PSYC18 - Psychology of Emotion
Lecture 6
Professor: Gerald Cupchik
T.A.: Michelle Hilscher
cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca
hilscher@utsc.utoronto.ca
S-634
S-150
Office Hours: Thurs. 10-11, 2-3
Office Hours: Thurs. 10-11, 2-3
Course Website: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik
Stanley Schachter (1922-1997)
Schachter was trained in the lineage of the
leading
scholars
in
experimental
social
psychology: Kurt Lewin & Leon Festinger.
He saw his project in relation to Cannon’s (1929)
criticism of James’ theory, to the effect that “the
same visceral changes occur in very different
emotional states and in non-emotional states”.
Schachter cited Maranon’s (1924) “fascinating
study,” as well as the work of Cantril and Hunt (1932) and Landis and
Hunt (1932) who “replicated” the findings.
Nisbett and Schachter (1966) stated: “In nature, of course, cognitive and
situational factors trigger physiological processes, and the triggering
stimulus usually imposes the label we attach to our feeling”. This sounds
like McDougall.
Stanley Schachter (1922-1997)
Schachter elaborated his cognitive analysis in terms of Festinger’s (1954)
notion of “evaluative needs”, that is, pressures to “understand and label
his bodily feelings” of “emotional excitement”… “in terms of his knowledge
of the immediate situation”.
This could involve a process of social
comparison to determine the relative
appropriateness of one’s feelings in a
given situation.
“The perception-cognition figure with a gun in some fashion initiates a
state of physiological arousal; this state of arousal is interpreted in terms
of knowledge about dark alleys and guns and the state of arousal is
labeled as fear”.
The Role of Arousal
Hohmann (1962) studied the emotional life of paraplegics and
quadriplegics with spinal cord injuries.
1. The higher the lesion, the less the visceral
innervation…
2. Expect decreasing manifestation of emotion as
height of lesion increases…
Interviewed respondents about feelings in situations
of sexual excitement, fear, anger, grief,
sentimentality.
Recall emotion arousing incident prior to injury and
comparable feeling after.
Results show that the higher the lesion the less the feeling of anger, fear,
sexual excitement and grief.
So, the less arousal from the viscera, the less the emotional experience.
Three Basic Propositions
1. In a state of arousal for which the individual knows no immediate
explanation, he will “label” this state and describe his feelings in terms of
available cognitions.
2. Given a state of arousal with a completely appropriate explanation
(e.g., “I feel this way because of an injection of adrenaline), no evaluative
needs will arise and the individual is unlikely to label his arousal in terms
of alternate available cognitions.
3. Given the same cognitive circumstances, the individual will react
emotionally or describe his feelings as emotional only to the extent that he
experiences a state of physiological arousal.
Schachter and Singer (1962)
1. Manipulate state of arousal experimentally.
2. Manipulate extent of explanation of bodily state.
3. Creation of situations from which explanatory cognitions may be
derived.
The experimental paradigm involved giving people injections of either
adrenaline or a control solution, saline, under the guise of testing the
effect of a vitamin called Suproxin on visual acuity.
Schachter and Singer (1962)
Independent variables:
1. Arousal state - Placebo versus Epinephrine
Placebo = saline solution (no bodily effects)
Epinephrine = causes heart rate and systolic blood pressure to increase…
leading to the experience of tremor, palpitations, and sometimes flushed
or accelerated breathing.
Effects occur within 3-5 minutes.
Schachter and Singer (1962)
Independent variables:
2. Explanation - A doctor who gave injections to the male subjects either
provided accurate descriptions of the effects of the drug Suproxin,
misinformed subjects, or failed to tell them anything about the effects.
Informed = Precise explanation of the effects of the epinephrine
injection. Direct information from the doctor about subjective
experience.
Ignorant = Not informed about any side effects.
Misinformed = Wrong symptoms are described
subject…numb feet, itching sensation, slight headache.
to
the
Schachter and Singer (1962)
Independent variables:
3. Socially relevant cognitions - In case “evaluative needs” were
stimulated by the subject’s experience of the bodily effects of the drug,
given what they were told about it, two kinds of role models were
provided. These “stooges” were ostensibly in the same drug situation but
behaved in distinctly opposite manners during the waiting period before
having their vision tested.
