Reading Blog due 11/8 midnight

Chapter 11 talks about what exactly an emotion is. This chapter is based off five main questions. The first question is what is an emotion. An emotion is a short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that helps us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. The next question is what causes an emotion? There are many things that can cause emotions such things are biological, psychoevolutionary, cognitive, developmental, psychoanalytical, social, sociological, cultural, and athropolgical. The chapter discusses the difference between the biological perpective and the cognitice perspective to emotions. The third question is how many emotions are there? There are many emotions out there, but research has decided that there are 6 basic emtions. These emotions are; fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. The fourth question is what good are the emotions? The main purpose of emtions is to help us adapt to situations in life. They have coping and social aspects to them that help us to function in life. The last question is what is the difference between emotion and mood? Emotions occure due to life situations while moods occu to ill-defined situations. Emotions direct and influence behaviors to a ceratin action, moods just direct what the person thinks. Emotions are short-lived, while moods are long lasting.

Chapter 12 talks about the many aspects related to emotions. It talks about the biological aspects of emotions which are the autonomic nervous system, endorcrin system, neural brain circuts, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback. The chapter also discusses the cognitive aspects of emtoins which is mainly appraisal. Appraisals of emtions follow a certain theory. This theory starts off with a situaiton (life event) which leads to an appraisal (Good vs. Bad, Beneficial vs. Harmful) this leads to emtion (Liking vs. Disliking) which then lead to the action (Approach vs. Withdrawal). Emotions also have social and culutral aspects to them. Emotions occur with interacting with other people. They play a central role in creating, maintaining, and dissolving interpersonal relationships, as emotions draw us together and emtions push us apart.

I decided to do a little more looking into the topic of the facial feedback hypothesis. The facial feedback hypothesis states that emotions are "sets of muscle and grandular responses located in teh face." It states that emotion stems from feeligs that engendered by movements of facial musculature, changes in facial temperature, and changes in glandular activity in the facial skin. Senstations from the face send feed back to the brain to produce emtional experiences. I came across some articles that discusses whether smiles actually make people happy and in better states. Some articles state that smiles do make other happy, while some people feel that people are over using smiles in society. We use smiles all the time, but some believe that people who even smile at thier jobs aren't truley happy, but they do it because they have to and they are not happy.

http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/2008/Smile.htm

http://www.aiga.org/facial-feedback-hypothesis/

Chapter 11 and 12 discuss emotion and how it relates to motivation. Four components make up emotion and they are feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social expressive. An example of an emotion and how these components relate is the emotion of anger. The emotion of anger gives us certain feelings and physiological activation causes bodily arousal when we experience anger. There is a sense of purpose and goal directed motivational state associated with anger, and we show a certain facial expression when experiencing anger that other people can recognize as such. Chapter 11 discusses the relationship between emotion and motivation. Emotions are one type of motive which energizes and directs behavior. Emotions also serve as an ongoing readout system to indicate how well or poorly personal adaptation is going. Emotion is an important part of motivation, because if you take away the emotion, you also take away the motivation. Experiencing a significant life event activates cognitive and biological processes that activate the critical components of emotion, including feelings, bodily arousal, goal-directed purpose, and expression. There are two perspectives for how many emotions exist: the biological perspective and the cognitive perspective. The biological perspective emphasizes primary emotions, such as anger and fear. The cognitive perspective acknowledges the importance of the primary emotion, but it stresses the complex (secondary, acquired) emotions such as frustration or being enraged. Basic emotions consist of fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. The themes of negative basic emotions are threat and harm and the themes of positive emotions are motive involvement and satisfaction. Negative emotions such as fear and disgust are designed to protect us from harm and help us survive stressful situations. Positive emotions such as interest and joy are designed to help us seek out others and be involved in a group. Emotions are good because they can be used for coping functions and social functions. For social functions, emotions help us communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships. There is a difference between emotions and mood. Emotions emerge from significant life situations, influence behavior and direct specific courses of action, and emanate from short lived events. Moods emerge from ill-defined processes, influence cognition and direct what the personal thinks about, and emanate from long lived mental events. The benefits of positive affects are prosocial behavior, creativity, decision making efficiency, sociability, and persistence. Ch 12 discusses the three central aspects of emotion. These aspects are biological, cognitive, and social cultural. Neural activation is a part of the biological aspect. Neural firing is the pattern of electrocortical activity in the brain at any time. Different emotions are activated by different rates of cortical neural firing. Differential emotions theory says that ten emotions constitute the principle motivation system for human beings, each emotion has a unique feeling, unique expression, unique neural activity, and a unique purpose/motivation. An example of emotional differentiation is shame and guilt. Shame and guilt are closely related emotions but each involve a different feeling, expression, neural activity, and purpose. Shame is felt and shown on the face while guilt is felt in the stomach.
I wanted to learn more about the benefits being in a positive mood has on our brain. I read an article that said the brain doesn’t use all of its resources when we’re in a bad mood. Bad moods limit thinking and we are most intelligent when our frontal lobe are fully activated. This article talked about waiting out a bad mood if working on a project because the bad mood will hold you back as it limits your brain functioning. It stated ways to get out of a bad mood such as think about something else than what put you in a bad mood, put a positive spin on the event that caused the bad mood, and find hidden benefits. I also read an article about a study done where one group of people watched the show “Whose Line is it Anyway” and another group watched news reports on natural disasters or movies about people diagnosed with terminal cancer. Afterwards, everyone performed tasks, and on tasks where it was necessary to try out different hypotheses, the people who were put in a good mood performed better. Positive mood enhanced performance on these type of tasks.

http://webster.utahbar.org/barjournal/2003/08/effective_stress_management.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201101/better-mood-better-performance-happiness-helps-us-make-good-decisionssometimes

Chapter 11 begins by discussing what an emotion is. The chapter points out that defining “emotion” is difficult because emotions are multidimensional. They involve subjective, biological, purposive, and social phenomena. Emotions make us feel a certain way and act a certain way. Emotions produce these multidimensional components which work to direct and energize our behaviors. The chapter points out that emotions are short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face. One important thing about this definition is that it does not define what a mood is. Moods differ from emotions in that moods emerge from ill-defined processes, where as emotions arise from specific stimuli. Moods also differ from emotions because they influence thoughts instead of behaviors and the emanate from long-lived mental events instead of from short-lived events like emotions do. There are two perspectives concerning emotion: the biological perspective and the cognitive perspective. The biological perspective believes that emotions occur automatically and involuntarily. They argue that because they are often hard to verbalize, emotions must have come from origins that are “non-cognitive”. The cognitive perspective argues that cognitive activity is a necessary prerequisite to emotions. That is, emotions only occur if there is a cognitive understanding about the situation that elicits the emotion. Both perspectives agree that emotions are complex but they differ on what causes emotions. The biological perspective focuses on certain range of primary emotions. The cognitive perspective acknowledges primary emotions but they believe that different emotions can arise from the same biological reaction. For example, increased heart rate can be a sign of excitement or fear but the appraisal of the situation is what leads to which emotion is felt. Chapter 12 points out that appraisals precede and elicit emotions. It is the appraisal, not the event itself that causes us to feel an emotion. We can make primary appraisals which estimate whether we have something at stake or not. We can also make secondary appraisals in which we asses our coping abilities for the situation eliciting the emotion. The book points out that there is debate about whether or not the emotion precedes the bodily reaction or if the bodily reaction precedes the emotion. The James-Lange theory suggests that emotional experiences follow and depend on how our body reacts to the stimulus. For example, when we see flashing red lights in our rear view mirror, our body reacts and then we feel the emotion of fear. One thing I thought was interesting from these chapters was that there is evidence to support that facial behavior is cross-culturally universal. I thought that was interesting because it suggests that everyone in the world shows basically the same facial expressions for each specific emotion. Facial expressions of emotions are things that have remained constant over thousands of years of evolution.
In class today, I found the benefits of positive affect really interesting. Specifically, I thought it was interesting to think about how just putting a genuine smile on my face could produce a lot of positive effects for not only myself, but for others as well. I chose to search the benefits of putting a smile on your face. I found a website that gave the top 10 hidden benefits of smiling. The ten reasons were 1. Can get people to trust you. 2. It sparks leniency 3. It can help you recover from a slip up 4. It can improve your mood 5. It can reduce negative emotions like embarrassment or distress 6. It can increase your attention 7. It can increase your attractiveness to the opposite sex 8. It can hide what you really think 9. It can make you more money and 10. If you smile, others will smile back at you. This page also pointed out that smiling may help you live longer. I thought these ten reasons were really interesting because they touched on a few things I hadn’t really considered when thinking about what benefits I might obtain from smiling more. http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/10-hidden-benefits-of-smiling.php
I also found the topic of whether or not we can voluntarily control our emotions to be very interesting. So I searched “how to gain control of your emotions”. I read an article that discussed the importance of recognizing that emotions don’t come out of nowhere and that they are caused by specific stimuli. It is important to understand that fact because it can help a person understand the best way to cope with their situation that is causing the emotion they are feeling. The article also suggests the importance of reappraising the situation. Changing how you look at the stimulus or situation can impact the way you feel and the emotion you experience. http://www.wikihow.com/Gain-Control-of-Your-Emotions

