similar across most emotions ­ many shared e.g. faster heart rate/perspiration). What differs is the cortical response to these. Cortical areas initiate both subjective experience and physiological response ­ these can occur simultaneously Bodily response is critical but physiological responses are not unique to emotions Emotion comes from our interpretation of why we are having these responses given the context/situation, i.e. our cognitive appraisals. Emotion = non­specific bodily response + context + cognitive appraisal Implications
If we can prevent the bodily reaction the emotion will not be felt Emotion and physiological response can occur independently ­ sadness can be felt without crying given the appropriate thalamus activation. Emotional feeling is more than bodily responses. We should be able to change how we feel by changing how we think about it Evidence Le Doux (1996) the speed of the startle reflex exceeds the time needed for conscious awareness. Emotional response is reduced in animals and humans with spinal damage that prevents some bodily responses. Physiological responses are not unique; Animals and humans with spinal damage that prevents some bodily responses can still feel emotion. Ekman et al. (1983) identified specific sets of physiological response linked to a subset of emotions, e.g. higher than usual heart rate in sadness, lower than usual in disgust. Ciacoppo (2000) claims this evidence is weak but says levels of motivation may be higher in negative emotions. Schacter and Singer (1962) found participants injected with adrenaline had no emotional response if told in advance that it would accelerate their heart rate. Claimed that this was because these participants could attribute the response to the injection, while the others who felt an emotional response could not. Also, participants who experienced emotion mirrored the emotion displayed by a stooge ­ felt happy if the stooge displayed happiness. Contradicts James­Lange as same response led to different emotions depending on context/cognitive appraisal. Supports James­Lange as those not expecting a response experienced an emotion. Page 15 14.5.1.4 Appraisal theories today
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The Schacter­Singer account was highly influential in introducing the role of cognitive appraisal in emotion. However it has been criticised because subsequent attempts failed to replicate their results. ●
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Subsequent appraisal theories built on the idea of emotion resulting from subjective evaluation of bodily response and the situation. Different theories suggest ways in which we might measure these factors in making this assessment: ○ Scherer suggests we might consider the novelty or agreeableness of the situation, or how significant it is to our goals. ○ He suggests a number of dimensions by which we might assess a situation that result in the cortex generating the feeling and physiological response corresponding to specific emotions ■ e.g. Fear/panic = high suddenness, various familiarity, low predictability, low coping potential, high/medium conflict with goal significance etc. so a spider suddenly appearing in front of an arachnophobic is likely to result in fear/panic. ○ A criticism of that this level of evaluation may take more time than seems likely, however the appraisal process could be automatic, parallel and very fast. ●
Criticisms ○ Relies on self­report ­ tests are usually recall personal of events or emotional induction, followed by questionnaires or verbal accounts of the appraisal process participants think they might have followed ○ Usual issues: ■ Subjective ­ no objective evidence ■ Participants can’t report what they are unaware of ○ No better method yet, maybe neuroimaging might offer an alternative in the future. Page 16 14.5.2 A clash of minds: the cognition/emotion debate Zajonc (1980) Lazarus (1982) Disagreed with cognitive appraisal theory that emotions result from cognitive process; Claimed: ● Emotion does not require cognitive process; ● Emotion precedes cognition (we feel before we think) ­ the primacy debate; ● Cognitive appraisal is separate to the other aspects of emotion (physiological response, behaviour, feeling the emotion). Similar to Jones­Lange but builds on the claim that we don’t need to think to feel by considering (and discounting entirely) the role of cognition. Supported cognitive appraisal theory. Claimed cognitive appraisal is essential to experience emotion; Used the mere exposure effect (familiarity increases liking) to support this claim ­ participants doing a task who saw items subliminally preferred them to novel items: ● Claimed subliminal items were not processed cognitively (this would not be considered accurate today); ● Assumed preference linked to emotion (not an obviously true association e.g. rating an unseen item wouldn’t seem emotional) Showed participants anxiety­provoking films (ethical considerations ?) either accompanied by a soundtrack that rationalised the film or no soundtrack (control condition): ● e.g. Stone Age circumcision film with an intellectualisation soundtrack explaining it as an anthropological study; ● e.g. an industrial accident film with a denial soundtrack explaining it was a made up safety film. Participants who heard the soundtracks had lower physiological measurements (heart rate, GSR); Suggests cognitive appraisal can alter emotional response (doesn’t prove cognition precedes emotion) Page 17 14.5.2.3 A resolution ?
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Neither argument was supported by conclusive evidence; Ultimately Zajonc agreed that non­conscious appraisal was important while Lazarus conceded that appraisal wasn’t essential to emotion; Both agreed that it’s important to establish the minimal amount of process required for emotion (if any); ●
Le Doux (1989) showed evidence that both original positions may have been right: ○ Used lesioned animals (ethical considerations); ○ Showed some brain structures were necessary to specific emotions (e.g. amydala and thalamus involved in fear): ■ A “lower road” sub­cortical route involving evolutionarily old structures takes stimuli from the thalamus directly to the amygdala via a single synapse, and by­passing cortical structures: ● very fast and ideal for rapid reaction without time­consuming learning; ■ A “high road” cortical route that goes from the thalamus to the sensory cortex and then to the amygdala; ● was essential to learning fear responses, but once these were learnt could be severed without eliminating the learnt fear response; ○ The lower route could support Zajonc’s theory ­ emotional response without cognition; ○ However the higher route could support Lazarus ­ needed to override inappropriate responses, could facilitate thought before action/emotion. Page 18 Page 19