EMOTION

EMOTION
- A conscious mental reaction subjectively experienced as strong feeling
usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by
physiological and behavioral changes in the body.
- Complex, multicomponent episode that creates a readiness to act.

SIX COMPONENTS OF EMOTION (Cognitive Appraisal, Subjective

Experience, Thought and Action Tendencies, Internal Bodily Changes, Facial
Expression, Responses to Emotion)
1. COGNITIVE APPRAISAL
- Typically where emotion begins.
- a person's assessment of the personal meaning of his or her current
circumstances.
2. SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE
- Component that we most frequently recognized.
- The affective state or feeling tone that colors private experience.
3. THOUGHT AND ACTION TENDENCIES
- Urges to think or act in particular ways.
4. INTERNAL BODILY CHANGES
- Autonomic nervous system (controls the heart and and other smooth
muscles)
- physiological responses such as changes in heart rate and sweat gland
activity.
5. FACIAL EXPRESSION
- Muscle contractions that move facial landmarks (cheeks, lips, nose,
brows) into a particular configurations.
6. RESPONSES TO EMOTION
- How people regulate, react to, or cope with their own emotion or the
situation that triggered it.

COGNITIVE APPRAISALS
- Interpretation process.
- personal interpretation of a situation made by an individual to stimuli in
the environment.
 - Person-environment relationship (refers to the objective situation in
which a person finds herself - her current circumstances in the world, or
in relation to others)

DISCOVERY OF APPRAISALS
TWO-FACTOR THEORY OF EMOTIONS
- Scachter and Singer (1962)
- Suggested that if people could be induced to be in a general state of
autonomic arousal, the quality of their emotion would be determined
solely by their appraisal of the situation.
- Emotions were thought to result from the combinations of two factors -
an initial state of unexplained arousal plus a cognitive explanation for
that arousal.
- Misattribution of Arousal (process whereby people make a mistake in
assuming what is causing them to feel aroused.)

THEMES AND DIMENSIONS OF APPRAISALS

• All appraisal theories are alike in that they suggest that people’s appraisal of
situations lead to the subjective experience of emotion, the arousal associated
with it and other components of the emotional response.
1.) MINIMALIST APPRAISAL THEORIES
- There are certain fundamental human transactions that yield specific
emotions.
- According to Richard Lazarus, these fundamental transactions are
called core relational themes.
- Core relational themes represent the personal meaning that results from
a particular pattern of appraisals about a specific person-environment
relationship.

2.) DIMENSIONAL APPRAISAL THEORIES

- concerned with specifying the various dimensions of appraisal and the
emotional consequences of those dimension.
- One dimension is the desirability of an anticipated event; another is
whether the event occurs.
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS APPRAISAL
- Much debate among emotion theorists has centered on whether the
appraisal process necessary occurs consciously and deliberately. Some
have argued that emotions can occur without any preceding conscious
thought (Zajonc, 1984).
- This sort of studies suggest that appraisals can occur at unconscious
levels making people experience emotions for reasons unknown to them.
- The cognitive appraisals within emotion processes are similar to other
forms of cognition. They result in part from automatic processing, outside
conscious awareness, and in part from controlled processing, of which we
are aware.

APPRAISALS IN THE BRAIN

AMYGDALA – a small, almond-shaped mass that is located in the lower brain
and is known to register emotional reactions.
 Amygdala received all its inputs from the cortex. those inputs always
involved conscious appraisal.
 Connections between sensory channels and the amygdala that do not go
through the cortex maybe the biological basis of unconscious appraisals.
 The amygdala is capable of responding to an alarming situation before
the cortex does, which suggests that sometimes we can experience
animotion before we know why.
 Criminals with antisocial personality disorder, show less activation in the
amygdala during emotional processing the normal criminals or non
criminals providing neurological evidence for an emotion-elated deficit.

SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE AND EMOTION

 To say that subjective experiences are a component of the emotion
process does not mean that all emotion experiences come with this
component. Researchers have argued persuasively that emotions can
occur without any conscious feelings at all.
 What function do these inner feelings serve? A prominent view is that
this feelings served as feedback about the personal relevance of our
current circumstances.
FEELINGS MODIFY ATTENTION AND LEARNING
 We tend to pay more attention to events that fit our current feelings than
two events that do not. As a consequence, we learn more about the events
that fit, or are congruent, with our feelings.

FEELINGS MODIFY EVALUATIONS AND JUDGEMENTS

 Our feelings can affect our evaluation of other people.
 Our feelings affect our evaluation of inanimate objects.
 Our feelings also affect our judgement.