Chapter 11 defines emotion. Emotion is a multidimensional topic that revolves around feelings, bodily arousal and social-expression. These components give a person a sense of purpose and lead to goal-directed behavior. Emotion itself can serve as primary motivation or as a "readout" to how well or poorly things are going. The two perspectives about who emotions are formed are the biological and cognitive perspectives. There has been a debate about which of these perspectives correctly explains emotions. Psychologists have found that both of these perspectives are important to understand emotion. The number of emotions that exists differ if you are talking to someone with a cognitive or biological perspective. The biological perspective says that there are a limited number of emotions that a person experiences while the cognitive perspectives believes that they are many complex emotions that are very different from one another. The basic emotions discussed in this chapter are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. These emotions have both coping and social functions. Emotions are described as a short-lived event and differ from mood which are more enduring than emotions.

Chapter 12 goes more in depth about the biological and cognitive perspectives of emotions and also adds a social and cultural aspect. The biological perspective of emotions says that neural activation and brain activity can explain the emotions we experience. Biology explains how emotions are universal and can be recognized by facial expressions. Facial expressions are formed when the various facial muscles move and contract. This means that emotions are innate and easy to recognize. The cognitive aspect of emotion emphasizes the importance of an event, or appraisal. Appraisal can either be good or bad and lead to a liking or disliking emotion. The emotions then determines if a person approaches or avoids action. The social and cultural aspect of emotions show that emotions can be valued and interpreted different depending on the context where the emotion is expressed.

I did some more research on if emotions are universal and I found several websites that said that emotions may not be as universal as we might think. One particular research showed pictures of common facial expressions to a group of people from Britain and Asia. The facial expression tested were anger, disgust, fear, happy, neutral, surprise, and sadness.The results showed that Asians had a difficult time distinguishing between fear and disgust. Eye-tracking technology in this study showed that Asian's typically focus on eyes when determining a particular emotion. This research and others like it show that recognizing emotions may not be universal, but rather are attributed to culture.
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/08/emotions-are-still-universal.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17605-human-facial-expressions-arent-universal.html

Chapters 11 and 12 both discussed emotion. Chapter 11 gave a basic overview and background knowledge on emotion, while Chapter 12 discussed the cognitive, biological, and social aspects of emotion. It’s difficult to define an emotion without knowing its 4 components. First, there is the physiological arousal associated with the experience of an emotion. Next, there is the social-expressive component. This is our body language or facial expression. “Feeling” is the subjectively cognitive experience within ourselves. These three components work together to generate a sense of purpose. This sense of purpose is our motivational behavior. It works to direct us towards a particular goal associated with the feeling we’re experiencing. This is how emotion is functional. Emotion is essentially the combination of the four components. As well as being motivational, emotion can also serve as a readout for those around us. People can better understand us and know how to approach us when they’re aware of how we’re feeling.
Emotions are caused by significant situational event. This event will in turn trigger our cognitive and biological processes to action. These two separate processes lead us to look at emotions as biological and cognitive. Certain emotions have certain biological, physical cues. Fear may lead to a rapid heart rate, sweaty palms, or a nauseous stomach. Extreme excitement could also result in the same physical cues. This leads to the cognitive perspective. How we interpret these physical cues can also determine they type of emotion we “feel”. We may know how we’re supposed to “feel” (such as fear during a large test instead of extreme excitement) and this also helps us decipher what we’re feeling.
There are many types of emotions. Once again, the biological and cognitive perspectives explain different types of emotions we may experience. Our biology supports emotions that serve a survival purpose. Some examples would be fear to escape a predator, or anger to fight back against someone. Although these are the purposes of emotions, we also know there is different types and degrees of emotions. For example, we know that we would be more angry if we totaled our car than if we were having trouble with a homework assignment. The cognitive perspective helps to explain these different types of emotion. The basic emotions, such as fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest can be explained into many subtypes. These subtypes help us classify what we are exactly feeling.
Emotions can serve as coping functions or social functions. There is a difference between emotion and mood. Emotion is a short lived feeling while mood is much longer lasting. Mood is generally made up of either positive or negative affect.

Chapter 12 addressed three different aspects of emotion. The first was the biological aspect. This states that emotions are the biological reactions to life events. The James Lange Theory suggests that emotional changes follow biological changes within the body. When our heart races and our palms sweat, our body signals that we are interpreting a threat in our environment. In turn, we say we feel fear. Fear is actually just our body’s reaction to a threat in our environment. There is evidence that bodily functions do play a role in emotions, but they are not the sole cause of them.
A cognitive aspect must also be examined when looking at emotions. Appraisal and perception are large components of this aspect. During appraisal, we decide weather a situation is good or bad, threatening or nonthreatening, happy or sad. We also appraise whether it pertains to us. Our appraisals turn into perceptions. These perceptions decide our emotions. Primary appraisal occurs when we decide whether the situation will affect us. Secondary appraisal occurs only if we decide during primary appraisal that the situation pertains to us. We then use secondary appraisal to assess whether we can cope with the benefit, harm, or threat.
Socialization is another aspect of emotion. Emotion work to integrate and socialize people. Emotional contagion is the process to which people mimic or synchronize their movements and portrayal of emotions while interacting with another person. We are socialized to be sad at a funeral, and happy at a birthday party. We are socialized to control our emotions in a school or professional setting. This socialization results in the management of emotions. We realize that we can’t act on all our emotions. We also realize we have to suppress the natural response we have to a lot of emotions.

I decided to research more about the facial feedback hypothesis. This hypothesis states that simply displaying an emotion on your face will lead you to experience it. One website explained the generation of the smiley face. A cartoonist invented this symbol to cheer people up in the workplace. A curved line was drawn for a smile and eyes were added to prevent people from turning the curved line upside down. The cartoonist believed that this symbol would work to make people feel happier and it has been used ever since. This is a good example of the application of the facial feedback hypothesis. It was also pointed out that the smile grew from grimaces a primate makes. These grimaces are usually out of fear, so essentially they state that they are afraid and in turn friendly. The writer applied this to the smiles people are forced to give at places such as McDonalds or grocery stores. These smiles are fake and do not make us feel cheerier. In actuality, these people are smiling because they’re afraid to lose their job.
I also found a study by Harker and Keltner. These researchers were interested in the smiles of women in their college year book pictures. They were interested in how observers would rate these women on their potential to provide rewarding experiences. They were also interested in their marital satisfaction 30 years after the photos were taken. It was found that women who were determined as having a positive affect (after controlling for extraneous variables such as appearance) were much more likely to be rated as rewarding and were more likely to have marital satisfaction. This shows that appearing happy can also mean that you are actually a happy person.

