PSYB10H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Ibm 7090, Construals, Soltyrei
Textbook Notes PSYB10 Lec 5
Chapter #6
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Chapter # 6 - Eotio
Characterizing Emotion
- Emotions: A brief, specific response, both psychological and physiological, that helps
people meet goals, many of which are social.
- Usually an emotion lasts for seconds or minutes, not hours or days
- Facial expressions of emotion typically last for 1–5 seconds
- Many physiological responses that accompany emotion—sweaty palms, blushing,
increased blood pressure—last dozens of seconds or minutes
- In contrast, moods, such as feeling irritable or blue, can last for hours and even days
- Philosophes all the fous of a eotioal epeiee its itetioal ojet.
- Emotions also help us achieve our social goals, in terms of responding to specific
challenges and opportunities involving interactions with other people
- Gratitude motivates us to reward others for their generosity.
- Guilt prompts us to make amends when we have harmed someone.
- Anger impels us to right social wrongs and restore justice
The Components of Emotion
- First component is what gives ride to emotions initially Appraisal process: A component
of emotion; patterns of construal for evaluating events and objects in the environment
based on their relation to current goals.
- Appraisal processes initiate emotions.
- Once under way, emotions involve distinct physiological responses, such as the blush
response of embarrassment or goosebumps that accompany awe, as well as activation
of neurotransmitter systems in the brain
- Emotions also involve expressive behavior, the focus of the next section, and subjective
feelings, the qualities that define what the experience of a particular emotion is like,
described with words, metaphors, and narratives
- emotions move us toward specific actions and behaviors
- Action tendencies constitute the fifth component of emotion
o Without emotions, we would be inactive, lost in thought.
Looking back:
Emotions are brief, specific, multidimensional experiences that help people meet their (often
social) goals. Emotions involve five components: the appraisal process, physiological responses,
expressive behavior, subjective feelings, and action tendencies. Emotions guide our behavior
and lead to action, enabling us to respond to the threats and opportunities we perceive in the
environment.
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Textbook Notes PSYB10 Lec 5
Chapter #6
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Emotional Expression: Universal and Culturally Specific
- An evolutionary approach to emotion proposes that the components of emotion—an
appraisal process, physiological responses, expressive behavior, subjective feelings, and
action tendencies—enable adaptive reactions to survival-related threats and
oppotuities all people fae… the ould e uiesal
- A cultural approach assumes that emotions are strongly influenced by the values, roles,
institutions, and socialization practices that vary across cultures
Darwin and Emotional Expression
- The science of emotional expression begins with the observations of Charles Darwin, in
his own musings about where emotions come from
- After his travels aboard the HMS Beagle, Darwin published The Expression of Emotions
in Man and Animals in 1872, detailing his evolutionary perspective on emotional
expression
- Dai’s detailed aalsis geeated thee hpotheses aout eotioal epessio.
o Posits universality
▪ Because all humans have used the same 30-40 facial muscles to
communicate similar emotions in our evolutionary past, people in all
cultures should communicate and perceive emotion in a similar fashion
o Because humans share an evolutionary history with other mammals, most
recently primates, our emotionally expressive behaviors should resemble those
of other species.
▪ In support of this thesis, Darwin drew fascinating parallels between
human emotion and the behaviors of animals in the London Zoo, as well
as those of his dogs at home.
o Darwin argued that blind individuals, lacking the rich visual input a culture
provides related to how to display emotion, will still show expressions similar to
those of sighted people because the tendency to express emotions in specific
ways has been encoded by evolutionary processes.
The Universality of Facial Expression
Cross Cultural Research on Emotional Expression
- To test Dai’s uiesalit hpothesis, Eka ad Fiese took oe tha ,
photographs of people trained in nonverbal expression, such as actors, as they
portrayed anger, disgust, fea, happiess, sadess, ad supise aodig to Dai’s
descriptions of these expressions
- They then presented photos of these expressions to people in Japan, Brazil, Argentina,
Chile, and the United States, who selected from six emotion terms the one that best
matched the feeling the person appeared to be showing in each photo.
- Across these five cultures, accuracy rates were typically 70–90 percent for the six
emotions
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Textbook Notes PSYB10 Lec 5
Chapter #6
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- Critics of the Ekman and Friesen study were unconvinced. They noted a fundamental
flaw in this study: the participants had all been exposed to Western media, and
therefore might have learned how to identify the expressions through that exposure
- The investigators thus faced a stiff challenge: to find a culture that had little or no
exposure to Westerners or to Western media.
- To accomplish this goal, Ekman traveled to Papua New Guinea to study the Fore
(pronounced FOR-ay), an isolated hill tribe living in preindustrial, hunter-gatherer-like
conditions.
- The Foe ho patiipated i Eka’s stud had see o oies o agazies, did not
speak English or pidgin (a combination of English and a native language), had never lived
in Western settlements, and had never worked for Westerners.
- After getting approval for his study from the local witch doctor, Ekman devised an
emotion-appropriate story for each of the six emotions.
- Fo eaple, the sadess sto as: The peso’s hild had died, ad he felt sad.
- For adult participants, he presented photos of three different expressions, along with a
story that matched one of the expressions, and asked them to match the story to the
appropriate expression (Ekman & Friesen, 1971).
- Here chance guessing would have yielded an accuracy rate of 33 percent
- Fore adults achieved accuracy rates ranging from 68 to 92 percent in judging the six
emotions; the children achieved accuracy rates ranging from 81 to 98 percent.
Emotional Expression in Other Animals
- Dai’s seod lai—that our emotional behaviors and expressions resemble those
of our mammalian relatives—has helped explain their origins in humans.
o chimps show threat displays and emit whimpers that are remarkably similar to
our own displays of anger and sadness
- Interest in the parallels between human and nonhuman expression has helped reveal
why we express embarrassment as we do
o When feeling embarrassed, people shift their gaze down, smile in a self-
conscious way, move their heads down and to the side thus exposing their necks,
and often touch their face or shrug their shoulders
o our expression of embarrassment resembles appeasement displays in other
mammals, often resulting in the effect of short-circuiting conflict and triggering
affiliation
- In humans, embarrassment signals remorse for social transgressions, prompting
forgiveness and reconciliation after someone has violated a social norm
Emotional Expression among the Blind
- Pride is the feeling associated with gaining status through socially valued actions
- The emotion is reliably signaled with dominance-related behaviors seen in other
mammals: expansive posture, chest expansion, head movements up and back, upward
arm thrusts
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