Reading Blog 3/29 - 10pm

Chapter eleven focuses on 5 questions, the first being ‘What is an Emotion?’. The textbook answers this question by explaining that emotions are multidimensional, suggesting that they exist as: subjective, biological, purposive, and social phenomena. The textbook further explains that emotions are composed of 4 parts: ‘feelings’, ‘bodily arousal’, ‘social expressive’, and ‘sense of purpose’. The only dictionary form of definition the book offers for emotions defines them as “short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events”. The section of the chapter concludes answering the question by describing two ways in which emotions relate to motivation. The first being that emotions are one type of motive in that they energize and direct behavior. The second being that they serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well/poorly personal adaptation is going.
The second question chapter eleven focuses on is ‘What causes an Emotion?’. The chapter explains that there is no clear answer to this question because there is still an on-going debate trying to answer it. The debate consists of two sides, cognitive and biological. The ‘biological perspective’ tries to defend their side by explaining that emotions have very rapid onsets, brief durations, and can occur automatically or involuntarily. The perspective continues to offer explanation by claiming that emotions are biological because they evolved through their adaptive value on dealing with fundamental life tasks. The other side of the debate consists of the ‘cognitive perspective’, which explains that cognitive activity is a necessary prerequisite to emotion because without an understanding of the personal relevance of an event’s potential impact on personal well-being there is no reason to respond emotionally. I found this question/answer/debate to be the most interesting part of both chapters eleven and twelve because prior to reading the section I had not thought of the possibility of emotions being biological. I always thought and assumed that they were cognitive. Reading this section has slightly changed my opinion; it has made me think that it is at least possible that some emotions in certain situations are pre-determined genetically.
The third question chapter eleven focuses on is ‘How many are there?’ Once again for this question there is a biological and cognitive perspective. The biological perspective claims that human beings experience about 2-10 emotions, whereas the cognitive perspective claims that human beings experience a greater number because several different emotions can arise from the same biological reaction because situations can be interpreted so differently. The two sides or all researchers agree that there are dozens of emotions, they just disagree on whether some emotions are more fundamental or more basic than are others.
The fourth question chapter eleven focuses on is ‘What good are Emotions?’. The book answers this by explaining that emotions help organisms deal with fundamental life tasks, such as loss, frustration, or achievement. The fifth question discussed/explained in chapter eleven is ‘What is the difference between Emotion and Mood?’. The book answers this by explaining that there are three main differences. The first of the three is ‘different antecedents’. By that the book means that emotions emerge from significant life situations and from appraisals of their significance to our well-being, whereas moods emerge from processes that are ill-defined and are oftentimes unknown. The second difference is ‘different action’, in that emotions mostly influence behavior and direct specific courses of action, where as moods mostly influence cognition and direct what the person thinks about. The third difference is ‘different time course’, in that emotions emanate from short-lived events that last for seconds or minutes, whereas moods emanate from mental events that last for hours or days.
A large part of chapter twelve is devoted to the debate of if emotions are dependent on our bodily responses to a stimulus, or if emotions are predetermined, and therefore independent of any stimuli. ‘James-Lange Theory’ believes and states that emotional experience follows and depends on our bodily responses to the flashing lights and siren sounds. A late section in the chapter explains the ‘Differential Emotions Theory’, which contains 5 postulates, the postulates all explain in one way or another that each emotion, expression, purpose, or motivation is unique.
Another section of chapter twelve focuses on the concept of ‘appraisals’, which are controlled by the ‘autonomic nervous system’. The section explains that appraisals are estimates of the personal significance of an event, or that they are the central construct in a cognitive understanding of emotion. The section goes on to explain that there are two forms of appraisal, ‘primary appraisal’ and ‘secondary appraisal’. Primary appraisal is concerned with a person estimating if they have anything at stake in an encounter. Secondary appraisal involves a person’s assessment for coping with the possible benefit, harm, or threat from an encounter.
The last section of the chapter focuses on a few interrelated topics. The first main one is ‘social interaction’. The section explains that the other people which human beings interact with are typically the most frequent source of day-to-day emotion. Related to that topic is ‘attributions’, or the causal explanations people use to explain an important life outcome. These two topics can be related in an example such as a car accident. At least two people would socially interact in a situation such as this and everyone involved would attribute the accident to some form of causal explanation.
Terms: 1) What is an emotion 2) What causes an emotion 3) How many emotions are there 4) What good are the emotions 5) What is the difference between emotions and moods 6) bodily arousal 7) sense of purpose 8) feeling 9) social expressive 10) biological perspective 11) cognitive perspective 12) James-Lange Theory 13) Differential Emotions Theory 14) Appraisal 15) Primary appraisal 16) Secondary appraisal 17) Attributions 18) Social Interaction

Chapter eleven is about the five constant questions about emotions. “What are emotions?”, “What causes an emotion?”, “How many emotions are there?”, “What good are the emotions?”, and “What is the difference between emotion and mood?”
“What is an emotion?” According to the text, an emotion is “a psychological construct that unites and coordinates four aspects of experience into a synchronized pattern.”The four aspects are feelings, arousal, purposive, and expressive phenomena. Emotions direct the four into consistent reactions to fit each event. Emotions and motivation relate in two ways: 1.) Emotions are motives. Emotions can direct and energize a person behavior. 2.) Emotions “readout” to designate how a personal adaption’s are going.
“What causes emotion?” During a life time, people face many different events in their lives (significant situational events). In these events, the cognitive (mind) and the biological (body) will react to adapt to the surroundings. When this happens it activates and gears up emotion.
“How many emotions are there?” Depending on who you ask, it ranges from two to ten. The book includes six: joy, anger, sadness, interest, disgust, and fear. Joy can be obtained by success, affection, love, and achievement. Feeling joyful is a sign that things are going well. Smiling is the best way to show joy. It’s also stated that smiling strengthen and help relationships. Smiling is contagious after all. The opposite of joy is sadness. Sadness is the most negative emotions of them all. It is also known as distress. There are two main factors the employ sadness, separation and failure. There is however, one benefit of sadness; it gets people involved in social groups. This is because of separation. People want to feel a part of something. Fear is activated when a person feels like they are being threatened. Danger and harm are the two biggest things that spike fear. Fear is the leading factor in motivating defense and coping. Anger, is an ever-present emotion. Believe it or not, anger is the most passionate of all the emotions. It can increase control, make a person stronger and have more energy. Disgust means getting rid of an unpleasant object. It is rejection. Last, is interest. Interest is the most common in everyday functions. It can both increase and decrease depending of the level of interest.
“What are the good emotions?” All of them. Each emotion can be beneficial. Emotions are what direct behavior to where ever it is needed. All emotions play a role in day-to-day life and they all response to situations that are fitting at that time.
“What is the difference between emotion and mood?” There are three main differences between the two, different antecedents, different action-specificity, and different time course. Different antecedents: emotions are formed by life events and appraisals. Moods are formed by the unknown. Different action-specificity: emotions influence behavior, they direct action. Moods influence what we think. Finally different time course: emotions any last a couple of seconds where moods can last are hours.

Chapter twelve is about the aspects of emotions. There is a big biological link with emotions. According to the book, emotions are biological reactions of the important events we go through in life. The example given is a threat and running away from it. The body starts to prepare for the event by activating certain things, like the heart and lungs. When the body is ready, it will run away, and the person is emotionally ready for the awaiting threat. The first time that this action was studied was by a theory called the James-Lange Theory. This study asked if there is a difference in emotions was linked to each bodily reaction.
William James didn’t believe that emotions are followed by body changes. He believed in the opposites, that body changes would cause emotion to spike. Two things rested on the idea; first “the body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events”, and the second “the body does not react to nonemotion-eliciting events.” For this there is an example, a shower. The book supports the example of the shower to show how James was thinking. When you’re taking a shower and the water suddenly turns cold. Because of this, our heart rate and breathe intake increase, and in some cases, you might scream do to the coldness. This example goes to show that when things happen, unexpectedly or not, your body reacts before our emotions. In other words, our body reacts before we have a sense on what’s going on. James also believes that emotions are just a way of thinking so we understand what’s going on. If there are no bodily changes, then there are no emotion changes. This theory became popular, and with popularity comes criticism. Some people augured the theory, that it’s more a fight or flight response. People also argued that emotional response was faster than the physiological response. This theory made emotions a hot topic; theories on emotions become the next new fade.
Another theory discussed in this chapter is the Different Emotions Theory. This theory gets its name from the different or unique emotions. Different Emotions Theory has five main points: “the ten emotions constitute the principal motivation system”, unique feelings, expressions, neural activity, and purpose. The ten emotions are as followed: fear, disgust, guilt, shame, surprise, anger, distress, joy, contempt and interest. Each of these acts of a system that can coordinate a person’s feelings. All ten of these are a way of dealing with what life throws at us, they are recurring and important.
Appraisal is also largely talked about in chapter twelve. Appraisal paves the way and brings forth emotions. It’s an approximate of personal significance in an event that occurs. Researchers of cognitive emotion have come up with two different beliefs for appraisal. The first, without appraisal emotions do not occur. Two, the appraisal causes emotion, not events. Magda Arnold studied what happens from perception to appraisal. According to her, people put events and objects into categories, positive or negative. A nice smell as positive and a painful sound as negative, these events can be linked to memories and judgments. After determining if an event is on the good side or bad, a deciding of liking or disliking occurs. Arnold beliefs that this process of either liking or disliking can be a felt emotion. This of course leads to the felt emotion to action. In this, a person has memories that they rely on to make a plan of action. If they don’t like something, then they are obviously going to avoid it. The liking and disliking also help us determine what action we should take to work around it.
There are two different types of appraisal, primary and secondary. Primary determines if anything is at stake with any encounter. These can include: well-being of you or a loved one, goals, and self-esteem. Secondary is more of the coping. It can help cope with emotions, behavior, and a person’s cognitive.
The most interesting thing I learned was in chapter eleven. The whole chapter was full of information about emotions and what they are and what can cause them. I think the most surprising thing that I learn was the number of emotions. Richard Soloman only picked two, which I thought was really low, while Carroll Izard picked ten, I still thought that was low. For some reason I figured there would be a lot more than just ten, but that’s just me.