TERMS: facial feedback hypothesis, biological aspects of emotion, cognitive aspects of emotions, James-Lange Theory of emotion, social aspects of emotions, emotion contagion, positive affect, emotion, mood, social functions, coping functions, fear, anger, disgust, joy, interest, motivation, readout

SOURCES: http://www.aiga.org/facial-feedback-hypothesis/
http://education.ucsb.edu/janeconoley/ed197/documents/Keltnerexpressionsofpositivemotion.pdf

Chapter 11 and 12 deal with emotions. The author tries to define emotions which are multidimensional. They exist as biological, social, and subjective phenomena. They are subjective feelings but also biological reactions, energy mobilizing responses. For instance, when people eat something that does not taste good, they make the face expression. Emotion could be an motivation and as a readout.Motivation- emotions can energize and direct behavior and readout- ongoing "readout" system to indicate how well or poorly personal adaptation is going.
Thus, what causes emotions? There are two processes: cognitive and biological. Cognitive process talks about feelings and sense of purpose, in turn , biological bodily arousal and social expressive. From biological perspective we have two primary emotions, anger and fear. A 3 week old infant can smile and 2 month old can express anger in respond to pain.
According to cognitive perspective, we have unlimited emotions. Emotion-generating process begins not with the event and not with one's biological reaction to it, but with the cognitive appraisal of its meaning.
There six basic emotions: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy and interest. Four of them are negative and two positive that brings satisfaction and involvement. Yet, whether they are positive or negative they are all good because they protect us,like fear for example motivates defense, fight or flight response. Emotions help us coping functions, direct attention and behavior where its needed.
Emotions also have social functions, they communicate our feelings to others (when we smile, when we mad people notice that), influence how others interact with us, create and maintain relationships.
We need emotions in our lives because life is not easy, it is full of challenges, stresses, and problems and emotions help us to solve the problems. Emotions affect they way we think, behave, and feel. Emotions are different from every day mood. Mood can change withing a second, emotions last longer.
Chapter 12 deals more about biological aspect of emotions such as autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain, facial feedback. The author gives the example of facial expressions for five emotions, how our face changes when we feel angry, disgust, distress, joyful, or scared.
In a social and cultural analysis of emotions, other people are richer sources of emotional experiences. When we socially interact we can often catch people's emotions.
The topic I decided to research on is differences between mood and emotions.http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-mood-and-emotion/. According to this article mood usually last longer than emotions. Mood can last the whole day, while emotions is the expression, for example when you are angry you express this emotion for couple minutes, hours, then you cool down and might be still be in a "angry" mood but the expression of anger went away. Also, mood is something that person may not express while emotions maybe expressed. Mood can change without any particular reasons, yet emotion does. Emotions are more extreme than mood.
According to another article mood is the way to generalize how someone is feeling without actually naming the specific emotion. Your mood is the stage of emotions, ti can cover all spectrum of the emotional scale.It is more easily to name the mood than emotions.

Sources:
http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-mood-and-emotion/

http://www.sourceenergy.com.au/?page_id=39

http://oneemotion.blogspot.com/

In chapter 11, it speaks more about the topic of ‘what is an emotion?’ Emotions are as simply defined or simply put as we all first think. There is actually a lot more that goes into emotions and this chapter discusses that. Discussing the five reoccurring questions that go into defining and understanding emotion 1- What is emotion? 2- What causes an emotion? 3- How many emotions are there? 4- What good are the emotions? 5- What is the difference between emotion and mood? Those are the questions that have stemmed the research that individuals have done. But there’s much more to emotion then just answering these questions, but first what exactly is emotion? Emotions are a mix of feelings; subjective experiences, bodily arousal, social expression/ facial expression, and have a sense of purpose or directed motivational behavior. So the gist is, emotions are short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposeful-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. There are too purposed perspectives, Biological and Cognitive Perspective, each with a few on and within that perspective, the emphasis of emotions differs. In chapter 11, there is also the social function of emotions. Emotions communicate our feelings towards others, influences how other interact with us, invites and facilitates social interaction, as well as creates, maintains and dissolves relationships. Which leads into the understanding of what a mood is rather then an emotion. A mood is ill defined process; it influences what you think and what about, longer lasting that emanates from a long-lived event of mental nature.

Chapter 12, discuses more of the aspects of emotions rather then what an emotion actually is. The clear focus was the three aspects of emotion; the aspects being, biological, cognitive and social-cultural. The biological pertains to the biological reactions to important life events, and their emotional-related reactions to those events. As much as emotions are rooted in biological reactions there are found to be cognitive responses of emotions that apply as well. The central aspect in cognitive understanding of emotions is appraisal; appraisal being an estimate of a personal significance of an event. The social-cultural aspects tributes to the social understanding of emotion, implying the sociocultural context one lives in contributes to a cultural understand of emotions. As that cultural might change, those that study this aspect of emotion believe you’re emotional repertoire would change as well. All these things go into emotion, all these aspects make up what emotion is, and causes in us.

The topic of interest I found in Chapter 12 was emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and consequently to converge emotionally. I found it very interesting and most specifically when applied to myself. Back home, my group of and I are rather unique and rather proud of it. When we get together, we are very often expressive and vocal in our interactions. It was recently appointed to me by my mother that this occurred; sometimes even thinking about my friends I get the rush of excitement. But I had never really knew that it was an actual psychological term for emotions. So when I read in chapter 12 it peeked my interest and I chose to look into it a bit more, learning where its more commonly applied that its mostly used in non-verbal communication but that it isn’t always the case. Another article I read, reminded me of the many times I have been to Disney World, remembering back I can associate myself with those times and the emotions of others. Just watching the crowd, children running and jumping eager to get on a ride, and seeing the smiles and laughter on people’s faces makes a person that much more excited or happy. It sort of brings to mind that emotions are rather addictive, positive emotions more specifically.
http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/06/the-day-after-the-from-business-to-buttons-conference-in-malmo-sweden-i-spent-the-day-in-copenhagen-with-bill-derouchey-and.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion

These chapters discuss what constitutes an emotion. An emotion has four features; feeling, arousal purpose and expression. They are caused by a significant situational event that then leads to a cognitive or behavior process and back to the four features. The basic emotions include; fear, anger, disgust, sadness, interest and joy. The negative emotions are what we feel when we feel threatened or harmed and the positive emotions are experienced when we have involvement and satisfaction. Emotions can serve as a coping mechanism and also as a social function. We can form bonds with others by communicating our feelings and facilitate social interactions. They also influence how others interact with us. By being in a good mood, we have prosocial behavior, more creative, have decision making efficiency, sociability and persist even if we fail. We have emotions so they can serve as solutions to challenges, stresses and problems. An emotion emerges from significant life situations that emanate from short lived events. In contrast, a mood emerges from processes that are ill defined and unknown and emanate from mental events and are more enduring. Biological, cognitive and social cultural also come into play with emotion. Biological reactions are important with life events and affect many systems within the body. The cognitive aspect deals with appraisal that regulate the emotion process. The primary appraisal evaluates if anything is at stake in a certain situation. Secondary appraisal occurs after reflection and revolves around one’s ability to cope. These theorists believe a person showing their appraisals in an emotional episode will yield a prediction of emotion. Social and cultural aspects also come into play. Our mood can be determined by other’s moods and we also share our emotions with others. There are things that are ‘culturally acceptable’ that socializes its members to experience and express emotions in a particular way. For example, in our society it is not acceptable for men to cry. Personal experience suggests we experience an emotion and our felt emotions are followed by bodily changes. The differential emotions serve unique and different motivational purposes. There are then emotions that constitute the principal motivation system. There is a unique feeling in that each emotion has its own subjective quality. There is unique expression in that each emotion has its own facial expression patter. Each emotion also has its own specific rate of neural firing that activates that particular emotion. Different emotions also generate distinctive motivational properties and serve adaptive functions. The facial feedback hypothesis explains that emotions are “sets of muscle and glandular responses located in the face” and also suggests that facial expressions are innate.
We talked in class today about the affects that smiling can have on ourselves as well as others. As a person who works in customer service, I smile almost all the time. It is a pet peeve of mine to see an employee at any store I’m shopping in and in the most depressing mood, therefore I aim to smile at everyone. I looked up the benefits of smiling on http://queenafghan.hubpages.com/hub/Benefits-of-Smiling. It tells us that smiling helps us stay positive, changes our mood, brings happiness, boosts the immune system, reduces stress and blood pressure, releases endorphins, brings us confidence and makes us look younger and more attractive. I have also learned from previous classes that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, so why not do it? Going off the smiling topic more, I looked up the benefits smiling has when communicating with the elderly. Many people have the stereotypes that the elderly are grumpy and hate their lives. However, most are the complete opposite. They tend to put a smile on my face with their old sayings and stories. I hope to work with the elderly who have suffered from a stroke and most likely will not have the ability to speak. I believe that smiling is a universal sign that we will both understand when a client can not express their feelings. Their facial expressions will also aid me in knowing their feelings when they are unable to communicate. In addition to facial expressions, and smiling the website shows many various types of nonverbal communication that can reflect feelings http://helpguide.org/mental/eq6_nonverbal_communication.htm.

