PY 101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Social Comparison Theory, Humanistic Psychology, Leptin

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PY 101
• Professor: Natalie Dautovich

Document Summary

Almost everyone has a sense of what emotion means, but the term is difficult to define precisely. Emotion and mood are often used interchangeably but are different psychologically. Emotions are immediate, specific responses to environmental events. Emotion (sometimes called affect) refers to feelings that involve subjective evaluation, physiological processes, and cognitive beliefs. Everyone feels emotions, but the intensity of emotional reactions varies. Some people report many distinct emotions every day, whereas other report only infrequent and minor emotional reactions. Primary emotions are evolutionarily adaptive, shared across cultures, and associated with specific physical states. Include anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, and possibly surprise and contempt. Arousal is a generic term used to describe physiological activation or increased autonomic responses. Crying results mainly when negative events leave us unable to respond behaviorally to our emotions. Physical changes occur in distinct patterns that translate directly into specific emotinos. Facial feedback hypothesis- facial expressions trigger the experience of emotions, not the other way around.