Reading Blog due Monday 3/26 @midnight

Chapters 11 and 12 collectively talk about emotion. Eleven describes the nature of emotion, which can be defined as a short lived adaptation to a life event. They are subjective (personal), biological (affect the body), purposive (means to achieve an end), and social (expressive). Emotions relate to motivation in two ways; they serve as a type of motivation (energize and direct energy) and regulate feedback for adaptation. There are biological and cognitive aspects to emotions, but there are ongoing debates about which is the primary source, but two contemporary views may contribute to an agreement. The two-systems view states we were born with the biological aspect and learned the cognitive aspect through experience, which are used to influence particular emotions (for instance, biological influences fear and cognitive influences hope) and each other. The chicken and the egg problem states they are both necessary to provide an ongoing chain of feedback. The two aspects also disagree on the proposed number of emotions. Biological supporters argue there are between two and ten basic emotions, and cognitive supporters argue there is a limitless number, because specific emotions arise from specific situations and social roles. However, a compromise proposed basic emotions gave rise to emotion families. Negative emotions included fear (to motivate defense), anger (to react against restraint), disgust (to avoid contamination), and sadness (to restore environment from distress). Positive emotions include joy (feedback to engage) and interest (motivates inquiry for information). All of these emotions provide functions, which must be regulated to serve social functions (express feelings, create relationships, interact). Mood is different than emotions in that it’s longer lasting with an unknown cause.

Chapter 12 focuses on emotional aspects, beginning with biological aspects. The James-Lange theory of emotions states when in contact with a stimulus, there is a bodily reaction, and then an emotion afterwards (my heart rate and adrenaline increased after I was nearly hit by a car, then I felt fear). Another theory is the differential emotions theory, which states basic emotions (positive, neutral, and negative) serve unique motivations. Support for the biological aspect includes neural circuits influencing the fight/flight response, behavior approach, and behavior inhibition, as well as prefrontal cortex processing (information interpreted before emotion felt). On another note, cognitive aspects argue emotions are caused by appraisals, estimation of personal significance for an event. One theory for this is Arnold’s Appraisal Theory of Emotions, which states the situation is classified as good or bad by the brain (appraisal) and given an emotion to approach or avoid. Another theory is the Lazarus Complex Appraisal, which argues there are several classes for benefits, threats, and harms to primary appraisals (accessing if important things are at risk) and secondary appraisals (accessing coping strategy) that cause specific emotions. Furthermore, attributions are used to explain outcomes using pride, gratitude, pity, hope, anger, guilt, and shame as roots. Finally, there are social and cultural aspects to emotions. One’s culture plays a role in how they interpret the emotion; for instance, Chinese people find love negative and shame neutral. These feelings are learned through social interaction directly or indirectly (through social contagion by mimicking others). Our professional social roles may also be compromised by emotions, but there are techniques to get around the emotional aspects on the job. For instance, medical schools teach students to deal with emotions by replacing intimacy with systematic procedures, avoiding clients, or identifying job satisfaction to remain objective.

I was surprised to learn the extent of biological influence in our emotions, such as the neural firing theory. This theory states that our emotions are influenced by the rate of neural firing over a period of time, which is in accordance with the James-Lange Theory that the biological reaction comes before the emotional reaction to a stimulus. Furthermore, I was surprised how the biological and cognitive aspects play different-sized roles in different emotions. These chapters are relevant to this class, because emotion is a type of motivation in that it directs and energizes behavior, and provides feedback. Specifically, chapter 11 introduced the concept and basics of it (such as the definition, cause, and amounts of basic emotions), and chapter twelve went into greater detail by breaking down and exploring the biological, cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of emotion with a variety of theories and examples.

Terms: emotion, motivation, biological aspects, two-systems view, cognitive aspects, chicken and the egg problem, basic emotions, emotion families, functions, social functions, mood, emotional aspects, biological aspects, James-Lange Theory, Differential Emotions Theory, cognitive aspects, appraisal, Arnold’s Appraisal Theory of Emotions, Lazarus complex appraisals, primary appraisals, secondary appraisals, attributions, social aspects, cultural aspects, social interaction, social contagion

Chapters eleven and twelve begin to discuss emotion. An emotion is subjective (feelings), biological (energy-mobilizing responses), purposive (motivate actions), and social (recognize signals that communicate our emotion). Emotion encompasses all four of those items. Chapter eleven discusses how emotions relate to motivation in two ways. One way is that emotions are a motive like needs or cognitions that energize and direct behavior. The second way is that emotions serve as a sort of feedback system to tell us how well our adaptation is going (ex. sadness is not moving well towards a goal). An emotion is caused by a combination of cognitive and biological processes. One psychologist says that emotions are caused by two systems. One system is an innate, involuntary physiological system and the other is a system based off of interpretations and social experiences. There is no specific number of emotions and the number varies depending on whether you follow the biological perspective or the cognitive perspective. The cognitive perspective includes acquired emotions. However, the text says that it has been concluded that emotions are based off of five emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, and love. Emotions serve the purpose of helping us cope and react to situations and to communicate with others. The final question from chapter eleven is what is the difference between emotion and mood? Emotions emerge from significant life situations but moods emerge from ill-defined processes. Secondly, emotions influence behavior whereas moods influence cognitions. Lastly, emotions come from shorter events but moods come from mental events that can last for longer periods of time.

Chapter eleven explained the basics of emotion to us. Chapter twelve breaks it down further and discusses three different aspects of emotion: biological, cognitive, and social and cultural. The biological aspect began with the James-Lange Theory. This theory says that the body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events and that the body does not react to nonemotion-eliciting events. The modern differential emotions theory says that there are ten principal emotions with their own unique feelings, expressions, neural activity, and purpose. This theory says how those ten emotions act as motivation for people to act. The biological aspect also discusses how emotions are “sets of muscle and glandular responses located in the face.” This is a biological way of saying that someone’s emotions are visible in their face. Cognitive aspects discuss the importance of appraisal in emotions. Appraisal measures the significance of an event to that person. Psychologists say that it is not the event itself but the appraisal that causes emotion. Lazarus discussed how complex appraisal also takes a look at how we believe we can cope with the event and whether it will benefit me or harm me. In primary appraisal, we have six things at stake. These six things are health, self-esteem, a goal, financial state, respect, and the well-being of a loved one. Secondary appraisal is the person’s analysis of the coping with the event. Another area of the cognitive aspect of emotion is attribution theory. Attribution theory discusses the “why” for life events and these create our emotions in some instances. The final aspects of emotion are the social and cultural aspects of emotion. The different emotions vary across cultures. Some vary whether they are positive or negative across cultures and some cultures believe in a different set of innate emotions. The text discusses how emotions are important in building, maintaining, and ending interpersonal relationships. Emotional socialization occurs when children learn what they should know about emotion from adults. How people manage emotions vary across cultures but also across professions. Some cultures expect each other to mask certain emotions just as we expect doctors to hide their emotions when performing an exam.

The most surprising thing I learned were the differences between emotion and mood. The two words are typically used interchangeably. When I first started reading that the two were different, I figured that emotion was for a longer period of time and that mood was brief. I was surprised, however, when I read that an emotion is thought to last for only seconds or minutes. The more I read and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. When you are in a bad mood, it lasts for usually the rest of the day and may even carry over into the next day. However, when you experience an emotion like surprise or joy, it lasts very briefly. It was interesting to learn about the differences in them. It made perfect sense that moods influence what a person thinks about rather than motivates a behavior like emotion does.

The reason we are discussing emotions and motivations together is because it was thought for a long period of time that emotions were the primary motivation for actions. However, in the text we learn that there are two reasons emotions relate to motivation. Emotions are considered a type of motive like needs and cognitions that energize and direct behavior. Being angry towards someone may motivate us to tell them why we are angry at them or to take some other sort of action towards that person. Emotions also are used to tell how well a person is adapting. The example from the text was that if you experience joy, it is an indicator that you are moving towards your goal. Likewise, feeling sad and upset can be an indicator that you aren’t moving towards a goal or that you are progressing slowly towards it.

Terms Used: Emotion, Subjective, Biological, Purposive, Social, Motivation, Needs, Cognitions, Behavior, Adaptation, Cognitive Processes, Biological Processes, Acquired Emotions, Mood, Social, Cultural, James-Lange Theory, Differential Emotions Theory, Appraisal, Lazarus, Complex Appraisal, Primary Appraisal, Attribution Theory, Emotional Socialization

Chapter 11 introduces us to the concept of emotion. We learn that emotion is more complex than one may first think. Emotion is comprised of four parts, they are feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social-expressive. Emotions are short-lived phenomena that help us adapt to the numerous situations and challenges we face throughout our life. Emotions are motives; they give behavior energy and direction. They are also a way to let ourselves judge how well or poorly we are reacting to the environment around us as well as how we are doing when working towards a goal.

Emotions stem from both biological and cognitive systems. We know emotions are innate because infants will respond with emotions like anger and joy with no prior experience or reference. We also know there is a cognitive aspect to emotion. We learn from experience how to respond to certain social and environmental cues. Both of these explanations for the origins of emotions work together and can be seen as the comprehensive explanation for what causes emotion. There is some argument as to how many basic emotions that there are within humans. Some of the criteria for a basic emotion includes that it be innate, distinct, and arises from the same circumstances in all people. The book lists fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest as its representatives of basic emotions.

Emotions do serve a practical purpose. The biological reactions we display as emotion are adaptive in that they help us deal with everyday challenges. Fear from seeing a snake gives the energy and purpose to run away from it. Emotions also help us with our goal-directed behaviors and allow us to interact in an appropriate way given the social context.

There are a few things that can help us differentiate emotion and mood. Emotions are typically shorter, are a response to a specific event, and give us specific behaviors. Moods exist as a positive or negative in affect. These are more commonly thought of as good or bad moods. Positive affect gives us the benefits of sociability, persistence, creativity, and helps facilitate intrinsic motivation.

