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Summary Chapter 6 - Emotion and affect
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The notes are based on Chapter 6 in 'Social Psychology, a South African perspective' textbook.
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Chapter 6 –Unit 4
Emotion and affect
1st Topic
Explain the duplex mind’s contribution to our emotional experience, and contrast conscious emotion
and automatic affect
Compare the three theories of emotion, and identify the role of physiological arousal
Explain how specific emotions ̶ such as happiness, anger, guilt, shame, and disgust ̶ serve interpersonal
functions
Describe the role of emotion in feelings of belongingness and relationships, in behaviour, in thinking and
learning, and in decision making
Describe the research on whether emotions differ across gender and culture
Introduction
– Emotions make life rich and interesting.
– Provide us with feedback and information about the world.
– The feedback helps us change our behaviour.
What is emotion?
Emotion: Conscious evaluative reaction that is clearly linked to some event.
Mood: Feeling state that is not clearly linked to some event.
Affect: the automatic response that something is good or bad. (positive affect – good or negative affect –
bad)
Positive effect: good emotions.
Negative effect: bad emotions.
Conscious emotion versus automatic affect
These correspond roughly to the two dimensions of the duplex mind.
1. Conscious emotion: A powerful and clearly unified feeling state, such as anger or joy.
2. Automatic effect: A quick response of linking or disliking toward something, may occur outside of
consciousness.
, Emotional arousal
Emotion has both mental (such as subjective feelings and interpretations) and physical aspects (such as
racing heartbeats and tears)
Arousal: A physiological reaction, including faster heartbeat and heavier breathing.
James-Lange theory of emotion: the theory that bodily processes of emotion come first and the mind’s
perception of these bodily reactions then creates the subjective feeling of emotion.
William James and Carl Lange linked mental and physical aspects of emotion in 1884.
Studies have proved that the body’s response seemed to be similar for different emotions.
The James-Lange theory of emotion suggests that the bodily processes of emotion come first and
the mind’s perception of these bodily reactions then creates the subjective feeling of emotion.
When something happens, your body and brain supposedly perceive it and respond to it, and these
physiological events form the basis for the emotion you feel.
Facial feedback hypothesis: Facial expressions can evoke or magnify emotions because the brain reacts to
facial muscles.
The James-Lange theory leads to the contemporary hypothesis of the facial feedback hypothesis.
The feedback hypothesis states that facial expressions can evoke or magnify emotions because the
brain reacts to what the facial muscles are doing.
An example: When you hold a pen between your teeth, you resemble a smile but when you hold a pen
between your lips, your face resembles a frown. The facial feedback hypothesis holds that if you are
smiling you will enjoy things more than when you are frowning.
Schachter-Singer theory of emotion: The idea that emotion has two components; a bodily state of arousal
and a cognitive label that specifies the emotion.
Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer invented the theory in the early 1960s.
They developed their theory partly in response to the failure of the James-Lange theory.
Instead of claiming that feeling emotion is a direct result of the bodily reaction, they said that
emotion has two separate components (physiological arousal and cognitive label).
Physiological arousal: Similar in all emotions. (Remember this is the problem that scientists found
when testing the James-Lange theory)
Cognitive label: Different for each emotion.
The Arousal is the mix of feelings that you get when your sympathetic nervous system is activated
(e.g your heart beats faster or more blood flows to your brain)
In the Schachter-Singer theory of emotion, emotion is something like a television program. The
arousal is the on/off switch and volume control. It determines that there is going to be an emotion,
and how strong it will be. The cognitive label is like the channel switch; it determines what emotion
will be felt.
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