Euphoric stooge = playfully crushes paper to play basketball, etc.
Bibb Latané, who served as the confederate in the euphoria condition,
“pointed out that the confederate exerted a great deal of pressure on the
subject to join him in the euphoric behaviour and that this constituted a
relevant situational inducement.”
Angry stooge = in response to a tasteless and inappropriately intrusive
questionnaire.
Schachter and Singer (1962)
Dependent variables:
The data comprised self reports of mood and observed behaviour.
Schachter and Singer maintained that the overall pattern of data in their
experiment support their version of the two-factor theory of emotion.
Results:
The major finding was that subjects in the Anger-Ignorant and EuphoricMisinformed conditions showed the highest self-report and greatest
behavioural display of the relevant emotion. No Anger-Misinformed
condition.
Schachter and Wheeler (1962)
Overview:
Male subjects viewed a slapstick film under influence of either
epinephrine, placebo, or chlorpromazine (a sympatholytic agent). They
measured laughter and ratings of funniness of the film.
Schachter and Wheeler (1962)
Independent Variables:
Arousal State-
Placebo
Epinephrine
Chlorpromazine
Dependent Measures:
Mirth = amount of laughter
Stimulus rating = how funny they found the film
Results:
Subjects laughed more in the epinephrine arousal condition but did not like it
more.
Cupchik and Leventhal (1974)
Showed that gender played a role in the relative independence of
expressive behaviour and evaluation for male subjects. Male and female
subjects were presented with single-frame cartoons with canned laughter
present or absent as a background.
Male subjects displayed more mirth but their evaluations were not affected
in the canned-laughter condition, while females showed both increased
mirth and evaluation. This implied greater interrelation between
expression and evaluative feelings for females compared with males.
After Schachter – Cognitive Social Psychology
& Attribution Theory
Schachter’s research spun off an entire industry having to do with making
accurate and inaccurate (misattribution) judgments of internal states.
For example, he did research on internalizers and
externalizers in relation to eating behaviour.
Internalizers respond to hunger cues in the gut
and externalizers respond to taste. We can also
say that externalizers respond to muscular
feedback related to satiety cues.
George Mandler’s Information Theory
Approach to Emotion (1962, 1975)
This approach emphasized the active role played by people in interpreting
and understanding the world around them.
His information processing approach to emotion places an emphasis on
the role of “meaning analysis and cognitive evaluation” that deals “both
with events in the external world and with the organism’s own actions and
behaviours”.
Like Schachter, Mandler focuses on “undifferentiated arousal”.
“Human beings apparently have difficulty in discriminating slight changes
in physiological patterns.” It is determined by the meaning analysis that
caused it given the individual’s values and environmental events. This
arousal “which decays relatively slowly, will potentiate subsequent feeling
states”.
George Mandler’s Information Theory
Approach to Emotion (1962, 1975)
“Discrepancy and interruption” of ongoing plans and actions signals
important changes in the environment and is the most important cause of
the arousal. This arousal prepares the organism physiologically to
respond to the evoking events. It also signals consciousness for
“troubleshooting” and “attention, alertness, and scanning of the
environment” which entails interpretation, and analysis both of the
stimulus and of one’s capacity to respond effectively to it.
So activity in the sympathetic nervous system initiates the search for
causes. This reorienting of consciousness calls attention to important
events in the environment. Emotion is bound up with the “troubleshooting”
function of the mind because it stimulates the individual to reorient
attention, plans, and activities in a conscious manner. Furthur,
“interruption may lead to expressions of fear, anger, surprise, humor, or
euphoria depending on factors other than the interruption itself”. In the
end, this theory is about mental life and consciousness in general, and not
just about emotion.
Magda Arnold (1960)
Assess the object in terms of how it affects us
personally in relation to harm or benefit… desirable
or undesirable, valuable or harmful, so we are
drawn toward or repelled by it.
Sequence:
PERCEPTION APPRAISAL EMOTION
Past experience and goals are an important part of appraisal.