Emotions are multidimensional and short lived . The four components of an emotion are feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social expressive. The feelings component of an emotion deals with our experience and cognition about a significant life event. Bodily arousal focuses on our physiological responses to a significant event, which regulates our body’s adaptive coping behavior during emotion. An example of a bodily arousal would be an increased heart rate and adrenaline when angry. The sense of purpose component gives goal directed character to our emotions, allowing for coping action to begin. The social expressive aspect describes how we communicate our emotion. Examples of the social expression of an emotion are posture, facial expression, and vocalizations.
Emotions are causes by cognitive and biological processes that activate the four components. Those who are in favor of the cognitive approach believe that individuals could not respond emotionally unless they first cognitively appraised the meaning and significance of an event. In other words, the appraisal of meaning causes emotion. A cognitive perspective states that humans experience a greater number of emotions than just the basic primary emotions. A cognitive approach recognizes that several emotions can arise from the same biological reaction. For example, raised blood pressure could be the basis for anger or fear. Those who are in favor of a biological approach cannot occur without a prior biological event. The biological perspective emphasizes primary emotions. The biological approach states that there are a small number of basic emotions, the basic emotions are universal, and basic emotions are products of biology and evolution. The two systems view states that both cognition and biology cause emotion. Under the two system view, an individual has two systems that activate and regulate emotion. The physiological system reacts involuntarily to an emotional stimuli. The second system reacts socially and makes interpretations based on experience.
There are six mentioned basic emotions in the chapter: Fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. However, the number of emotions depends on the level of specificity. Basic emotions are defined by four components. The first condition is that basic emotions are innate, so they are not acquired through experience/socialization. The second component is that basic emotions arise from the same circumstances for all people. For example, fear is experienced by everyone when their life is threatened. The third aspect is that basic emotions are expressed uniquely and distinctively. The fourth component of basic emotions is that they evoke a distinctive and predictable physiological response. For example, you can predict that fear will cause an individual’s heart rate and perspiration to increase.
Emotions related to motivation because emotions energize and direct behavior, making emotions a type of motive. For example, fear energizes a fleeing behavior to achieve the goal of reaching safety during a threatening life event. Emotions energize and direct bodily functions by affecting the autonomic nervous system, the endocrine system, neural brain circuits, neural firing, and facial feedback. Emotions serve a coping function by energizing and directing behavior in adaptive ways to cope with major challenges and threats. Emotions also serve a social function by allowing us to communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, facilitate social interaction, and create/maintain/and dissolve relationships.
Emotion is many times perceived as having the same meaning as mood. However, emotion and mood are not the same. Emotions and mood have different causes. Emotions are causes by significant life events and appraisal of the event in terms of our well being. Mood is many times caused by unknown and poorly defined processes. Emotion and mood also have different action. Emotion influences our behavior and directs action. Mood influences cognition, directing what a person thinks about. Emotion and mood also have a different time course. Emotions are short lived and moods last for longer periods of time.
I decided to further research universal facial expressions. One article that I viewed identified eight universal emotions: fear, interest, sadness, disgust, shame, surprise, happiness, and anger. The article mentioned that although certain emotions can be accurately identified universally, the interpretation of the emotion intensity varies across cultures. The article states that in cultures where strong emotions are looked down upon, individual’s typically rate facial expressions of emotions less intensely. The article goes on to state that individuals who do well interpreting facial expressions are able to tell friends from enemies, allowing them to live longer. After reading the article I found a website where you can test your facial expression recognition skills.

http://www.cio.com/article/facial-expressions-test

http://www.lifescript.com/Soul/Self/Growth/Your_Facial_Expression_Is_A_Dead_Give-Away.aspx?gclid=COq5y6_FqKwCFQGFQAodkFnr-w&trans=1&du=1&ef_id=aeJOueo0EUMAAAcx:20111109024924:s

Chapter 11 describes emotion as having four-parts which include dimensions of feeling, arousal, purpose, and expression. Feeling gives emotions a personal meaning, arousal includes biological activity like hear rate, purposive gives emotion a goal-directed sense of motivation to take a specific course of action, and expression is emotions social component which gives emotion its communicative aspect such as through facial expressions. Emotions are both a cognitive and biological phenomenon. There are between two and ten basic emotions that we have. The six emotions that most people agree on being the basic emotions that humans have include: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. Emotions serve a purpose. Emotions evolved as biological reactions that helped us adapt successfully to fundamental life tasks, such as facing a threat. Emotions that arise during an important life task serve a goal-directed purpose that has coping and social purposes. Without our emotions we would not survive effectively. There is a difference between emotion and mood. Emotions arise in response to a specific event, motivate specific adaptive behaviors, and are short-lived. Moods arise from ill-defined sources, affect cognitive processes, and are long-lived.

Chapter 12 states that there are three aspects of emotion: biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. The biological aspect of emotions include the autonomic nervous system (heart, lungs, and muscles), the endocrine system (glands and hormones), the neural brain circuits (limbic structures such as the amygdala), the rate of neural firing (pace of information processing and neural activity), and facial feedback, which is how the body prepares itself to cope effectively when faced a situation of personal significance like a threat. The activation and maintenance of about 10 different emotions can be understood from a biological perspective: interest, joy, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame, guilt, and surprise. Appraisal is the central construct in a cognitive understanding of emotion. There are two types of appraisal: primary and secondary. Primary appraisal evaluates whether or not anything important is at stake in a situation. Secondary appraisal occurs after some reflection and revolves around an assessment of how to cope with potential benefit, harm, or threat. The social-cultural aspect of emotion is where other people are our richest sources of emotional experiences. This is where we express our feelings to others in specific ways, and catch others emotions from feedback and mimicry.

I was interested in the section of chapter 12 that talked about managing emotions. The first article I found discusses how doctors learn how to control their emotions. Researchers at the University of Chicago indicate that doctors activate a part of their brain that controls emotions during encounters with patients. The next article I found discusses emotion regulation. Some jobs require you to modify your emotions and expressions, such as waitresses, nurses, actors, and doctors. People in such professions must be able to manage their emotions so that they are consistent with organizational or occupational display rules, regardless of whether or not they match our internal feelings. I am sure most of us have experienced this without even realizing what we were doing.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2007/09/27/Doctors-control-emotions-with-patients/UPI-17471190910948/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor

Chapter 11 deals with the five questions related to emotions. Specifically, what is an emotion, what causes emotion, how many emotions are there, what good are emotions, and what is the difference between emotion and mood. Am emotion is a four part system that deals with feeling, arousal, purpose, and expressions. Emotion has been debated to be either a biological or cognitive response, and both have evidence to support their position. The answer to how many emotions are there depends on the perspective. From a biological stand point there are about 2-10 basic emotions. According to a cognitive perspective there are an almost limitless number of secondary emotions that occur through personal experience. In class we talked about how the biological perspective could be thought of as the primary colors and the cognitive perspective could be thought of as all the colors in a crayon box. The fourth question addresses what good are emotions. Emotions do serve a purpose, occur during an important life task, is goal directed, and has coping and social purposes. If we didn’t have emotions people would function poorly in the social and physical environments. The final questions address the difference between an emotion and mood. Emotions occur in response to a significant life event, influence behavior/action, and are short lived (like less than 3 seconds). A mood is in response to an ill-defined source, influences what you think about, is long-lived mental events, and tap into memory as good or bad. People who feel good have happy thoughts, positive memories, and prosocial behavior, are creative, have decision-making efficiency, are more social, and persist in spite of failure.

