COGSCI 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Walter Bradford Cannon, Sympathetic Nervous System, Facial Expression
13 Jun 2018
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Understanding Emotions
Basic Emotions vs. “Higher Cognitive Emotions”
I. Basic Emotions
- Happiness, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust, Surprise
II. Higher Cognitive Emotions
- Love, Awe, Elevation, Pride, Contempt, Jealousy, Moral anger, Guilt, Resentment, etc.
III. Examples
FEAR: Core Features
- Fear Feelings→ Bodily response pattern (hormonal changes, enhanced sympathetic
tone) → Facial expression
IV. Darwin
What explains the reliable co-occurrence of these core features? Darwin said evolution!
- Emotional expressions are innate and “instinctual” - stereotyped, unlearned, and universal in the
species
Takes on Emotion
I. TAKE 1: James-Lange Theory
[Stimulus→ Bodily Response Pattern→ Perception of Body→ FEELING]
- Explanation
- Emotions are accompanied by bodily changes, and we can sense what is going on in our
bodies just as much as we can sense what is going on in the outside world
- Different situations elicit different bodily changes. Each type of emotion has a unique
associated feeling because it arises from sensation of a unique bodily state
- Pros
- Helps to explain the feeling of emotion i.e. what makes “hot” diff from “cold”
- Helps explain why one emotion is different from another
- Cons
- Walter Cannon found that the sympathetic nervous system was:
- unitary - a single profile was generated regardless of whether the stimulus was
an object of fear, anger, hate, etc.
- slow - it occurred well after emotional feelings were thought to occur
II. TAKE 2: Schacter-Singer
[Stimulus→ Bodily Response Pattern→ Conscious Interpretation of Bodily Responses→ FEELING]
- Explanation
- Bodily response patterns may be fairly course-grained (i.e. ???)
- Pros
- G
- Cons
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III. TAKE 3: Standard Appraisal
[Stimulus→ Conscious Interpretation of Situation→ Emotion Effector Program (FEELING)]
- Explanation
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