Summary Everything You Need to Pass the Emotion Exam
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Course
Emotion (7202BS02XY)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Book
Psychology of Emotion
This is a summary of both the lectures and literature of the Emotion course. This was part of the specialisation Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. Using this as my main form of studies, I passed all my exams with a grade of 8.0 or higher.
Table of Contents
Lecture 6 Emotion Regulation
Slides p. 1
Chapter 9 Emotion Regulation p. 3
Lecture 7 Gender and Culture
Slides p. 6
Chapter 11 p. 9
Chapter 12 p. 11
Lecture 8 Self-Conscious Emotions and Happiness
Slides p. 13
Chapter 6 Self-Conscious Emotions p. 16
Chapter 7 Happiness p. 18
Lecture 9 Empathy
Slides p. 20
Noba Chapter Theory of Mind p. 23
Zaki (2020) Catastrophe Compassion p. 24
Lecture 10 Unconscious Emotion and Motivation
Slides p. 25
Winkielman & Berridge (2004) Unconscious Emotion p. 29
Legend of In-Text Colours
[R] recap of information
….. an example
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Marked in yellow means it was one of the learning goals (most important).
, Lecture 6: Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation = how we try to influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and
how we experience and express these emotions.
Motives for emotion regulation:
➔ Hedonic motivation = regulating emotions in order to feel good. When you’re feeling down
you watch a really funny movie to make you feel better.
❖ Can be maladaptive in the long run (when gambling makes you feel good).
➔ Instrumental motivation = regulating emotions to facilitate (improve) performance.
❖ Tamir et al. (2008) had participants play a non-confrontational game (build an empire
that spreads peace) and a confrontational game (goal was to strike members of a drug
cartel). Conditions were assigned first. Short music clips were played in advance of
the game: a song that induced anger, a neutral one and one that induces excitement.
For those playing the non-confrontational game, people were more interested in
listening to neutral and exciting music than angry music. Neutral and exciting music
facilitate the mission of inducing peace more than angry music. In the
confrontational game participants preferred listening to angry music over neutral and
exciting music, and those who chose angry music also performed better at that
confrontational game, showing that people seek to induce emotions that facilitate
their performance.
➔ Pro-social motivation = regulating emotions in order to function better in relation to those
around us (prosocial emotion regulation: pretending to like an ugly sweater your grandma has
made for you in order to not upset her).
➔ Impression management = trying to influence how other people see us by regulating our
emotion expressions. Children trying to hide their pain after a fall to seem cool.
❖ Indicates that there are norms that tell us what is ‘acceptable’ to express (or hide) in
different contexts. These are called display rules.
Display rules = social norms about what emotion is appropriate to express to whom in what context.
➔ These rules vary across emotions. Showing sadness is more regulated than showing
happiness; people hide their sadness more (exceptions like at a funeral).
➔ Emotional expressions are generally more acceptable in private contexts (vs in public), and
emotional expressions are more often accepted with close others (vs less close others).
Process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998) = highlights
five families of emotion regulation that occur at different times
(represented by the black line running from left to right) in the
elicitation of an emotional response. In the image we look at
enhancing positive feelings. The arrow pointing from response
(feed)back to situation indicates that your response affects/changes
the situation in some way. Situation, attention and appraisal
regulation are antecedent focused (= they occur before the actual
emotion has been elicited). Response regulation concerns after.
Situation regulation = there are two different ways in which you
can regulate a situation.
(1) Situation selection = choosing a situation that aids emotion
regulation (and / or opting out of a situation you don’t wanna be in).
After a long day (you are extremely tired) a kid is crying in the store
you’re in, because they want candy (not enjoyable). An example of
situation selection is to leave the store, or to decide to come back
another time.
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, (2) Situation modification = changing aspects of the situation to regulate one’s emotion. In the same
example, you can modify the situation by distracting the kid or cheer them up.
→ Both methods solve the root cause of what is stressing you, and therefore you’re no longer exposed
to the emotion eliciting stimulus (crying child), thereby you are not going to be upset. It is effective,
but not always possible (you can’t always ‘just leave’ the store).
Attention regulation = shifting your own attention away from a (distressing) stimulus. Distracting
yourself by putting headphones on and listening to a podcast so that you can hear the crying child less.
This is also effective.
Some have said that you can also distract yourself by suppressing your thoughts of emotional events
(thoughts of the crying child). However, studies have found a rebound effect where trying to suppress
a thought leads to increased physiological arousal when you do think about it (white bear effect =
when told not to think about the white bear, people tend to do the opposite. When people think about
the white bear in this scenario, arousal is increased). Just accepting the state of affairs and the
emotions is more effective for emotion regulation than trying not to think about it.
Appraisal regulation = regulating emotions by (re)appraising the situation in a more beneficial way
(trying to think about it from another perspective). This is often practised in therapy. Trying to see the
situation from the perspective of the parents or the child, or recognizing that it is a privilege that this is
your biggest struggle in the supermarket. Also effective; can be done in advance, during and after the
situation to change our feelings about the situation.
Participants did a maths test. The ‘threat’ condition was told their test would be scored on speed and
accuracy, while those in the challenge condition were told to ‘see this task as a challenge’. Then the
participants were asked to rate how threatening they found the task to be. Despite no differences in
maths performance, results saw that those in the threat group actually experienced higher perceived
threat (they also had higher physiological arousal). A difference in framing (appraisal) of the task
(the perspective from which people see the task) affected emotional experience.
Response regulation = regulation of the emotional expression after the emotion has been elicited.
You can also regulate the arousal that the emotion creates (yoga, exercise, drugs and alcohol). You
may want to frown because you’re upset, but in order to regulate you smile at the child (may help the
child calm down as a bonus).
In a study, participants watched an emotionally provocative movie. One group was told to just watch
the movie, the other group was told to show no emotion (suppress) while watching it. Results found
that there was not a significant difference between groups in the feelings that people experienced, but
the no emotion group had way higher arousal level than the other group. Suppressing emotional
expressions (or expressing an emotion that is incongruent with what you actually feel) is costly;
people work hard to suppress their emotions which raises arousal.
People still suppress their emotional expressions because it can be beneficial in social situations.
Expressing happiness after receiving a gift you don’t like because you want the person who gave it to
you to feel good.
→ Negative social consequences: pairs of women watched upsetting movies. In one pair, a person had
to suppress her emotions during the discussion of the movie. In another, one person had to reappraise
the upsetting aspects of the film in a different way. One pair got no instructions. It was found that in
the appraisal condition, there was less expression. In the suppress condition, they were less expressive
too, but there was also partner stress and dislike. Suppression is costly: you spend effort
suppressing expressions, so there is less effort left to put into making an interaction pleasurable.
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