Chapter 12 discusses the different aspects of emotions. The three main aspects are the biological aspect, cognitive aspect, and the social and cultural aspects of emotion. The first biological theory of significance was the James-Lange theory. It states that emotions are the reactions to changes in the physiological systems. Its main problem was that of causality. The famous example is seeing a bear and running. The James-Lange theory would say it is the running away that causes us fear. Common sense and further study would show us that in fact seeing the bear causes fear and then we run. Emotions give us energy and direct our bodies to action.

Biological systems involved in emotion are the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, and our facial feedback and patterns of facial expression. The facial feedback hypothesis states that the aspects of emotion are actually our awareness of proprioceptive feedback from facial actions. There are two forms of this hypothesis, the weak form and the strong form. Only the weak form currently has strong evidence to support it.

The main construct of the cognitive aspect of emotion is appraisal. Appraisals are estimates of the significance of what we of observing or experiencing. Appraisals are the antecedent to emotion and are what causes the emotion, not the actual event itself. Primary appraisal is evaluates the initiate significance of events. Secondary appraisal is what we do after some thought and reflection over an event or idea. Attribute theory suggests that people want to explain why they experience certain things in life. Thus, an attribute is the reason we us to explain why things happened the way they did.

Social interaction and experience give us the background for our social and cultural aspects of emotion. When interacting with others, we display mimicry, get feedback from others behaviors and expressions, and tend to act and feel like others around us through the concept of emotional contagion. We gain our emotional knowledge from interacting with people. We learn how to manage and express our emotions through our experience interacting with others.

The most surprising thing I learned was universality of certain facial expressions. It could easily be though that we learn our facial expressions from watching others, but this is strong evidence that our many of our facial expressions are innate and unlearned.

Emotion has a lot to do with motivation. Emotion gives our behavior the energy and direction needed to work towards accomplishing things. Thus, from emotions arises motivation. Also, our emotions guide us through motivational states. Emotions can be seen as a “readout system” guiding our behavior when working to accomplish something or in goal-directed behavior. Positive emotions encourage us to continue towards our goal and negative emotions urge us to stop working towards that action.

Terms: Emotion, basic emotions, mood, positive affect, negative affect, James-Lange theory, facial feedback hypothesis, appraisal, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, attribute, emotional contagion

Chapter 11 focused on emotions. Reeve defines emotion as “short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that helps us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events.” Emotions are multidimensional concepts that have four elements. They are subjective (cognitions), have a purpose (goal directed behavior), biological reactions that help the body react in ways it should under certain circumstances (autonomic and hormonal systems), and also play a role in our social world through interacting with others and interpreting one’s emotion (communicating one’s emotions).

Emotions energize and direct one’s behavior, like needs and cognitions. One researcher believes that if there is no emotion in action, the motivation for the individual will not be there. Emotion also is related to motivation through the feedback that emotion gives us in personal adaptation. The positive emotions that are felt express that the adaptation is going well, but the negative emotions express the opposite.

Emotion is difficult to tell if it stems from cognitions or biological factors, both theories have extensive research. The biological perspective views emotion as automatic, unconscious and it is mediated by subcortical structures of the brain. It is also pointed out that many of our emotions are just reactions to our current environment. Many of them happen before we can cognitively process them. The three main points are emotions are nonverbal so they must have begun at a point without language, emotions can also be brought on through processes other than cognitions such as activity of the muscles in the face, and finally babies and animals express emotions. The cognitive perspective that gains support from the idea that emotion comes from the process of cognitively assessing the meaning of an event. The debate between these two factors has led to many theories of where emotion comes from.

The two-systems view is the first view that takes on the cognitive and the biological perspectives. This theory says that both biology and cognitions help form emotions. They are interrelated and influence each other. It also says that some emotions are due to biology specifically (anger, fear) and some are due to cognitions (hope and gratitude). The second is referred to as the emotion-as a process-view. This view sees emotion as constantly changing and changing is comparison levels. It depends on cognitions arousal, preparation for action, feelings, expressive displays, and behavior.

Another question researchers try to explain is how many emotions are there? Again, there is much research to help support these many theories. The first is the biological perspective. These perspectives can range from individuals having from 2 to 10 emotions. They all agree that everyone does have basic emotions and that they are innate and part of human as well as animals. The cognitive perspective supports an unlimited amount of emotions within humans because they are subjective and so much affects them. Together they form the concept of having six basic emotion families and from those basic emotions subcategories are created. The six basic emotions are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy and interest. Emotions also serve for coping and social needs. Biologically, our emotions serve us as well as animals to let us know how to react when there is a danger and to preserve our life and pass on our genes to future generations. Emotions direct our behavior and channel our focus to what is important. Socially, emotions motivate interactions between individuals.

The text also explains the difference between mood and emotion. The first difference is that the stem of a mood is often unknown, whereas emotions are the product of a life event. Mood also changes cognitions and directs a person thoughts in a certain way. The final difference is that moods are more long lasting than the short-term emotions. Positive affect is the every day feeling of “feeling good” which holds many benefits for individuals.

Chapter 12 also focuses on emotion and its aspects. The James-Lange Theory is the first described under the biological aspects of emotion. This theory says that a stimulus causes our body to react that in turn causes emotion. It also focuses on our body reacting differently to events that cause emotion and that our body does not react to events that doesn’t stir up emotion. There are many criticisms of James-Lange’s theory, but contemporary research does support that the body’s reaction does set the stage for the emotion involved with a stimulus. Another theory, the differential emotions theory focuses on that our emotions serve different motivational purposes. This theory says there are 10 emotions that each have their own feeling, are expressed on the face differently, each having different rate at which the neurons fire, and they are available for different motivational purposes.

Another important concept in chapter 12 was appraisal. Appraisal is defined as the evaluating of the significance an event has for an individual. An event causes a person to appraise whether it is a good or bad event, which leads to the emotion (like vs. dislike) and finally the action (approach vs. withdrawal). This is called Arnold’s Appraisal Theory of Emotion. Another researcher, Lazarus, shared many views with Arnold, but focused on the well being of an individual. He said that if the well being of the individual is at risk they have to evaluate that circumstance. Primary appraisal is when the individual decides whether they have anything at risk in the situation. Secondary appraisal is the reflection of the coping during the possible benefit, harm or threat. Lazarus also states that if person’s motives are at risk, emotions will follow.

The most surprising information I learned was about the facial feedback hypothesis that said that emotions were based of the muscles and muscles movements of the face. I think that is so interesting that just forming your face in a certain way can create an emotion within you. It doesn’t seem like emotions can be changed and manipulated that easily. These chapters tie in with motivation on many levels. Emotion is intertwined with the concept of motivation. Emotions energize and direct our behaviors. It motivates us in how we respond and socialize with others, how we respond in certain events and many other areas of our lives.

Terms: emotion, motivation, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, two-systems view, emotion-as a process-view, mood, positive affect, basic emotions, emotional families, social functions, coping functions, James-Lange Theory, differential emotions theory, facial feedback hypothesis, appraisal, Arnold’s Appraisal Theory of Emotion, Lazarus’s Complex Appraisals, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal,

Chapters 11 and 12 focus on the topic of emotion. Chapter 11 discusses the nature of emotion, such as the five questions listed in the beginning of the chapter; 1) What is an emotion?, 2) What causes an emotion?, 3) How many emotions are there?, 4) What good are the emotions, and 5) What is the difference between emotion and mood? As events take place in our lives, everyone has a reaction to them, whether positive or negative, extreme or subtle.

Emotions can be described through four components; subjective, biological, social, or have a purpose behind them. The first component listed previously is in relation to our feelings, or the subjective experience we all encounter during any given important event which evokes a cognitive reaction. The second component relates to the biological arousal each of our bodies experience following a life event which creates a specific motor response, preparing our bodies for action. The biological factor involves physiological activation within each of us. The third component includes our behaviors with regards to others when emotions motivate a reaction. This means our communication with others, as well as our facial and vocal expressions are influenced by certain emotions. Lastly, emotion affects our sense of purpose, or our motivational state which directs our goals, and the actual act of functionality. Emotions cause us to act, displaying the motivational factor, and emotions can be used by others to read how we feel, thus telling them what course of action to take.

The debate is still ongoing regarding whether emotion is caused by cognitive processes or biological processes or both. There are relevant and arguable cases for both the cognitive perspective and the biological perspective regarding emotion, so taking a middle ground seems to be the best choice of action when contemplating the cause of emotions. This middle ground can be described as the two systems view, where both systems work together simultaneously. However, this latter view brings about the dilemma- which came first? - Much like the age-old chicken-and-egg problem.

The question of how many emotions there are is closely dependent on whether one follows the cognitive or biological perspective. The biological side argues anywhere from two or three primary emotions to ten, which does not account for all of the secondary emotions. The cognitive side claims there are many more. It doesn’t seem there is any one correct answer. Arguably, the book states there are so-called basic emotions- anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest.

Emotions help us to cope with everyday life and stressful or exciting situations. Some argue that emotions cloud judgment and get in the way of rational thinking, but deciding your position on this debate is purely subjective. Also, we learn in chapter 11 that emotions are dynamic, ever-changing with each event that can occur throughout the day, while mood is a state in which one can remain for hours, days, and so on. The final topic chapter 11 discusses involves positive affect. Put broadly, people with more positive affect feel better, have happier thoughts and memories, and can be more creative and social.

In chapter 12, social-cultural is added to the aspects of emotion discussed. As previously stated, emotions evoke biological reactions, causing our bodies to prepare by activating: 1) the autonomic nervous system, 2) endocrine system, 3) neural brain circuits, 4) neural activity/pace of processing, and 5) facial feedback. When thinking about emotion, we would typically follow a stimulus- emotion- bodily reaction sequence of events. However, the James-Lange theory suggests we follow a stimulus- bodily reaction- emotion sequence instead. This theory faced enough criticism to push it into the background, allowing other theorists to offer their ways of thinking. Controversy remains regarding whether the physiological arousal causes, or follows emotional activation.

