PSY234 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Sweet Potato, Cockroach, Hominidae
2 Jun 2018
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Week 11 Lecture – Emotion and Disgust
Lecture outline:
• Motivation and emotion
• Some approaches to emotion
o Darwin
o James-Lange theory
o Cannon-Bard
o Two-Facto Theory of emotion
Motivation and emotion –
• Motivation refers to the ‘why’ of behaviour
• Emotions were regarded as pleasant and unpleasant outcomes of satisfying or
not satisfying motives
• Behaviourists thought that once you have fulfilled a motive (e.g. eaten food),
then you have a satiated feeling (reinforcement) BUT relationship between
motivation and emotion is much more complex than just rewarding our
behaviour (we have a range of emotions)
What are emotions?
• No grand theory = many mini theories
• Definitions tends to highlight aspects of a particular theory
o “Brief, specific psychological and physiological responses that help
humans meet goals, many of which are social” – Gilovich
• Characteristics of emotions:
o Emotions are brief
▪ Facial expression lasts between 1-5 seconds
▪ Autonomic response (e.g. elevated heart rate, changes in
breathing) that accompany emotions last minutes
▪ Recalled emotional events are typically of experiences that
lasted a few minutes (intense anger)
o In contrast, moods (e.g. feeling blue) last hours or days (enduring for
e.g. low negative mood)
o Emotions are specific
▪ We feel emotions about specific people/events (e.g. when we
feel angry, we have a clear sense about what we feel angry
about)
o In contrast, an irritable mood is not so easy to pin down to a cause
o Emotions motivate behaviour
▪ They help us with our goals e.g. anger helps us remedy
perceived injustice, fear prompts fight or flight
o Emotions are social → they promote adaptive functioning within brief
social interactions
▪ Feeling and showing gratitude rewards others for their
cooperative actions
▪ Anger punishes others who have violated social norms to be
cooperative and kind
▪ Guilt keeps us in check when we threaten social bonds
▪ Embarrassment – individuals like you more if you show
embarrassment
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Components of emotions –
• Physiological responses
o Autonomic nervous system (Sympathetic ANS, parasympathetic ANS)
e.g. fight or flight
• Cognitive processes
o Language
o Judgements: feelings as information (Schwartz & Clore, 1983)
▪ Life satisfaction and weather (life satisfaction was greater
amongst sunny weather, compared to overcast weather) –
people often use current feelings to make complex social
judgements
• Expressive behaviours – changing faces; fake and real smiles/happiness →
researchers have found that there are two muscles involved in the true-
felt/genuine smile (hard to fake the activation of muscles for the real smile)
Some approaches to emotion –
• Darwin (1872) – the expression of emotions in man and animals
o Basic continuity from animals to humans (emotional expressions of
anger, fighting, submissiveness)
o Apparent enlargement of body size
o Increase the chance that the animal will survive
o Universality of emotions – we should be able to understand all
emotional expressions, even if we don’t speak the same language
• James-Lange theory of emotion
o Intended to describe the clear-cut physiological emotions (grief, fear,
rage & love)
o Common sense view
▪ Perception → emotional feeling → bodily changes
o James’ view
▪ Perception leads to both → motor reaction AND visceral
arousal → emotional feeling
▪ E.g. see a bear, then you start to run, at the same time you have
increased HR, then only after that you feel the fear → emotions
come AFTER reaction/bodily changes
o Feelings, but not sure why: objectless emotions, so sometimes you feel
an emotional state but you are not sure what is causing it
o “Peripheral” theories - emphasises the autonomic nervous system,
rather than the CNS in the generation of emotion
o Provided the groundwork for much of the modern physiological work
in emotion
• Some of Cannon’s criticisms of James’ theory
o Spinal lesions in animals → emotional reactions persisted, emotional
states still exist even when we lesion animals
o Emotional reactions (physiological) are undifferentiated → being sick
and having a fever can have the same pattern
o Physiological reactions sometimes occur after how you feel e.g. you
get frightened by someone, then your HR increases
o Cannon’s central view:
▪ Perception → hypothalamic arousal leads to both → emotional
feeling AND bodily changes
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• James and Cannon
o Both were right
o Inspired physiological (James) and neurological (Cannon) approaches
to emotion
• Peripheral theory – facial feedback theory
o Laird (1984) – facial feedback hypothesis → emotion is caused by
facial muscles
▪ Laird measured muscle movements on the face of students,
tells the students to contort facial muscles then rate mood states
→ found that he made people happier when he made them do a
smile, angry face = more upset
▪ One of the criticisms = maybe the students knew what you
were doing
o Strack, Martin & Stepper (1988)
▪ Wasn’t clear what the experimenter was doing to participants
▪ Participants put a pen in their mouth in their lips or long ways –
same muscles involved in a smile; thought cartoons were
funnier
▪ Facial expressions are causing the emotion – manipulating face
muscles makes you feel happier
▪ Recent study by Lotter (2008) – looked at fMRI of brain, those
who had botox have less emotional feeling
• Schachter and Singer’s (1962) Two-Factor Theory (peripheral theory,
although agrees with Cannon)
o Emotion experienced by individuals depends largely on the meaning of
the situation to which the person attributes arousal
o 1. Undifferentiated physiological arousal (increased HR)
o 2. Construal of the undifferentiated arousal (label where it’s coming
from) e.g. too much coffee (jittery); anger towards your flat mate
o Study was looking at the effects of suproxin on vision study (this was a
lie)
o Got injected by either adrenaline vs. placebo
o Adrenalin group = informed about the true effects vs. others given no
info
o Then placed in waiting room with euphoric vs. angry confederate
o Those in adrenalin group who were informed of true effects acted
LEAST like the confederate, those not told anything acted MOST like
confederate (placebos not told anything acted moderately like
confederate)
o Those who were informed were overattributed to the injection – so
thought their injection was making them how they feel, rather than the
confederate
Misattribution of arousal
• Many other studies:
o Zillman (1978) → got men to ride exercise bike, increased HR, then
showed cartoons – those riding exercise bike found cartoons funnier
than those who were not. Also showed erotic pictures, found more
attractive than those who did not ride bike
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Lecture outline: motivation and emotion, some approaches to emotion, darwin, james-lange theory, cannon-bard, two-facto theory of emotion. Misattribution of arousal: many other studies, zillman (1978) got men to ride exercise bike, increased hr, then showed cartoons those riding exercise bike found cartoons funnier than those who were not. Lecture outline : what is disgust, disgust and disease avoidance, some of our research, conclusions. Disgust: darwin (1872): experience of revulsion and a characteristic facial expression involving the gape, revulsion at the prospect of oral incorporation of an offensive object . 2003 have found this for body odour: findings are consistent with a disease avoidance account of disgust. Some difficulties for the disease avoidance account of disgust: sex involves intimate contact with basic disgust elicitors. Core (even 2-5 year old respond negatively) i. e. maggots, dirty old socks, snot still care even though they don"t appreciate contamination: 2.