Appraisals are “sense judgments”. This phrase emphasizes their “direct,
immediate, non-reflective, nonintellectual and automatic nature.”
They are judgments about the meaning of situations but are not in-depth
cognitive judgments.
Emotions have a survival purpose and are impulses to action or a
readiness to respond to the environment in a particular way (e.g., anger
and urge to strike; fear and urge to flee).
Drive Reduction Model
Situation appraisal sets in motion physiological responses experienced as
unpleasant tension. When action is complete, physiological response
abates and tension is reduced.
So…Emotion is the “felt tendency towards anything appraised as good or
beneficial or away from anything appraised as bad or harmful.”
1. Feelings are essential ingredients of emotion.
2. Physiological changes that accompany emotion provide a basis for felt
experience and survival related purposes.
Recognize emotion by appraising the situation.
APPRAISAL SETS IT ALL IN MOTION!
Nico Frijda (1984)
Situational meaning contains three kinds of awareness:
1. Situational meaning structure
2. Arousal
3. Action tendencies
1. Situational meaning structure
Relevance of event
Seriousness of event
Urgency of event
Inescapability
Nico Frijda (1984)
2. Arousal
Autonomic arousal… Schachter and Mandler
3. Action tendencies
“States of readiness to respond” associated with emotions
including facial expression.
These tendencies “establish,
relationship with the environment”.
maintain
or
disrupt
a
Emotions arise to solve problems that humans face in
encounters with the environment.
Nico Frijda (1984)
Like Magda Arnold… Emotions are an “awareness of action tendencies of desires to strike or to flee, to investigate or be with”.
“Different action tendencies are what characterize different emotions”.
Event coding - Appraisal - Significance evaluation - Action readiness Action
Appraisal - compare coded event with concerns
Evaluation - diagnose what can be done about it
Richard Lazarus (1964)
Traumatic film
Control, Intellectualization, Denial, Trauma
Appraisal is affected by expectations and affects reactions.
Emotions are responses to perceived environments that “prepare and
mobilize” us to cope in an adaptive manner.
Relational meaning… how event affects us…
How situation will affect us in terms of good or bad.
What person brings to the situation in terms of expectations, goals, and
intentions.
Emotions arise out of personal meaning that people bring to the situation
that are relevant to their goals and aspirations.
Primary appraisal - assess relevance of an event for a person’s well being
(goals)
Secondary appraisal - deal with and evaluate coping response
Eponymy (Boring, 1963)
Definition: Naming a school, movement or paradigm after a person.
Three factors from Boring:
(1) Narrow attention by readers that focuses on prominent figures or
features associated with a school, movement, or paradigm.
(2) People want heroes and so they focus on successful researchers in
that way.
(3) Ambitious researchers need goals, awards and honours to activate
them. This motive can be related to the Action Model.
And one extra factor from Cupchik in view of Schachter’s success
with Maranon’s original idea.
Theatrical eponymy – The association of a scholar with an experimental
paradigm because of its dramatic qualities. See this in relation to the
paradigm from Schachter and Singer (1962) in which the subject received
an injection, with or without an explanation, and was exposed either to a
euphoric (happy) or angry stooge in a dramatic scene.
Also related to this is the distinction between personalistic and naturalistic
explanations for developments in science.
Personalistic explanations focus on the individual (Darwin, Newton, Freud,
Einstein) as the great genius. The personality of the figure was behind his
or her great discoveries.
Naturalistic explanations focus on the intellectual context in which certain
ideas or problems were salient.
The German concept of Zeitgeist refers to the intellectual spirit of the
times which might have influenced the scholar to develop what seemed
like a new idea.
COGNITIVE APPROACHES to emotion…
Karl Pribram (1967, 1968)
1. He offers a memory based theory of emotion rather than a viscerally or
arousal based theory.
2. He takes into account past experience and the present, emotionevoking situation.
3. Emotion is related to the plans or projects rather than the level of
activation.
4. Organized stability is the baseline from which disturbances or
perturbations occurs. Input that is incongruent with the baseline
produces a disturbance.
