7.2 (Emotions)

• The three responses of an organism is physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious cognitive experience
• physiological arousal is what happens to our body
• expressive behaviors is how we respond
• conscious cognitive experience is our thoughts and feelings
• The James Lange theory states that physiological arousal comes first, and emotion is awareness to that arousal
• Cannon Bard Theory says that the physiological response and emotion are separate (in the brain) therefore they can occur at the same time
• Schacter singer theory says that one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal to experience emotion
• Misattribution of arousal is when we can wrongly associate our arousal to something else (ex: bridge experiment)
• our emotions exist because they serve an adaptive role and motivate people to respond to stimuli in the environment
• Fear is to react quickly to danger
• Love is to continue genetic line
• Joy is for social bonding
• Richard Lazaurus appraisal theory says that a thought must come before any emotion or physiological arousal
• Zajonc LeDoux theory says that some emotions are quickly activated through a fast pathway
• Paul Ekman says that facial expressions are universal and that we can always detect them
• Cultural difference in emotions is how much we show
• Facial feedback hypothesis says that facial expressions communicate and amplify emotion
• Adaptive level phenomenon is our tendency to form judgements based off a neutral level is defined by our prior experience
• we each have our own baseline of contentment
• relative deprivation is the perception we are worse off relative to lose whom we compare ourselves
• optimal arousal level varies depending on the task
• EEGs show emotions activate different areas of the cortex
• negative emotions are linked to the right hemisphere and positive emotions are linked to the left
• Positive emotions trigger more left frontal lobe activity than the right due to its rich supply of dopamine receptors
• Opponent process theory of emotion views emotions as pairs of opposites, while one is experienced, the other is supressed
• Learning fear is conditioned through experience and observation; which can lead to prejudice
• fear is contagious
• Both genes and experience play a role in our emotional reactivity
• Phobias are intense fears that fall outside the average range
• anger is recognized more quickly bc of potential threat
• Catharsis hypothesis says that releasing aggressive energy relieves aggressive urges
• The feel good do good phenomenon is people’s tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood
• altruism is like the feel good do good phenomenon
• Subjective well being is self perceived happiness and satisfaction of life
• we overestimate the duration of our emotions and underestimate our capacity to adapt