Facial feedback is the hypothesis that states our facial expressions can invoke specific emotions. For example, if a person smiles profusely, he or she will ultimately be happier. Appraisal is something we all unconsciously do to ascertain the importance of events in our lives and then how to deal with them. This cognitive approach to understanding emotion involves primary and secondary appraisal. We all learn to distinguish between important events and not-so-important events in order to react appropriately, called emotion knowledge. After an event has occurred and one has responded accordingly, the attributional analysis strives to explain why the emotional response happened. Finally, in chapter 12, we learn that cultures vary, and emotions are displayed in different ways. We use this cultural and social analysis to tell us what to do, how to react, when to express or control our emotions (emotion management).

It was surprising to learn that we may have a great deal of control over our emotions. Also, facial feedback is quite interesting to me. It reminds me of the pencil between the teeth trick; putting a pencil between your teeth causes you eventually to be in a better mood, as you are smiling continuously.

Emotion is behind motivation. When one is sad, they are motivated to mope around, frown, etcetera. When a person is scared, he or she may be motivated to run from something, hide away from someone, or react in such a way which expresses their fear. Emotions evoke the nervous system to react, causing the body to act.

TERMS: emotion, facial feedback hypothesis, emotion knowledge/management, primary/secondary appraisal, attributional analysis, James-Lange Theory, biological/cognitive/social-cultural perspective, mood, positive affect, primary/secondary emotions

Chapter 11 and 12 deal with the emotion side of motivation and emotion. Chapter 11 goes over what an emotion is, the definition of it, what causes an emotion both biological and cognitive perspectives, how many emotions we have, basic emotions, social functions, why we have emotions and the difference between emotion and mood.

The big five questions in dealing with emotion is what is an emotion, what causes it, how many are there, what are good emotions, and what is the difference between mood and emotion. The definition of emotion short lived feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. Emotional are multidimensional and one definition cannot even grasp their complexity. As said in the definition, emotions are caused by significant life events. In the theories about this we have the biological side which says we first feel the emotion and understand it versus cognition where we first understand the situation then we feel the emotion.
These two perspective also differ on the amount of emotions we have, biology has it limited to a certain number where cognitive has infinite emotions. The basic emotions we have are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, interest. We have good emotions and we have bad emotions. Emotions are also used in coping function and in social functions. The different between emotion and mood is that emotion is short lived whereas mood is a long term state. Positive affects make us feel better and make us healthier.

Chapter 12 goes over the aspects of emotions. We have the biological aspects which cover the James-Lang theory. The theory states we experience and emotion then it is quickly followed by a bodily change. Then we see the more contemporary views on emotion and how the brain and parts like the amygdala pay in the emotion activation. Next we have the theory of Differential Emotions which says each emotion is unique in their feeling, expression, neural activity and purpose. Then we move on to the facial feedback hypotheses. This says that subjects aspects of emotions are caused by changes in facial muscles, temp of facial skin and glandular changes in face. Their are 36 muscles involved in facial expression. Our facial expressions are almost the same across all cultures.

Next we have the cognitive aspect of emotion. In this we have appraisal, complex appraisal and it's process, emotional knowledge and attributions. Appraisal is the idea that we estimate the personal significance of an event and the implication to its importance and affect on our well being. Arnold's appraisal theory starts out with a situation which leads to an appraisal then an emotion and finally action. Emotional knowledge is the idea that any one person can distinguish the different emotions. Finally, attributions rest on the assumption that people want to explain why they experienced a certain event.

The last part of this chapter deals with social and cultural aspects of emotion. This includes social interaction, emotional socialization, and managing emotions. Social interaction is how we interact with others and is the most frequent source of our day to day emotion. We also tend to mimic those we spend a lot of time around in regards to their facial expression and tone of voice and posture when emoting. Emotional socialization is when an adult tells a child about the emotional they ought to know about. Last but not least we have managing emotions which is simply about how we learn to manage and regulate out emotions.

This all has to do with emotions in two ways. First, emotions are part a motives. Anger can spur us on and makes us work harder to achieve a goal. Second, emotions are like a personal feedback system that tell us how well we are adapting to a particular situation. The most surprising thing I learned that that the biological view believed that we first felt the emotion then understood it. I guess I have always sided with the cognitive side when I thought that we first understood the situation then felt the emotion.

Terms: Managing emotions, emotional socialization, social interaction, social and cultural aspects, attributions, emotional knowledge, appraisal process, complex appraisal, cognitive aspects, Arnold's appraisal theory of emotion, facial musculature, facial feedback hypothesis, differential emotions theory, neural activity, James-Lang theory, biological aspects, positive affect, mood, social functions, coping functions, good emotions, basic emotions, cognitive and biological perspective.

Chapter 11 and 12 are two chapters that collectively talk about emotions. With chapter 11 discussing the nature of emotions, by asking and answering the following five questions: What is an emotion, What causes an emotion, How many emotions are there, What good are emotions, and What is the difference between emotion and mood? To answer the first question emotions are short-lived phenomena that help us adapt to life events. They are multidimensional and can be subjective (personal feelings), biological (bodily response), purposive (meaning of action), and social (expressive signals). Emotions relate to motivation in two ways; one is the emotions are a type of motivation (energize and direct behavior) and second they act as a readout (regulating feedback) for personal adaption. To the question of what causes an emotion’, are biological and cognitive phenomena. The biology side state that neural activity or spontaneous facial expressions active emotions, were as from cognitive point of view, meaning has to first be established and then emotions following accordingly. There are two views that contribute to the debacle. The two-system view states that both cognition and biology together cause emotion, being born with the biological aspects and later on learn the cognitive aspects through experience. Then there is the Ol’ chicken-and-egg problem first brought up by Robert Plutchik in 1985. As to the how many emotions are there, both sides disagree on the actual amount. Biological supporters focus more on the primary emotions and argue that there are between two and ten basic emotions, and cognitive supporters argue that there is a limitless number because emotions arise from individual, social, and cultural experiences. A middle-ground has been drawn, that each basic emotion is not a just that emotion alone but rather a family of related emotions. Only a select few, five to be exact, can be a basic emotion family and still be rooted in biology and evolution: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and enjoyment. All of these emotions provide ways of coping with major challenges and threats, that must be regulated to serve social functions (incentives, deterrents, and unspoken messages). What makes mood different from emotion is it’s longer lasting effects with an unknown cause.
Chapter 12 focuses on emotional events and the processes that occur within them, it starts with biological aspects. When the body faces situations where it must cope it activates the following: heart, lungs, and muscle (ANS), glands and hormones (endocrine), limbic structure “amygdale” (neural brain circuits), neural activity (rate of neural firing), and facial musculature (facial feedback). The first theory on this is the James-Lange theory, which states a bodily change causes an emotional experience (my heart rate and adrenaline increased after I was mugged on the street, then I felt terrified). Support for this comes from the three neural circuits in the brain that regulate emotional behavior (behavioral approach and inhibition, and fight-or-flight). The other theory is the differential emotions theory, that states the basic emotions as (positive, negative, and neutral) and serve unique motivations. The facial feedback hypothesis is an aspect of emotion stemming from: movements of the facial musculature, changes in facial temp., and changes in glandular activity in facial skin. This in turn activates emotion to the awareness of the proprioceptive feedback from facial behavior, a behavior evident cross-culturally. On the cognitive aspect, emotions are caused by appraisals, san estimate of the personal significance of an event. The theory to back this up comes from Magda Arnold, who stated that a situation is either good or bad according to appraisal and then is given an emotion to either approach or avoid. Then came along Lazarus with his complex appraisal, stating that good appraisals could be seen as several types of benefits, while bad appraisals could be broken down into several types of harm and threat. Only if a person’s well-being is at stake (primary appraisal) will they take action and then secondary appraisals (coping potential for that event). To explain why someone experienced a particular life outcome, we turned to attributions, that further explanation of why we succeeded or failed (secondary appraisal of the outcome). Then finally there are social and cultural aspects to emotions. The culture one lives in plays a big role in how they interpret emotions, U.S. and China have different emotional repertoires due to the fact that they are learned through different social interactions of their surroundings.
I think that surprised me the most was how the biological and cognitive aspects play different sized roles in different emotions and that each has its own way of influencing our emotions. Also I was shocked to find out how many emotions there are and even with both sides somewhat agreeing on a five basic emotions, those five basics change from one person to the next. These two chapters have a lot to do with motivation in that they emotion itself is a type of motivation that directs and energizes behavior and allows for feedback.
Terms: emotion, motivation, biological, aspects, two-system view, cognitive aspects, chicken and the egg problem, basic emotions, emotion families, social functions, mood, emotional aspects, biological aspects, James-Lange Theory, Differential Emotions Theory, cognitive aspects, appraisals, secondary appraisals, attributions, social aspects, cultural aspects, social interaction, social contagion

Chapters 11 and 12 focus on emotion. Chapter 11 is titled the nature of emotion. It opens with the question "what is emotion?" Emotions are more complex than feelings. They are multidimensional. Along with the feeling aspect, emotions are biological, purposive, and social phenomena. The feeling part of emotions is cognitive, the phenomena of awareness. The biological aspect is the physiological activation of the body resulting in motor response or bodily preparedness. The social phenomenon aspect is communication through facial or vocal expression and the purposive aspect is the functional aspect in which emotion results in goal directed motivation. The book's definition of emotion is short lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to opportunities and challenges.

Emotions function as a type of motivation. Some researchers go further than this, hypothesizing that emotion is the primary motivational system. These researchers argue that the idea of physiological drives being primary motivators is a 'radical error' because physiological deprivations induce emotional responses. They believe these emotional responses result in motivation and behavior.

Emotions are caused by situational events that trigger responses from the mind and body. he biological perspective theorizes that emotions are primarily biological and not cognitive. There are several rationale supporting this theory, the most interesting to me was the idea that because emotional states are difficult to verbalize, their origins must be non-cognitive. The cognitive perspective theorizes that cognitive activity is a necessary prerequisite to emotion. The two systems view hypothesizes that it is the combination of social and cultural learning history (te cognitive system) and ancient evolutionary history (the biological system) of an individual that causes emotion.

The debate of how many emotions actually exist comes down to a biological versus cognitive approach. A biological perspective focuses on primary emotions such as fear and anger. Researchers agree that these emotions are limited in number, universal to all animals and products of biology and evolution. Cognitive theorists argue that several different emotions exist and can arise from the same biological reaction. A middle ground argument is that emotional families exist.

