Emotions
• Feeling, such as fear, joy, or surprise, that
underlies behavior
• Essential Questions:
– What causes us to feel emotions, both physically
and psychologically?
– Do emotions differ culturally?
– Does emotion (happiness, stress) have any
correlates?
– How can we be happier?
Defining Emotion
• Emotion includes the following:
– A subjective conscious experience or cognitive
component
– Bodily or physiological arousal
– Overt or behavioral expressions- like?
• Emotional reactions are linked with the
Autonomic Nervous System
– Sympathetic/parasympathetic NS
– Autonomic responses accompanying emotion are
controlled by the brain
Measuring Emotional Responses
• Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)
– GSR measures increased electrical
conductivity of skin that occurs when
sweat glands increase activity
– GSR used to measure autonomic
arousal and therefore emotional
reactions
• Polygraph/Lie Detector
– Assumes there is a link between lying
and emotions
– Measures respiration, heart rate,
blood pressure, and GSR
– Does not detect lies, but rather
nervousness
– Only accurate about 2/3 of the time
– some people do not become
nervous when they lie!
Basic Emotions
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Plutchik proposed that there are eight basic
emotions
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Fear
Surprise
Sadness
Disgust
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Anger
Anticipation
Joy
Acceptance
 Other
(secondary) emotions are the
composites of primary emotions
Surprise + Sadness = Disappointment
 Fear + Acceptance = Submission
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Plutchik’s Basic Emotions
Plutchik
Basic Emotions
• Some have criticized Plutchik’s model as applying only to
English-speakers
– Other cultures have more socially “helpful” emotions, i.e. more
that describe empathy
• Revised model of basic emotions includes:
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Happiness
Surprise
Sadness
Fear
Disgust
Anger
• Which emotion is the most evolutionarily important?
Physically important? Psychologically important?
Opponent-Process Theory
• Emotions have hedonic value- either negative or
positive (pleasurable)
• When one is aroused, the opposite will appear to
allow us to remain even-keeled
– when we are elated we may then feel down or
depressed
– fear is replaced with elation (or at least relief )
– pain with pleasure
– anxiety with calm
– Boredom with interest
Solomon’s Opponent Process
Theories of Emotion: How do we know
when we are excited vs. stressed?
• James-Lange theory
– Environmental stimuli bring on physiological
changes that we interpret as emotions
– Your heart is beating fast and your breathing rate
has increased. Your palms are sweaty and your
hands are shaking. What emotion might this be?
– Based on the contextual cues, the interpretation
of this emotion may be:
• Excitement before a competitive race
• Fear of an intruder in the house
• Nervousness before speech, first date, surgery
Nonverbal Communication of Emotion
• Voice quality
• Facial expression and Ekman’s work
– Lie to Me
• Body language
– Posture
– The way we move communicates
information
• Personal space
• Explicit acts
– Slamming doors
– Destroying stuff
• Emblems
– i.e. the bird
Gender, Culture and Emotion
• How do men and women differ in:
– Their experience of emotion
– Their display of emotion
– Their reaction to others’ emotion?
Gender and Emotion
• Men and women feel emotions equally, but
express them differently (role of language)
• Men and women may experience different
emotions in the same situation
• Anger
– Men tend to direct their anger outward
– Women tend to direct their anger inward
• Women are more skilled at understanding
nonverbal components of emotion
Culture and Emotion
• Expression of emotion can be influenced by cultural
norms
• Some emotional displays are universal
• Display rules
– Culture-specific rules that govern how, when, and why
expressions of emotion are appropriate
– Etre et Avoir clip (1:11)
• “Display rule” methods:
– Intensification-emphasizing
– deintensification – less intense display
– masking- expressing one, feeling another
– neutralizing- no display
Stress and Health
• Stress is the manner in which we respond to
events perceived as threatening or challenging
– Stress has an impact on our mood, our behavior
and our health
– Behavioral medicine integrates what we know of
human behavior and medicine to better
understand health and disease
– Health psychology involves the contribution of
psychology’s contribution to behaviorla medicine
Arousal Theory
• People are motivated to seek an optimal level
of arousal for a given moment
• Yerkes-Dodson law
– States that there is an optimal level or arousal for
best performance on any task
– The more complex the task, the lower the level of
arousal that can be tolerated without interfering
with performance
Yerkes-Dodson Law
Stress Response
• Stress Appraisal (Threat or Challenge)
• Cannon’s fight-or-flight response
– Epinephrine and norepinephrine released from adrenal glands
– Sympathetic nervous system kicks in
• Hypothalamus and pituitary control cortisols released from
adrenal cortex
• Withdrawal- pull back and become paralyzed
• “Tend and befriend” (Shelley Taylor).. Oxytocin?
• Gender and stress
– Women more likely to nurture and band together
– Men more likely to withdraw and turn to alcohol
• Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
– Phase 1: Alarm (prepare to cope)
– Phase 2: Resistance (actual coping)
– Phase 3: Exhaustion (resources depleted)
Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome
Bottom Line: Long-term stress = Body “collapses”
Sources of Stress: Stressors
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Catastrophes and PTSD
Change and the SRRS
Pressure
Frustration
Conflict
– Approach-approach
– Approach-avoidance
– Avoidance-avoidance
Stress and Health
• “Type A” vs. “Type B” (Friedman and Rosenman)
– Type A: reactive, competitive, impatient, motivated, aggressive
and easily angered – susceptible to Coronary Heart Disease
– Type B: easy going, mellow – much less susceptible to CHD
• Pessimism makes you twice as likely to develop CHD
• Depression also increases CHD risk
• Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)
– Studies relationship between nervous, endocrine and immune
systems
– Stress and AIDS
– Stress and cancer
Coping with Stress
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Perceived feelings of control
Optimism
Social support
Exercise
Relaxation/Meditation
Biofeedback
Spirituality
Positive Psychology
• How do we move away from stress and focus
on being happy?
• How Full Is Your Bucket
• Stress (portrait of a killer)
• Happiness
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLKfTgG_
9Ok synthetic happines)
http://movies.netflix.com/WiSearch?v1=Happ
y&raw_query=happy&ac_category_type=movi
e&ac_abs_posn=1&ac_rel_posn=1&raw_quer
y=happy happy documentary
Journal Questions
• Come up with a list of six universal emotions.
• Are emotions physical (heart rate, blood
pressure) or psychological (thought
processes)?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how stressed are you?
• What are your “stressors” on a daily basis?
Overall?