Overview lectures
Lecture 1 - Introduction
• Three components of emotion:
o Phenomenal experience
o Physiological pattern
o Verbal + nonverbal expressions
• 6 basic emotional expressions
o Fear, anger, disgust, joy, sadness, surprise (& neutral)
• Emotions are relatively distinct, but can mix
• Ekman: emotions are universal across cultures
• Russel: low agreement on classification of expressions
• Elfenbein & Ambady: Emotions are universal in a certain degree
• Friesen & Matsumoto: Emotions are flexible
o May not always display true feelings -> especially in Asian cultures
• Asians are more about context, Americans are more focused on individuals
• Many cultures have unique emotions/terms to describe emotions
• Darwin: Emotions have functions -> Verbal + Nonverbal expressions
o Antithesis: most emotions have an opposite emotion/expression
• Measuring emotions
o Questionnaires -> Introspection
o Emotional Stroop task
o Physiology
• James-Lange: emotions are caused by a physiological pattern and expressions
o Substances in the body can alter emotions
o Cannons Criticism: Visceral changes too slow to be source, Artificial changes
(e.g. adrenaline) do not produce emotions & relations between state of body
and emotion is not 1:1.
o First two arguments are false, third is true
• Schachters two factor theory: Perception influences appraisal, physiology and
emotion. Appraisal and physiology influence each other and emotion
• Plutchiks psychoevolutionary theory: 8 emotions in pairs of opposites and varying
intensity
• Ortony and Turner: categorizing has no use due to difficulty, vagueness and
disagreement
• Russels secondary emotions: on a scale from intense to mild and unpleasant to
pleasant
• Feldman Barret: emotions come from basic mental systems -> psychological
construction approach
• Rolls: emotions on scale from punishment delivery to reward delivery and from
reward omission to punishment omission
Lecture 2 – Emotions, moods, feelings and temperament
• Emotions
o Intense, very brief, triggered/toward stimulus, affect behavior, measurable,
can be unconscious.
, • Feelings
o Introception
o Mild intense, longer than emotions, triggered by perception of bodily
changes, conscious, questionnaires
• Mood
o Low intensity, long lasting, no cause/target, affects cognition, measurable and
questionnaires
• Temperament
o Dispositions of a person to react in a certain way
o Part of personality
o Cloningers temperament types: Harm avoidance, novelty seeking, reward
dependence (genetic profiles)
• Big five personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Neuroticism (OCEAN)
• Gray’s model (Reinforcement sensitivity theory): three systems that control
behavior
o F/FLS: fight or flight system -> for danger
o BIS: behavioral inhibition system -> monitors conflict between F/FLS and BAS
o BAS: behavioral activation system -> weighs rewards
• Affective style: tendency to experience positive affect (PA) or negative affect (NA)
o Based on: emotion perception, emotion production, emotion regulation,
emotion memory
o Individual differences: threshold, peak, rise time, recovery, duration
o Left PFC -> PA
o Right PFC -> NA
Lecture 3 - Neuroscience
• Macleans stage of evolution -> emotions are in limbic system, between reptilian and
neocortex brain.
o Limbic system isn’t unique for processing emotions, not all parts for emotions
• Frontal cortex adds complexity to emotions
o Phineas Gage -> personality changes with damaged FC
o Orbitofrontal cortex -> inhibitions, better judgement calls, steering attention
• Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis
o Emotions are used for decision making
o Interaction between OFC and limbic system
• LeDoux’s dual route theory -> two routes for processing emotional stimuli
o High (cortical) -> identifying, emotional evaluation, action
o Low (subcortical) -> direct via thalamus and amygdala to action
o Evidence: faster RT’s for emotional stimuli, amygdala recognizes threat,
without visual cortex we can still react to threat
• Amygdala is needed for fear conditioning
• Pessoa’s Integration Model -> amygdala has a modulating role
Lecture 4 – physiology
• Peripheral nervous system -> somatic and autonomic