Basic emotions are innate, universal, distinctively expressed and evoke a predictable response. Negative basic emotions are reactions to threat or harm and evoke avoidance responses. They are fear, anger, disgust and sadness. Positive basic emotions motivate involvement and satisfaction and they are joy and interest. The difference between mood and emotion is that emotion is a short lived reaction to an event while moods are long lived and exist as positive or negative general affects.

Chapter 12 reviews biological, cognitive and social and cultural aspects of emotion. The biological aspects of emotion are the body's emotion-related reactions to life events. The James-Lang theory states that emotional experience follows and depends of bodily changes. If bodily changes do not occur, then emotion will not ensue. Support for this theory has faded due to contemporary criticism. The main question when discussing this theory is whether the physiological arousal causes or follows emotion activation. The facial feedback theory hypothesizes that emotions stem from (1)muscle movements in the face, (2) facial temperature changes and (3)changes in glandular activity in the facial skin. These three factors simply state that emotion is the awareness of feedback from facial behavior. This may seem far fetched, but there is a lot of supporting evidence on effect of change in facial expression. I believe that the fact that some facial expressions are learned and different cross culturally goes completely against the facial feedback hypothesis.

Cognitive aspects of emotion depend on appraisal of whether an event is significant and it's implication of well-being. Once an event is appraised as appraised, emotion occurs. It is the appraisal and not the actual event that cause emotion activation. The emotional activation motivates approach or avoidance behavior. Lazarus characterizes appraisal into primary and secondary. Primary appraisal determines whether an event will affect one's physical or psychological well-being. Secondary appraisal asses the best way to cope with the possible benefit, harm or threat of a situation.

Social and cultural aspects of emotion attribute understanding of emotion to social interaction. Social construction of emotion argues that situations define what emotions are appropriate, such as the different emotions anticipated when attending a wedding, cleaning out a litter box, or going to a playground. Social interaction increases the number of emotions we experience. Emotions play a role in drawing us together and pushing us apart. Emotional contagion also occurs as a result of social interaction, which is the tendency to mimic expressions of another individual and eventually synchronize emotions. Regardless of what pathway you believe emotion occurs through, when it occurs it motivates behavior.

The most interesting part of the reading for me was the five strategies suggested to medical students for managing emotion and the following information on emotion management of hairstylists and flight attendants. It forced me to think about what emotion managing behavior I exhibit at work. One of the main ways I control anger or disgust at work is to force myself to smile, supporting the facial feedback hypothesis. Another is to be overly polite to people who I think are most rude, which I think helps me put complete blame on the customer and exempt myself from fault. Outside of work, I think I try less to control my emotions. I would never give an inappropriate hand gesture to a rude customer, but I may to a rude driver.

terms: biological, cognitive and social-cultural aspects of emotion, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, facial feedback hypothesis, affect, emotion, mood, basic emotions, cognitive perspective, biological perspective

Ch. 11 explains emotion as short-lived, adaptive phenomena with four aspects: 1) subjective (internal feelings); 2) biological (energy-mobilizing physiological responses); 3) purposive (motivational forces); and 4) social (recognizable and representative to others). There is debate whether emotions are primarily biological or primarily cognitive; the text seems to endorse a combined, interactive biology-cognition model. This lack of consensus on a precise definition of emotion clouds the issue of how many emotions there actually are, as there are distinctions made between basic and secondary (acquired) emotions. Emotions differ from moods in 3 regards: 1) antecedents; 2) action-specificity; and 3) time course.

Emotions relate to motivation in two ways: 1) as one type of motive (possibly the primary motivational system, instead of the physiological drives); and 2) as personal feedback regarding adaptation.

Emotions serve at least 8 functions (e.g., protection, destruction, reproduction, reunion, affiliation, rejection, exploration, and orientation), each of which helps to ready us to respond to a particular situation; however, there is debate whether emotions are adaptive/functional or maladaptive/dysfunctional.

Ch. 12 continued the discussion of the biological, cognitive, and social aspects of emotion. Biological aspects include emotion-specific ANS and neurological responses. Biological theories of emotion (such as the James-Lange theory, Differential Emotions theory, and the Facial Feedback hypothesis) were discussed. Cognitive theories of emotion seem to center on either the appraisal (significance of the event), emotion knowledge (ability to discern between fine gradations of emotions), or attribution (perception of an event’s cause) components of emotion. Social aspects of emotion include social interaction (emotional responses to others that impact relationships), emotional socialization (learned emotional behaviors and cognitions), and managing emotions (expressing emotions in a context-specific, socially acceptable way).

It surprised me that a textbook would give such a poor definition of (at least) one of the two primary subjects it purports to explain.

Terms: emotion, phenomena, subjective, biological, physiological, purposive, energy-mobilizing, motivational, social, drives, motive, cognitive, adaptive, functional, maladaptive, dysfunctional, James-Lange theory, Differential Emotions theory, Facial Feedback hypothesis, appraisal, knowledge, attribution, social interaction, emotional socialization, managing emotions

Chapter 11 is focused mainly on explaining and defining emotion as a whole subject. The chapter asks five question. The first was, What is an Emotion? Reeves explained this through 4 dimensions of emotion. They are feeling, arousal, purpose, and expression. They are what gives all subjects in life personal meaning to each and every individual. The societal component of what emotion is gives us the ability to recognize how people feel and to show our emotion to others through facial features and body language. The next question was, What causes emotion? There is an ongoing debate as to whether emotion is biological or cognitive in origin. Both have put up strong cases. Cognitive enthusiasts believe that mental appraisals influence emotion and behavior that comes from it. Biological believers say that the limbic system has much to do with regulating our responses to an emotion-causing event. This makes sense to me since fear is considered and emotion and many biological responses are set off simultaneously in reaction to fear stimuli. The third question is, How many emotions are there? Perspective is important when asking this question because it tells you the answer to the question. Most researchers will say there are anywhere from 2 to 10 basic emotions that we feel. However, many others will say that based on personal experience, developmental history, socialization influences,and cultural backgrounds all create a plethora of emotions that are varied in intensity and type. Reeves discussed six emotions in depth and they are fear, anger, distrust, sadness, joy, and interest. The fourth question was What good are emotions? Again this is a matter of perspective. In defensive situations emotions can focus us and help us respond appropriately to a situation like jumping into a lake. Fear of drowning guides us to respond by swimming for the shore or treading water. On the flip side emotion can be in the way. Being distressed, upset, and angry while driving in a car can have devastating consequences by causing us to make poor decisions in the heat of the moment. The final question of the chapter was, What is the difference between emotion and mood? In lay terms emotion is a short lived response to a specific event the guides us to our reactions. Mood is long lived state of being that has no real origin and it affects our cognitive processing. There is a fine line drawn between emotion and mood. Being in constant emotional fear is not a good way to live because of the biological events that happen in accordance with fear. Being in a negative mood can hurt sociability and and bring an onslaught of bad emotions. Emotion is still a very complex subject that still has more to offer and we have to keep looking.

Chapter 12 of the book zeroed in on the three aspects of emotion which are biological, cognitive, and social. Parts of the body are readily activated during emotionally charged events. Autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback all play a role in emotion. The basic explanation of biology's influence on emotion is that when an emotion like fear is felt our body responds accordingly by raising the heart rate and increasing adrenaline. In the James-Lange Theory William James came to two conclusions. One: the body reacts uniquely to emotionally charged events. 2: The body does not react to events that don't elicit emotion. Essentially James contested that we experience change and emotion is our brain's way of making sense of what is happening. This theory has met many criticisms like the argument of the fight or flight response. The brain is another section of biology that has a hold of emotion. Through animal testing and specific cases like Phineas Gage have given us evidence that certain parts of the brain are different centers for emotion. The amygdala for example, is a center for negative emotion like anger.
The Differential Emotions Theory is another facet of biological effects on emotion. This theory is lay terms says that of the ten basic emotions, each is unique, expressed uniquely, has unique neural pathways, and their purposes are unique. Facial Feedback Hypothesis allows us to see that each of the ten emotions are readily recognizable to almost everyone, yet they are different from person to person.
Cognitive aspects of emotion has basic process from situation to action in the Arnold Appraisal Theory of Emotion. The situation is any life event that happens. After perceiving the situation people appraise the situation as either positive or negative with the help of the limbic system and the amygdala. After being appraised an emotion of that orientation is elicited. Next the emotion places purpose and meaning behind the consequential action. Richard Lazarus uses well being to distinguish the types of appraisal people experience. Primary Appraisal involves determining if their is anything at stake for the individual involved. Secondary appraisal occurs after the person has had time to reflect on the harmful or helpful event. His theory is intriguing because it places a personal motivation behind the idea of appraising and reacting to emotion-causing events. Social and Cultural analysis of emotions are the richest form of feeling the emotions of everyday life. We read people and people read us to get a sense of the situations at hand. As we develop we distinguish what kinds of emotions are appropriate in what situations. Even when we are unsure of how to act we read the emotions and actions of others to gauge and then interact as they do. Overall Biology, cognition, and social aspects of emotion are very important to our world and we would do well to take notice of them.

Terms Used: emotion-causing event, mood, cognitive, personal experience, developmental history, socialization influences,and cultural backgroundsAutonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback, James-Lange Theory, Differential Emotions Theory, Facial Feedback Hypothesis, Arnold Appraisal Theory of Emotion, Primary Appraisal, Secondary appraisal

Chapters 11 and 12 both involve emotions. Chapter 11 is titled Nature of Emotion: Five Perennial Questions. In chapter 11, there are five questions that are talked about that I have never even thought about. This was an interesting chapter because I learned a lot more about my emotions and what causes our emotions. The first question asked in this chapter was, What is an emotion?
Emotions include, feeling, arousal, purpose and expression. Feelings give emotions more personal meaning. Arousal, deals with the biological aspect of the body such as fear and and how it makes your hands sweat. Purpose gives emotions a more directed action to achieve motivation. Finally, social component has to do with communication. The second question asked was, what causes an emotion? Emotions are caused by both biology and cognition. Then chapter 11 asked, how many emotions are there? There is a broad answer to that question. There can be anywhere between 2 to 10 different emotions. The fourth question is, what good are the emotions? Emotions are good because they help cope with our different types of emotions. You have to learn to control your emotions instead of having your emotions control you. There is a big difference and emotions are good because they help cope with social purposes. Finally, the fifth question asked was, what is the difference between emotion and mood? Emotions come from specific events in our lives. They are short lived and can often change very quickly. Moods affect more of the cognitive process and are long lived. Moods are often more along the lines of positive or negative whereas, emotions can be fear, happiness, or joy.