Terms: Chapter 11- emotion, feelings, arousal, purposive, expressive phenomena, significant situational events, cognitive, biological, joy, anger, sadness, interest, disgust, fear, different antecedents, different action-specificity, and different time course.
Chapter 12- James-Lange Theory, Different Emotions Theory, appraisal, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal,

Chapter 11 is titled ‘Nature of Emotion: Five Perennial Questions’. This chapter opens up a new section in the textbook: emotions, and provides us with a basic overview on what emotion exactly is. Countless sources attempt to tell us how to control our emotion and while most people know what emotions are, they are unable to conceptually define them. The authors define emotions as short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. While this is a relatively comprehensive definition, there are more aspects that affect our emotions. The chapter asks five basic questions that are asked when studying emotion. The first question is, ‘What is an emotion?’ The author describes this in a four part sequence. Feelings are subjective experiences that involve cognition and an individual interpretation of the emotion. Bodily arousal is the biological aspect of the emotion such as physiological activation or fight or flight responses. The sense of purpose describes the functional aspect of the emotion. Feelings of sadness function as a means of reuniting with a loss, or coping with a failure. The social-expressive dimension describes the topography of the emotion expressed such as facial or vocal expression. Emotions influence our motivation in that they serve as a function of a means to overcome an obstacle and are an efficient means of communication. The second question asked is, ‘What causes an emotion?’ While many schools of thought have attempted to answer this question, it all boils down to two main sources: cognitive and biological. Multiple researchers for both perspectives have outlined cognitive and biological approaches to describing motivation. Another explanation is the two-systems view. This proclaims that we have two systems that activate and regulate emotion. The third question asks, ‘How many emotions are there?’ This seems to be the question with the most disagreement. One theorist may tell you there are two basic emotions and another may tell you there are ten. Regardless, the debate asks whether or not emotions should be parsimonious or explanatory for ALL learned emotions. Some use biology and others use cognitive theories to defend their answer on the number of emotions. Six basic emotions that can be seen in six universal facial features are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy and interest. The fourth question asks, ‘What good are emotions?’ From an evolutionary standpoint, emotions serve as a function to adapt to environmental events. We use emotions to overcome obstacles and communicate effectively with others. For example, in a threatening situation, a fearful emotion is activated. This will cause an emotional behavior such as running away or backing down. The emotion functioned as a means of protection. The final question addressed by the author is, ‘What is the difference between emotion and mood?’ Emotions can be relatively short-lived as a response to environmental events. Moods are long-term affective states that are less dynamic than emotions. One can hold a positive affect, or an overall good mood, or a negative affect, an overall bad mood. People with positive affects tend to be more sociable, more likely to help others and able to solve problems in more efficient ways.
Chapter 12 presents emotion at a more specific level. It is titled ‘Aspects of Emotion’. In the preceding chapter, the authors differentiated between a biological, socio-cultural, and cognitive approach to emotion. There are five biological aspects of personality: Autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing and facial feedback. All of the preceding are physiological causes of emotions. For instance, when the autonomic nervous system is activated, the emotion fear might surface. There are also five cognitive, social and cultural aspects of emotion: appraisals, knowledge, attributions, socialization history and cultural identities. The authors describe in detail the facial feeback system embedded in all of use. Facial feedback hypothesis says that the subjective aspect of emotion comes from movements in the facial muscle, changes in facial temperature and gland activity in the skin. The five basic facial features are recognized universally. In other words, it is a human trait rather than a culture trait. From a cognitive standpoint, emotion is understood by analyzing appraisal. There are two types of appraisal: primary and secondary. Primary appraisal asks whether or not something is at stake such as self-esteem or a goal. Secondary appraisal occurs after the fact and assesses how one will cope with a gain or loss. Emotion is also learned. Humans differentiate between situations and react appropriately thereafter. The socio-cultural aspect of emotion involves the sharing of emotion from person to person. Theorists suggest that other people are often the most salient source of emotion. Culture strongly influences our concept of emotions, the expression of our emotions and the management of our emotions. We efficiently interact with others from our own culture, as we have similar concepts of emotion.
The most interesting portion of the two chapters for me was the section that asked, ‘What good are emotions?’ Evolutionary psychology is of great interest to me and the authors used basic Darwinian ideas to explain the function of emotion in regards to survival. Without emotion, one would be at a significant disadvantage as they would not know how to effectively cope with environmental stimuli. The fact that all humans possess the capacity to experience all the basic emotions and express them identically through facial feedback amazes me as well. Despite cultural differences in the manifestation and expression of emotion, a sad face in one culture is a sad face in another. This suggests to me that humans are meant to work together, despite differences in language. In many situations, it would be an evolutionary advantage to react to environmental situations effectively.
One part of the chapter that I didn’t find as interesting was the biological aspect of emotion. While I agree that it is important to the understanding of the source of emotion, it doesn’t offer as much room for subjective interpretation. In other words, once such physiological patterns are learned, there is less room for future research compared to that of the cognitive approach.
Overall, I felt as though these two chapters, in particular chapter 11 did an excellent job of introducing the concept of emotion. The authors also did a great job in outlining the debates between theorists on how to define emotion. We can experience hundreds of emotions every day, yet we rarely think about the emotion itself. Instead, we focus on the environmental cue that caused the emotion. After reading these chapters, I feel as though I understand human nature a little better.

Terms: emotion, feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, social-expressive, cognitive perspective, biological perspective, two-systems view, coping function, mood, positive affect, negative affect, autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, facial feedback, appraisals, knowledge, attributions, socialization history, cultural identities, primary and secondary appraisal, socio-cultural aspect, expression knowledge, expression management, emotion management.

Chapter 11

Chapter eleven dealt with emotions. Emotions have coping services and social functions that facilitate our day to day life. Emotions generate four main experiences:
1. Feelings: Or our subjective experience—most emotions are named after how we feel when they are occurring.
2. Bodily Arousal: Or Brain activity and what it does to your body.
3. Social-Expressive: This is shown in our facial expressions and voice.
4. Sense of Purpose: How emotions functions to motivate our behavior.
With these four purposes, emotions help to energize and direct our behavior. They also serve as a system that indicates how well or poorly you are adapting to your environment. This lead the chapter to discuss what causes emotions. Emotions are cued by a situation event that leads to two paths: a cognitive process and a biological process. Both paths occur simultaneously and lead to feelings, sense of purpose, social-expressions, and bodily arousal. Some say that biology is the base, or core, of emotion in that your body recognizes the emotion you should be feeling first and generates the appropriate bodily arousals for our brain to say, “oh, I must be scared”; however, others who agree with the cognitive perspective say that the cognition must come first in order to interpret how a specific situation affects you directly, and that’s how you determine and put a label on the emotion. To clarify, there is no debate that these two paths occur. This two systems view (learning/social or biological/genetics) is ongoing because one path may be more dominate during certain emotions but both facilitate your outcome behavior.
So how many emotions are there? From the biological perspective there are only enough needed for survival of the human species. From the cognitive perspective there is an endless number of emotions because they can be complex and/or secondary. Negative emotions treat, harm, and help for survival. Positive emotions motivate and satisfy. There are six basic emotions (it helps to think of these from a caveman’s perspective):
1. Anger—for protection of resources.
2. Fear—get away from harmful things.
3. Disgust—protection from bad things such as poisonous food or sick people.
4. Sadness—glue that binds social relationships.
5. Joy—teaches what is good and releases dopamine.
6. Interest—gets us to seek new information.
There are disagreements over certain emotions and whether or not they are actually emotions; for instance, interest and surprise. Surprise is a sudden new interest that serves as an orientation to direct others attention to the new aspect of their environment. Surprise has a specific facial expression which makes it unique and less debatable that it’s an emotion. There are four main functions of emotions:
1. Communicate feelings to others.
2. Influences how others interact with us.
3. Invite others to socially interact with you.
4. Create, maintain, or dissolve relationships.
Emotion is different from mood. Emotion is short term and emerges from specific life situations. Emotions, however, can carry over into our mood. Mood, on the other hand, is long term and influences how we think. Mood emerges from ill-defined processes and is more difficult to switch than emotion; such has a long nights rest. Our every day mood is effected by positive and negative affects. Positive affect starts out low in the morning, peaks about mid-day, and falls again at night, where as negative affect stays remotely the same throughout the day. There are many benefits to being in a good mood, such as: you are more social, creative, persistent, and can make decisions more easily and quickly.
Chapter 12
Chapter twelve went into more detail about the cognitive and biological aspects of emotion as well as more emotional theories. Biological, cognitive, and social-cultural are the three aspects to emotion. As we all know, the biological aspect deals with the ANS, endocrine system, brain circuits, and neural firing. Neural firing is the pattern or electrocortical activity in the brain at any given time. Different emotions are activated by different rates of neural firing. I find this very interesting. The cognitive aspect deals with our knowledge and what we have learned socially from our culture and emotions. There is a theory that we can differentiate between emotions by their unique standards, such as facial expressions.
Chapter twelve went on to introduce us to new complex emotions such as shame and guilt. Shame occurs when you break your own rules and feel bad about it, whereas guilt occurs when you break others’ rules and feel bad about it.
Next the chapter went on to discuss the appraisal theory. There are three parts:
1. How does an event produce good or bad appraisals?
2. How does the appraisal generate emotion?
3. How does felt emotion generate behavior?
This theory is broken down into three more verifications:
1. Type of benefit (joy, love, hope, etc.)
2. Type of harm (anger, disgust, etc.)
3. Type of threat (jealousy, anxiety, etc.)
Anxiety arises from uncertainty in your environment. People can cope with this by using secondary coping behaviors, such as, swearing, eating, drinking, etc., or they can figure out what they are uncertain about and find a way to make that a solid cognition and no longer an uncertainty. The emotional term, “scared” is often misused for the feeling of anxious.
Last but certainly not least, there are three main components of social and cultural aspects of emotion:
1. Emotional knowledge—general instructions
2. Expression management—how to express our emotions
3. Emotion management—when to control emotions
I am definitely interested in many parts of these two chapters. I would like to learn more about manipulating our own emotions so that they can carry over to our mood. I would love to trick myself every morning that I am in a great mood! 

