Emotion and Cognition

Lecture 1: Introduction to emotions

What are emotions?

Distinct states of the mind, displayed early in life (babies/innate).

They are a combination of these components:

1. Phenomenal Experience
2. Physiological Pattern
3. Verbal+ nonverbal expression

Typical expressions are distinct states of the mind, displayed early in life (babies/innate), thus hard-coded

Emotional expression

Many emotions are expressed in the human face. Some emotions are not displayed by the face (jealousy).

There are some ambiguous and some clear expressions of emotion.

According to Paul Ekman there are 6 basic emotional expressions (that can be mixed):

Fear, anger, disgust, joy, neutral, sadness, surprise

“Emotions are universal across cultures” – Paul Ekman

Critics of Ekman

• Russell (1994): “There is low agreement about the classification of expressions”
  • Ecological problem: Real world scenarios not taken into account (Forced-choice response format, within-subject design, preselected photographs of posed facial expressions design was pre-set by Ekman).
  • It doesn’t make sense to make categorical classification of emotions, dimensions make more sense
     
• Elfenbein & Ambady (2002): “Emotions are universal to a limited degree”
  • Minority groups recognize emotional expressions of majority better than the majority group themselves
     
• Friesen & Matsumoto (2000): Display rules shape emotion dependent on culture
  • Japanese people adapted their expressions to hide their negative emotion
  • Emotions are flexile and they may not necessarily reflect true feelings
  • Japanese people tend to display more surprise
     
• Kitayama et al (2000):
  • Positive emotions are important for Americans, and the more positive and the less negative, the better.
  • In Japan,  people who tend to have a lot of positive emotion also have a lot of negative emotion.
  • In Japan, some positive emotions are felt more and considered more important, these are socially engaging emotions, e.g., friendly feeling
     
• Masuda & Nisbett, 2001; Kitayama et al, 2003
  • Japanese made more statements about contextual information and relationships than Americans
     
• Masuda et al., 2008
  • The surrounding people’s emotions influenced Japanese but not Americans’ perceptions of the central person

Why do we have emotions?

• Darwin: They are universal adaptive functions. Natural selection over time played a role in emotion.
• William James: They are body responses to deal with the situation.
• Damasio: Strong bodily response for better memory and better memorization of events when important à later on quick decisions
• Arnold: Appraisal à emotions help to evaluate and make better decisions
• Averill: To create social constructs

Darwin:

Darwin’s theory of emotions mainly focusses on how emotions are represented in expressions

• Principle of serviceable associated habits
  • Purpose during evolution (but not anymore necessarily)
• Principle of antithesis
  • Most emotions have a counterpart. E.g.: disgust <-> sadness
• Principle of expressive habits through the nervous system
  • Distinct reaction by the brain

How to measure emotions?

Questionnaires, introspection, emotional stroop task, physiology…

• Infants: emotions are pure and simple
• Disorders: emotions are uncontrolled or extreme
• Reactions to emotional stimuli
• Record and study expressions
• Cross-cultural research (innate emotions)
• Cross-species

James-Lange theory:

Body reacts first --> then comes the emotion (phenomenal experience)

Testing:

• Changes in body alter emotions
  •  
  • Concealed facial expression of pain in relation to shocks resulted in weaker skin conductance responses and lower subjective ratings of pain
• Cognitive inhibition of body weakens emotions
• Substance-induced bodily changes alter emotions and related neural activity -e.g.: botox study: facial muscles give feedback to your brain

Cannon’s criticism of the James-Lange theory:

• Visceral changes too slow to be source of emotion – this criticism turned out to be FALSE
• Separating body from CNS does not alter emotional behavior in animals - FALSE
• Artificial induction of visceral changes typical for emotions do not produce them (adrenalin) - FALSE
• Relation bodily states – emotional states not 1:1 - TRUE

Cannon’s criticism didn’t lead to the rejection, but to the change of the James-Lange model

 Schachter’s two-factor theory

There is an interaction between physical arousal and how we cognitively label that arousal

• Context and expectations can alter emotions/feelings
• Acknowledge that emotional experience largely depends on bodily changes
• thus, physiological changes precede emotional experience
• also, some cognition/appraisal precede emotional experience
• but, bodily changes are not solely responsible for emotions
• Arousal must be interpreted

Testing Schachter’s hypothesis:

• Series of electric shocks
  • Group1: was told that the pill given will cause arousal symptoms
  • Group2: was told that the pill given will do nothing
• Anticipating the symptoms made subjects tolerate the shock’s pain (four times less amperage). Thus, people who took the pill attributed much of the unpleasantness of the shock to the pill instead
• Emotion = Arousal + Cognitive component

Models of emotion

Plutchik's Psychoevolutionary Theory:

• Few (8) basic emotions
• Polar opposites
• Vary in intensity
• Remaining emotions derived/mixed
• Mapped onto adaptive behaviors

Ortony & Turner (1990):

• There is no objective way to investigate which emotions are basic
• Neuroscience cannot fully dissociate emotion categories
• Disagreement which are basic due to vagueness of language
• Disagreement which are basic due to hierarchies
• Disagreement whether emotions have to have a valence

Emotion Dimensions

Dimensions are better than categories when it comes to investigating emotions

Ratings are subjective but calculating the dimensions is an objective method

With help of the mean difference score one can find underlying constructs/dimensions

Main emotion dimensions:

• Arousal (+ high vs. – low)
• Valence (+ positive vs. - negative)
• Goals (+ reward vs. - punishment)
• Active vs. passive (+ delivery, - omission)
• Probability of the goal (certainty/predictability)

Theories of Feldman Barrett

Conceptual Act Model: "anger," "sadness," "fear," … are not basic building blocks in the mind, but are mental events that result from the interplay of more basic psychological systems that are not themselves specific to emotion.

Psychological construction approach: Think how basic ingredients like flour, water, and yeast can combine to make diverse foods that look and taste very different from one another. Emotions are constructed in much the same way from basic mental ingredients.

“Emotions are learned or socially constructed and not given to us by nature” (Barret)