Chapter 12 focuses on aspects of emotions. The three most basic aspects of emotion include; biological cognitive and social cultural. Since emotions are more or less reactions to the events happening around us they are most definitely biological. Since emotions direct our actions they guide our body into how we are feeling. They get our body ready to fight or compromise. Facial feedback is connected to the biological part of emotion. There are two forms of facial feedback. They include, strong and weak expressions. Facial feedback controls naturally occurring emotions. Emotions are highly related to cognition. We learn what causes different emotions from the situations we are put in. That becomes cognitive, because it's knowledge about how we react to each situation. Emotions are also related to the social and cultural aspect. We learn about other people's emotions through experience and interactions with them. Conversations are one of the best way to find out about other people's emotions. Often time they will just tell you how they are feeling.

The most surprising things I learned was in chapter 11 and it was the answer to the question, how many emotions are there? I didn't know that human beings can have anywhere between two to ten basic emotions. I think that only having two basic emotions is a very small amount of emotions. But I guess I don't even know how many emotions I have or use. It's weird to even think about that, but I am a pretty emotional person.

Emotions have a lot to do with motivation. I feel like it depends on your emotions that really has a lot to do with how much motivation you have. When I am feeling mad or angry, a lot of time I have a lot of motivation because I want to prove something and I won't stop until I do. Some people are the opposite. If they are mad they have no motivation. It really depends on the person but overall emotions are highly correlated to motivation in many ways.

Terms: biological, cognitive, and social-cultural aspects of emotions, facial feedback, emotion, mood, basic emotions

Chapters 11 discusses the nature of emotions. Emotions are very complex and are multidimensional and include subjective (individual differences), biological (physical), purposive (means to something else), and social phenomenon (emotions shown to others). Emotions relate to motivation because it is a type of motivation it directs our behavior in certain ways. Emotions also are a “readout” system or feedback for different aspects in our lives. One way emotions are being seen is being caused by a situation or event and then either go through cognitive or biological processes which both result in the 4 dimensions mentioned earlier. Another way they have been viewed is the two system view which go either go a social/cultural way or an evolutionary way, but they ultimately result in emotions. The Comprehensive Biological-Cognition model is a feedback loop that can cycle around in a clockwise and counterclockwise fashion. There is controversy over the existence of basic emotions. The book lists fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest as basic emotions. Emotions serve many important functions such as protection, destruction, reproduction, exploration, and rejection as well as social functions such as communication and influence.
Chapter 12 discusses the biological, cognitive, and social aspects of emotions. The biological aspects include the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback. The James-Lange Theory suggests that we experience a stimulus then have a bodily reaction and then we experience an emotion. The facial feedback hypothesis states that emotions come from different feelings that are derived from facial expressions, so facial expressions activate emotions. Cognition takes a different approach to studying emotions and one theory states that there is a situation then we have and appraisal of the situation which elicits an emotion which causes us to approach or withdraw from the situation. Some examples of appraisals are Arnolds appraisal, whether it is a good or bad event. Lazarus’s appraisals which has to do with how it affects personal well-being, as well as others such as expecting the event to occur, who this event was caused by, if the event is morally fine, as well as other. Emotions can also be viewed in a social way, and how they affect different social situation. An example of this is emotional contagion which is to mimic the facial expressing of another individual. For example if a friend was telling their engagement story you would smile as opposed to them telling a story of their argument with their best friend, where you would take on sad facial expressions. Emotion socialization is kind of like norms for when different emotions are appropriate. For example it is not appropriate to laugh at a funeral since it is supposed to be a time of grief and sadness. It is important for individuals to manage their emotions for biological, cognitive, and social reasons.
What I found surprising was the difference between emotion and mood. I always thought of them interchangeably, but I learned that they are different from each other. We continually experience a mood, but we do not always have emotions. Emotions must be triggered by a significant event such as winning a race. This significant event would cause joy, which can also affect your mood, but an individual can be in a good mood without a significant event occurring. I found this very interesting because it is something that effects everyone personally, because we all experience moods and emotions, so it is important to realize that they are different. These chapters have a lot to do with motivation since emotions motivate our behavior. If an activity elicits joy and individual would be likely to continue that activity. If an activity causes anger an individual would likely stay away from that activity. Emotions really dictate how we behave and process things, so it is very important to motivation.
Terms: emotion, motivation, subjective, biological, purposive, social phenomenon, readout system, comprehensive biological-cognition, protection, destruction, reproduction, exploration, rejection, cognitive, social aspects, James-Lange Theory, stimulus, mood, emotion socialization, emotional contagion, appraisal, Lazarus Appraisal

The first question, what is an emotion, is quite complex. Emotions are made up of four components. They are subjective feelings that make us feel a certain way. Emotions are biological reactions that prepare the body to handle different situations. They are agents of purpose that help create a desire to do things. Lastly, emotions are social phenomena by us sending body language and verbal signals that demonstrate our emotions to others. All four of these components are interrelated and act upon each other. Emotions and motivation are connected in two ways. First, emotions act as motives for behavior. Second, emotions give a read-out of how an individual’s personal adaptation is going. Positive emotions reflect that everything is going well and the individual is successfully adapting to situations. Negative emotions demonstrate that adaptation is unsuccessful in the individual. The second question in the text is, what causes an emotion? This question forms a debate between biology and cognition. The biological perspective insists that emotional processing of life events are non-cognitive, automatic, unconscious, and mediated by subcortical structures. Emotions have rapid onsets, brief durations, and occur automatically. The cognitive perspective, on the other hand, theorizes that emotions are a response to a life event after cognitive evaluation. Some life experiences produce emotions, whereas others do not. There is one more stance on the debate that includes both biological and cognitive origins. This theory describes that there are two systems interacting with each other that activate and regulate emotion. The biological system is innate and acts involuntarily to stimuli. The cognitive system reacts interpretatively and socially. The two systems work together to control emotions. The third question, how many emotions are there, depends on if one takes the biological or cognitive stance on emotions. The scientists of the biological perspective all agree that there is small number of basic emotions. Their choice in the number of emotions ranges from 2 to 10. This perspective states that the basic emotions are universal to all humans and are products of biology and evolution. The cognitive stance explains that there is almost a limitless number of emotions. This is because several different emotions can arise from the same biological reaction and human situations can be interpreted in many different ways. Both perspectives agree that there is a collection of basic emotions. These emotions are innate, arise from the same circumstances for all people, are expressed uniquely and distinctively, and evoke a distinctive and highly predictable physiological patterned response. The six basic emotions the text describes are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. Fear is a reaction that occurs when a situation is dangerous and threatening. Fear motivates defense in ways of nervous system arousal, flight, or coping by being still. Anger comes from restraint, betrayal, being rebuffed, receiving unwanted criticism, a lack of consideration from other and more. It is the most passionate emotion that energizes people to act in attack. Disgust involves getting rid of or away from an unwanted, spoiled, deteriorated object. As adults we experience disgust with poor hygiene, gore, and death. Sadness is the most negative emotion that arises from experiences of separation or failure. Sadness motivates a person to restore their environment before experiencing the emotion again. Joy comes from events that produce desirable outcomes. Joy gives evidence that things are going well. Interest is an emotion that is ongoing. We continually direct our attention from one object or event to another. Interest brings about the want to explore and seek out information around us. What good are the emotions is the next question discussed. Humans have emotions to help cope with life situations. Emotions provide us with automatic, quick responses to fundamental tasks. Emotions help with social functions like communicating our feelings to others. Emotions are informative for those we interact with. The final question discussed is, what is the difference between emotion and mood? First, emotions and mood have different origins. Second, emotions influence behavior and moods influence cognition. Third, emotions are short lived while moods can last for hours or even days.

Chapter 12 is separated into biological aspects of emotion and cognitive aspects of emotion. The biological stance states that emotions are biological reactions to life events. The study on biological controlled emotions started with the James-Lange Theory. This theory suggested that the body reacts uniquely to different emotion-elicitating events and the body does not react to non-emotion elicitiating events. Although this theory was eventually rejected, it leads the way for contemporary studies. Contemporary researchers looked for emotion specific patterns in brain activity. Neural firing is the pattern of electrocortical activity in the brain. The different amounts of neural firing, brain activity, is related to events in one’s environment. The facial feedback hypothesis discusses the theory that facial expressions are innate and motivate action. Emotions activate facial expressions and then facial expressions either exaggerate or restrain the emotions felt. A study discussed in the book sound that facial behavior is cross-culturally universal which provides evidence that facial expressions are innate. The biological stance explains that emotions are involuntary. In order to feel an emotion there needs to be an environmental event that gives a reaction. The cognitive stance on emotion states that emotions come from information processing, social interaction and cultural contexts. The main focus of the cognitive approach is appraisal. Appraisal is the estimation of personal significance of an event. Events don’t cause emotions like the interpretation of that event or situation does. Emotions come after appraisals. Changing the appraisal changes the emotion. Appraisals are either viewed as negative or positive by an individual. Then either a liking or disliking occurs. If an individual experiences liking a motivational tendency to approach the emotion-generating object occurs. If disliking is experienced it generates a motivation tendency to avoid. Primary appraisal is an estimate of whether one has anything at stake in the encounter. Health, self-esteem, a goal, financial state, respect, and well-being of a loved one are components that could be at stake. Secondary appraisal occurs after an individual has reflected on the event. It involves assessment for coping with the situation. Socio-cultural context contributes to understanding of emotion. If you change the culture you live in, then your emotional collection will also change. Interactions with others trigger many of our emotions. Emotional contagion refers to the tendency to automatically mimic expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with those we interact with.

