Disussion 5
Chapter 6
Emotion & Affect
Today’s Outline
Emotions in general
Are men or women more emotional?
Theories of emotion
Misattribution of arousal
Happiness!
What actually makes us happy?
How to increase our level of contentment and avoid common misconceptions about what brings us joy
Anger
Physiological arousal and performance
How do we define emotion?
Emotion: a conscious state that involves an evaluative reaction to something
Mood: a feeling state that is not clearly linked to some event
Affect: hard to define
Can be positive affect (good emotions) or negative affect (bad emotions)
Or can imply automatic, non-conscious emotions
Universal emotions
Are emotions a cultural phenomenon or a consistent, innate human occurrence?
At least these 6 emotions were easily recognized in a meta-analysis of 37 countries and 5 continents
Universal emotions
Those emotions were all posed and exaggerated
It’s harder to tell emotions in the real world across cultures
E.g. Asian Americans tend to regulate their emotions more than non-Asian Americans
That make discerning an Asian American’s mood more difficult
Even within one’s own culture, it can be challenging
Adults learn to hide their emotions well
Discerning emotions
How good are you at discerning happiness?
Which of Julia Robert’s smiles indicate genuine happiness?
Discerning emotions
Which did you guess and why?
The answer is the picture on the right!
Duchenne smile:
Contracted muscles around the eye, which raises the smile into more of a V or raises the cheeks
The smile is more open as well
Let’s look at some more examples
Discerning emotions
Sex differences in emotions
6 basic emotions were similar across cultures, but what about between the sexes?
Who is more emotional?
The stereotype would say women, but does that hold up to empirical scrutiny?
Sex differences in emotions
Several studies that have used different methodologies, such as self-report data or being hooked up to instruments that measure physiological arousal, have found:
No differences based on sex
Other studies have found differences but only in specific, limited situations
Young male children are more emotional
Men at work feel more anger
Men fall into love faster and experience more distress upon breaking up
Sex differences in emotions
If anything then, men are more emotional
The stereotype of men being cool and rational may exist as a standard to help regulate potentially volatile, strong male emotions
Let’s back up and review some of the general theories of emotions
Theories of Emotion
James-Lange Theory of Emotion
Common sense says, ‘See a bear, feel afraid’
Stimulus then emotional response
Their theory:
See bear, physiological arousal kicks in (elevated heart rate), feel fear
Theories of Emotion
James-Lange Theory of Emotion
Support for this theory:
Facial feedback hypothesis
Participants who held a pen in their teeth and then watched cartoons rated them as more funny/enjoyable
It forces the facial muscles into a smile which leads to happy feelings
Participants who held the pen between their lips (mimicking a frown) rated the cartoons as less funny
Beyond that though there wasn’t much empirical support for this theory
Theories of Emotion
Cannon-Bard theory of emotion
A stimulus is present, then someone simultaneously has information relayed to the cortex (which determines the emotion) and the hypothalamus (which sets off the physiological response)
The thalamus is the way station that sends those two signals
Theories of Emotion
Schachter-Singer Theory of Emotion
Has influenced many studies in social psychology
You see a snake (stimulus), you simultaneously have physiological arousal (more air in the lungs) and attach a cognitive label to the situation (fear), then you experience fear in full
TV analogy, arousal is the volume, fear is the channel switch, and experiencing fear is watching the program
Misattribution of Arousal
The Schachter-Singer theory of emotion allows for the physiological arousal to be mislabeled with the wrong emotion
Dutton & Aron (1974) suspension bridge study
Misattribution of Arousal
The researchers surveyed male participants who were crossing that scary bridge (which apparently wobbled and had low hand rails)
At the other end was an attractive women who surveyed them and then tore off a piece of the paper and wrote her number on it, asking them to call her
Participants in the scary bridge condition were more likely to call her, compared to the control condition (a small, normal bridge further up the river)
In both conditions though the woman was the same
Misattribution of Arousal
The researchers claimed the male participants experienced physiological arousal from the fear of crossing the bridge, which was then misattributed to being attracted to the female confederate
The problem is:
No other studies have been able to replicate the notion that a negative emotion can be misattributed to a positive one (or vice versa)
Positive to positive or negative to negative, yes
Reinterpretation of bridge study: participants felt relief or triumph and that was misattributed to attraction
Other disconnects between mind/arousal
How in tune are people with their body? Is the mind on the same page as one’s genitals?
Unfortunately for many women, the answer is no
The correlation between stated mental arousal and physical arousal is only .25
For men it’s better, .60
In other studies on the disconnect between mind and sexual arousal, there have been some hilarious results…(see next slide)
Other disconnects between mind/arousal
In a study by Adams, Wright, & Lohr (1996), male participants were asked to rate their thoughts feelings about homosexuality
Participants then watched a video showing gay sex scenes
Participants were hooked up to a penile plethysmograph, which measures sexual arousal
Ironically, those men with the most anti-gay attitudes were the ones most turned on by the videos…
Other disconnects between mind/arousal
A similar but slightly different study was conducted by other researchers on female participants
The participants were hooked up to a vaginal plethysmograph, which measured vaginal lubrication
The women who reported the highest levels of guilt about sex were the ones who were the most turned on by the videos
They even stated they did not enjoy the films
Happiness!