THOUGHT AND ACTION TENDENCIES AND EMOTION

Action Tendency - an urge to carry out certain expressive or instrumental
behaviors that is linked to a specific emotion.
 One way that feelings guide behavior and information processing is
through the urges that accompany them.

BODILY CHANGES AND EMOTIONS

 When we feel certain emotions strongly, like fear anger, we could notice
a variety of physical changes like a quick heartbeat and respiration.
 Many psychological changes takes place during emotional arousal result
from activation of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous
system.
 The sympathetic nervous system prepares body for emergency action and
this responsible for the following changes:
1. blood pressure and heart rate increase
2. respiration becomes more rapid
3. the pupils dilate
4. perspiration increases while the secretion of saliva and mucus
decreases
5. blood sugar level increases to provide more energy
6. the blood more quickly in case of wounds
7. blood is diverted from the stomach and intestine to the brain and
skeletal muscles
 8. the hairs on the skin become erect, causing goose pimples.
 The sympathetic nervous system thus gears up the organism for energy
output. As the emotion subsides, the parasympathetic system - takes over
and returns the organism to its normal state.
 The undoing effect of positive emotions
1. Positive emotions appear to have an undoing effect on lingering
negative emotional arousal

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND EMOTION

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS - associated with basic emotions show high cross-
cultural recognition.
 it accompanies a subset of emotions have universal meaning.
 the communicative power of facial expressions is evident in parent-infant
interaction.

FACIAL FEEDBACK HYPOTHESIS

1. Thalamus release stimuli to internal organs and cortex simultaneously.
2. Physical changes and emotional experience occur at the same time.
 Example: A person sees a spider. According to the Cannon-Bard Theory,
the person would begin to shake and simultaneously appraise the shaking
behavior as fear. The spider makes the shake and feel afraid.

RESPONSES TO EMOTION: EMOTIONAL REGULATION

EMOTIONAL REGULATION
- process of coping the emotions by modifying emotional reactions in a
attempt to accomplish a goal.
- this is about proper management of emotions which may include
channeling and expressing our emotions in ways which are acceptable to
others.
- it is an healthy and unwise to keep your emotions to yourself or to choose
to move away people who cost you disappointment without letting him
know why you are behaving as such as this may expressed psychosomatic
illness.
EMOTIONS, GENDER AND CULTURE
 Emotion vary by gender and culture perhaps most typically at the front
end of the emotion process and the back end of the emotion process.
 Many gender differences can be linked to gender stereotypes about
emotions.
 Cultural differences in individualism versus collectivism also yield
differences in emotion.

GENDER DIFFERENCES AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

 Gender differences are influenced by society.
 Emotion are one of the the basic ingredients of human existence.
 It is a common observation that men and women show different
emotional response patterns the way they express emotion is also
different.

GENDER DIFFERENCES
 Stereotypically it is thought that women are more emotional than men.
 Also their behaviours are guided by their emotions; they are led by their
heart.
 Men, on the other hand, are thought to have control over their emotion;
they can postpone their emotional reactions and thus act rationally.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
 Use gestures, words and intonation differently to convey emotion.
 Collectivism refers to cultures that emphasize the fundamental
connectedness and interdependence among people.
 Individualism refers to cultures that emphasize the fundamental
separateness and independence of individuals.

AGRESSION - people who act in this urge become either physically or

verbally aggressive.

AGRESSION AS A DRIVE
  According to Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory, many of our actions are
determined by instinct particularly the sexual instinct.
AGRESSION AS A LEARNED RESPONSE
 It focuses on the behavior patterns that people develop in response to
events in their environment.
 Aggression can be learned through observation or imitation.

SOCIAL-LEARNING THEORY
 Shares basic principles of reinforcement with behaviorism, it differs from
stick behaviorism in that, it also emphasizes cognitive processes.
 Social-learning Theory further differs from strict behaviorism in that
stresses the role of vicarious learning or learning by observation.

AGGRESSIVE EXPRESSION AND CATHARSIS

 Studies that try to distinguish between aggression as a drive and
aggression as a learned response often focus on Catharsis or purging an
emotion by experiencing it intensely.
 If aggression is a learned response, expression of aggression could result
in an increase in such actions.

UNDERLYING STRUCTURE OF EMOTION

 The affect is present in all the organizational parts is the root of all its
relationships. The emotions influence many organizational dimensions
such as decision making, creativity, teamwork, negotiation, leadership,
turnover, and job performance. Another essential construct in this field is
emotional labor or the management of emotions.