The most interesting thing I learned was how facial expressions can effect emotion. I was surprised to read that when an individual makes a certain facial expression it can heighten the emotion they are feeling. It was also interesting that facial expressions are universal.
When motivation is threatened emotion occurs. When an individual experiences events that conflict with their goals they feel emotion through appraisal. The negative emotions then motivate the person to fight the incongruence they are experiencing with their goals. Emotions also help an individual asses their well-being. If a person feels joy and happiness their well-being is in good condition.

Terms: emotion, read-out, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, basic emotions, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, interest, mood, James-Lange Theory, facial feedback hypothesis, appraisal, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, emotional contagion

Chapter 11 and 12 are all about emotion. Chapter 11 focuses on explaining what an emotion and how it is brought upon. Emotions are more complex than one initially thinks. Emotions are multidimensional; they can be subjective, biological, purposeful and social phenomena. Subjective feelings are those emotions such as anger or happiness; these emotions make us feel a certain way. The way we feel is also a biological reaction, we react to situations based on an adaption to different situations. Emotions also stem from purpose. Our emotions in some cases wouldn’t come out if they didn’t have a purpose, for example fight an enemy. Our emotions can also be communicated through facial expressions and body posture (social phenomena). Emotions energize and direct behavior; this is the relationship between emotion and motivation. Emotions are a type of motive they can motivate people to do things based on feelings. Emotions are caused by cognitive and biological, social, cultural, and developmental said to be a few factors that contribute to the causation of emotions. Biology and cognitive play a big role in the study of emotions, but there have been disagreements and different theories from both sides debating which one controls emotion. This chapter also discusses how many emotions there are, this is determined all by ones perspective. According to the biological viewpoint 2-10 emotions are in existence. This chapter discusses how emotions arise from limbic neural patterns, neural firing, universal facial expressions, and discrete patterns of facial feed-back, but according to the cognitive perspective human being are capable of more than just basic emotions. Chapter 11 also explains why emotions are good and how the help human beings, for example if people didn’t have emotions they wouldn’t function properly in their environment. Lastly the difference between mood and emotions are discussed, moods are positive or negative affect states and emotions are reactions to certain events.
Chapter 12 discusses the aspects of emotions. Biological aspects of emotions are the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing and facial feedback. The first theory of emotion was the James-Lange theory of emotions suggests that the body reacts uniquely to different and the body does not react with none motion- eliciting events. This chapter basically discusses how the james-lange theory was rejected over time and later replaced by contemporary perspective. Emotion is related to cognition through emotional knowledge and attributions. Through social situations we experience a great deal of emotional feed-back and learn a lot about emotion through others.
The most surprising that I learned was just how important emotions are and how they affect ones motivation to do something. Emotions are important to one’s health and mental state. I also was surprised to learn the difference between emotions and moods. I just assumed they were tied together and didn’t really have many differences.

Key terms: emotion, feelings, purposeful, subjective, biological, facial feedback, cognitive perspective, contemporary perspective.

Chapter 11 is titled Nature of Emotion: Five Perennial Questions. These five questions are 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 emotion and mood? Emotions are most definitely multidimensional. Emotions are more subjective, as they make us feel a certain way that not everyone may be able to relate to. Emotions are also agents of purpose. They may cause us to do things we may not normally do. The problem with emotion is that everyone knows what emotion is, but defining it is usually a challenge. The four components of emotions are feelings (subjective experience, phenomenological awareness, cognition), bodily arousal (physiological activation, bodily preparation for action, motor responses), sense of purpose (goal-directed motivational state, functional aspect), and social-expressive (social communication, facial expression, vocal expression). There are two ways in which motivation related to emotion. The first is emotions are one type of motive. Emotions energize and direct behavior. Second, emotions serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. Joy signals social inclusion and progress towards goals, whereas distress signals social exclusion and failure. There is a process that goes along with emotions being caused. The first thing that occurs in the significant situational event, then your cognitive and biological processes kick in. From these processes come feelings, sense of purpose, bodily arousal, social-expression.

The most surprising thing that I learned from Chapter 11 was the emotions that they considered to be “basic”. The basic emotions that they mentioned were fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and negative basic emotions: threat and harm, joy, interest, positive basic emotions: motive involvement and satisfaction. This was surprising to me because this seemed more in-depth to me. I was expecting a list of four maybe five, so this seemed a little extensive. After reading the descriptions and examples I understand why they are “basic” and stick out more than other emotions.

This relates to motivation because emotions also serve social functions and coping functions. Emotions allow us to communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships. Emotional displays influence how people interact, as the emotional expression of one person can prompt selective behavioral reactions from a second person. This relates to motivation because if you were working hard towards a goal and someone gave you a negative response, you would most likely question what you were doing wrong or at least ponder why they were giving you negative feedback. If you received positive feedback from a bystander, you would be more likely to continue doing the selected behavior because of the positive feedback.

Chapter 12 is titled Aspects of Emotion. The biological aspects are autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, facial feedback. The cognitive, social, and cultural aspects are appraisals, knowledge, attributions, socialization history, and cultural identities. William James had a theory that our bodily changes do not follow the emotional experience; rather, emotional experience follows and depends on our bodily responses to the flashing lights and siren sounds. This theory rested on two assumptions: 1.) the body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events and 2.) The body does not react to non-emotion-eliciting events. His theory became popular but was also widely criticized. Differential emotions theory takes its name from its emphasis on basic emotions serving unique motivational purposes. The theory endorses ten emotions constitute the principal motivation system of human beings, unique feeling: each emotion has its own unique subjective, phenomenological quality, unique expression: each emotion has its own unique facial-expressive pattern, unique neural activity: each emotion has its own specific rate of neural firing that activates it, and unique purpose/motivation: each emotion generates distinctive motivational properties and serves adaptive functions.

The most surprising thing from Chapter 12 for me was Figure 12.4 Facial Expressions for Five Emotions. I found it to be comical at first because some of the pictures I would not identify with those particular faces, but I knew where they were going. It was interesting to be that so many emotions seem negatively based. Joy seems to be the only “happy” emotion and in my opinion there are different many feelings that are more positive than disgust, distress, fear and anger. All of those seem relatively negative.

Chapter 12 is related to motivation because it goes into depth about the different aspects of emotion and recognizing them. By recognizing certain facial ques and so on, one is able to be more conscious of the world around them. If someone is unobservant and spacey, they are more likely to miss visible clues as to how their behavior may be influencing others.

Terms: emotion, appraisal, attribution, biological aspect, cognitive aspect, James-Lange theory, Two-Systems view, basic emotions, negative emotions, fear, sadness, feedback, mood, emotion-eliciting events, non-emotion-eliciting events, facial expressions, motivation, distress

Both chapters were about emotions, where they come from, and how we respond to them.

Chapter 11 introduced emotion as both a form of motivation and as a readout or feedback to how well were adapting to our surroundings. As a motivator, emotion directs and energizes behavior. When we feel fear, it motivates us to remove the stimulus that threatens us. The scarier something is, the more energy it provides to our behavior. For me, the more legs something has, the scarier it is. Mice and things don't bother me, bugs are kindof gross but not scary so I don't react very strongly to them. Spiders creep me out and provide mild fear of getting bit, so I respond by quickly hitting them until they die. House centipedes, on the other hand, terrify me and provoke a flee response. I can't even get close enough to them with let the vacuum extension suck them up. My coping response to the fear is to protect myself. While the centipede probably wouldn't hurt me at all, the heart attack resulting from the fear might be what I am protecting myself form. I think that attack could be a response to fear, too, though, in a fight-or-flight response. Once the emotion of fear is felt, a cognitive assessment or appraisal of the threat is made. If it is small enough, like the spiders in my room, the person decides that an attack would more effectively eliminate the threat than running away. Along with coping functions, chapter 11 discussed social functions of emotions. They give us the ability to express feelings to others and interact in ways that manage relationship. In communication classes, it's always stressed that most communication occurs on a nonverbal level. Emotions largely control the nonverbal cues we give off. Interest looks vastly different than annoyance or anger. They provide a lot of facial feedback to the people we are interacting with.
Chapter 11 also discussed the role of affect on a person's mood and emotion. Small, positive-emotion-creating events can boost a person's affect and thus affect their behaviors. While positive affects change during the day and peak from 6-9pm, negative affect stays relatively stable.
The thing that surprised me most from this chapter was that negative and positive affects can exist simultaneously. I also found it surprising that there are more basic emotions (as far as most theories suggest) than there are basic personality traits. It always seemed to me like personality could be so vastly different, but the personality section in the class I TA for teaches five or so basic traits. Having more emotions than personality traits seems really odd to me.

Chapter 12 focused more on the biological, cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of emotion. Some theories, like James-Lange biological theory, says that a person's body reacts on a physical level to a stimulus before the mind can appraise the situation and create an emotion. I think that, even though there have been specific neural activations identified that create emotions, there have to be some levels of cognitive appraisal. A dog barking is a stimulus that might instill fear in someone. The activation of the sympathetic nervous system flooding with norepinepherine could make someone run away from a dog, but it doesn't happen every time a dog barks unless someone already has an intense phobia. If a dog is barking in a menacing way, before freaking out, the first thing I would do is check to see if the dog is capable of reaching me. If there's a fence in the way, I'm not very likely to experience the fear. I think some level of cognitive appraisal must occur in many situation before an emotion can be felt.
I think what surprised me most overall is that frustration never came up as a list of the types of emotion.

Terms: adapting, stimulus, energy, direction, coping, social function, appraisal, cognitive, facial feedback, positive affect, negative affect, mood, James-Lange theory,

What interests me the most about these chapter and the class material as a whole, is that these meanings seem to be associated as common sense, but most people including myself don’t realize how complicated and in depth innate responses actually are. For instance, there is no single way of describing an emotion or the way it relates to motivation and how it directs individual behavior. Yet, everyone knows what it feels like to be happy, sad or angered but without researching it or being taught, most people wouldn’t really know what is really going on as we experience emotions. Chapter 11 focuses on the nature of emotion, whereas chapter 12 focuses on aspects of emotion.