chapters 11 and 12 speak primarily address the issue of emotion. In chapter 11 detailing that is the emotion that causes emotions, emotions are few and the benefit that produce emotions. In Chapter 12 addresses the biological, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of emotion.

In my opinion the most interesting of these two issues is the biological study of emotion, and especially the james-lange theory. I think people are reluctant to believe that something as simple as holding a pencil between the teeth causing a smile may cause our mood improves. Accept biological theories leads to the conclusion that we have not control of our emotions, and this is something that people do not want to assume. However I think that biological theories are as valid as the cognitive. The facial feedback hypothesis is fascinating to me because I believe that many of its tenets are true. What would happen if instead of prozac the psychologists only prescribe you , "you smile ten times a day, and with this you should feel better. " No one has come up to sing a joyful song's mood has improved. It seems ridiculous, but I think doing certain things can trigger positive or negative emotions and this is something people should know. I guess television ads saying, "smile", it seems stupid but sometimes the simplest things are more effective than complex
.
Can we voluntarily Our emotions control? That is the question that Ekman and Davidson were made in 1994, and the answer they found is that there are four aspects that together cause an emotion, feelings, arousal purpose and expression. Each emotion is described according to some parameters, for example, if we are sad our heart beats slower and our arousal is more ... most important is the conclusion of this study, if we can control things like our heart rate or we can control our facial expression (so far) our emotions, and this in my opinion is very interesting and worthy of more study future.

List of terms: emotion, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, james-lange theory, facial feedback hypothesis, facial musculature, feelings, arousal, purpose, expression.

Chapter 11 is about the nature of emotion. There are five questions that come with the study of emotion. They are: what is emotion, what causes emotion, how many emotions are there, what good are the emotions, and what is the difference between emotion and mood? The book defines emotions as multidimensional feelings that we have. They are feelings, but they are also biological reactions that prepare the body to adapt to whatever situation someone may face. There are four main components of emotion. Feelings are subjective experiences, phenomenological awareness, and cognition. Bodily arousal is a physiological activation, bodily preparation for action, and motor responses. Social-expressiveness is social communication, facial expressions, and vocal expressions. The sense of purpose is goal-directed motivational states and functional aspects.

There are two ways in which emotion and motivation relate to each other. The first is that emotions are one type of motive. Second, emotions serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. Everyone always asks, what causes emotion? Emotion as I said before is causes by both cognition and biology. The basic emotions are those meet the following criteria: 1) Are innate rather than acquired or learned through experience or socialization. 2) Arise from the same circumstances for all people. 3) Are expressed uniquely and distinctively. 4) Evoke a distinctive and highly predictable physiological response. Emotions exist as solutions to the challenges, stresses, and problems that we have to deal with almost every day of our lives. Moods and emotions are different in the way that moods arise from different causes. Emotions emerge from significant life situations and from appraisals of their significance to our well-being.

Chapter 12 is about the different aspects of emotion. There are two main aspects of emotion. They are the biological aspect and the cognitive aspect of emotion. The emotions in our life are partly biological reactions to important life events. The biological aspects of emotion are 1) autonomic nervous system 2) endocrine system 3) neural brain circuits 4) rate of neural firing 5) facial feedback. The cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of emotion are 1) appraisals 2) knowledge 3) attributions 4) socialization history 5) cultural identities.

The James-Lange Theory is talked about in the textbook. This theory says that the stimulus makes the bodily reaction and the bodily reaction makes the emotion. This theory rested on two assumptions. They were that the body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events and the body does not react to nonemotion-eliciting events. Eventually, this theory faded out. The Differential Emotions Theory is also talked about in this chapter. This theory endorses the following five things. 1) Ten emotions constitute the principal motivation system for human beings. 2) Unique feeling: Each emotion has its own unique subjective, phenomenological quality. 3) Unique expression: Each emotion has its own unique facial-expressive pattern. 4) Unique neural activity: Each emotion has its own specific rate of neural firing that activates it. 5) Unique purpose/motivation: Each emotion generates distinctive motivational properties and serves adaptive functions. There are ten fundamental emotions that are included in this theory. They are interest, joy, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame, and guilt. These emotions prepare us for acting in adaptive ways.

Terms used: emotion, cognition, biological aspect, cognitive aspect, James-Lange Theory, Differential Emotions Theory

Chapters 11 and 12 are all about emotions which we have not talked about much until now. Emotions are hard to define but they have 4 components. The thing that triggers an emotion is a significant life event. This event triggers the 4 components of feelings, bodily arousal, social expression, and a sense of purpose. We usually just think of feelings when we think about emotions but emotions are purposeful, they coincide with specific physiological activations, and they create a display through facial and sometimes vocal expression. Emotions motivate. They energize and direct behavior. They also provide a constant readout to the individual as to what their well-being is like. Like I already mentioned, emotions happen in response to a significant situational event. Emotions arise after primary appraisal of the situation. One has to determine if anything is at stake. Emotions involve cognitive and biological processes. This just means that a combination of innate responses to situations and our experiences and learned information about specific situations allow us to experience emotion.

There has been much disagreement on how many emotions exist. Numbers range from 2 to a limitless amount. With this being said, the text provides 6 basic “families” of emotions. These include fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. We learn that all emotions serve a purpose. Fear motivates defense or retreat (fight or flight) in a threatening situation. Anger motivates progress or productivity in a certain situation to overcome any roadblocks. Disgust motivates avoidance and can be a protective emotion even though it creates an aversive feeling. Sadness motivates behavior to feel better and restore well-being. Joy motivates social activities and continuation on the current activity. Interest motivates learning and openness to new experiences. Emotions are probably most important in social functions. They allow others to know our feelings, they influence others’ actions toward us, they facilitate social interaction and they can help create, maintain or end relationships.

In chapter 11, I found the section on positive affect very interesting. There are certain benefits of feeling good. If we are in a good mood we are more likely to help others. I can think of many times when I have experienced this. This one time I was driving on the highway on my way to class when a mattress flew out of the truck that was a little ways ahead of me. I was in a good mood that day and I pulled over to help the driver get the mattress off of the road. I was late for class but I helped anyway. If I would have been in a bad mood, I probably just would have been mad that I had to swerve around the mattress to avoid hitting it and I know I wouldn’t have stopped because I was already late. Another benefit of a good mood is that you act sociably which may prolong your good mood. When in a good mood, you are less likely to act aggressively. I feel like many of these benefits go hand in hand with each other like being less aggressive and more sociable. Positive also allows greater cognitive flexibility and creative thinking. This may be why I feel more attentive and able to understand concepts in class when I am in a good mood because I have noticed that before.

It is important to acquire emotion knowledge. This is part of what should be taught to children so that they know how to regulate their emotions and they do not become overly agitated in an emotionally stressful situation. These teaching may be done differently in different cultures. I find this very interesting. All I really know about emotions, I acquired in an American culture. Different cultures view emotions differently and more than that have different primary emotions. I guess I have seen this displayed in media but I never really thought about it much before. All of this information makes me wonder if there may be fundamental differences in opinion between parents of different nationalities about how to raise their children. My guess would be that this is a very big possibility.

