AP Psychology - Unit 7 Christian Hernandez
Module 56 + 57 Motivation, Emotion, and Personality
Module 56: Theories and
Physiology of Emotion
What is emotion? A response of the whole organism, involving physiological arousal,
expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.
How do the three pieces fit Emotion research considers two big questions:
together?
Does your bodily arousal come before or after your emotional feelings?
How do thinking (cognition) and feeling interact? Does cognition always come
before emotion?
Historical emotion theories, as well as current research, have sought to answer
these questions.
What is the James-Lange theory The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological
of emotion? responses to an emotion-arousing stimulus: stimulus leads to arousal which
leads to emotion
How did Walter Cannon disagree Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon and his graduate student Philip Bard
with the James-Lange theory of disagreed with the
emotion? James-Lange theory.
They asked:
“Does a racing heart signal fear or anger or love?”
The body’s responses—heart rate, perspiration,
and body temperature—are too similar, and they change too slowly, to cause the
different emotions.
What is the Cannon-Bard The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers
thalamic theory of emotion? (1) physiological responses and
(2) the subjective experience of
emotion
What is the thalamus? The thalamus, at the top of the brain stem, is the brain’s sensory control center.
How does the Cannon-Bard The Cannon-Bard theory suggests that stimulation/arousal and emotion are a
thalamic theory explain emotion? combined response to a stimulus.
After exposure to a stimulus, sensory signals are transmitted to the thalamus.
Once the thalamus receives the signal, it relays the information to two
structures: the amygdala and the brain cortex.
How are the amygdala and the The amygdala is responsible for the instantaneous emotional response (fear,
sympathetic nervous system rage, etc.) and the cerebral cortex directs the response.
involved in emotion?
Simultaneously, the sympathetic nervous system sends signals to muscles and
other parts of the body, causing them to tense or prepare for fight-flight or
freeze.
James-Lange theory and Cannon- James-Lange Theory: Physiological responses occur first and are the cause of
Bard theory emotions.
Cannon-Bard theory: The emotional and the physical response occur
simultaneously - one is not dependent upon the other.
How do thinking and feeling The James-Lange theory and the Cannon-Bard theory both take into account
interact? physiological responses and the interplay with emotion.
But how does cognition factor in to the theory of emotion?
Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer demonstrated that how we appraise
(interpret) our experiences also matters.
What is the Schachter-Singer Our physical reactions and our thoughts (perceptions, memories, and
Two-Factor theory of emotion? interpretations) together create emotion.
In Schachter and Singer’s two-factor theory, emotions have two ingredients:
physical arousal and cognitive appraisal.
An emotional experience, they argued, requires a conscious interpretation of
arousal.
What is the spillover effect? Arousal spills over from one event to the next.
Does cognition have to precede Must we always interpret our arousal before we can experience an emotion?
emotion? Psychologist Robert Zajonc didn’t think so.
He contended that we actually have many emotional reactions apart from, or
even before, our conscious interpretation of a situation.
What is the “high road”? Some complex emotions like hatred and love travel a “high road.” A stimulus
following this path would travel via the thalamus to the brain’s cortex.
There, it would be analyzed and labeled before the response command is sent
out, via the amygdala
What is the “low road”? Some simple emotions such as likes, dislikes, and fears take what Joseph
LeDoux called the more direct “low road,” a neural shortcut that bypasses the
cortex.
Following the low road, a fear-provoking stimulus would travel from the eye or
ear, via the thalamus, directly to the amygdala
Schachter-Singer vs. Zajonc- Schachter-Singer: Our appraisal and labeling of events also determine our
LeDoux emotional responses.
Zajonc-LeDoux: Some emotional responses are immediate, before any
conscious appraisal.
What are the basic emotions? When surveyed, most emotion scientists agreed that anger, fear, disgust,
sadness, and happiness are basic human emotions.
How does the sympathetic The SNS directs your adrenal glands to release epinephrine (adrenaline) and
division of the ANS activate the norepinephrine (noradrenaline), the liver pours extra sugar into the bloodstream,
body in a crisis? respiration, heart rate and blood pressure increase,
digestion slows, pupils dilate, perspiration increases, and blood clots more
quickly.
Can one brain region be Yes. Consider the insula, a neural center deep inside the brain.
responsible for different The insula is activated when we experience various negative social emotions,
emotions? such as disgust, lust and pride.