Emotion is such a broad aspect of human existence. As I previously stated, there is no single way of explaining it, although there are many debatable theories in the end they are all interactive, working together versus one theory being correct. For instance researchers have debated what causes emotions, whether it is biological or cognitive. I would say more biological because the book says that the cognitive perspective requires appraisal of meaning. Although there are some individuals that are unresponsive to emotional situations like Autistic children, it doesn’t mean they aren’t feeling the emotion. For instance, if an autistic individual and an average individual were put in the same situation, they may express it differently but the feelings are the same. Similarly, the book suggests the same concept through infant studies. Although infants have limited cognitive ability, they have emotional responses suggesting that emotional processing is innate.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be accurate to rule out cognitive appraisal of meaning to be a causal factor of emotions. Lazarus says if you take away cognitive processing then the emotion disappears. This meaning that appraisal sets the stage for emotional experience. Depending on the situation, people may have a different cognitive understanding that elicits certain emotions. However, it depends on how everyone would react to a situation. Everyone reacts differently to stimuli. There may be some consistencies but some people are happy when watching TV when others hate it. Some people found George Carlin (an atheist comedian) to be funny where others were extremely offended. These situations would elicit different emotions in people depending on their likes, dislikes or their beliefs. Therefore people can differ in their cognitive processes causing various emotions. In concordance with the previous statement that the theories are interactive, the two systems view suggests that biological and cognitive aspects cause emotion.

Along with the interactive theory that they all work together to help us understand what role emotions play in our lives, there are four dimensions of an emotion. Subjective feeling, biological reactions, purposive, and social phenomena all help explain what an emotion results from. In addition, emotions and physiological drives such as thirst, hunger, sex, sleep and pain equally serve as primary motivators stimulated simultaneously when certain events occur. For example, when people are involved in a physical fight, it could elicit fear, anger or both as well as pain. I agree that if emotion were taken out of the equation, than motivation would decrease but our physiological drive is what tells our body what it needs to survive even without an emotional response.

Chapter 12 relates well to chapter 11 by going more in depth about biological and cognitive perspectives. James Lang related his theories to automatic physiological responses, like being in a cold shower. If these bodily reactions (increase heart rate, widening eyes) didn’t occur, than neither would the emotion. Although this sounds correct, others argue that those responses were caused by the bodies fight or flight response and didn’t vary from one emotion to the next and that emotional responses were quicker than physiological reactions. After reading through the various theories, they all come with criticism no matter how accurate they sound or how evident they are. Someone will always try to debate the truisms. I was fascinated to read about the facial feedback hypothesis but I thought it was difficult to understand after reading it once. I would like to research more about this topic. I think both theories, cognitive or biological have good evidence but I am going to side with both and conclude that motivation and emotion are far too broad to narrow into one theory or perspective.

Terms: Emotion, Biological perspective, Cognitive perspective, Cognitive Appraisal, stimuli, elicit, Two Systems View, innate, Subjective feeling, Biological reactions, Purposive, Social phenomena, physiological drives, thirst, hunger, sex, sleep, Pain, fear, anger, James Lang theory, automatic physiological response, fight or flight response, facial feedback hypothesis

Chapter 11 talks about the nature of emotions. The natures of emotions are subjective, biological, purposive, and social. Our emotions are influenced in two ways through a view known as the two-system view. This view looks at emotions as first being biologically born into an individual and second being learned/cognitively gained through experiences. If someone has a biological instinct to have the emotion of fear for a bee because it can sting, they might also cognitively have the emotion of hope that it doesn’t sting them. Emotion families were also discussed in the text as there are two different views. One view believes that there are ten or fewer basic emotions (biological) and another believes that our emotions are limitless. Both views believe that there are positive and negative emotional families. Basic positive emotions are for example: Joy and interest where as basic negative emotions are anger, fear, disgust, and sadness. Chapter 11 states that the purpose of emotions is to function to maintain and regulate social functions like the expression of feelings, relationship regulations, and basic interactions.

Chapter 12 looks at the specific aspects of emotions. The James-Lange theory starts the chapter by states that the body reacts when stimulus is present and then the emotion is what follows. For example, if someone is going for a walk and they cross paths with a bear, their heart rate and adrenaline as well as fight or flight motivations might kick in-these are their bodily reactions. The bodily reactions are then followed by the emotion of fear. Another theory in chapter 12 is the differential emotions theory. This theory states that positive, neutral, and negative basic emotions serve a purpose for different motivations. The James-Lange theory and differential emotions theory look at the biological aspects of emotion. Specific neural circuits are a biological aspect that has an influence on the prefrontal cortex processing or the part of the brain that processes information before the emotion occurs. The neural circuits also play a role in the fight/flight response, and behaviors in terms of behaviors inhibitions and approaches. (All the above are biological aspects)

Chapter 12 also looks at cognitive aspects of emotions. Cognitive aspects of emotions look at the significance an event has on someone personally and these emotions are caused by appraisals. The Arnold’s Appraisal Theory of emotions illustrates this. The theory that situations are appraised as either being good or bad by the brain to let us know whether or not to approach or avoid it. Another cognitive theory is the Lazarus Complex Appraisal theory which looks benefits, threats, and harms for primary appraisals. Primary appraisals are those that look and access if things that are important are at risks. The Lazarus Complex Appraisal theory also looks at the benefits, threats, and harms of secondary appraisals. Secondary Appraisals are coping strategies that lead to specific emotions. Chapter 12 also talks about the cultural and social aspects of emotions. Emotions are learned through our interactions with others. Therefore the culture in which we live influences how we feel about certain emotions. In terms of marriage in North America, love is a highly valued emotion. In other countries, marriage might be associated more strongly with a feeling of security or an emotion of comfort for example. Social aspects of emotions could be how we learned our emotions or how we display them, whether it be directly or indirectly. Emotions may be learned through watching or copying others. Situations, cultures, and social influences are all aspects that play additional roles in emotions.

Perhaps most surprising about chapter 11 was that it defined emotions as short lived adaptations to events. I guess that I always assumed emotions to be more than merely short lived. I think this is because I am constantly feeling some sort of emotion and I never really stop. I feel like emotions are continuous so I never really thought of them as short lived. This definition or idea gave me a new perspective on emotions. I always believed that the emotions, in a sense, lasted forever. Whenever I look back at a certain event, I feel the same emotion all over again as if it never went away. For this reason, I think I was a little surprised by this definition of emotion.

I was also surprised by the fact that mood and emotion are two different things. What I believed to be emotions in the above paragraph was most likely more like a mood than an emotion. Moods last longer and don’t necessarily have a clearly known cause. It seems that moods are the long term version of emotions.

In Chapter 12 I was most surprised by the biological effect in terms of the order in which our thought and emotions occur. I always felt like our emotions were instant. I didn’t realize how much thought actually took place before our feelings set in. I also was fascinated by the fact that we are so capable of controlling our emotions or learning different ways to show emotions based on our culture or social norms. I assumed that emotions were completely biological and merely an instinct. It was cool to learn that so much thought actually goes into the production and display of our emotions.

Emotions relate to motivation in that they may themselves motivate us. They would motivate us by creating a sense of drive or vitality/energy that directs us as we want to achieve a specific emotion or no longer feel an emotion. Emotions are also a form of feedback that we feel when we do something. Feedback is an important part of motivation and therefore a clear link between emotion and motivation. If we receive a positive or negative feedback in terms of an emotion that we feel, that may affect our motivation to complete that act again.

Terms: emotions, nature of emotions, subjective, biological aspects, cognitive aspects, purposive, and social, motivation, (positive or negative) feedback, drive, direct, vitality/energy, two-system view, basic positive/negative emotional families, mood, joy, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, interest, James-Lange theory, stimulus, bodily reaction, fight or flight motivation, neutral basic emotions, specific neural circuits, differential emotions theory, Arnold’s Appraisal Theory, Lazarus Complex appraisal Theory, benefits, threats, harms, primary appraisals, secondary appraisals, cultural aspect, social aspects.

Chapter 11 and 12 go well together, they both talk about emotions and how we react to them and how they influence our daily lives.

Chapter 11 talks about emotions and that they are reactions to situations in life. Emotions are actually very short and the process happens between the event and the emotion to be very interesting. Chapter 11 focuses on the five questions that are a huge component to the study of emotion. 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 emotion and mood? Emotions have four main parts, feeling, arousal, purpose, and expression. Emotions energize and direct behavior, causing someone to act out also emotions serve to indicate how well or poorly personal adaptation is going. There is a debate going on as to what exactly causes an emotion, but it is narrowed down to eith biological or cognitive. Which causes which? Biologically there are only 2-10 basic emotions, but according to the cognitive perspective there are 6 main emotions with limitless secondary emotions. Emotions can help us adapt to our surround and help us learn to cope. By coping we prepare to respond and to prevent certain actions. Emotions also serve social purposes to communicate with others, create and maintain relationships.

What I found surprising from this chapter is that there are two different perspectives about what causes an emotion. To me I think it would be a combination of both biological and cognitive, and I feel they need each other. I was not aware that there was a vs and that each perspective believes they are the primal cause.

Ch. 12 focuses on the aspects of emotion, biological, cognitive and social-cultural. The biological aspects are the 1. autonomic nervous system 2. endocrine system 3. limbic brain structures (neural brain circuits) 4. neural firing and 5. facial feedback. The James-Lange Theory argues that the stimulus causes the bodily reaction BEFORE the emotion, usually it is thought of that the motion causes the reaction. This was one of the first theories on emotions and biology, it has been modernized now. The three distinct neural circuits that accompanies physiological arousal are, 1. behavioral approach: seek our attractive oppurtunities 2. fight or flight: flee from aversive events 3. behavioral inhibition system: totally freeze (anxiety). These 3 circuits are tied to 4 emotions, fear, rage, anxiety and joy. The most important thing to the congitive aspect is appraisal. Primary appraisal decides if the situation is important. Secondary appraisal occurs after reflecting on how to cope with the threat, or benefit. Social-cultural stresses that other people can affect our emotions through the process of mimicry, feedback and contagion. Our culture socializes kids to grow up and to show their emotions in a certain way, which is where diversity and different traditions start.