Chapter 12 discussed the different aspects of emotion such as biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. The biological aspects of emotion serve as coping functions and allow the person to adapt to life events. Emotions energize actions via the automatic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain, the neural firing and processing, and by facial feedback. From a biological stand point there are about 10 different emotions: interest, joy, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame, guilt, and surprise. The facial feedback hypothesis appears in two forms, weak and strong. The strong version poses specific facial features such as smiling with joy. The weak version is associated with exaggerated and suppressed facial expressions. The cognitive understanding of emotion is appraisal; there is primary and secondary which regulate the emotion process. Primary appraisal evaluates whether something is at risk in a situation and secondary appraisal occurs after, offers reflection and assessment of how to cope with a potential threat. Emotion is also embedded in cognition through emotion knowledge and attributions. The knowledge part involves learning distinctions and what situation causes what emotions. Attributional focuses on the post-outcome and explains when and why. From a social and cultural stand point of emotion other people are our greatest source of emotional experiences. This can be seen through mimicry, feedback, and ultimately contagion as we “catch” other people’s emotions. We also socially share emotions through experiences and during conversations with others.

I researched facial expressions and emotion. I found an article that stated that facial expressions are innate and not learned. The study was conducted on blind athletes and sighted athletes and it found that both individuals showed the same facial expressions when loosing or winning. This study gives new light into how humans regulate and manage displays of emotion in a social context, suggesting that regulation of emotion is not learned through observations.

I also wanted to look more into the positive effects that facial expressions can have, such as smiling. I found an article that listed 10 benefits of smiling. They were making one more attractive, changing ones mood, smiling is contagious, relieves stress, boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, releases endorphins, lifts the face and makes you look younger. I actually tried making eye contact and smiling at people when I left class today and I actually felt kind of good doing that and was surprised at how many people did make eye contact with me.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081229080859.htm

http://longevity.about.com/od/lifelongbeauty/tp/smiling.htm

These two chapters focus on emotions, and how they relate to motivation. Emotion is defined as the choreographic feeling, arousal, purposive, and expressive components that form a reaction to an eliciting event. Emotions relate to motivation in two ways. 1) Emotions energize and direct behavior 2) Emotions serve as an ongoing system to indicate our performance and how our personal adaptation is going. Some researchers argue that emotions constitute the primary motivation system. Causes of the emotion experience stem from a significant situation event and then cognitive and biological processes direct towards feelings, sense of purpose, bodily arousal, and social-expressive.

The biological perspective states how infants respond emotionally to certain events despite their lack of cognitive abilities. In addition, the cognitive perspective states without cognitive processing, emotions disappear. The two-systems view on emotions states that: one system is an innate, spontaneous, physiological system reacts involuntarily to emotional stimuli. The second system is an experience based cognitive system that reacts interpretatively and socially.

Basic emotions in the textbook are defined as fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, interest, negative basic emotions: threat and harm, and positive basic emotions: motive involvement and satisfaction. Emotions serve coping functions such as 1) communicating our feelings to others 2) influencing how others interact with us 3) inviting and facilitating social interaction and 4) creating and maintaining relationships

Chapter 12 states how emotions are biological reactions to important events. It discussed the James-Lange theory which had two assumptions: 1) the body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events and 2) the body does not react to nonemotion-eliciting events In addition, the differential emotions theory states how our basic emotions serve different, motivational purposes while relates to the first assumption of the James-Lange theory.

Of the 80 facial muscles, only 36 are involved in facial expression. According to the textbook, anger, fear, disgust, distress, and joey are the most recognizable facial expressions of individuals. Chapter 12 discussed how appraisal is an estimate of the personal significance of an event. In addition, this chapter discussed the attribution theory which states that people want to explain why they experienced a particular outcome in their lives.

The topic that interested me was what was defined as the "basic emotions." Different theorists claim that there are primary emotions and secondary emotions. Along with the secondary emotions, come tertiary emotions that compliment the category. For instance, love is said to be a primary emotion, whereas lust is considered secondary. The tertiary emotions that correlate with lust are said to be adoration, affection, and attraction. Also, some theorists state that there are a wide range of basic emotions, while some state there are only one or two basic emotions. Theorists Weiner and Graham claimed that the two basic emotions we express are happiness and sadness. However, theorist Arnold stated that our basic emotions consist of: anger, aversion, courage, dejection, desire, despair, fear, hate, hope, love, sadness.

http://changingminds.org/explanations/emotions/basic%2
0emotions.htm

In addition, another article I found stated that the seven basic emotions are anger, fear, joy, contempt, disgust, sadness, and anger. These are identified as the basic emotions because they can be universally identified whereas an emotion such as shame cannot be defined.

http://www.humintell.com/2010/06/the-seven-basic-emotions-do-you-know-them/

Chapter eleven discusses the nature of emotion. An emotion originates when an important life event occurs. Emotion consists of four-parts that are feeling, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social expression. These characteristics work together to create an emotion. Emotion can be viewed as a motive or a readout. As a motive, emotion is energizes and directs behavior. On the other hand, emotion aiding as a readout indicates how well or how poorly an individual is doing in life. Many psychologists banter between two processes indicating what causues an emotion to take place. During the cognitive process, it is believe that a person must have a cognitively surveyed the situation in order to respond with an emotion. However, biological prospective states that the cognitive process does not need to take place in order for one to produce an emotional reaction. Cognitive perspective and biological differ in more than just where emotions stem. In the biological perspective, primary emotions are expressed as being the only emotions a person exerts. Conversely, secondary and complex emotions are just as important as the primary. Overall, people of these express a wide range of emotions. These emotions are broken down into six basic emotions that are seen throughout society. In these six basic emotions, an individual expresses negative emtions (threatinging or harmful) as well as positive emotions (motivate involvement and satisfaction). Fear, anger, disgust, and sadness are all negative emotions that we experience. Joy and intreats fulfill the positive emotions category. When these basic emotions are present, an individual experiences good emotions that allow one to exert coping functions and social functions. On the other hand, moods differ from emotion. Mood is a phenomenon that lasts for hours or days at a time, unlike emotions. Moods have three specific differences. Moods derive from process that are ill-defined and influences a person’s cognitive thought process. Moods can exert positive or negivite feelings. Positive feelings are benificial to someones everyday life by improving their creativity, decision-making efficiency, sociability and persistence.
Chapter 12 discusses the aspects of emotion and the theories associated with those aspects. There are three main concepts of aspects of emotion. Those are biological, cognitive, and social and cultural. Biological aspect of emotion identifies the body’s reaction to the emotion. Through an emotion, the body prepares itself to cope with that emotion by activiting the necessary body functions in order to cope with the emotion. Facial expressions also play a role in the biological aspect of emotion. Cognitive emotion conducts an important role in the emergence of emotions. During this, information processing, social interactions and cultural contexts direct the emotion in developing. One conducts an appraisal of the significant event which in turn causes an emotion. Without the apprasal period, an emotion will not occur. Social and cultural aspects of emotion also influence the understanding of emotion. An individual’s sociocultural environment and social interactions impacts the emotion. Some environments express emotions heavily, where others do not. This will influence an individual on their expression of emotion.
I love to smile, and I smile all the time. I really believe that putting on a smile not only brighten someone else’s day, if they don’t think you are creepy, and has a positive influence on your own. When we talked about how beneficial smiling is in class today, I decided to research more information about smiling. I found a very interesting article titled “10 Hidden Benefits to Smiling.” I was really surprised to read about all of them, actually. At first, they seem generic but reading the facts for them are surprising and really making you smile the next time around. The second article I found called “The Emotional & Physical Benefits Of Smiling.” These were more about the body’s reactions and positive effects it receives to smiles which were very interesting. I didn’t know you could improve your health just through a smile. It put a whole new perspective on smiling!

http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/10-hidden-benefits-of-smiling.php
http://weighingthefacts.blogspot.com/2011/10/emotional-physical-benefits-of-smiling.html

Chapter 11 talks about emotion, and the five big questions surrounding emotion. These questions are A) What is an emotion? B) What causes emotions? C) How many emotions are there (six basic biological ones vs. unlimited number of cognitive ones) D) What good are the emotions (how to cope with different emotions, whether its fight or flight, cower away, reach out for help, etc) and E) What is the difference between emotion and mood (emotion is brief, comes from significant life events and influences our behavior, whereas mood is more of a long term chronic feeling that influences our thoughts).