In brain scans, it becomes active when people bite into some disgusting food,
smell disgusting food,
think about biting into a disgusting cockroach, or feel moral disgust over a
sleazy business
exploiting a saintly widow.
Do different emotions trigger Observers watching fearful faces showed more amygdala activity than did other
different brain circuits? observers who watched angry faces.
Depression-prone people, and those with generally negative perspectives, have
shown more right frontal lobe activity.
People with positive personalities have shown more activity in the left frontal
lobe than in the right.
How effective are polygraphs in Polygraphs measure emotion-linked autonomic arousal, as reflected in changed
using body states to detect lies? breathing, heart rate, and perspiration.
Are polygraphs reliable? If these polygraph experts had been the judges, more than one-third of the
innocent would have been declared guilty, and nearly one-fourth of the guilty
would have gone free.
Module 57: Expressing emotion?
How do we communicate To Westerners, a firm handshake conveys an outgoing, expressive personality.
nonverbally? A glance can communicate intimacy, while darting eyes may signal anxiety.
When two people are passionately in love, they typically spend time—quite a
bit of time—gazing into each other’s eyes.
A silent language of emotion? Hindu classic dance uses the face and body to effectively convey 10 different
emotions.
Can humans detect nonverbal We readily sense subliminally presented
threats? negative words, such as snake or bomb.
A single angry face will “pop out” of a crowd
How can experience sensitize us In experiments using a series of faces that morph from anger to fear, physically
to particular emotions? abused children are much quicker than other children to spot the signals of
anger.
How does experience influence Shown a face that is 50 percent fear and 50 percent anger, abused children are
our perception of emotion? more likely to perceive anger than fear.
Abused childrens’ perceptions
become sensitively attuned to glimmers of danger that non-abused children
miss.
How readily can we detect deceit? Despite our brain’s emotion-detecting skill, we find it difficult to discern deceit.
The behavioral differences between liars and truth tellers are too minute for
most people to
detect.
Looking at 206 studies, people were just 54 percent accurate in discerning truth
from lies—barely better than a coin toss.
What is a Duchenne smile?
Raised cheeks and activated muscles under the eyes, called a Duchenne smile.
How is modern texting impacted
by absence of emotion? The absence of expressive emotion can make for ambiguous emotion in
electronic communications.To partly remedy that, we often embed visual cues
to emotion in our messages. Without the vocal nuances that signal whether our
statement is serious, kidding, or sarcastic, We are in danger of what
developmental psychologist Jean Piaget called egocentrism, by failing to
perceive how others interpret our “just kidding” message.
What research has been
conducted on gender and Researchers Kring and Gordon asked male and female students to watch film
emotion? clips that were sad (children with a dying parent), happy (slapstick comedy), or
frightening (a man nearly falling off the
ledge of a tall building).
Is interpreting facial expressions
an adaptive? Darwin argued that in prehistoric times, before our
ancestors communicated in words, they communicated threats, greetings, and
submission with facial expressions.
Their shared expressions helped them survive.
How does culture impact the
amount of expression? Individualistic cultures, as in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and
North America, display visible emotions.
Collectivist cultures, as in Japan and China, often have less visible emotional
displays.
The mouth, often so expressive in North Americans, conveys less emotion in a
Japanese person than do the telltale eyes.
How do facial expressions
influence our feelings? A hearty smile—made not just with the mouth but with raised cheeks that
crinkle the eyes—enhances positive feelings even more when you are reacting
to something pleasant or funny.
When smiling, people more quickly understand sentences that describe pleasant
events.
What is the behavior feedback
effect? The tendency of behavior to influence our own and others’ thoughts, feelings,
and actions
Module 56 Summary Emotions are psychological responses of the whole organism involving an
interplay among physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious
experience. Caroll Izard’s 10 basic emotions are joy, interest/excitement,
surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt. The large-
scale body changes that accompany fear, and anger, and sexual arousal are very
similar (increased perspiration, breathing, and heart rate), though they feel
different. Emotions may be similarly arousing, but some subtle physiological
responses, such as facial muscle movements, distinguish them.
Module 57 Summary Much of our communication is through body movements, facial expressions,
and voice tones. Even seconds-long filmed slices of behavior can reveal
feelings. Women tend to read emotional cues more easily and to express more
empathy. The meaning of gestures varies with culture, but facial expressions,
such as those of happiness and fear, are common the world over. Research on
the facial feedback effect shows that our facial expressions can trigger
emotional feelings and signal our body to respond accordingly. We also mimic
others’ expressions, which helps us empathize.
