Emotions

Question	Answer
emotions	relatively brief, transient experiences brought about by environmental stimuli; emotional responses tend to be uniform across individuals
affect	broad word for emotion, describes more general feelings (arousal, depression)
affective experiences	tend to be valenced; negative cues = hint that something has gone wrong in the environment indicator for things we should pursue (adaptive) and avoid (maladaptive)
emotions can be structures along 2 different dimensions	positive negative activation/arousal
cerebral cortex	area responsible for voluntary action, complex judgment, symbolic thought; new part of brain
limbic system	Emotional experiences and responses are hard wired from evolution and come from this older part of the brain; at odds with the cerebral cortex; something potentially threatening in environment; emotion is useful for rapid and directed response important for survival
Monet vs. Garfield study	Will you hang it up? Why do you like it? Later... Did you hang it up? How much do you like it? Individuals who justified emotional response were less likely to hang it up and like it later; Emotional responses don’t lend themselves well to explanation
ventromedial prefrontal cortex	located in the frontal lobe at the bottom of the cerebral hemispheres and is implicated in the processing of risk and fear; part of brain that processes arousal
misattribution of arousal	brain must guess to understand which stimuli are leading to arousal; this can lead to incorrect attribution of the sources of arousal
Bridge study	men must cross one of 2 types of bridges: stable, rickety opposite side is an attractive woman who gives them her number individuals who walk over rickety bridge were 5x more likely to call her (misattribution of arousal from bridge to woman) Thrill seeking gentlemen more likely to cross dangerous bridge, call woman – selection bias
Who is going to cheat?	o Subjects told they will experience anxiety from sugar pill more likely to cheat o Incorrect source to anxiety
more misattribution	- Hook people up to heart monitor, listen to their heart beat (but really they listen to standard, simulated heartbeat) o Show images of attractive people; o If they think their heart is beating faster, find certain image more attractive
capgras syndrome	Think family members have been replaced by imposters; no longer feel an emotional response when they see their kin; these people should elicit an emotional response but don’t, that’s why people with capgras think the person is an imposter
Phineas Gage	suffered damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex; no longer had capacity to decide whether to act on emotions
How people decide whats adaptive or maladaptive with gambling	Some decks better than others; Losses bigger than gains in long term; Normal people go for green decks; develop understanding of probability; Damage to VMPFC people swayed by big win decks, go for red decks
three features of emotions	- change in brain state - interpretation of feelings - emotional expression/external display
Amygdala reaction to potentially threatening things in environment	2 pathways from thalamus ♣ Low resolution goes straight to amygdala (fast); processes immediate threats in environment we want to rapidly avoid ♣ High resolution goes to cortex then amygdala (slow); actually process the stimuli, higher fidelity; conscious system has time to process/ deregulate other reaction if needed
lesions to amygdala	o Lesion amygdala in rats, they will not learn association between potential threats in environment and need to change behavior o Individual monkeys with damage/lesion to amygdala approach objects previously threatened by; also monkeys didn’t show traditional fear-style emotional detection
people with amygdala damage	People lead relatively normal lives, hold down jobs Not faced with same types of threats our ancestors were faced with; threats are now based on amount of trust we can place in people around us; is amygdala not crucial in determining trustworthiness? it is
separable systems for positive emotions	negative emotion --> disgust in insula o Different chemicals and broad brain circuits for positive emotions; more complicated emotions require more of the brain o Don’t work in discrete regions; widely distributed system throughout entire brain
interpretation of emotion	Violation of a community norm or private standard different cultures have different words for them? Our ability to assign term to it can shade our interpretation of feeling
universality of emotional expression	o Individual with congenital blindness will have similar facial expression o universally recognized across cultures
6 basic emotional expressions	Anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise
Different ways of dealing with emotions in different cultures	Display rules: How and when it is appropriate to display an emotional response; different across cultures
Why express emotions?	(1) Some emotions have an evolutionary advantage: disgust face to avoid getting gross stuff in your eyes and mouth (2) Didn’t always have complex communication system of language: Emotions provide another channel for us to communicate with each other; nonverbal language, Helpful when we are with people who don’t speak same language

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	Created by Sneha Mittal about 8 years ago