I found facial feedback to be very interesting and surprising. I didn't know that a strong facial expression can affect certain emotions. However, there is always that old saying "A smile is contagious". By smiling it makes one feel happier than by frowning.

Emotions are very important to our motivation because they cause us to not think rationally or to work really hard. Emotions energize and direct our behavior, this helps make us more motivated if we can regulate and keep our emotions under control and in balance.

Terms: emotions, biological aspects, cognitive aspects, facial feedback, social-cultural aspects, joy, rage, anger, sadness, neural circuits, James-Lange Theory, primary and secondary appraisal

Chapters 11 and 12 discuss the basic characteristics of emotion and its functions in terms of motivation. Chapter 11 is organized by addressing five perennial questions in the study of emotion: 1) what is an emotion? 2) what causes an emotion? 3) how many emotions are there? 4) what good are the emotions? And 5) what is the difference between emotion and mood? Surprisingly, emotion is actually much more complex than it appears to be. Emotions are multidimensional, consisting of feelings, bodily arousal, a sense of purpose, and social-expressive functions. A basic definition of emotion is a short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. Emotion has been interpreted as both motivation and as readout, or feedback on the person’s ever-changing motivational states and personal adaptation status.

In response to the second question, “What causes an emotion?”, there are two camps that address the source of emotion: cognitive and biological processes. The biological perspective suggests that emotions are automatic, unconscious, and originate in structures in the brain. The cognitive perspective on the other hand suggests that an individual’s appraisal of an event gives meaning to it, which then leads to an emotional experience. Theorists have proposed a two-systems view, which says that cognition and biology work parallel to one another and produce emotion, as well as a comprehensive biology-cognition model, which suggests that biology and cognitive processes interact in a dynamic process to produce emotion.

The third question, “How many emotions are there?”, also varies according to what perspective a theorist takes. Again, there is the biological camp and the cognitive camp. According to the biological perspective, there are roughly 2-10 primary emotions. While the eight proposals vary based on their emphases, they all agree that a small number of basic emotions exists, basic emotions are universal to all human beings (and animals) and emotions are products of biology and evolution. The cognitive perspective suggests that humans have an unlimited number of emotions because situations can be interpreted so differently based on their cognitive appraisal, language, personal knowledge, socialization, history, and cultural expectation. However, both camps agree on 6 basic emotions that are viewed as families of related emotions. The 6 basic emotions are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest.

The fourth question is, “What good are the emotions?” Darwin suggests that emotions help animals to adapt to their environment, or they serve some survival purpose. The author suggests that emotions help animals cope with fundamental life tasks. Emotions serve at least eight distinct purposes in particular: protection, destruction, reproduction, reunion, affiliation, rejection, exploration, and orientation. This suggests that emotions are positive, functional, purposive, and adaptive organizers of behavior. Emotions also serve a number of social functions by communicating our feelings to others through potent, nonverbal messages. Emotions can 1) communicate our feelings to others, 2) influence how others interact with us, 3) invite and facilitate social interaction and 4) create, maintain and dissolve relationships. In terms of whether emotion is adaptive or maladaptive, they can be both. The author ends the section with one important piece of advice, saying, “In the end, whether emotions serve us well depends on how able we are to self-regulate our emotion systems such that we experience regulation of emotion rather than regulation by emotion” (pg. 322)

The fifth and final question for chapter 11 is, “what is the difference between emotion and mood?” Emotion and mood differ in antecedents, action-specificity, and time course. In general, moods are more enduring states of being that follow a brief emotional episode. Mood exists as a positive affect state or a negative affect state (good mood vs. bad mood). Positive affect refers to the everyday, low-level, general state of feeling good. In general, there are many benefits to positive affect, such as being more prosocial and more creative.

Chapter 12 focuses on the biological, cognitive, and social/cultural aspects of emotion. There are five main components to the biological aspect of emotion: 1) autonomic nervous system, 2) endocrine system, 3) neural brain circuits, 4) rate of neural firing and 5) facial feedback. While the initial James-Lange Theory suggested that biological mechanisms cause emotion, contemporary theorists generally agree that biological components of emotion accompany, regulate, and set the stage for emotion but do not directly cause it. The last biological component, facial feedback, suggests that emotion is the awareness of proprioceptive feedback from facial behavior. While there is varying findings whether manipulating facial muscles will produce the corresponding emotion, there is support that exaggerating or suppressing natural facial expressions did augment or soften (respectively) the emotions felt.

The cognitive aspect of emotion is primarily concerned with appraisal, which is an estimate of the personal significance of an event. The basic ideal underlying appraisals is that they precede and elicit emotions. Without appraisal, there is no emotion. Psychologists are now trying to form more complex models for appraisals to explain the multitude of emotions. For instance, a primary appraisal concerns involves an estimate of whether one has anything at stake in the encounter whereas a secondary appraisal involves the person’s assessment for coping with the possible benefit, harm or threat. Other components of the cognitive aspect of emotion include emotion knowledge, or the number of different emotions a person can distinguish and attributions, or the reason the person uses to explain an important life outcome (the idea being that the person takes into account the outcome as well as the cause of the outcome, or an attribution, before determining the meaning of the event).
The social and cultural aspects of emotion include social interactions, which trigger most of our emotions, emotional socialization, which occurs when adults tell children what they should know about emotion, and lastly, how we manage our emotion based on our roles in society.

I was actually most surprised by the complex definition of emotion. I guess it is one of those concepts that you understand but its difficult to apply a definition to. Emotion is important to motivation because it gives us an indication of how we are adapting to our environment from a psychological perspective, thereby helping us to determine whether to avoid or approach a similar situation in the future. In general, we should approach environments that result in positive emotions and avoid those that result in negative emotion. It’s as simple as that.

Terms: emotion, readout, two-systems view, comprehensive biology-cognition model, positive affect, facial feedback, appraisal, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, emotion knowledge, attribution, emotional socialization

Chapter 11 talked about emotions. Emotions come in four dimensions, subjective, biological, purposive, and social. Emotions are related to motivation because emotions energize and direct behavior. Emotions also serve as a "readout" system to show how well or poorly a person is adapting to a situation. Emotions are caused by the biological perspective, cognitive perspective, and the two-systems view. The biological perspective found that the emotional states are hard to verbalize, so the origins are not cognitive (not language based), emotional experiences can happen by noncognitive procedures, and emotions happen in infants and animals. In the cognitive perspective, cognitive processing needs to happen before the emotion. Emotions happen because of the cognitive appraisal of its meaning. The two-systems view, one system is innate, spontaneous, physiological that reacts involuntarily to emotional stimuli. The second system is an experience based cognitive system that reacts interpretatively and socially. The two-systems view combines the biological perspective and the cognitive perspective.
Our basic emotions are: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. Our emotions can serve as coping mechanisms and can direct behavior in adaptive ways. Our emotions also serve as social functions: communicate our feelings with others, influence how other interact with us, invite and facilitate social interactions, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships.
Chapter 12 talks about the different aspects of emotions. There is the biological aspects of emotions, cognitive aspects of emotions, and social and cultural aspects of emotions. In the biological aspects is the James-Lange theory. In the James-Lange theory the body reacts uniquely to different emotion eliciting events and the body does not react to nonemotional eliciting events. In the facial feedback hypothesis emotions come from feeling engendered by movements of the facial musculatures, changes in facial temperature, and changes in glandular activity in the facial skin. Facial feedback gives emotion activation. Once activated, the emotion program initiates the cognitive and body to maintain emotional experience over time.
In the cognitive aspects there is appraisal. In the appraisal, without antecedent cognitive appraisal of the event, emotion do not happen, and the appraisal causes the emotion, not the event. From perception to appraisal, people categorically appraise events as either positive or negative. From appraisal to emotion, people appraise things as good or bad. From felt emotion to action, if a person likes it, then it motivates them to approach it, on the other hand, if a person dislikes it, then it motivates them to avoid it.
In the social and cultural aspects, social interaction helps one to understand the social meaning of emotion. Also, the sociocultural context helps to understand the cultural of emotions. In social interaction, people experience more emotions around other people than by themselves. In emotional socialization is when adults tell children what they should know about emotions.
What surprised me the most was the facial feedback hypothesis. I knew that facial expressions were important in expressing one's emotions, but just the slightest move of the facial muscle can show a different emotion. Also just by smiling can activate the feeling of joy. Emotions have a lot to do with emotions. Like in chapter 11, emotions are related to motivation because emotions energize and direct behavior. In chapter 12, from felt emotion to action, it motivates people to approach or avoid a situation whether they like it or dislike it.
TERMS: emotion, motivation, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, two-systems view, biological aspect, cognitive aspect, social and cultural aspect, James-Lange Theory, facial feedback hypothesis, appraisal, social interaction, emotional socialization

Chapter 10 talked about the self and everything that goes into self-motivation. It describes the different dimensions of psychological well-being and what affect those dimensions have on things like self-esteem and self-concept. Self-concept was a very interesting topic simply because of everything that it covers. The self-concept is, in simple terms, how you view yourself. However, there are many other things involved in forming the self-concept.
One of the most surprising things I read in this chapter was the many dimensions of psychological well-being. It was very interesting to read what high and low scores in each mean. Reading through the table was very interesting because I felt like each item made sense and was something that I will remember.

Chapter 11 gave an overview of emotions and what exactly they are. One of the most prevalent concepts was how complex and multidimensional emotions really are. Emotions have four primary components, feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social expressive. These components are interrelated and dependent on each other. Emotions also play a twofold part in motivation. They are a type of motivator and are also a type of readout, which help the self understand what is going on.
Chapter 12 looks more at the different aspects of emotions. Different emotions develop in specific areas of the brain. Facial expression is a very important part of emotion. This is shown in the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. This hypothesis states that by displaying the emotion on ones face, that person will begin to feel that emotion. This has been both supported and refuted through many tests.