This is a combined summary of the lectures and relevant book chapters as well as the assigned papers. It concerns the core theme course "Emotion" of the second year bachelor's programme.
Emotions samenvatting van colleges en boek ter voorbereiding voor het tentamen
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Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
Psychologie
Emotion (SOWPSB2SP05E)
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Emotion lecture 1
Chapter 1 - General Introduction
Topic Overview:
1. What are emotions?
2. How can you measure them?
• Learning objectives this week:
• Primary characteristics/components of emotions
• Distinguish emotions from other affects/motivation
• Measurement methods:
- How can you measure (components) of emotion?
- Advantages and limitations of different methods
• Main theoretical perspectives: main characteristics, similarities and differences
• What is an emotion?
• „Everyone knows what an emotion is, until asked to give a definition…“
• Theories focus on different components
of emotion; Each men investigate a
different part of an elephant even though
its the same „object“
- e.g. focus on feeling, cognition,
physiology, motivation, expression
- all part of the same concept!
- taking the different theories together
you get a „whole“ understanding
• Proposed „Solution“ by Mulligan & Scherer: list of elements for a working definition!
• Theoretical perspectives:
• Evolutionary:
- Darwin:
• General belief: expression of emotions is uniquely human, intended for
communication (Darwin disagreed!)
• Darwin: humans and animals same
• 2 Central questions:
- How are emotions expressed by animals and humans? —> universal
character of these expressions
, - Where do emotions come from? not for communication, but are remains of a
past function of expressions —> e.g. preparation to bite (shows dislike) as
social signal
- Ekman & Izard:
• Support for universal recognition of facial expressions for basic emotions:
- Happiness, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust, Surprise
• In the literature there is debate about the 6 general emotions
• Research methods he introduced:
- Observations in humans and animals
- Cross-cultural research: questionnaires, observations
- Judgement of photographs: posed and spontaneous
• Conclusions part 1 and 2: recognition depends on response format and
options (list of options vs. freely label!) + often limited number of choices
and stimuli (big 6)
• Conclusions about test part 3 and 4: expression in „real life“ are often more
subtle than stimuli from standard sets, difficult to recognise cause
interpretation is context-dependent; information about context shapes your
recognition + not all facial expressions are expressions of emotions (e.g. the
Haka dance) + dynamics influence the interpretation (e.g. moving when
talking) —> things that complicate recognition from photographs
- Additional notes:
• Expressions are multimodal: face, voice, body (not only facial expressions)
• Dynamic and multimodal tests
• Expression ≠ emotion!
- Emotions have „display rules“: posing or masking expression
- Recognition ≠ experience: if people recognise emotion that does not
mean that they experience it as well
• Bodily:
- William James:
• Perception —> Feeling/emotion —> Bodily effect (General opinion)
• James: Perception —> Bodily effect —> Feeling/emotion
• James focus on: experience instead of expression, bodily responses, adaptive
function (because its an automatic reaction)
• Important influence:
- Central role of ANS/bodily component
- Bodily response influences experience (and cognitions)
• Criticism by Walter Cannon:
- Disconnection between guts and brain does not lead to reduction in emotions
(which should be the case if body is responsible)
, • Disconnection cortex and subcortical regions does induce changes —>
cortex inhibits lower brain regions that host emotions (seen in Gage)
- Bodily response (arousal) not specific enough for differentiation between
emotions
- Schachter and Singer:
• Two factor theory: Arousal + Cognition = Emotion
- Perception —> Bodily arousal —> Appraisal —> Feeling/Emotion
- Experiment: adrenaline injections
• Different contexts elicited different emotions
• However not replicated, questions reliability!
• Cognitive:
- Aristotle: Emotions are evaluations of events in the world, depend on our beliefs
• Katharsis= experiencing clarification of our emotion, how they are related to
consequences
- Rene Descartes:
• Origin of emotions is in the soul (our thinking part)
- Emotions are about goals, concerns, identity
- Regulated by thoughts
• Emotions closely connected to the body
• Emotions are usually functional
- Magda Arnold: Appraisals
• Emotions based on evaluation of events (appraisal)
- arises when something is important to us (a concern)
• Direct relation evaluation <—> emotion
- therefore you can predict, deduct (infer), regulate (linked to cognitive therapy)
- emotions mediate, link our interior concerns with events and objects in the
world
• Emotions are relational (object-focused)
- Link internal concerns with external events/objecta
- Action impulse: toward (attraction) or away (repulsion) —> positive vs. negative
evaluation
- Sylan Tomkin’s:
• affect is the primary motivational system; amplify our drives
• Social-cultural perspective:
- Social roles, values and duties influence emotions
• Expression: display rules
• Experience
- Feeling rules „how you should feel and how you should not feel“ aka what is
appropriate to specific context (Hochschild)
, - E.g. anger —> violation of a norm (which is determined socially)
- Emotions have a social function: Regulation of interpersonal/societal relations
• E.g. anger:
- Prevent future violation of personal boundaries
- Fighting for justice
- Also Hochschild:
• Emotional labour= constructing emotions in oneself in order to induce them in
others
• central message: Emotions are kinds of social performances in which we
embody specific roles and identities
• Integration:
• Emotions are…
- functional: adaptive reaction to environment
• Evolution
• Social relations (feeling and display rules)
- build up from different components: This is the check list!!!! (+ the 2 components
later)
• Motor expression
• Physiological responses
• Action tendencies
• Appraisal
• Subjective experience aka feeling usually not as prominent as one might think
at first sight
• A framework:
- Arise as result of
appraising events
in environment
(Aristotle)
- Involve subjective
feelings aka
experience,
expression
(Darwin), bodily
responses
(James),
tendencies to act, emotion-specific ways of perceiving the world (Isen)
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