C13: Emotion

• Emotion is the response of a whole involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors and conscious experience
• Two theories of emotions: James-Lang Theory and Cannon-Bard Theory
• James-Lang theory is our experience with emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to an emotion-arousing stimulus
• Cannon-Bard theory is the emotion-arousing stimulus that simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion
• Schacter's two-factor theory is to experience emotion one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal
• Spill over-effect is the tendency for one's emotions to affect how other people around them feel (eg. when we feel happy, more willing to help others)
• We cannot easily see differences in emotions from tracking heart rate, breathing and perspiration; facial expressions and brain activity can vary with the emotion
• Robert Zajonc, along with Ledoux, emphasized that some emotional responses are immediate before any conscious appraisal
• Richard Lazarus also emphasized that our appraisal and labeling of events also determines out emotional responses
• Two Dimensions of Emotion include Pleasant relaxation, Joy, Sadness and Fear Anger
• Pleasant relaxation and Joy are both positive emotions
• Pleasant relaxation and Sadness both have low arousal levels and more dopamine levels
• Joy and Fear Anger both have high arousal levels
• Sadness and Fear Anger are both negative emotions
• Emotions are generated from several interwoven networks in the brain; causing emotions to happen
• Facial feedback theory is basic emotion that is associated with a unique facial expression
• Carol Izzard came up with 10 basic emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger, Surprise, Intra/Excitement, Shame, Guilt and Contempt
• 3 basic emotions include: fear, anger and happiness
• Fear is our adaptive, helpful and inborn based or leaned response
• If there was damage to the Amygdala, one would stop having fear
• If there was damage to the Hypothalamus, one would feel fear with no understanding as of why
• Anger is a readily and adaptive emotion that produces many hormones
• Anger is easy to read despite not knowing a certain language and can be see in one's eyes
• Happiness is related to serotonin and the Feel Good, Do Good phenomenon
• Feel-Good, Do-Good phenomenon is the tendency to be helpful when in a good mood