Chapter 11

• Emotions

  • Short-lived, adaptive responses that support survival towards a specific object or experience
  • Correspond with certain facial expressions and physiological changes, and can influence future behaviour
• Moods


  Long-lasting, less-intense states that aren't affected by a specific object or event
• Sources of Emotions

  • Reinforcement Contingency
  • Intensity of Reinforcer
  • Discriminative Stimuli
  • Unconditioned Reinforcers
  • Conditioned Reinforcers
  • Positive Punishment
  • Negative Reinforcement
• Functions of Emotions

  • Elicitation of hormonal & physiological responses
  • Arbitrary responses for rewards; motivational
  • Communication
  • Social Bonding
  • Mood state of dependency; evaluation of memories
  • Storage of memories
  • Preservation
• Antecedent stimuli signals whether you'll get a reinforcer or punisher for responding
• Emotions keep us responding when they become part of the reinforcement contingency
• Darwin's Three Principles of Emotions

  1. Serviceable Habits
  2. Antithesis
  3. Direct Action of Excited Nervous System on the Body
• Serviceable Habits


  Emphasizes that the way emotions are expressed serves a purpose in non-human animals, but not people
• Antithesis


  Emphasizes how opposite emotions have opposite bodily expressions
• Direct Action of the Excited Nervous System on the Body


  Emphasizes how emotions result in perceivable changes in the nervous system
• 7 Basic Emotions Proposed by Paul Ekman

  1. Happiness
  2. Surprise
  3. Fear
  4. Anger
  5. Sadness
  6. Disgust
  7. Contempt
• Action Unit


  Describes how each emotion has a specific facial expression that we can detect
• 4 Culturally & Universally Recognized Facial Expressions

  1. Happy
  2. Anxious
  3. Surprised
  4. Disgusted
• Language is important for processing emotions since people primarily use the left hemisphere to categorize facial expressions
• Emotional Contagion


  When one person observes & then experiences the same emotion as the other person
• Conditioned Emotional Response Procedure


  Process of linking an emotional response, through classical conditioning, to a neutral stimulus
• Ontogeny 


  Describes how an individual develops over a lifetime
• Ontogenic Learning


  Involves the animal-environment interactions specific to an individual
• Hoarding


  Refers to instances in which things that don't need to be stored are
• Behavioural Sequence Animals Perform in Caching

  1. Carry food to specific place & inspect the area
  2. Paw at chosen location
  3. Dig a hole to store food
  4. Tamps or head motions with the nose touching the site
  5. Scoops or head motions involving the nose scooping soil & leaves over site
• Coolidge Effect


  Occurs when an animal that has multiple mate-pairings with the same partner, & experiences renewed sexual interest in a new partner
• Habituation


  A type of learning in which an animal is exposed to the same stimulus repeatedly and eventually stops responding to the uninformative stimulus
• Dishabituation 


  An effect when an animal is exposed to the same stimulus repeatedly, stops responding to the uninformative stimulus, and responds to the repeated stimulus when there's a change in context, a different stimulus is presented just before it, or there's a rest period without presentation of the repeated stimulus
• Motivation


  Cause of behaviour closely tied to antecedents & consequences of behaviour, as well as internal drive
• Motivational intensity influenced by performance feedback, & not entirely caused by internal mechanisms
• Premack Principle


  A behaviour or activity that has a higher probability of occurring may be used as a reinforcer for a behaviour or activity that has a lower probability of occurring
• Jack Michael (1982) proposed there are more motivating operations that act on the antecedent stimulus, behaviour, & consequence contingency
• Motivating Operations


  Variables that are extended in time & momentarily change the current frequency of behaviour related to a specific reinforcer
• Establishing Operations


  Increases the effectiveness of reinforcers & evoke behaviour related to obtaining them
• Abolishing Operations


  Decrease the effectiveness of reinforcers & behaviour related to obtaining them
• Examples of Motivating Operations

  • Food Deprivation
  • Water Deprivation
  • Oxygen Deprivation
  • Activity Deprivation
  • Sleep Deprivation
  • Sexual Deprivation
  • Becoming too Hot or Cold
  • Increase in Painful Stimuli