Ch 11 & 12 Emotion

Chapter 11 deals with emotion and what the book calls the 5 perennial questions of emotion. These 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 reactions to important life events. Once an emotion comes forth, they bring about feelings, coax the body to action, generate motivational states, and produce distinguished facial expressions. The chapter also went into detail about the four components of emotion. These components are, feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social-expressiveness. Chapter 12 talks about the different aspects of emotion. There are biological aspects and cognitive, social, and cultural aspects. The biological aspects deal with the bodily side of things such as the nervous system, brain circuits, rate if neural firing, and facial feedback. The cognitive aspects deal with knowledge, attributions, socialization history, cultural identities, and appraisals.
The most surprising thing to me was the Differential Emotions Theory. This theory states that there are 10 emotions that motivate and prepare the individual to act in adaptive ways. I was really interested to know that according to the theory, we only really experience two emotions that are categorized as positive. While I understand that it is more necessary for our bodies to react and become motivated to change something if the emotion we are feeling is negative, it seems odd to me that there are so few that they define as positive. The book argues that most emotions are derivatives of these larger, broader emotions, but I don’t necessarily agree with this. Love, for example, is its own emotion in my opinion. It brings about its own set of emotion in my opinion, and this is one reason this was so surprising to me. It was really interesting to see all of the debate and different ideas in regards to emotion. We all understand what emotions are but we can’t always pinpoint what emotion we are feeling and how it came about. That is why it was also very surprising to read about many professionals opinions and how they try to explain the ideas of emotion.
I believe that emotion deals with motivation because many motivations are directly brought about from emotion. Negative emotions such as fear motivate us to change our situation and avoid whatever it is that is bringing us fear. This is used for safety. Another example of this could be the emotion of interest, When we are interested in something, it motivates us to explore whatever it is that is interesting us. Emotions better allow us to interact with our environment by not only allowing other people to better interact with us by reading our face, but also bringing about important motivations to both keep us safe, or continue a positive feeling. Without emotion, we would not be able to tell what makes us happy, or we may not be able avoid situations that may not be safe for us because we would not feel fear. Emotion is a key motivator that we should, if nothing else, be aware of.
Differential Emotions Theory
Emotion
Motivation
Positive Emotion
Negative Emotion
Fear
Interest

Chapter 11 provides insight on the nature of emotions by providing answers to the five perennial questions that arise when looking into emotions. There are four segments that form the concept of what we call “emotion” and they all seem to work in a well coordinated synchrony. The four segments are: feelings, bodily arousal, social-expressive, and sense of purpose. Chapter 12 goes about elaborating on emotion by attacking it from three different angles. These being the biological aspects of emotion, the cognitive aspects, and the social and cultural aspects. I had never previously thought about emotions as being so multifaceted. Prior to reading through these two chapters I had thought of emotions as just being similar to our feelings. Rarely had I pondered the motivational aspects that emotions provide.

Our emotions, similar to our needs and cognitions, energize and direct behavior. Emotions also serve a second purpose, which is to provide a reflection of our progress towards personal adaptation. For example, being distressed or upset likely means that things aren’t going as planned and the individual has likely experienced some failure, or has at least encountered some bumps in the road. Now, what causes emotions to arise in the first place? Significant life events seem to be what elicits the onset of emotions. When looking deeper than just the surface, it appears to be that the root cause of emotion is due to two different origins. The first being biological and the second cognitive. The biological perspective claims that emotions arise as a result of us humans being derived from nature. This meaning that because infants and other nonhuman animals can experience emotions, then emotions are an attribute of the world we live in rather than a creation of the human mind. The cognitive perspective takes a stance which states that it is our appraisal of the meaning of an event that elicits emotion. Therefore if we attribute an event as being irrelevant then the emotional response to that event will be miniscule if it even arises at all. In all reality, it is likely not a case of whether or not one is right and one is wrong. Both perspectives attribute to the two-pronged concept of emotion.

The most interesting thing I learned from these two chapters was the James-Lange theory. The James-Lange theory states that bodily changes cause emotional experiences to take place. An example of this theory at work would be to imagine you are at cruising down the road singing along to your favorite tunes. Suddenly the car in front of you brakes extremely hard. You catch sight of their bright red tail lights and immediately your eyes open wide. You grasp your steering wheel tightly, clench your breath, and stomp on your brake before you can even think. Following this close call, as you sit in your now stopped car, your heart rate is elevated and you feel heated. It is likely that you experience feelings of anger and fear. This example displays the idea derived from the James-Lange theory that as our bodies react ensuing emotions are upon us before we even have time to make sense of the situation at hand. I found this theory intriguing as it attempts to explain the unexplainable arousal of emotions from a biological view.

Terms Used:
Emotion
Motivation
Distress
Biological Perspective
Cognitive Perspective
James-Lange Theory