Chapter 12 takes a more in depth look of emotion and its different biological aspects (different theories of emotion, facial feedback hypothesis, the testing of these theories, etc) and cognitive aspects (appraisal-the complexity of it and it’s attributions.) This chapter also divulges into the social and cultural aspects of emotion, how it helps us interact and manage our emotions.

I decided to look on the internet for more information on the different number of emotions, both biological and cognitive. The first site I looked at was pretty simple…it had lists of both the positive and negative emotions, but made the point that something as simple as “happy” can be broken down into more specific emotions depending on the experience (thrilled, ecstatic, overjoyed, etc). The second site I visited talked about the importance of emotions and why humans should even bother with dealing with them, especially the negative emotions. The article mentioned evolution in regards to negative emotions, which we discussed in class. I never knew really why we were given negative emotions, because it makes my world two times harder. But now I realize by looking at the evolution standpoint, it makes sense to me.

http://www.self-improvement-mentor.com/list-of-human-emotions.html
http://www.livescience.com/2431-humans-bother-emotions.html

Chapter 11 essentially deals with what is emotion. It answers five critical questions when thinking of emotion. The first is “what is emotion?” It tells the readers that there are four parts to emotion: Feeling, arousal, purpose, and social expression. Feelings give emotion personal meaning. Arousal includes physical or biological actions that your body subconsciously undertakes such as a quickened heart pace or pulse. Purpose creates a sense of motivation, which in turn, energizes and directs behavior. This is generally goal-oriented. Social expression is the facial expressions given when a person is experiencing a certain emotion.

The second question addressed by the textbook is “what causes emotion?” There is an ongoing debate between a biological or cognitive cause. Proponents of the biological cause for emotion state that emotions “arise from bodily influences such as neural pathways in the brain’s limbic system.” The cognitive prospective believes emotions arise from appraisals of life events and the personal meaning behind each and every event.

The third question asks “how many emotions are there?” Again, there is a difference is position. The biological position is that there is no more than ten, but no less than two basic emotions, from which all other emotions are derived. The cognitive belief is that “human beings possess a richer, more diverse emotional repertoire than just the basic emotions.”

Fourth, the textbook answers the question of “what good are emotions?” It states that emotions serve a purpose, which is to keep us alive (from a biological perspective). Fear keeps us safe, sadness teaches us to connect with others, disgust protects us from poison and disease, and so on and so forth.

The fifth point explains the different between emotion and mood. An emotion is a reaction to a specific occurrence and generates motivations. They are therefore, generally, rather short lived. Moods, in turn, can be positive or negative and are ill-defined. They also last longer and can greatly the clarity of the mind.

Chapter 12 primarily deals with the aspects of emotion, of which there are three central ones: biological, cognitive, and social cultural. The biological aspect is to help the individual with life, for mamy of the reasons that was stated for the use of emotions previously. For example, helps us to run or to fight or to avoid something. As mentioned earlier, the cognitive aspects of emotion revolves around appraisal, both primary and secondary, which serves to determine if anything important or deemed worthy is at risk at a specific event. The social and cultural aspect discusses how “other people are our richest sources of emotional experiences.”

I decided to research this last aspect of emotion more in depth. One website intrigued me right away, entitled “How to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions,” it can be found at http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Absorbing-Other-People's-Emotions. The article discusses how not to absorb other’s emotions, as stated by the title. It addresses prevalent emotions in a crowd and emotions of your close, intimate friends. I understand where they author is coming from, but there are some things with which I disagree. First and foremost, while I understand the need to not drown in the negative emotions of others, their emotions can sharpen your sense of morality and your clarify your definition of right and wrong. Granted, the article does not state to completely ignore the emotions of others, but it fails to address there is a very thin, very fine line between the two. I also vehemently, most emphatically disagree with the statement that “the intimacy of close relationships can feel like suffocation or loss of your own self.” The acknowledgement and understanding of a friend’s emotions can only go so far in helping them. True empathy is the feeling of the actual emotion felt by a loved one, at least in my humble, uneducated opinion. Granted, there is some loss of self, but that is the beauty with intimate relationships.

The following website, http://www.adb.org/documents/information/knowledge-solutions/understanding-developing-emotional-intelligence.pdf, stresses the importance of emotional intelligence, stating that even those with high IQ’s need to understand their own emotions and other’s emotions to truly be successful in this world. Daniel Goleman summed it up quite well in my opinion, “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”

Chapter 11 and 12 are both all about emotions. Chapter 11 focuses on what emotion is while chapter 12 focuses more on the three central aspects of emotion. Emotion consists of cognitive based feelings, body arousal, social expressiveness, and a sense of purpose. An example of an emotion is if you were just told you won the lottery; you would feel a rush of happiness, your heart would start beating rapidly because it was unexpected, you would instantly get a huge smile on your face, and you would hurry to go pick up the money you won. Emotion is short-lived and emerges from a significant life event; it influences a person’s behavior. Emotion is a lot of the time mistaken from mood, but mood is the state of cognition you are in. Mood is long-lasting, and directs a person to think about a situation. An emotion like sadness can lead to your mood being depressive, but mood and emotion are two different variables. Researchers still debate on whether emotion is biological or cognitive. Theorists with a biological perspective believe that emotions come from bodily influences and theorists with a cognitive perspective think that emotion comes from mental events. There are many psychologists who think that emotion comes from both the biological and cognitive perspective. Biological and cognitive theorists on emotion also have a different perspective on how many emotions a person has. From the biological perspective, people have 2-10 basic emotions. Then from a cognitive perspective, people have an unlimited amount of emotions because emotions are complex. Some psychologists also believe that a person has 6 basic emotions; fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. Fear, anger, disgust, and sadness are all thought to be negative emotions, but it is these negative emotions that keep us alive and stay away from harm or threat. Joy and interest are positive emotions and they motivate us to stay involved and give us curiosity to try new things.
The three central aspects of emotion that are talked about in chapter 12 are biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. The biological aspect is how the body reacts to life events. Because of the biological reaction; a person is better able to adapt to the environment they are in. Emotions serve as energizers to the body’s action potentials. The cognitive aspect is the emotions appraisal. Appraisal then divided up into two different divisions; primary and secondary. Primary appraisal evaluates the importance of the situation and the secondary appraisal asses how to cope after reflection of emotion. Then the social-cultural aspect of emotion is learning what emotions are “social acceptable” in certain situations.
When I read about the social-cultural aspect of emotions, I began to think about what emotions are “social acceptable” to display in our culture that wouldn’t be in another. So, I looked up cultural differences in displaying emotions. One research that I found discussed how some cultures try to have total control over their facial expressions while other cultures don’t. Russians were found to have the most control over their facial expressions and Americans were found to have the least amount of control. It was also found that in “collectivist” cultures, not many emotions were socially acceptable to display. It is okay to display more types of emotions in “individualist” cultures. http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/05/which-culture-most-controls-their.php Then I found a website that talked more about the differences of expression of emotions in “collectivist” vs. “individualistic” cultures. Because collectivist cultures are based on relationships with one another, it is also assumed that everyone goes through the same emotions in all life situations. There are strict expectations of how one should display their emotions in collectivist cultures. Individualistic cultures have more loose rules on emotional expression. Individualistic cultures focus more on each individual then a whole group. They realize that 2 people going through the same life crisis can feel 2 completely different emotions and it is okay to express them differently. http://vapidvapidity.blogspot.com/2009/05/cultural-differences-in-expression-of.html