These chapters helped me to understand emotion by attempting to show what emotion is and explaining what emotion really consists of. Now instead of just talking about feelings when I talk about emotions, I will be able to add the other components to explain a certain emotion.

Terms: emotion, motivation, primary appraisal, cognitive, biological, innate, emotion families, fight or flight, mood, positive affect, emotion knowledge, primary/basic emotions

Chapter 11 & 12 seemed to intertwine rather nicely, ultimately giving overall a better comprehension of emotion. In chapter 11 addresses the different questions asked when speaking of emotions, while chapter 12 furthers understanding by speaking of the different aspects of emotions.

The first question asked, is what is emotion? It is said that emotion is multidimensional, which include such factors as: subjective, biological, purposive, and social. Each factor adds to the overall definition of emotion. When trying to give emotion a quick definition, one simple explanation would be:"emotions are short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena, that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events". They also can be defined as the "psychological construct that unites and coordinates 4 aspects of experience in a synchronized pattern". Emotion is also seen to have a relationship with motivation. This is so because they energize and direct behavior.

So, emotions live inside and can arouse both cognitive and physically stimulation while also helping us adapt and survive in the social world. Chapter 12 goes on to further explain some of these aspects of emotion. It begins with biological aspects of emotion. With biological emotion the body prepares to cope effectively. There are different systems in the body that affect this including the: autonomic nervous system (heart, lungs, muscles), endocrine system (hormones and glands), limbic brain systems (amygdala), neural activity, and facial feedback. I found this to be rather interesting because it helped me understand more what systems create what reaction within us. This biological aspects is another answer to the next question presented in chapter 12.

The next question is presented in chapter 11 is: what causes emotion? Well the biological question has been addressed, but mostly, emotions occur when we "encounter significant life events that activate cognitive and biological processes that activate the critical components of emotion". Chapter 12 gives more insight on the cognitive aspect of emotion as well. Cognitive emotions shown in chapter 12 include: appraisals (estimate of our personal significance of an event), knowledge (discriminate different shades of emotion with only a single emotion present), and attributions (which is why we believe we experience a particular life outcome). There is much debate over the biological and cognitive aspects of emotions discussed in chapter 11, but ultimately both serve as essential aspects in emotion.

The third question that is asked is: what good are emotions? Chapter 11 informs us that Charles Darwin wrote "The Expression of Emotion in Man & Animals". This book explains that emotions have helped animals adapt to surroundings, which therefore makes it a candidate for natural selection. Again this helps support biological aspect, but emotions are also good for dealing with coping and social functioning. Emotions serve to help us socially function because social interactions help us experience a greater number of emotions. This theory is addressed in chapter 12. Through social interaction we begin to mimic our surrounding and the people we are with. This helps us adapt to our outside environment, while also experiencing emotions in yourself through interaction with others.

The fourth question addressed is: is why we have emotions? Chapter 11 explains that emotions exist as solutions to these challenges, stresses, and problems. It also states that emotions "equip us with specific, efficient responses that are tailored to problems of physical and social survival". They have biological perspectives but also have been time tested to present day. In chapter 12 it says that emotions there are emotion specific patterns in brain activity. These distinct circuits which regulate patterns of emotional behavior which include: behavioral approach system, fight-or-flight system, and a behavioral inhibition system. These are still emotional behaviors we need and have evolutionarily needed. Also, chapter 12 gives the theory that cultural aspects of emotion which include emotional socialization which is teaching kids how to react to different emotions in different settings and situations. Different cultures will instill different reactions.

The last and final question asked in chapter 11 is: what is the difference between emotion and mood. The differences in emotion and mood arise from different causes of (mood is unknown), emotions influence behavior and direct specific action, whereas mood influences cognition and directs what a person thinks about. They are also different because moods are more enduring. Moods are also found in either a positive or negative affect state. People who emit a positive effect, they are more likely to helps others, act socially, expressing greater liking towards others etc. In chapter 12 it speaks of ways medical students manage emotions that help them better cope and interact with patients. I think if people are able to manage their emotions better then they will be able to manage mood because if they are in a positive mood they will not let it be squandered in light of downtrodden emotions. Chapter 12 also speaks of facial feedback hypothesis. This can relate to distinguishing between mood and emotions because if you are able to facially read someone's mood then you can probably predict their emotion given a certain stimulus. This can also be vice versa because if someone reacts emotionally strong to a not very stimulating stimulus, you can probably predict their mood.

Terms used: subjective, biological, purposive, and social, emotion, relationship with motivation, autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, limbic brain systems, neural activity, and facial feedback, facial feedback hypothesis, behavioral approach system, fight-or-flight system, and a behavioral inhibition system, natural selection, social interactions, mood, cultural

I will begin the discussion by providing a summary of each chapter. I will then explain the context of how each chapter relates to each other. Finally I will conclude by citing the most interesting part of each chapter , why it is interesting, and how it is applicable in my life.

Chapter eleven begins by analyzing five questions. What is an emotion? What causes an emotion? How many emotions are there? What good are the emotions? What is the difference between emotion and mood? Emotions are commonly confused for feelings. However emotions are much more complex than feelings are, emotions are multidimensional. Emotions can be subjective, but they can also be biological, agents of purpose, and social phenomena. Emotions are only present when there is a purpose, when there is indeed a purpose; emotions allow us to communicate the quality and intensity of our emotionality to others around us. Feelings relates to a subjective experience, phenomenological awareness, and cognition. Bodily arousal relates to the biological piece meaning physiological activation, bodily preparation for action, and motor responses. Sense of purpose relates to the goal-directed motivational state and functional aspects. Social-Expressive or social phenomenological awareness means social communication, facial expression, and vocal expression.

It has been discovered that emotions are harder to define than at first glance. The majority of the problem is the multidimensional qualities and how they interact with each other. A primitive introduction to the emotion definition is a short-lived, feeling –arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that helps us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events.
Next we look at emotion as it relates to motivation. Some research has been developed to indicate that emotion is one type of motive. Other research has been developed to indicate that emotions constitute the primary motivational system. A quick look back at our basic needs, air, water, and food can all be tied back into motivation, but underlying each is a terrifying fear that we will die without each of these so it motivates us to take action. That fear is most definitely an emotion. Again, looking at a slightly different purpose of emotion, we can find a similar result. Emotions are also used to gauge what is going on inside of people. It can also be used to judge a person’s motivational state. Positive emotions can indicate positive motivations while negative emotions can indicate negative motivation.
So what causes emotion anyway? Serious and longer duration emotions are often tied to significant life events. This significant life event will trigger a cognitive process and a biological process. Through these two, we see all four senses of the meaning of emotion: feelings, sense of purpose, bodily arousal, and social-expressive. A closer look at this process reveals a two-systems view that is the source and simultaneously regulates emotions. The cognitive process is associated with social, cultural learning and the history of the individual. This process moves through the Cortical structures and pathways to evaluate, interpret, the meaning and personal significance of the event. The biological process is closely linked with the evolutionary, polygenetic history of the species. This process moves through the subcorticol structures and pathways to create a instantaneous, automatic, and unconscious reaction to sensory characteristics of the stimulus event. These processes operate in a circular fashion joining with a feedback loop. Therefore mid process it becomes difficult to tell exactly where things start and where they end.

One may ask how many emotions are there? Emotions, like colors, can be divided into primary emotions and secondary emotions. The biological perspective typically emphasizes primary emotions. There are eight schools of thought on this subject, but all conclude that there are a small number of basic emotions, basic emotions are universal to all human beings, and basic emotions are products of biology and evolution. The cognitive perspective encompasses many more emotions, admitting that several emotions can stem from the same biological response. There are nine major research traditions within the cognitive perspective. The similarities of these nine include that there are virtually an infinite amount of emotions, the similarities end there. Research traditions vary by how these emotions come to be and how they are portrayed.

To reconcile the two systems, the number of emotions has been categorized into families. Discussion of the families ensues. Fear is an emotional reaction that arises from the person’s interpretation that the situation faced is dangerous and a threat to self is perceived. Anger is the ever-present emotion. It is one most people remember in detail and can be boiled down to a belief that a situation is not what it should be. Disgust is the feeling or desire to place distance, emotional or physical, from a contaminated, deteriorated, or spoiled object. Values depend on development and culture. Sadness is a negative emotion and arrives from a failure or separation between what is wanted and what is obtained. Joy indicates desirable outcomes and a success at a task. Interest is also an ever-present emotion that increases and decreases based on the subjective focus of the individual. It does not ever completely dissipate, but ebbs and flows between various focal points.

So what good are emotions? Many people will say that emotions are the root of survival. They aid in the coping after significant life events. It functions much like a natural selection process. Socially in today’s world, emotions communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships.

Emotions and mood vary based on the reason for their inception. Moods are overarching types of feelings while emotions are short lived and occur in the face of significant life events. Moods are a series of conditions why we feel good while emotions are specific states of being that exist for a short time period. Moods can also dictate how well we receive others and interruptions in our day.

Chapter 12 looks at the aspects of emotion. What does emotion look like? The James-Lange theory focuses on two assumptions: The body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events and the body does not react to non-emotion-eliciting events. James argues that the series of sensations are just a specific pattern of reactions that are derived from the specific event. Emotions are simply a way to describe what is happening.

