To sum up: Arousal fuels emotion Cognition channels it

Embodied Emotion

Sensation Seeking Peaks in late teens and early 20’s –Higher in men than women/60% genetic Categories: –Thrill and adventure seeking Skydiving, bungee jumping, race car drivers –Experience seeking Nonconforming lifestyle, reject middle-class lifestyle: unusual friends, frequent travel, artistic expression –Disinhibition Social drinking, partying –Boredom susceptibility Restless: must… get… out… of… here….

Is it bad to have a high level of sensation seeking? Not necessarily –Tend to engage in more prosocial behavior –Firefighters, law enforcement –ER doctors

Physiology of Emotion Emotions caused an aroused physiological state: –autonomic/sympathetic nervous system. Glucose released Respiration increased Blood clotter released Adrenaline: epinephrine, norepinephrine Blood pressure up Digestion slows

Arousal is adaptive Moderate arousal is best when taking a test –Too much can wear you out, too little can be distracting Similar physiological arousal occurs during fear, anger, and sexual arousal – so how do we pick up on the adaptive differences of these three states?

Emotion and the Brain: Asymmetry Different emotions flow through different brain circuits. –Disgust/sadness = right brain circuits –Happiness/positive emotions = left frontal lobe activities

Role of cognition in emotion Spillover effect Unlabeled vs. labeled emotion –Which pathways would be used? –Which theories of emotions best explain?

Expressing Emotion Feeling emotion and expressing emotions are two very different things. Much of communication is nonverbal: body, face and gestures. –Staring into eyes can give good “love” information. –People are very good at reading nonverbal cues. You can tell a happy face from 100 yds. –Angry faces tend to leap out of the crowd at you. –Women are better at perceiving lies, loves, and emotional cues.

Reading Emotions Feature detectors Anger read in the eyes, happiness from the mouth Introverts are better at reading nonverbal cues extraverts are better at expressing them. Females are better than males.

How does personal experience relate to the telling of expressions?

Expressiveness Behavior Feedback phenomenon. –Expressions not only communicate emotion but they regulate it: Smiling will make you happier. Walking boldly will make you more confident. Pull up on your desk, push down on it, which feels better?

Expressiveness and Culture However, facial expressions for various expressions are universal. –But the purpose of emotion may be different For instance, Japanese rarely show self- aggrandizing and negative emotions –but likely to show happiness, as means of social glue. In Chinese culture, people are encouraged to adjust to others

Facial feedback effect Indicates that expressions amplify our emotions by activating muscles associated with specific states –How does that relate to the behavior feedback phenomenon? –Where does self-awareness play a role?

Who is the best at displaying naturally occurring emotions?

QUICK BREAK Grab a computer, turn it on – log in to my website Click on link at the bottom for Reading the Mind’s Eyes Test

Detecting Emotion: Autism People with autism often times have difficulty grasping other’s states of mind –Lack of empathy –Creation of morality?

Mind’s eye test: Autism Tests administered to high functioning autism (HFA), Asperger syndrome (AS), normal adults in community college, and normal adults from Cambridge –HFA/AS adults scored significantly worse in facial recognition – but there was no correlation to IQ and Eyes test Eye test is thus independent of general intelligence (g): nonsocial

Experienced Emotion Carroll Izard identified 10 basic emotions –Joy, interest-excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt Izard acknowledges that others exist, but they are combinations of the above

Two categories of experienced emotion Emotional valence: pleasant/positive vs. unpleasant/negative Arousal: high vs. low

How would you differentiate between terrified vs. afraid? Delighted vs. happy?

Fear Controlled by the amygdala –located at the ends of the hippocampus in the Limbic system of the lower brain. Fear is adaptive to fight/flee from dangerous events. We can learn to fear just about anything, –we fear some things easier than others: heights, spiders, snakes. Stress is fear gone wild: too much, too often.

Fear Example Humans can learn to fear embarrassment and social situations or classical conditioning –Chronic anxiety (fear) of social events can have devastating effects on your immune system and other mood systems (depression/anxiety disorders). –Extreme fear of a specific trigger is called a phobia.

Thresholds of Fear Peoples’ triggers for fear vary. –Some are not easily fearful test pilots, serial killers, Type B personalities –Some are anxious/nervous almost all the time. Type A personalities Tranquilizers operate on this brain/body system by calming the SNS or blocking adrenaline (epinephrine) receivers in the brain.

Happiness One’s mood colors everything else – memories, assessments of relationships, relative well-being Happiness defined as subjective well being – how happy to you think you are Feel Good, Do Good Phenomena: –The happier you are the more likely you are to help others.

Happiness Examples happiness set point (50% heritable). happiness hovers in a range around that point independent of life circumstances. –If something extremely bad happens or extremely good, you eventually rebound back to your range. –Ex: Two years later, the relative happiness of accident paraplegics and lottery winners is the same.

Money and Happiness Money does not buy happiness. –There is no relationship between money and happiness, with the exception of the desperately poor in impoverished countries (basic needs?) Money only buys a temporary surge of happiness – remember set point

Changing materialism of entering collegians

Subjective well-being (self-perception)

Adaptation-level Principle tendency to judge various stimuli relative to our own previous experiences. –If circumstances change, within months you recalibrate your level and then emotionally judge experiences relative to the new circumstance.

Adaptation-level Principle For material wealth to increase, relative-well being would require an ever increasing abundance. Think about the Amish, never had, never missed.

Relative Deprivation Principle We compare ourselves to others just above and just below us. –So, if everyone gets an A, we’re not as happy as if we got the only A. –If you’re GPA is 3.0, you’ll be happier comparing yourself to 2.0s than 4.0s. –basically someone is always above and always below.

What’s the difference between the relative deprivation and adaptation level principles of happiness?

Get Happiness!!!! (within your inherited range) flow. Form close meaningful relationships internal-locus of control report being happier. faith in something larger than themselves. Optimism: look on sunny side.

Opponent Process Theory of Emotion When you feel one emotion, you will feel the opposite feeling when resolved –Fear of public speaking, feeling elated after But when the first emotion is repeated, it is less intense and the opponent feeling becomes stronger. –Less scared the next time you speak, stronger feelings of elation when finished

Opponent Process Theory of Emotion Examples: Do drugs, feel good, come down, get depressed. Do more drugs, not as high, come down harder. Exercise? Studying?

Anger Generally triggers are perceived –misdeeds of friends and loved ones. anger-provoking deeds are ones that tend to be willful, unjustified and avoidable. –“It doesn’t have to be this way!”

Anger adaptive for arousing protective reactions maladaptive when it fuels behaviors we later regret.

Anger and Catharsis Displaying anger is not cathartic (cleansing), it increases anger. How so? (OC) The immediate soothing effect it causes becomes positively reinforcing, building anger as habitual response.