Chapter eleven is all about the nature of emotion and how we define it. Emotions are subjective, multidimensional and biological. When talking about emotions you have to look at all four dimensions of emotion and how they relate to one another. The four dimensions include feeling, sense of purpose, bodily arousal, and social-expressive. The book also talks about how emotions are short lived feelings that come about from a certain stimulus and not long term feelings. Emotions are caused by certain life events that we adapt through biological and cognitive ways. Altogether biological and cognitive activate components of emotion including feelings, bodily arousal, goal-directed purpose and expression. With the biological perspective it is believed that humans have a small number of emotions. With the cognitive perspective, humans are thought to have several diverse emotions. We have decided on 6 different emotions that include fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. Emotions help us to deal with the events in our lives and our environment. A lot of the times we confuse emotions and moods. Emotions are short term and come about due to specific events. Moods are long term and arise without a specific event.
Chapter 12 goes on to talk about aspects of emotion. There are three different aspects of emotion that include biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. Our emotions energize and direct bodily actions by having an affect on the autonomic nervous system. For the biological perspective there are 10 different emotions which include interest, joy, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame, guilt, and surprise. The cognitive perspective deals with the construct of appraisal. There are two different types of appraisal, primary and secondary. Primary appraisal evaluates the importance of a situation. Secondary appraisal occurs after reflection and depends on an assessment of how to cope with a potential benefit, harm, or threat. Finally, in a social and cultural is our emotions while interacting with others and our environment.
A topic that I found interesting was positive affect and how it affects our lives. The first website I found talks about research that they have done with positive affect. If one is happier and comfortable in their current environment they are more efficient decision makers, more creative problem solvers, and have a better use of memory. The second article was about a study done with positive and negative affect and reactions in the lab. Basically it was measured using stress tests under different conditions and ones with positive affect did better on the tests. I think this just adds on to what we discussed in class where if you are in a better mood then you are more productive and also more creative in your work.

http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/display.asp?id=6302

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17157442

These two chapters are related to one another, they both work to describe and explain emotion. Motivation obviously, is having the will to do something. There can be a negative or positive outlook on this motivation, which creates emotion.
But what’s an emotion? Emotions are a combination of things: feelings, social expressions, bodily arousal and a sense of purpose. All of these things work together to get to a behavior that’s goal directed. These four components can be seen in happiness, sadness, etc. Emotion can either direct a behavior or adapt to something. People wonder how emotions happen, and there’s no specific answer, just that the biological and cognitive aspects of our life both contribute to it.
There are many emotions: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, interest (curiosity). These emotions are what keep us alert, satisfied and alive. They help us cope and also communicate in social settings. These social functions are: communicating with others, influence how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction and create/maintain relationships. Some might think these things are described as your ‘mood’, but there is a difference between emotion and mood. Moods are vague, they influence thoughts and usually are long lasting events. Emotions are from significant events, they influence behavior and are usually pretty brief.
When a person feels good, there are many benefits: they are usually better situated in social settings, more creative, more effective decision makers, more sociable, and they tend to persist more often. As a persons emotions are varied, they tend to have a unique way of feeling, expressing themselves and a unique neural activity. Their sense of purpose is often more advanced.
I decided to research the body’s ability to cope. I found it quite interesting that you must upkeep your health in order for that coping mechanism to stay strong. Getting an adequate amount of sleep, avoiding alcohol and drugs, exercising, eating a balanced died and keeping stress low all contribute to treating trauma and helping your ability to cope. http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/ , http://helpguide.org/mental/emotional_psychological_trauma.htm

In chapters 11, the focus was on the nature of emotions. Emotions are made up of four components; feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social-expressive. Emotion can serve as a motivator, and energize and motivate behavior. Emotion can also serve as a readout for other people, indicating to others so they can react and respond to us appropriately.
The chapter debates over emotion as a cognitive or as a biological process, and whether one is more important than the other in emotion. Biological perspective focuses on the body's side, and cognitive processes focus on the mental side. One aspect on which they differ is on the number of emotions they focus on. Biological perspective focuses on the primary emotions (fear, anger, joy, sadness, etc). and cognitive perspective focuses on primary emotions and complex secondary emotions that aren't necessarily easy to read.
The social functions of emotions are varied, and include communicating our feelings to others, influencing our interactions with others, and helping to create, maintain, and dissolve relationships. Overall, they make a big impact on our social experiences. Affect is like whether a person is optimism and pessimism, where you can either have positive affect and be pleasant and reward driven, or have negative affect and be punishment driven.
Finally, mood is often confused with emotion. Emotions are generally fast and short-lived, whereas moods last longer. Moods are more general, and can really influence our thoughts and behavior. A mood can also be hard to define, whereas an emotion is more specific.
Chapter 12 was also about emotion, specifically aspects of emotion. The main aspects of emotion are biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. Biologically, emotions can active the autonomic nervous system, the endocrine system, the neural circuits, the rate of neural firing, and facial feedback. Cognitively, we appraise emotions primarily or secondarily. Primary appraisal looks at whether anything important is at stake. Secondary appraisal looks at how to cope with the situation, and comes about after some reflection. Socially, other people are our main source for our emotional experiences. We learn from others, observe them, interact with them, and generally learn about the expectations in our culture from those around us.
For my individual research, I found an article that looked at whether or not honeybees experience pessimism, or negative affect. The experiment found that bees might experience negative affect after being exposed to a negative situation and then ambiguous stimuli. I have read some other articles about animals experiencing emotion, but this was the first to look at general moods rather than emotions. I think this is a much better approach, since it would seem to be much easier to evaluate moods than emotions, since they last longer and are general enough to observe.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/honeybee-pessimism/

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900544-6

Emotions. Not only are emotions fascinating; they are the other half of the title of this course!
Emotions have four components: subjective feelings, physical arousal, a goal-directed purpose, and social-expression. The cause of emotion is debated to be either biological or cognitive. Biologically, emotions arise from bodily responses such as neural pathways. Cognitively, emotions arise from mental events with personal meanings, like appraisals. There are several different kinds of basic emotions. These basic emotions have been formed over time as adaptive to our survival. Basic negative emotions are fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. The basic positive emotions are joy and interest. Emotions serve several purposes as well. As I mentioned before, the biologically help us adapt to fundamental life tasks. They also give us goal-directed purposes in the social world we live in.
Chapter 12 explains in further detail the three central aspects of emotion: biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. Biologically, emotions affect the autonomic nervous system, the endocrine system, neural brain circuits, the rate of neural firing, and of course, facial expressions. The facial feedback hypothesis has a weak version and strong version. The strong version insists that facial expressions activate emotions, whereas the weak version says that facial expressions enhance pres-existing emotions. There are two types of appraisal: primary appraisal determines if a situation is important or at stake, whereas secondary appraisal involves reflection and coping with a situation. Finally, in our social-cultural world, our emotional experiences come largely from other people; both “catching” other’s emotions and sharing ours with them.
I was particularly interested in the Facial Feedback Hypothesis theory. One article I found was called “Fake it till you Make It: Can Smiling Improve Mental State?” The overall consensus on whether fake smiling can improve mood is unclear. However, many experts argue that just the physical act of smiling can release endorphins, and maybe even combat anxiety and depression! While the data is still up for debate, several self-reports still emphasize the health benefits of humor.
On a similar topic, I read “Better Moods Through Botox—Injections Improve Anger Management.” A University of Wisconsin-Madison student did an experiment to see how quickly 40 participants could respond to statements as either “happy,” “sad,” or “angry.” They then did the same test two weeks later after their first injection of botox. The participants responded at the same pace with the happy, but much slower for angry and sad. This further fuels the facial-feedback theory: facial expressions can help dictate your mood.
Maybe I will just wear a smile around all day now! :D

http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/2008/Smile.htm

http://www.epione.com/articles/better-moods-through-botox-injections-improve-anger-management/

Chapter 11 is titled “Nature of Emotion: Five Perennial Questions” and it is just that, five questions over the understanding of the nature of emotion.

The first question asks, “What is an emotion?” According to the chapter, there are four dimensions to emotions: feelings, arousal, purpose and expression. Feelings are subjective and give an emotion it’s meaning. Arousal deals with biological activity that prepares the body to react to the emotion causing event. The purposive component uses the emotion to guide and help understand how to take a specific, goal-oriented approach in responding to the emotion causing event. The social component of emotions deals with what the emotion communicate to others.

The second question asks, “What causes an emotion?” This question, asks if emotions are a biological or a cognitive phenomenon. The biological theory states that emotions arise out of a bodily reaction to the environment and activate neural pathways within the limbic system of the brain. The cognitive theory behind what causes emotions states that emotions rise out of a personal feeling about an emotion-based event occurring within the environment.

