Emotion
CHAPTER 13
THE NATURE OF EMOTION
Defining Characteristics
Organized psychological and physiological reactions
to changes in our relationship to the world
Both subjective and objective
Subjective level has several characteristics:
is usually temporary
is either positive or negative
is elicited partly by a cognitive appraisal of how the situation
relates to your goals
How you interpret an event
alters thought processes by directing attention towards things and
away from others
Triggers an action tendency or the motivation or behave in a
certain way
Are passions that happen to you
Defining Characteristics cont.
Subjective emotions are triggered by the thinking self
and felt as happening to the self
Objective aspects of emotions include learned and innate
expressive displays and physiological responses
How your body responds to emotions
Emotions are a temporary experience with either
positive or negative qualities
Allows people to communicate their internal states and intentions to
others
Also directs and energizes a person’s thoughts and actions
Can organize and disrupt thoughts and behavior
The Biology of Emotion
Central nervous system and the autonomic nervous
system
Brain Mechanisms
Three basic features of brain’s control of emotion:
Activity in the limbic system (amygdala)
Brain’s control over emotional and nonemotional facial
expressions
Contributions of the cerebral hemispheres in experience,
perception and expression of emotion
The Biology of Emotion cont.
Mechanisms of the Autonomic Nervous System
“fight-or-flight” syndrome
Involved in the physiological changes in emotion
Theories of Emotion
The James-Lange Theory
William James (1890)
Body responds before your brain
Afraid of something because you run away from it
Physiological responses relate to emotional experience
w/o them, we would feel no fear
According to James, emotion must be the result of
experiencing a particular set of physiological responses
Called James-Lange theory because Carl Lange, a Danish
physician, offered a view similar to James’s
Polygraphs or lie detector tests (p. 508-509)
The Cannon-Bard Theory
Walter Cannon disagreed w/James’s theory
Cannon believed that one does not cause the other;
they happen simultaneously, but separately from one
another
Cognitive Theories
Schachter-Singer Theory (two-factor theory)
emotions we experience are partly shaped by the way
we interpret the arousal we feel
Argued James’s theory was correct; but req’d some
modifications
combination of feedback from peripheral responses
and the cognitive interpretation of what caused those
responses
May have different interpretations of the same response
Cognitive Theories cont.
How you label your arousal depends on attribution
Process of identifying the cause of an event
Theory is not fully accepted today; but it did
stimulate more research
Transferred excitation
When physiological arousal from one experience carries over to
affect emotion in an independent situation
Ex. Bad day just gets worse
Cognitive Theories cont.
Richard Lazarus (1966)
Cognitive appraisal theory
Process begins when we decide whether or not an event is relevant
to our well-being (do we care?)
If so, we will feel a positive or negative reaction based on whether
it is helping or hurting us achieving our goals
Experienced Emotion
The Adaptation-Level Principle
Happiness is relative to our prior experience
Our tendency to judge various stimuli against prior
experience
Allen parducci
Utopia?
The Relative Deprivation Principle: Happiness is
Relative to Others’ Attainments