Lecture 8:
EMOTIONS
Story about Betty:
Came over and was upset – broke up with new boyfriend, Dave.
“Why do I always fall for the wrong guy?” she sighs.
Dave was attractive and fun to be with, but very unpredictable
- He would call one week and take her to a comedy show or rock climbing at
the rock gym
- But, then he wouldn’t call for weeks at a time.
- Also, he was rumored to be a lady’s man and was often unfaithful to Betty.
“But,” she says “At one point, I felt like I was in love with him.”
Now Betty had a boyfriend before Dave, his name was Mike
- Mike was very diff from Dave in that he called Better every night to see how
her day went
- He took her to dinner often, and made her feel secure about how he felt about
her
Then she met Dave and left Mike to pursue a r/s with Dave.
- She says “I never felt for Mike what I feel for Dave.”
- Why do you think Betty felt in LOVE with Dave who was inconsistent and often indifferent
to her, and was not in love with caring Mike????
HAVE THEM ANSWER
I’ll let you know in a few seconds what Betty and I came up with in terms of what might be
going on that caused her to fall for “Bad News Dave”
Also, this story shows the complexity of emotions….
Emotions consist of three interacting components:
1) physiological arousal
2) behavioral response
3) cognitive appraisal (thought processes)
- supposedly these interact
- different theorists have diff hypotheses as to how these three components interact to
produce emotions
One of the first psychologists to discuss this issue was William James
James-Lange theory of emotions:
*put up transparency of James Lange model
- You see the lion (stimulus), your heart starts racing, sweating (physiology)
and THEN you think – “Oh, I’m scared” – you’ve LABELED the emotion
based on your reactions to the stimuli.
- So contrary to common sense, James thought that what your body is doing
alerts you as to how to interpret what you are feeling
- If you’re running, then you must be scared.
- If you’re smiling, you must be happy.
James Cannon and Phillip Bard disagreed with James and Lange and developed their own
theory.
- They felt that there is no way that physiological reactions alone can produce
the experience of emotions
- Instead, they hypothesized that emotion originates in the thalamus (remember
we discussed the thalamus as the relay station that connects your sense organs
with your cerebral cortex or cognition)
- so the thalamus in your brain relays the stimulus information both to your
nervous system and muscles (to cause physiological arousal and motor
movement) and to your cerebral cortex to stimulate the cognitive
interpretation of what’s going on emotion.
ANY QUESTIONS ON THE DIFFERENCES B/W THE TWO THEORIES???
In the 1960s, a psychologist named Stanley Schachter emphasized this “cognitive appraisal”
process that is present when interpreting emotions.
He developed the Two factor theory of emotion
Similar to James and Cannon, he described these important factors that are necessary to
experience an emotion:
Physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation.
- Schachter felt that if the situation is clear, labeling an emotion is pretty easy
and automatic.
- So, if you’re crossing the street and a car starts racing toward you, you
experience physiological arousal and immediately interpret your feelings as
fear!!
- What happens in ambiguous situations, though, when you’re feeling arousal but
you’re not sure what’s causing it???
- You look at the environment and see if there’s something there that can help you
interpret why you are feeling nervous.
- Example: Let’s say you’re sitting in class and you’re looking ahead, and all of
the sudden your heart starts beating faster, your palms start getting sweaty.
- You’re not quite sure why you are getting this physiological arousal
- so you look around and notice that the instructor wrote up on the board a
reminder that next week you are having a big exam.
- So, given that cue, you interpret your physiology as due to being nervous,
thus, the emotional experience you have is NERVOUSNESS or
anxiousness.
- However, let’s suppose that instead when you start feeling your heart beating
faster and the sweating, you look around and notice that the person you’ve had
a crush on all semester is sitting a few rows in front of you
- Then, how would you interpret the physiological arousal???
HAVE THEM ANSWER !
- As passion, love, desire, or something of that kind.
ANY QUESTIONS???
Schachter and a colleague named Singer did a study to test this theory.
- One group of male subjects was injected with epinephrine (or adrenaline) that increases
arousal … it produces the physiological responses that we’ve talked about (increased heart
rate, sweaty palms, hyperactivity).
- Half of these people were told that the drug would cause the arousal effect –
Drug-informed
- Half of them were NOT told anything about the effects of the drug – Drug
Uninformed
- A second group was injected with a placebo (basically a fake drug).
- Then, each of them were placed in a room with another subject who really wasn’t a subject but
a confederate of the experiment. They were told that this person had also been injected with the
drug.
- In some cases, the person acted happy, dancing around the room, playing
games with the paper, paper airplanes, etc.