The contemporary perspective further explores this theory and concludes that certain emotions elicit certain series of reactions but this is not a complete account of emotion. Other emotions do not do this. These are the emotions where no particular behavior pattern is more conducive to survival. Anger has a specific behavior actionable series that will help someone survive, but what does happiness or hope look like? The brain also has specific activities that are followed with certain emotions but not all emotions.

Differential Emotions Theory emphasizes basic emotions serving unique motivational purposes. This theory has 5 assertions. Ten emotions constitute the principal motivation system for human beings. Each emotion has its own unique subjective, phenomenological quality. Each emotion has its own unique facial expressive pattern. Each emotion has its own specific rate of neural firing that activates it. Each emotion generates distinctive motivational properties and serves adaptive functions.
Cognitive aspects of emotion include appraisal, complex appraisal, the appraisal process, emotion differentiation, emotion knowledge, and attribution. Social and cultural aspects of emotion include social interaction, emotional socialization, and managing emotions.

Chapter’s 11 and 12 relate to each other because they address two complementing aspects of emotion. Chapter eleven discusses what emotion is, what it is not, and why it is defined as such. It then differentiates emotion from mood. Chapter 12 looks at the aspects of emotion meaning how emotion is observed on a physiological level and a physical level.

The most interesting part of chapter 11 for me was how they traced the needs of air, water, and food back to emotion. I had always thought about the motivation behind them but never the emotion. I also found the correlation of emotion to significant life events a meaningful comparison. In chapter 12, I found the facial expression descriptions the most interesting. I was fascinated by how well we can determine what emotion looks like and that it remains the same across cultural boundaries.

The interesting parts that I have discussed are interesting to me because of their applicability to my life. Chapter 11 causes me to look at emotion as a tool to manipulate behaviors and to prepare me for anticipated emotional states after significant life events that I may not have been prepared for. Chapter 12 allows me to better interpret the emotions of people around me and also cognitively process what those emotions may mean in terms of the current environment.

Terms: emotion, agents of purpose, social phenomena, phenomenological awareness, subjective experience, motivation, cognitive process, biological process, feelings, sense of purpose, bodily arousal, social-expressive, Cortical structures, Fear, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, Interest, Joy, mood, Differential Emotions Theory, appraisal, complex appraisal, the appraisal process, emotion differentiation, emotion knowledge, and attribution, social interaction, emotional socialization, and managing emotions

Chapter 10 discusses the basics of emotion. It describes that emotion is a short lived feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that helps us deal with events in our lives. Emotions are complex because they include four main components: feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social-expressive. Feelings are a subjective experience. They’re usually what we think about when thinking of emotions. Bodily arousal is the physiological sensations we experience. Sense of purpose is the motivational state we’re put into and directs our behavior. Social-expressive is facial expressions. All four are an important aspect that makes up emotion. There are several theorists that debate whether emotions are biological or cognitive. The biological perspective says that emotions arise in infants, who have little cognition, which is a main source of evidence for this theory. They explain that emotions come from neural circuits and that cognition is not needed to have emotions. This perspective says that there are 2-10 emotions. The cognitive perspective feels the opposite. They believe that taking away cognition takes away emotion. This perspective says that our social experiences teach us how to react to situations, so knowledge about how to act in a situation produces emotion. They believe that there are a limitless amount of emotions. While each perspective has its good points, it’s best to consider a combined perspective. Both perspectives have proof for their theories and like the chicken-and-egg problem or nature versus nurture, neither one wins. The concept of emotions is very complex. There are, however, 6 basic emotions that are universal and agreed upon in both biological and cognitive perspectives. Those emotions are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. All six of these emotions help us to survive in the world and motivate our behavior. They influence how we cope with situations. They also influence our social interactions. All emotions are very important to each person. Another part of this chapter explains the difference between mood and emotion. Many think that they are very similar but they’re actually quite different. Emotions last for a very short amount of time, even seconds. They do, however, influence our moods, which last much longer, even up to a whole day. Moods direct cognition and emotions direct behavior. Two parts of mood is positive and negative affect. Affect refers to the every state of feelings. Positive is good and negative is bad. Both are independent of each other and can occur together. Positive affect makes us optimistic and gives us energy to do things. Negative affect makes us pessimistic and tired. It’s important for our well-being to have a higher positive affect because it benefits us by making us happier and having a better life.
Chapter 12 includes the different aspects of emotion. The three main aspects are biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. As stated in chapter 11, the biological aspect of emotion comes from the firing of neural circuits that produces different emotions. These emotions help us to survive in the world. There are different theories within this perspective that have a certain number of emotions. The differential emotions theory claims there are 10 emotions. Facial expressions are an important aspect of deciding whether something is an emotion or not. If something has a specific facial expression, it’s probably considered an emotion. The cognitive aspect of emotion discusses appraisal, which is an estimate of the personal significance of an event. Arnold created this theory of emotion that said a situation leads to an appraisal, which leads to emotion, and then action. When a person decides whether a situation is good or bad, they then feel the emotion and emit behaviors according to that emotion. There are two types of appraisal: primary and secondary. Primary appraisal decides if anything in the situation is in trouble, whether it be health, a goal, or a relationship. Secondary appraisal decides how to cope with a certain situation, like a threat or benefit. The social-cultural aspect of emotion deals with our interactions with others. We’re able to detect other’s emotions just as other’s can detect ours. This ability helps maintain relationships and express emotions.
Terms: emotion, feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, social-expressive, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, basic emotions, mood, positive/negative affect, differential emotions theory, facial expressions, appraisal, primary/secondary appraisal