Thus far we’ve covered general theories of emotion and arousal, but let’s focus on a specific one – happiness
After all, what’s the point of psychology if not to understand how to all live happier lives and enjoy our time on this planet?
Understanding Happiness
One of the most crucial concepts for understanding our own happiness is the hedonic treadmill
The idea here is that life always goes up and down and you will return to your default level of happiness
E.g. lottery winners are back to their pre-win levels of happiness in < 1 year
And to some extent, even after bad events, like serious accidents, people return to near pre-accident levels of happiness
But negative events take longer to return to baseline from than fortunate events
Understanding Happiness
Similarly, some objective indicators have been found to predict happiness but their effect sizes are quite weak:
Being healthy
Having a happy marriage
Career success or Having enough money
Studies I’ve read show that earning money up to 60,000 a year increases happiness, but the gains in happiness beyond 60k are negligible
Kids are a surprising exception, they make parents unhappier. But people do see their life as more meaningful when they have kids
Understanding Happiness
So you’re probably thinking “Ok ok, so if winning the lotto doesn’t make us happy and the usual objective life goals don’t make us much happier, than what does make us happy?”
One thing that does is – subjective life goals
Doing what is really important to you, doing what you love
But more importantly, what really predicts happiness is just your overall default disposition!
Are you a happy, positive person?
Were you happy 10 years ago? Past happiness is a strong predictor of future happiness
Increasing our happiness
No matter whether you have thus far been happy or unhappy, there are things you can do to be happier and more content
Indeed many researchers have estimated we have at least 40% control over our own happiness:
Increasing our happiness
Things you can do to be happier
1. Seek to form strong, meaningful, trusting social bonds, with your partner, your family, & friends
Around 3-5 good friends is a number to shoot for
Social support is consistently an extremely strong predictor of health and happiness
Fits with all we know about social psychology; we are truly social animals
2. Physical arousal is key for mood/affect regulation
Exercising is directly tied to reducing feelings of depression and anxiety
When we become inactive it’s like our animal brain begins to freak out
Increasing our happiness
Do things that feel good, e.g. eat tasty things, nap and relax, play, listen to music
Pursue your subjective goals
Thankfulness, this can’t be overstated.
- Constantly reflect on or make lists of all the good things
in your life or the good things that have happened to you. And if you’re religious or spiritual, praying about how blessed your life is. Maintaining an optimistic mindset
Take-home points: happiness
Remember, if you think you’ll be happy when you get married, land that dream job, get rich, etc…you won’t be. That’s just the hedonic treadmill and you’ll inevitably drift back to baseline.
Therefore, adjust your baseline level of happiness. Be happy just because; for no reason. Or simply because the world is beautiful
You have control over your own happiness
It’s up to you to build a thankful, optimistic mindset and a healthy life filled with loving relationships
Understanding Anger
Anger is a strange emotion, it seems to serve little purpose in our everyday lives
It prepares us to fight, but how often do we do that?
Anger kind of seems like a relic of our evolutionary past
One theory is that we get angry because we want to resolve conflicts in relationships we care about
If we didn’t care about the relationship, we would probably just express contempt and just not interact with the person who made us angry any more
Understanding Anger
There are many drawbacks to anger:
Repressed anger often leads to heart disease
Many studies have shown angry people make extremely bad decisions…like really dumb (Leith & Baumeister, 1996)
Paradoxically, angry people tend to be way more optimistic than depressed or anxious people
Similarly, angry people are also typically very energized and ready to take action
Anger makes people feel powerful
But none of that leads to correct choices/decision-making
Anger makes our decisions impulsive and we fail to into account negative consequences
Understanding other Emotions
Take-home point about anger:
If you play sports or games to win, avoid anger, you’ll just make very bad choices
Also the idea of catharsis doesn’t pan out in research studies
If you go hit a punching bag to ‘cool off’, you don’t cool off, you’re more likely to stay mad.
As we don’t have time to cover each emotion, let’s just consider generally the relationship between arousal and different good/bad emotions
Understanding Emotions
As we can see, some emotions are similar on arousal level but have the completely opposite emotional valence
As if they’re mirror images, e.g. alarm and excitement
Arousal & Performance
Regardless of the emotion we ascribe to it, what can we learn about the general presence of physiological arousal and its effect on us?
*Classic study, Yerkes-Dodson
Some arousal is good, it increases oxygen to brain & muscles and it focuses our attention
But too much is bad, leads to anxiety
Emotional Intelligence
The final topic we’ll touch on for emotions is emotional intelligence
We always talk about IQ, but what about EQ?
What good does it do someone to be a genius, but so depressed that he/she is unmotivated to get outta bed or work?
Emotional intelligence is defined as:
“The ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate one’s emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth”
Emotional Intelligence
EQ is a popular topic among businesses
In the Harvard Business Review, an article on EQ attracted more interest than any other article in last 40 years
Validated scales have developed to measure one’s EQ
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
Emotional intelligence is correlated with success in fortune 400 insurance companies
People with high EQ held higher positions, received better rankings from peers, etc.
Emotions continued
We’ll be continuing to explore emotions to some degree as we look into stress, coping, aggression & antisocial behavior, and prosocial/helping behavior.