- In some cases, the person acted angry, complained about the experiment and
the questionnaires they had to fill out and ripped up his paper in an angry
fashion.
How do you think the different groups acted????
** Put up transparency and DISCUSS
** Transparency of 2-factor model in ambiguous situations
- Let’s go back to my friend Betty, and why she fell in “love” with Dave and not Mike.
- Dave made her feel upset many times when he wouldn’t call, or when she would find out
he was cheating on her.
- When he would come around, that made her very happy!
- Plus, he would take her to do thrilling things, like horseback riding, rock climbing, etc.
- Lots of arousal going on there for Betty, right??
- Given that she needed to explain her arousal (and the fact that she stayed with him for so
long), she attributed it to her great love for him -- misattribution!!!
- What about Mike??
- He was always pleasant, she felt secure.
- So, not much arousal going on.
- That gave her nothing to explain! Thus, she felt she did not love him.
So can feelings of love or attraction be related to interpretation of physiological arousal????
Let me tell you about the Bridge Study.
Two researchers did a study in which they had two groups of men.
- One group was asked to walk over a bridge that was wobbly and was 230 feet
above a rocky rapids.
- The second group was asked to walk over a very sturdy and wide bridge that
was only 10 feet from the ground.
- While on the bridge, all the men were approached by a female research
assistant, and asked to participate in a study.
- The woman also gave the men her phone # in case they had any questions.
- The researchers then measured how many men in each group called the
woman.
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE RESULT WAS????
- More of the men on the tall bridge that was wobbly and scary called the woman.
- Like Schachter and Singer, the researchers suggested that it was because the
men on the tall bridge became aroused since the bridge was so high up and
scary, and they transferred these fear arousal feelings onto the woman!
- But, believe me, I’m not suggesting that all of you now take your dates on
scary roller coaster rides or bungy jumping so that the arousal can be
transferred onto you!
- Don’t try this at home folks!!!!
So, what are these bodily responses to stimuli that we often interpret as emotions?
- One that we are all familiar with is Generalized Autonomic Arousal which is
mediated by the autonomic nervous system
- When an event prompts some emotional response, the sympathetic nervous system
(which is part of the ANS) is activated … it controls the involuntary muscles and
organs.
** Transparency of activity of sympathetic NS.
- These things happen so that we can be energized to do something about the stimulus
… either run or hug or scream or dance!
- Do all emotions produce the same phys responses?? … it seems that love,
anger, and fear all increase your HR
- But, anger increases skin temperature, while fear decreased skin temperature.
How do scientists measure emotions people are having???
- Well before they used to rely on self-report … but what are the problems with letting
people just tell us what they are feeling?
HAVE THEM ANSWER
- people may respond as they think the experimenter wants them to respond
- sometimes, not even on purpose, as we’ve seen, people are influenced by
environmental cues and their responses may not be accurate.
- So more recently, psychologists have used measures called psychophysiological
measures of emotion.
- We already know that your physiological responses are related to emotions.
- They place electrodes on people to measure different bodily responses.
- One measure they use is called the startle response.
** Throw book on desk.
- When one is suddenly presented with a sudden noise, the person responds
with this alert response. What usually happens is that you blink harder than
usual
- So, an electrode is placed right under the eye to measure eyeblink, then the
person is presented with a loud burst of noise, and they see if they had a big
eyeblink.
- Now, the startle response is specific to fear… so if I were to drop this book
real hard while you are watching the movie Scream in a dark room, your
startle response would be significantly greater than it was here.
- So, the startle response is a good specific way of measuring fear with
psychophys measures.
** Transparency from 1st lecture on phychophys measures
- HR can also be measured, as you know if you’ve ever been to a hospital.
- As we said, HR isn’t specific to just fear; HR goes up when you’re nervous,
scared, angry, etc.
- Facial EMG – not autonomic/physiological response, instead motor response, muscle
movement.
- Corrugator
- Zygomatic
- Skin Conductance – when have sweaty palms, but also when you are paying
attention to something (orienting response).
Opponent process theory – if have time!
- drugs use and withdrawal
SCHACHTER AND SINGER EXPERIMENT (1964)
What are you feeling?
Confederate’s Drug- Drug- Placebo
behavior Informed Uninformed Group
(Ambiguous)
Happy arousal Aroused but Happy Nothing
no emotion (not aroused)
Angry arousal Aroused but Angry Nothing
no emotion (not aroused)
Generalized Autonomic Arousal:
bodily responses to an event that mobilize the person
for “fight” or “flight”