Chapter 11 focused on the five questions surrounding emotions. What is an emotion? There are four components to defining an emotion: feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social-expressive (facial/vocal expression). The definition that was kind of decided on was short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. Emotion can be described as motivation or readout. Some researchers argue that emotions constitute the primary motivational system. When described as a readout, emotions are not necessarily motives in the same way that needs and cognitions are, but, instead, reflect the satisfied vs. frustrated status of other motives. If it is a positive emotion, you have the "green light" to continue on the path; if it is a negative one, you get a "red light" that alerts to stop what you are doing so you can change it. What causes an emotion? This is where the biology and cognitive perspectives come into discussion. With biology, it is said that emotions can and do occur without a prior cognitive event but not without a prior biological event. With cognition, individuals cannot respond emotionally unless they first cognitively appraise the meaning and personal significance of the event. In the biological perspective, Izard discusses how infants respond emotionally to certain events despite their cognitive shortcomings. Ekman observes that emotions have very rapid onsets, brief durations, and can occur automatically/involuntarily - they happen before you become consciously aware. Panksepp states that emotions arise from neural circuits and must be noncognitive since they are often difficult to verbalize. With the cognitive perspective, Lazarus says that without an understanding of personal relevance of an event's potential impact on personal well-being, there is no reason to respond emotionally. Scherer agrees with Lazarus that some life experiences produce emotions and others don't. Weiner concentrates on the info processing that takes place after life outcomes occur. The two-system view says that both cognition and biology cause emotion. They are parallel and influence each other. However, some emotions arise primarily in one or another. There is also the chicken-and-egg problem; in this emotional process, there does one start? How many emotions are there? The biology perspective emphasizes the primary emotions and downplays the importance of the secondary/acquired ones. They state that there are between 2 and 10 basic emotions. These basic emotions are universal to all human beings and are products of biology and evolution. The cognitive perspective acknowledges the importance of the primary but stresses that much of what is interesting is due to experiences, so they emphasize the complex (secondary/acquired) ones. They say that there are almost an unlimited amount of emotions; this is because situations can be interpreted so differently and because emotions arise from blends. Basic emotions are innate, arise from the same circumstances for all people, are expressed uniquely and distinctively, and evoke a distinctable and highly predictable physiological patterned response. Negative basic emotions deal with threat and harm; these include fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. Fear arises from your interpretation that the situation you face is dangerous and threat to well-being and motivates defense or coping. Anger arises from your belief that a situation is not what it should be; it is the most passionate and most dangerous emotion. Disgust involves getting rid of/away from a contaminated, deteriorated, or spoiled object. Sadness (distress) is the most negative, aversive emotion that arises from experiences of separation or failure; it indirectly facilitates cohesiveness of social groups. Positive basic emotions deal with motive involvement and satisfaction; these include joy and interest. Joy is emotional evidence that things are going well; it facilitates our willingness to engage in social activities and is also a "soothing function." Interest is the most prevalent emotion in day-to-day functioning; some level is ever-present. Joy adds to and somewhat replaces interest once satisfaction occurs. What good are the emotions? Darwin argued that emotions help animals adapt to their surroundings. There are coping functions; there is a greater flexibility in emotional ways of coping than is otherwise apparent. There are also social functions. They communicate our feelings to others; influence how others interact with us; invite and facilitate social interaction; and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships. Emotions serve as informative, forewarning, and directive. Emotions exist as solutions to challenges, stresses, and problems. What is the difference between emotion and mood? They have different antecedents (causes), action-specificity, and time-course. The average person generally experiences an ever-present stream of moods, or "affect". A mood is a way of feeling that often exists as an aftereffect of a previously experienced emotional episode. Positive and negative affect states are independent ways of feeling and can be felt simultaneously. Positive = approach and negative = withdrawal. Positive affect varies systematically in accordance with sleep-wake cycles and it typically remains outside our conscious attention. Benefits of feeling good include a willingness to help others, cognitive flexibility and creative problem solving, decision-making efficiency, taking risks, and so much more.
Chapter 12 focused on the aspects of emotion. There are biological, cognitive, and social & cultural aspects. Biological aspects include autonomic nervous system (ANS), endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback. The James-Lange Theory states that stimulus --> emotion --> bodily reactions. The body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events. The contemporary perspective says that physiological arousal accompanies, regulates, and sets the stage for emotion, but doesn't directly cause it. It also discusses the specific neural circuits: behavioral approach system, fight-or-flight system, and behavioral inhibition system. Specific brain areas were also discussed; subcortical (noncognitive) brain areas, when activated, are fully capable of generating and regulating specific emotions. Neural activation or firing is the pattern of electrocortical activity (in the brain) at any given time; activity can increase, decrease, or remain constant and it depends on environmental events. Differential Emotions Theory says that basic emotions (10) serve unique/different motivational purposes: unique feeling, expression, neural activity, and purpose/motivation. Why aren't emotions like jealousy, love/hate, etc counted for? This is because emotion families exist such that many nonbasic emotions are experience-based derivatives of a single basic emotion; many emotion terms actually better describe moods, attitudes, personality traits, and disorders; some nonbasic emotions are blends of basic ones; and many emotion words refer to specific aspects of a basic emotion. The facial feedback hypothesis states that the subjective aspect of emotion stems from feelings engendered by movements of facial musculature, changes in facial temperature, and changes in glandular activity in facial skin. Much facial behavior is surely learned but also has a genetic, innate component. If all cross-cultural test subjects matched answers, facial expressions are then universal across cultures. We can somewhat voluntarily control our emotions - it is more about controlling our thoughts, beliefs, and ways of thinking. Cognitive, social, and cultural aspects include appraisals, knowledge, attributions, socialization theory, and cultural identities. Appraisal is an estimate of personal significance of an event; the appraisal, not the event itself, causes emotion. Change the appraisal, the emotion changes. Arnold's Appraisal Theory of Emotion states stimulus (life event) --> appraisal (good vs. bad, benefit vs. harm) --> emotion (liking vs. disliking) --> action (approach vs. withdrawal). Complex appraisal is done by Lazarus who expanded Arnold's model. "Good" appraisals include types of benefits and "bad" appraisals include types of harm and types of threat. This includes primary appraisal (whether one has anything at stake in the encounter) and secondary appraisal (person's assessment for coping with possible benefit, harm, or threat). The appraisal process differ on how many dimensions of appraisal are necessary for explaining emotional experience. Other possible appraisals include expectancy, responsibility, legitimacy, and compatibility with standards of self/society. Emotion differentiation is also a part of appraisal. Emotion knowledge is the number of different emotions any one person can distinguish (through experience); there are "shades" of basic emotions. Attributions are the reasons a person use to explain an important life outcome. These generate emotional reactions. With social and cultural aspects of emotion, if you change the culture/situation you're in, the emotions change. A person experiences a greater number of emotions when interacting with others. Emotional contagion is the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and to converge emotionally. Social sharing of emotion is to reexperience and relive past emotional experiences. Emotional socialization is telling others what they ought to know about emotion. Different societies socialize their children's emotions in different ways. Finally, to manage emotions is to cope with aversive feelings in ways that are both socially desirable and personally adaptive.
The most interesting thing from Chapter 11 was the debate of the difference between emotions and mood. I never realized how much of a difference there was in the two. I will now keep what I learned in mind when someone asks "how are you?" From Chapter 12, the most interesting thing was the facial feedback hypothesis. I find it fascinating that a person can learn so much by another person's face.
ME Terms: Emotion, feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, social-expressive, two-systems view, primary/secondary/acquired emotions, biological/cognitive perspectives, basic emotions, fear, anger, disgust, sadness (distress), negative basic emotions, joy, interest, positive basic emotions, coping functions, social functions, affect, mood, James-Lange Theory, neural circuits, behavioral approach system, fight-or-flight system, behavioral inhibition system, subcortical, neural firing, differential emotions theory, facial feedback hypothesis, appraisal (primary and secondary; complex), Arnold's Appraisal Theory of Emotion, emotion differentiation, emotion knowledge, attributions, social interaction, emotional contagion, social sharing of emotion, emotional socialization

Chapters 11 and 12 are about emotions. Emotions are short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. There are four components of emotion; emotions generate feelings, arouse the body to action, generate motivational states, and produce recognizable facial expressions. Emotions relate to motivation in two ways. First, emotions are one type of motive. Second, emotions serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. There are two perspectives when it comes to deciding what causes an emotion: the biological perspective and the cognitive perspective. According to the biological perspective, emotions arise from bodily influences such as neural pathways in the brain’s limbic system. According to the cognitive perspective, emotions arise from mental events such as appraisals of the personal meaning of the emotion-causing event. Both biology and cognition are important in the activation and regulation of emotion. The biological perspective suggests that humans possess between 2 and 10 basic emotions. The cognitive perspective says that each emotion can be further divided cognitively suggesting an almost limitless number of secondary emotions. The six emotions that are usually cited are fear, anger, distrust, sadness, joy, and interest. Emotions developed because they have served and do serve a purpose. The many coping functions of emotions include the following: protection, destruction, reproduction, reunion, affiliation, rejection, exploration, and orientation. Emotions also serve social functions such as communicating our feelings to others, influencing how others interact with us, inviting and facilitating social interactions, creating, maintaining, and dissolving relationships. Chapter 11 also discusses the difference between emotion and mood. Emotions arise in response to a specific event, motivate specific adaptive behaviors, and last for seconds, or maybe minutes. Moods arise from ill-defined sources, affect cognitive processes, and can last for hours or days. Mood exists as a positive or as a negative affect state. These two moods are independent-not opposite-ways of feeling.
Chapter 12 discusses the three main aspects of emotion: biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. In the biological aspect, facing a situation of personal significance, the body prepares itself to cope effectively by activating the following: (1)Autonomic nervous system; (2)endocrine system; (3)neural brain circuits; and (4)rate of neural firing; (5) facial feedback. James Lange had the first theory of emotion. It contained important parts, but as a whole was discredited. The differential emotions theory blossomed in the early 90’s. It claimed that there were ten emotions that constitute the principal motivation system for human beings and each emotion has its own unique subjective, phenomenological quality, facial expressive pattern, rate of neural firing, motivational properties and adaptive functions. The 10 different emotions from the biological perspective are interest, joy, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame, guilt, and surprise. The facial feedback hypothesis claims the subjective aspect of emotion stems from feelings produced by (1) movements of the facial musculature, (2) changes in facial temperature, and (3) changes in glandular activity in the facial skin. It also suggests that facial feedback has a genetic, innate, cross-cultural component. The cognitive aspects of emotion involve primary and secondary appraisal that regulate our emotions. Primary appraisal is asking whether one has anything at stake in the encounter such as health, self-esteem, a goal, financial state, respect, and well-being of a loved one. Secondary appraisal occurs after some reflection, involves the person’s assessment for coping with the possible benefit, harm, or threat. The cognition aspect also includes emotion knowledge and attributions. Emotion knowledge is when the individual appraises a situation with high discrimination and responds with highly appropriate emotions. An attributional analysis focuses on when and why people have pride, gratitude, or hope following positive outcomes and guilt, shame, anger, and pity following negative outcomes. Social and cultural analysis of emotion refers to our emotional connection to our society and culture. Other people and cultures in general instruct us about the causes of our emotions (emotion knowledge), how we should express our emotions (expression management,) and when to control our emotions (emotion management). The most interesting thing I learned in these chapters was how the neural firing in the brain changes for different emotions. These chapters could be applied to my life in the way that I interact with my children and husband. We often joke that my husband doesn’t have a governor (in a racing sense) when it comes to reacting to a situation. I try very hard to teach my children that they can feel an intense emotion, but don’t need to immediately act on what they are feeling.
Terms Used: emotions, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, coping functions, social functions, mood, positive/negative affect, social-cultural perspective, facial feedback, differential emotions theory, facial feedback hypothesis, appraisal (primary and secondary, attributional analysis, emotion knowledge, expression management, emotion management.