The third question within chapter 11 asks, “How many emotions are there?” According to each different theory behind emotions there is a different number of emotions one can feel reported and they range from 2 different expressions to 10 different expressions. Most of the basic emotions recognized are fear, anger, distrust, sadness, joy and interest.

The fourth question within chapter 11’s “five perennial questions” is “What good are emotions?” Or in other words, what purpose do emotions serve? Emotions can come from an evolutionary perspective where they served as non-verbal communication for us to communicate to one another when we may have been at a loss for words. Emotions can also help within social environments by helping to communicate our wants and needs as well.

The final question within chapter 11 is that of, “What is the difference between emotion and mood?” The answer is that emotions are generally short-lived and come from a specific event that can be defined. Moods however, are longer in duration and come from a source that is difficult to define.

Chapter 12 is titled, “Aspects of Emotion” and states that there are three primary aspects to emotions – they have a biological, cognitive, and social-cultural aspect.

According to the biological aspect of emotions, emotions direct bodily actions through the autonomic nervous system (regulation of heart, lungs, and muscles), the endocrine system (hormones and organs), neural brain circuits, neural firing, and facial feedback of the felt emotion. According to this aspect, there are ten different emotions that can be felt by an individual and these include: interest, joy, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame, guilt, and surprise.

The cognitive aspect of emotions states that there is both primary and secondary appraisal in regulating the emotion process. Primary appraisal judges the severity of the emotion causing event and judges whether or not it puts the individual in any sort of risk (physiological, self-esteem, etc.). The secondary appraisal deals with how an individual should cope with a situation or threat.

In the social and cultural aspect of emotion we look at how we interact with others. Emotions are usually picked up from an individual and involve a process of mimicry, feedback and contagion. The cultural aspect lies in how we express our emotions to one another, as every culture is different in it’s own expression of emotions.

I decided to Google, “facial expressions and emotions” and came up with the first link reading, “Facial Expressions of Emotion are Innate, Not Learned”. The link led me to a page that discussed how facial expressions are built into our genes with a study to back this idea up. The study, which used both blind and sighted participants, measured facial movements and expressions to emotion causing events, with many of the blind individuals showing the same facial expressions as those whom were sighted. The second link that I clicked on lead me to the American Psychological Association’s page with a news article discussing how studies are finding out that the face actually IS NOT a mirror of our emotions. The news article discusses how facial expressions are not necessarily a mirror to how individuals feel on the inside, but that they simply push social interaction forward, whether or not it is truly how the individuals feel within themselves. The news article continues saying that, sometimes emotions can occur without any facial feedback and sometimes, facial feedback can occur when there really is no emotion for the face to be receiving feedback from. The news article even mentions a study where infants were studied with cameras and their facial expressions were recorded, some occurring in the absence of any emotion. However, I found this study to have a bit of a flaw, and that was that it is a little hard to measure an absence of emotion, since after all, emotions can be seen as a subjective experience, therefore, how can you really tell when somebody is truly feeling an emotion or not? Therefore, a photo taken with a blank facial expression, could actually be portraying an emotion within the individual that they cannot verbally report back on.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081229080859.htm

http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan00/sc1.aspx

Chapter 11 discusses emotions. Emotions make us feel and act a certain way. They are a short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face. To break it down further feeling gives emotions a personal meaning, arousal includes biological activity like heart rate, purposive gives emotion a goal-directed sense of motivation to take a specific course of action, and expression is emotions social component which gives emotion its communicative aspect through things like facial expressions. It is difficult to define emotions because they are multidimensional. They involve subjective, biological, purposive, and social phenomena. The multidimensional components work to direct and energize our behaviors. Moods differ from emotions in many different ways. They emerge from ill-defined processes, where as emotions arise from specific stimuli. They influence thoughts instead of behaviors and they come from long-lived mental events instead of from short-lived events like emotions do. There are two perspectives concerning emotion: the biological perspective and the cognitive perspective. The biological perspective believes that emotions occur automatically and involuntarily. Because it is sometimes hard to verbalize emotions, the biological perspective believes that emotions come from origins that are non-cognitive. The cognitive perspective believes that cognitive processes are needed before we can experience emotions. This is because we need to have a cognitive understanding about the event, circumstance or situation before we can elicit an emotion. Both perspectives agree that emotions are complex but they differ on what causes emotions. The biological perspective focuses on certain range of primary emotions. The cognitive perspective acknowledges primary emotions but they believe that different emotions can arise from the same biological reaction. Various studies have concluded that there are between 2 to 10 different basic emotions. The 6 primary emotions that all researchers tend to agree on are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. Emotions serve a purpose. Emotions evolved as biological reactions that helped us adapt successfully to fundamental life tasks, such as facing a threat. Emotions that arise during an important life task serve a goal-directed purpose that has coping and social purposes. Without our emotions we would not survive effectively.
Chapter 12 discussed the 3 different aspects of emotion. The biological aspect believes that emotions are the biological reactions to life events. The James Lange Theory suggests that emotional changes follow biological changes within the body. When our heart races and our palms sweat, our body signals that we are interpreting a threat in our environment. In turn, we feel fear. Fear is actually just our body’s reaction to a threat in our environment. The cognitive aspect acknowledges that appraisals and perceptions are a large component of determining emotions. During appraisal, we decide whether a situation is good or bad, threatening or nonthreatening, happy or sad and whether it pertains to us. Our appraisals turn into perceptions which decide our emotions. Primary appraisal occurs when we decide whether the situation will affect us. When we decide it is pertinent to us we then use secondary appraisal to assess whether we can cope with the benefit, harm, or threat. Socialization is another aspect of emotion. Emotions work to integrate and socialize people. Emotional contagion is the process to which people mimic or synchronize their movements and portrayal of emotions while interacting with another person. The socialization process results in the management of emotions. We realize that we can’t act on all our emotions so we learn how to suppress our emotions in certain situations.
After reading these chapters, I started thinking about the socialization aspect of emotions. Specifically how facial expressions allow us to communicate our feelings to another person. Without facial expressions and other nonverbal cues during social interactions, people can misinterpret the meanings or the intent behind the communicator’s message. With the digital age now upon us, the majority of people spend a lot of time communicating through various digital media. The use of text messaging and Facebook has nearly replaced “old fashion” telephone conversations and some human-to-human contact. I know from my own experiences and with speaking to others, a good portion of society (especially the younger generations) prefer texting to actually speaking on the phone. With this switch in the method of human interaction, how exactly do we express our emotions through the seemingly cold, emotionless world of technology to avoid misinterpretation of our messages? The answer….emoticons. The use of emoticons further solidifies the importance of humans needing to use emotions to convey and interpret messages while communicating. Without emotions, it is easy to misunderstand someone’s intent thus causing a person to produce their own emotional responses (which could be anxiety producing emotions) that are unnecessary. I found this site: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/2011/07/18/communicating-theory-of-mind/ which further discusses the needs and uses of emoticons. It was really interesting to read because it went into further discussion about how emoticons have evolved to include cultural modifications. Western society uses  to express the message as being happy while Eastern societies use (^_^) or (^.^). It also talked about how the general emotions used during messages were happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, and neutral which are similar to the basic 6 emotions that researchers tend to agree upon. Another study that reaffirms the use of emoticons to express emotion and discusses the cultural differences is by Young-Joo Cha from Indiana University (http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:KsXrFYh51lUJ:https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/bitstream/handle/1805/2351/Young-Joo%2520Cha.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1+psychological+studies+on+using+emoticons&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjy6AF4Ct6n9Pk2XJzuAyYW8YFdf4OJ1kMMaCUz-g1TWoyVKHSWz_4ba2eyRzrMG5vVvfbvF6bnCQFpWeBFKqKQcxpLeDaCLb8osiUuyBTttR3J-RtNxcJvrOb_rpcGy8MVm95P&sig=AHIEtbRBLLEJ5LWEiLWgpIdh_dDwcWbxWA) This study discussed the emotional responses people have when viewing emoticons. I found it all very intriguing and is worth the time looking in to. All though both of these websites do not further discuss a topic within the chapters 11 and 12, I still think they are related because emoticons are just another way for people to convey emotions.