5. An important part of the baseline is continuing activity of the viscera
regulated through the autonomic nervous system.
6. A mismatch between expectations and actual bodily changes in heart
rate, sweating, butterflies, and so on, is sensed as a discrepancy.
Karl Pribram (1967, 1968)
7. So emotion is related to ongoing organization of plans, programs or
dispositions.
“Emotion is a perturbation, an interruption, disruption
of normal ongoing activity.”
Pribram extends the homeostatic model from intraorganic
events to the total organism-environment relation.
8. Emotion is an e-motion, a process that takes the organism temporarily
out of motion and effects control through the regulation of sensory
inputs.
9. Central control through the regulation of peripheral inputs takes two
forms:
(A) Inhibition of peripheral inputs while organism decides
what to do.
(B) Facilitation of attention to critical inputs from the
environment.
Oatley and Johnson-Laird
* They follow in the tradition of Mandler and Pribram by focusing on the
interruption of goals.
* Emotions signal important events in the environment and prepare one
cognitively and physiologically for activities that may involve changing
one’s plans or goals and altering ongoing behaviour.
EMOTIONS FUNCTION IN THE MANAGEMENT OF ACTION!
* Emotions emerge at significant junctures in plans.
* Emotion signals do this quickly and without the aid of consciousness.
* Emotions involve a readiness to respond in particular ways to particular
stimuli.
Oatley and Johnson-Laird
* Emotions are triggered by stimuli that are relevant to goals – for
example:
(A) Anxiety when self-preservation is threatened.
(B) Anger when plan being carried out is frustrated.
(C) Happiness when a goal is achieved.
* Complex emotions are not combinations of simpler, basic
emotions. They have added propositional evaluation which is
Social and includes reference to models of the self.
* Emotion involves intrasystemic communication between modules in the
system.
* Emotion involves intersystemic communication in the sense that many of
our more complex emotions communicate information about mutual
plans and goals of interdependent social actors.
Oatley and Johnson-Laird
So, emotions are mental states with coherent psychological functions.
They have:
An action readiness component (like Frijda) based on an evaluation of
something happening that affects the person’s concerns and the
evaluation need not be conscious.
A phenomenological tone or felt quality.
Emotions are accompanied by:
•
A conscious preoccupation
(e.g., anger and thoughts of revenge)
(B) Bodily disturbance
(C) Expressive gesture in the face
Oatley and Johnson-Laird
Oatley imagines a heirarchy of modules in the brain that execute functions
and help us realize our goals. This is a computational model.
SO EMOTIONS HELP US ARRANGE GOAL PRIORITIES.
We are consciously aware of only the top level of the cognitive system
that contains a model of the system’s goals.
The Semantic Field of Emotion
0 – Generic emotions:
emotions and feelings
1 – Basic emotions:
happiness and elation
(They have intensity & duration)
2 – Emotional relations:
love and hate
3 – Caused emotions:
gladness and horror
4 – Causatives:
irritate and reassure
5 – Emotional goals:
desire and avarice
6 – Complex emotions:
embarrassment and pity
Roseman’s Cognitive Structural Theory
For 14 emotions, 5 dimensions or ways of appraising events
(Like the VALUE X EXPECTANCY model we discussed earlier)
1. Situational State – Are the events one encounters in a particular
situation consistent or inconsistent with one’s motives?
Consistency leads to positive emotions and
inconsistency
to negative emotions. (Like Arnold’s
harmful-beneficial
distinction).
2. Probability – How certain are you that a particular outcome will occur?
Uncertainty and fear or hope.
Certainty, joy, sadness, sadness or disgust.
Roseman’s Cognitive Structural Theory
3. Agency – Who is responsible for events in a particular situation?
Caused by self = GUILT
Caused by other = ANGER
Circumstances beyond one’s control = SADNESS
4. Motivational State – Do the events one encounters involve obtaining a
reward or avoiding a punishment? (Appetitive vs. Aversive Motivation)
Obtain reward = JOY
Avoid punishment = RELIEF
5. Power – Perceive oneself as weak or strong in a particular situation.
Weak = FEAR
Strong = FRUSTRATION/ANGER