Chapter 11 in the textbook focuses on five questions involving the nature of emotion. The first question is what is an emotion? Emotion is defined as multidimensional, complex feelings that make us feel a particular way but are also biological reactions that prepare the body for adapting to whatever situation one faces. The chapter continues to describe emotion as an agent of purpose that creates a motivational desire to fulfill behavior. The textbook sums up this confusing definition by breaking emotion into four components. The four components are feelings, sense of purpose, bodily arousal, and social expressive. The first component, feelings, includes subjective experience that has meaning and personal experience and it is developed by mental processes. The next component, sense of purpose, is a goal directed behavior that is necessary to take the action that will cope with the current situation. This component explains why people want to do what they do and why they benefit from their emotions. The third component, bodily arousal, the body is physiologically activated for action through motor responses. The last component, social-expressive, communicates are emotions nonverbally to others to express are reaction to the current situation. Basically, according to the book emotions are short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. The next question involving the nature of emotion is “What causes an emotion?” Emotions are argued to be caused by both cognitive processes and biological processes. The people who argue that biological processes cause emotion believe that emotional reactions do not necessarily require cognitive evaluations. On the other hand people who argue that cognitive processes cause emotion believe that individuals cannot respond emotionally unless they cognitively appraise the meaning and personal significance of an event. Another answer to the question is that both biology and cognition cause emotion. The third question involving the nature of emotion is “How many emotions are there?” The cognition-biology debate shows two different answers to this question. The biology perspective projects that there are only primary emotions between two and ten. On the other hand the cognitive perspective believes that there are almost a limitless amount of emotions that an individual experiences. The next question involving the nature of emotion is “What good are the emotions?” Emotions are used as coping functions to adapt to changing physical and social environments. Also they are used for social functions such as communicating our feelings to other, influencing how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships. The last question involving the nature of emotion is “What is the difference between emotion and mood?” According to the chapter, emotions and moods arise from different causes. Emotions come from significant life situations and from appraisals of their significance to our well-being. Moods come from processes that are ill-defined and are most of the time unknown.
The most surprising thing from Chapter 11 is how complex and difficult the definition of emotions is. It took almost thirty pages for the textbook to explain many of the aspects of emotion and I am still surprised and confused from the answers provided. Another piece of information that was surprising to me about personality is that there is a big difference in the belief systems of the biological and cognitive fields of emotion. Both fields are very different from each other even when it comes to the number of emotions it is possible for a person to feel. They also both have very convincing arguments when they are attempting to put a number on the amount of emotions felt by an individual.
Chapter 12 is about the three main aspects of emotion. The aspects are biological, cognitive, and social and cultural aspects of emotion. The biological aspect of emotion describes emotion as biological reactions to important life events. The James-Lange Theory is the first theory of emotion and the centerpiece to the biological aspect of emotion. This theory suggests that our body changes cause emotional experience. However, because the James-Lange Theory lost popularity many other contemporary theories were created. The contemporary theorists generally came to the conclusion that physiological arousal accompanies, regulates, and sets the stage for emotion, but it does not directly cause it. One of these theories is the Differential Emotions Theory. The theory is based on five points: Ten emotions constitute the principal motivation system for human beings, unique feeling, unique expression, unique neural activity, and unique purpose/motivation. Another theory is the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. The theory says that emotion stems from feelings engendered by movements of the facial musculature, changes in facial temperature, and changes in glandular activity in the facial skin. There are many arguments made about facial expressions such as whether or not they are cross-cultural. Another question that arises regarding emotion theory is “Can we voluntarily control our emotions?” There is no definite answer to this question because there are arguments that can support or discredit the other side. The next aspect of emotion is the cognitive aspects of emotion. Cognitive aspects of emotion are the fact that emotions come from information processing, social interaction, and cultural contexts. The central concept in this aspect is appraisal. Appraisal is defined as an estimate of the personal significance of an event. When an individual appraises an event their estimation of its significance will determine how it effects their emotion. After the individual has felt this emotion, they will turn in into an action or behavior. The social and cultural aspect of emotion is the final aspect of emotion. This aspect helps us to have a social understanding of emotion. Many social psychologists argue that emotion originates within biological social interaction and a cultural context. Society and culture play a role in personality because of the difference in emotionally reactions of society’s and culture’s compared to one another. An example the textbook uses is Chinese infants low emotional reaction compared to the higher emotional reaction of American infants. Another role this aspect plays is that the number of emotions people experience is greater when interacting with others compared to when we are alone.
What surprised me the most about Chapter 12 was the high effect that social interaction has on the number of emotions felt by an individual on a day to day basis. Interactions with others cause most emotions to occur within an individual compared to my previous belief that an individual has most of their emotions alone or caused by their reaction to external stimuli other than anther individual.

M&E Terms
Emotion, feelings, biological reactions, purpose, motivational, behavior, bodily arousal, mental processes, goal, physiologically, motor responses, cognitive processes, biological processes, appraise, environments, social interaction, mood, physiological, James-Lange Theory, Differential Emotions Theory, Facial Feedback Hypothesis, neural activity, expression

Chapter 11 and 12 are all about emotions. Emotions are best categorized as one type of motivator that energizes and directs us just as we learned that physiological drives and social needs motivate us. However, this does not mean they are not complex. Chapter 11 is devoted to describing this complexity when studying emotions. They have four main components: feeling, bodily arousal, purposive and social-expressive.

The feeling component of emotion is the subjective experience. It is felt at a “phenomenological” level and arises from our cognitions about events. The bodily-arousal component involves our physiological activations that occur with emotion which includes our motor responses such as an accelerated heart rate when we experience fear. The purposive component is the goal-directed state that we experience when we take action to cope with emotion. It helps to explain why individuals make decisions about how to handle their emotions and how people benefit from those. For example, if someone is experiencing fear they may run away (purposive action) to ensure their safety (benefit from the action). The social-expressive component is our social communication exhibited regarding the emotion. This includes our gestures, vocal response, facial expressions, body posture, etc. For instance, when someone is experiencing sadness, they may cry, slump down, put their hands over their face or make facial expressions of despair or grief.

There are two major viewpoints on what causes emotions. One is biological and the other is cognitive. Supporters of the biological viewpoint that biology is primary in emotions because they are difficult to verbalize and they are not language based which is a cognitive skill. Infants have emotions so they must be present at birth and so do animals that have no language skills. They also state that emotions can be experienced by non-cognitive procedures such as stimulating the brain. Supporters of the cognitive viewpoint argue that not every stimuli produce emotion so it has less to do with biological reactions but rather cognitive appraisal of the stimulus and the circumstance. Not all life experiences generate emotion. Cognitive supporters feel that it is the attribution of our personal reflections on experiences that creates the emotions we feel.

Our text also discussed the biological and cognitive perspectives on how many emotions there are. Biological supporters say that humans possess somewhere between 2 and 10 basic emotions. Most commonly listed are anger, fear, distrust, sadness, joy, interest and disgust although some believe in only 2, 4 or 10 major emotions. The researchers focus on neural pathways and patterns of neural firing along with facial expressions to study these emotions. Cognitive theorists argue that the number of emotions experienced can be limitless and that several emotions can arise from the same biological reaction.

Another major question dealt with in this chapter is what good do emotions do us? Emotions do have a purpose and since they come from biological reactions they could be necessary for our safety and survival. People would function poorly without them but yet being over-emotional can be harmful if they become hard to regulate.

People often get emotions and mood mixed up or use the terms interchangeably. This is a mistake. Emotions are fleeting and come from short lived events whereas a mood has a longer duration. Emotions come from significant life situations and mood comes from processes that are unknown but seem to affect our everyday state either positively or negatively.

The most interesting thing I learned in Chapter 11 was in learning about the emotion of disgust. I had no idea that disgust had a biological purpose in keeping ourselves and others safe. We experience disgust when we encounter an object that we believe to be contaminated. It could be anything from tainted meat or showing disgust at child abuse. The function of disgust is rejection and that is what actively keeps us safe (ie, from eating a rotten piece of meat or thinking about an adult having sex with a child) and it encourages aversion to those activities.

Chapter 12 also discusses emotions in-depth. There are three major aspects of emotion which our text describes. These include biological, cognitive and social-cultural. The biological analysis of emotion was touched on earlier in this post, however, this chapter talks about how our emotions serve as a preparation system for important life events that allow individuals to cope better with those events.

Emotions can energize us by affecting our endocrine system and gland and hormone regulations, by affecting our autonomic nervous systems along with our heart, by affecting our neural circuits in our brains, by affecting our neural firing rates and by affecting our facial expressions and feedback.
Research on the biology of emotions show that around 10 different emotions can be studied from the biological perspective including fear, anger, joy, interest, disgust, distress, shame, surprise and guilt. These 10 emotions are discussed in the Differential Emotions Theory which states that:
1. Ten emotions constitute the principal motivation system for human beings
2. Unique feeling: Each emotion has its own unique subjective, phenomenological quality.
3. Unique expression: Each emotion has its own unique facial-expressive pattern.
4. Unique neural activity: Each emotion has its own specific rate of neural firing that activates it.
5. Unique purpose/motivation: Each emotion generates distinctive motivational properties and serves adaptive functions.

The facial feedback hypothesis was discussed and from it we learn that the subjective aspects of emotion come from feelings engendered by the movements of facial musculature and changes in facial temp and changes in glandular activity inside the facial skin. Therefore, emotions are “sets of muscle and glandular responses in the face. Example, smiling makes you happy. The brain can actually interpret facial expression stimulation and which then involves the whole body in the emotional response. If this is true then facial expressions can moderate emotional experience and people can intensify or reduce their emotional experience accordingly such as exaggerated smiling or suppressing sadness.

Cognitive aspects of emotion study how emotions are produced from cognitive and informational processing. A central construct in this is appraisal which precedes and elicits emotion. There are two types, primary and secondary. Primary evaluates the importance of a situation and secondary appraisal occurs after reflection and thought about how to cope with a situation. Appraisal theorists make decision trees to find out all the different appraisals a person might make during an emotional event and then can predict which emotion the person will experience.

