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)
