Emotion
Chapter 10
Cognitive Component
This component involves:
a subjective conscious experience (cognitive)
Cognitive appraisals help determine emotional
experience
Contrast effect
Counterfactual thinking
Emotional experience contains an evaluative (e.g.,
good/bad) component
Winning the lottery
Getting a promotion
Positive psychology
Physiological component
Bodily arousal
Much of this occurs
through the autonomic
nervous system
Link between emotion
and arousal is basis for
polygraphy
Neural Circuitry
Key components
Limbic System
Hypothalamus
Amygdala
Adjacent Structures
Real-world Application
Fear is a basic primal emotion that is key to Scientists figure they can improve that fear-
evolutionary survival. It's one we share with animals. dampening process by learning how fear runs through
the brain and body.
Genetics plays a big role in the development of
overwhelming -- and needless -- fear, psychologists The amygdala isn't responsible for all of people's fear
say. But so do traumatic events. response, but it's like the burglar alarm that connects
to everything else, said New York University
"Fear is a funny thing," said Ted Abel, a fear psychology and neural science professor Elizabeth
researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. "One Phelps.
needs enough of it, but not too much of it."
Emory University psychiatry and psychology
About 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety professor Michael Davis found that a certain
disorders, according to the National Institute of chemical reaction in the amygdala is crucial in the
Mental Health. A Harvard Medical School study way mice and people learn to overcome fear. When
estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy in that reaction is deactivated in mice, they never learn
to counter their fears.
1999 at roughly $42 billion.
"There's a trick to panic attack," said David Scientists found D-cycloserine, a drug already used to
Carbonell, a Chicago psychologist specializing in fight hard-to-treat tuberculosis, strengthens that good
chemical reaction in mice. Working in combination
treating anxiety disorders. "You're experiencing this with therapy, it seems to do the same in people. It
powerful discomfort but you're getting tricked into was first shown effective with people who have a fear
treating it like danger. of heights. It also worked in tests with other types of
fear, and it's now being studied in survivors of the
These days, thanks to counseling, self-study, calming World Trade Center attacks and the Iraq war.
exercises and introspection [one can] stop or at least
minimize those attacks early on.
Behavioral component
Emotion involves:
characteristic overt expressions (behavioral)
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
States that muscular feedback
from facial expressions helps
us to recognize our own
emotions.
Studies show that when asked
to mimic facial expressions of
various emotions, participants
report experiencing those
emotions to some degree.
Culture and Emotion
Similarities across
cultures
Recognition of facial
expressions
Use same evaluative
dimensions
Fair vs. not fair
Triggered by same
events
Risky situations lead to
fear
Culture and Emotion
Differences across cultures
Emotional categorization
Display rules
Theories of Emotional Experience
Evolutionary Theories of Emotion
Emotions are innate
reactions to stimuli
Should be recognized
without much cognitive
effort (adaptive)
Originate in subcortical
brain structures that
evolved before cortex
Humans have a small
number of fundamental
emotions.
Happiness
Common sense notions incorrect
People are generally happy
Income, age, parenthood,
intelligence, and attractiveness
largely uncorrelated with
happiness
Physical health, good social
relationships, religious faith, and
culture modestly correlated with
happiness
Love, marriage, work
satisfaction, and personality
strongly correlated with
happiness
Subjective rather than objective
reality important