Emotion also involves cognitions about knowledge of emotions and attributions. Emotional knowledge consists of learning the basic emotions and what situations can cause which emotion. The ultimate goal is sophisticated emotion knowledge wherein an individual can appraise a situation with the utmost discrimination and then respond appropriately. Attribution analysis focuses on post-outcome attributions and can help explain when and why people experience positive emotions after positive outcomes and negative emotions after negative outcomes.

Finally, the social and cultural analysis of emotion centers around other people being our best sources of emotional experiences. Social interaction can make people experience similar emotions (laughing + joy) We share and re-experience our emotions in discussing them with others. Culture socializes us to experience and share our emotions according to particular ways of our cultures.

The most interesting thing I learned in Chapter 12 is about the benefits we experience from feeling good or experiencing positive affect. People who are in a good mood are more helpful, creative, cooperative, less aggressive, experience more cognitive flexibility, increase decision making efficiency and many other benefits as well. This interests me because in my Health Psychology class we have studied how being positive and happy can reduce your health risks and help you achieve an overall better well-being. These two tie hand in hand because positive affect very clearly affects both your psychological and physiological well-being for the better.

ME terms used: emotions, feeling component, purposive component, social-expression component, bodily-arousal component, phenomenological, biological viewpoint, cognitive viewpoint, mood, social-cultural viewpoint, attribution, fear, anger, joy, interest, disgust, distress, shame, surprise and guilt, differential emotions theory, facial feedback hypothesis, emotional knowledge, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, positive affect

Chapter 11 discusses emotions and how they occur as a result of particular events in our lives. These emotions create feelings that tell our body to act a certain way whether it’s an action or just a facial expression. There are four characteristics that describe emotion: feeling, arousal, purpose and expression. One single characteristic can not describe an emotion at any one point. There is always an interaction between them that make up any particular emotion. Emotions relate to motivation in two ways in that they themselves are one type of motivation. It also serves as a reading of how a person will adapt to a situation, whether positively or negatively. Positive emotions signal contentment in the situation and negative emotions tell us there is something wrong or uncomforting. There has been a debate on whether emotions are strictly biological or cognitive and which aspect generally comes first. If emotions are seen to be primarily biological emotions need to occur without a prior event to trigger that reaction. It is seen as an inborn predisposition without any outside situations influencing it. Those representatives with the view that cognition is the primary root of emotion argue that without a drive or outside factor to influence our emotions, our emotions wouldn’t exist. There needs to be some factor that caused us fear in the past that will trigger that emotion each time that same or similar factor occurs. For instance, if a child burns himself on the stove, seeing a hot stove each time drives that particular emotion of fear of being burned. The correct answer to which came first is just like asking “chicken or the egg” problem as discussed in the chapter. Humans have both biological and cognitive drives behind their emotions and they both work together. We have particular emotions when we are first born because of our evolutionary history. We are innately born with a fear of snakes and to respond positively to a happy human face. Biologically speaking, humans posses from 2-10 emotions while the cognitive theorists propose more than 10. When it comes to a number, we go by the basic emotions that tend to branch off to include many more. These basic emotions are characterized by the following: they are innate instead of being learned, are a result of similar circumstances (e.g. loss), are very distinct across cultures, and are able to have a predictable physiological patterned response. This basic emotions are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy and interest. In relation to these basic emotions, we also have the primary functions of emotions. These coping functions include protection, destruction, reproduction, reunion, affiliation, rejection, exploration, and orientation. There are also social functions of emotion like smiling even when we aren’t happy or for instance when we are nervous. Emotions and moods are seen as two different aspects. We know why we have a certain emotion, because it is influenced by our biological past or some past situation that we have responded similarly too. Moods can’t always be explained and may not even have a known cause. They have a tendency to be more continuous than a single emotion may last.
One aspect of this chapter that I found to be interesting was the discussion on how emotion and moods differ. I never really thought about the difference between the two and just assumed they were related to one another. Moods have two descriptions: positive affect and negative affect and both are independent of each other. It was surprising to learn that they aren’t opposite of each other because a person can feel both at the same time.
Chapter 12 is a continuation of chapter 11 on emotions but goes more in-depth on the biological, cognitive, social and cultural aspects of it. James-Lange was the first theorist to try to associate particular emotions with specific reactions that correspond to that emotion. Contemporary theorists worked off the James-Lange theory and tried to conclude that physiological arousal occurs with a specific emotion as well as regulates and prepares the body for action but not necessarily is the cause of it. The differential emotions theory claims that our ten basic emotions each have certain, unique, motivational purposes. The components associated with these emotions are feeling, expression, neural activity, and purpose/motivation which prepare the body for reaction. Facial feedback is described as having one job which is to activate our emotions. It is not the direct cause of our increased or decreased heart rate but acts as the activator that prompts certain cues in our body to react. Facial expressions are seen as similar cross culturally so we can assume that it is an innate characteristic but people portray such expressions in different situations as we have learned through our experiences. When talking about the cognitive or social aspect of emotion an important point to look at is appraisal. Appraisal is basically how important a life event or situation is to the individual. This is seen as the main point of the cognitive aspect. If we learned in the past that a certain event makes us fearful or happy, our past appraisals of the situation will influence our current emotions. Primary appraisal determines how much a person has at stake in the situation like finances, health, or self-esteem. Secondary appraisal is how the person will cope with a certain benefit, harm, or threat after assessing the situation. Throughout every situation, small or big, we try to make excuses for why we did a certain action or made a certain choice. This is called an attribution and is simply explained by the reasoning a person has for a particular outcome. When looking at cultural and social aspects of emotion, many theorists claim that how a person acts, emotionally, in the situation they were raised would change if they moved to a different culture. Granted, we all have similar facial expressions but our experiences and upbringings teach us which emotions are generally used in certain situations, and culturally these differ around the world. One thing I learned from this chapter that struck me as interesting was the section on facial expressions. By forcing ourselves to make a certain facial expression it can mildly change our vital signs and our emotion. I never realized how much of an impact our facial expressions had on our emotions, even if it is mild. Another interesting factor I learned was at the end of the chapter when they talked about social and cultural expressions of emotion. I wouldn’t have thought that by moving from one culture to another that your emotional cues would also change. I just assumed that facial expressions are similar for everyone but I didn’t take into account the situations and lifestyles of other cultures that also will influence our emotions.
ME Terms: positive affect, negative affect, emotion, fear, anger disgust, sadness, joy, interest, mood, social functions, coping functions, cognitive, biological, motivation, cultural and social aspects of emotion, primary/secondary appraisal, attribution, appraisals, cognitive aspect, facial expressions, facial feedback theory, James-Lange, differential emotions theory,

Chapter 11 was concerning the nature of emotion: five perennial questions. Emotions are multidimensional, subjective feelings, reactions or responses, and agents of purpose. Emotions can motivate us either as a motive or as a readout. The four components of emotion are feelings, bodily arousal, social-expressive, and sense of purpose.The cause of emotions occur from significant situational event. This event activates cognitive and biological processes which then activate the four components of emotions. This perspective is called the two-systems view. There are different perspectives on how many emotions there are. The basic emotions are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, negative basic emotions, joy, interest, and positive basic emotions. Negative basic emotions include threat and harm while positive basic emotions include motive involvement and satisfaction.
Emotions can function for coping functions and social functions.
Chapter 12 is aspects of emotions. There are three different kinds of aspects of emotions: (1) biologival aspects of emotions, (2) cognitive aspects of emotions, (3) social and cultural aspects of emotions. Biological aspects (reactions) are body emotion-related reactions to life events. Biological body emotion-related reactions are the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback.
Cognitive, social, and cultural aspects include appraisals, knowledge, attributions, socialization history, and cultural identities.
From the conginitive aspect of emotion biological events are not considered as important. Cognitive emotion theorists believes that emotions occur only with an antecedent cognitive appraisal of an event, and that the appraisal (not the event) causes emotions. A ground breaking theory of cognitive aspect of emotion on appraisal is Arnold's appraisal theory of emotion. His theory states that their is sequence starting with a situation (life event), an appraisal, to an emotion, and finally to action (approach vs. withdrawal).
Social and cultural aspects of emotion which concerns social interaction contributes to an individual's social understanding of emotion. Other aspects of emotion include social interaction, emotional socialization, and managing emotions.
Again when reading a chapter in the book I was amazed at how complex everyday processes truly are. I never realized how complex emotions are, and I have never thought of them as adaptations or biological reactions but just something that comes naturally, innately. I have also never thought of emotions as an agent of purpose. I also never realized that emotions help individuals and is functional for people. Instead we think of being "emotional" as having some negative connotations. I thought the two chapters were quite interesting.
Terms: Emotions,feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, social expressive, significant situational event, cognitive process, biological process, two-systems view, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, negative basic emotions, joy, interest, positive basic emotions, threat, harm, motive involvement, satisfaction, coping function, social function, aspects of emotions: biological, cognitive, social/cultural, body emotion-related biological reactions, autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, appraisals, attributions, arnold's appraisal theory of emotion, approach vs. withdrawal, social interatcion, emotional socialization