Chapter 11 starts with the biggest focus being on the 5 perennial questions of emotions those being what is emotion, what causes emotion, how many emotions are there, what good are the emotions, and what is the difference between and emotion and a mood? It then goes into talking about what emotion is there is no just one word definition that tells what emotions are but more so a circle of things that creates emotions. Feelings, bodily arousal, social-expressive and sense of purpose are four things that go into creating emotions. First the body responds to something in which we receive what is happening like for instance hearing a phone call about losing a love on when then take the feelings of that sadness for the case and reflect it out in the motion of tears but for the body that is the goal motivated point that you are going for because you are expressing the way you feel and getting your feelings out there. Emotions are more so thought of as small little burst they come in time for a bit and are the way we handle our feelings and thoughts and then they are gone after a short period of time emotions are the way we handle life and the different events that are thrown at us. Emotions are also a sense of motive. Like the motives of needs and cognitions emotions are the needs to handle things they are what motivate us to act the way we do. For instance, if someone begins to get mad about failing a test or some other issue and they then express their emotion through motions of either being very mad or upset or by not caring or other things. The reasons for emotions in the first place is a large event or an event that has purpose which then goes on to cause feeling about the event. After the mind processes the event that is when it is then reflected out into a emotion of happiness or sadness and it is what starts the feelings, and the bodily arousal. When it comes to talking about the number of emotions there are there is no perfect set number but more so that the different emotions can be classified into families of emotions. Each different emotion has its own type of defense that goes to it such as fear motivating defense, and for fear it is the most passionate emotion and for disgust it is the function of rejection. After knowing what starts and motivates our emotions next is the reason of why we have them. There are times when I feel so mad at someone or something and I always think about how nice it would be to just not have emotions and not care about anything but emotions are the way we deal with life and the events that are tossed our way. Without having a way to get our feelings out by being mad and yelling or sad and crying we would have everything always locked up away in our body and it would be no good for us as a person emotions are there for a reason. Chapter 12 goes right along with emotions but begins to focus more so on the apart of the brain that it effects or deals with. The main parts of the brain that deals with emotions are the noncogntive brain areas that help to generate and regulate specific emotions. The neural activation within the brain is another large part of what cause emotions to happen. When neurons begin to fire then send out signals to which then send signals to bodily functions that creates and begins the actions of emotions. Something big that goes along with emotions are facial expressions which a lot of times is what we as people from the outside looking in on someone can tell their thoughts and feelings based of that. Facial feedback is something that during all emotions are taking place. This is when your facial expressions began to change and your face when change in color or it may seem to tense up. These facial changes can be something that helps other people around you understand your emotions and what you are feeling it is also the way the body reacts to emotions. Within the face there are 80 facial muscles of which 36 help control facial expressions. Although it seems that almost everyone uses facial expressions some may be for certain cultures and not others. Some facial expressions seem to be learned from cultural to cultural rather then just everyone having the same expressions.

Terms:
Fear
Disgust
Anger
Emotions
5 perennial questions
facial expressions
facial muscles

Chapter 11 deals with the nature of emotions, and everything behind emotions. Emotions are actually a lot more complicated than we generally think that they are. Emotions are complicated because they’re multidimensional. This means that they exist as subjective, biological, purpose, and social phenomena. Emotion can be described with four dimensions, being feelings, sense of purpose, social-expressive, and bodily arousal. Feelings include subject experience, phenomenological awareness, and cognition. Sense of purpose deals with gal-directed motivational state and functional aspects. Social-experience is the social communication, facial expressions, and vocal expression. This is what I believe that most people consider emotion, because it is what we can see and hear. Bodily arousal is psychological activation, bodily preparation for action, and motor responses. Emotion ties into motivation in two main ways. The first way is that emotions are on type of motive, meaning emotions energize and direct behavior. Next, emotions serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. The book gave an example of the with joy. Joy signals social inclusion and progress towards goals, whereas distress signals social exclusion and failure. Some researchers argue that emotion is our primary motivational system. Even though what causes emotion has different view points, it stems from a significant situational event. Encountering a significant life event will activate cognitive and biological processes. Emotion exists because life is full of challenges and stress, and emotions are the solution to these problems. There was a lot of great information in chapter 11 about emotion, as well as chapter 12. Chapter 12 also deals with emotions, but is more of the basis of the aspects that are associated with emotions. Emotions have biological, cognitive, and social and cultural aspects of emotions. Biological aspects of emotions are biological reactions to important life events. James-Lange has a theory that goes with the biological aspect of emotions. He states that personal experience suggests that we experience an emotion and that felt emotion is quickly followed by bodily changes. His theory is based off of two assumptions being, the body reacts uniquely to different emotion-eliciting events, and the body does not react to emotional-eliciting events. Cognitive aspects of emotion are emotions that emerge from information processing, social interaction, and cultural context. The central construct of understanding emption is appraisal. All cognitive theorist endorse two interrelated beliefs being, without an antecedent cognitive appraisal of the event do not occur, and the appraisal, not the event, causes the emotion. This chapter gave insight on the various forms of appraisal that go with aspects of cognitive emotions. Social and cultural aspects of emotion is the idea that emotions originate within both social ad cultural context. Social interaction is where we find that we experience a greater amount of emotion when we are with people versus when we are alone. I found it interesting that as we are exposed to people we tend to mimic their facial expressions. When I sat an thought about this I realized that I absolutely have done this. I notice that when I hangout with someone a lot I actually start to make the gestures and expressions that they do, and I can catch myself on it. Overall both of these chapters gave me in-depth information about emotions!

TERMS:
feelings
sense of purpose
social-expressive
bodily arousal
social inclusion
motivational system
biological
cognitive
cultural and social

Chapters 11 and 12 focused on emotions. Chapter 11 answered five perennial questions. First, what is an emotion? An emotion is a short-lived phenomenon that helps us adapt to opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. An emotion is subjective, biological, purposive, and social. Emotions energize and direct behavior, so emotions serve as motives. Emotions are also motivating because they provide feedback.
Secondly, what causes an emotion? From the biological perspective, emotions are involuntary and are primarily biological. From the cognitive perspective, emotions are experience-based and are initiated by cognitive appraisal of an event’s meaning. The two-systems view is the theory that both cognitive and biological work together, simultaneously.
The third question is, “How many emotions are there?” From the biological perspective, there are from two to ten emotions. From the cognitive perspective, there’s a nearly limitless number of emotions. Psychologists from both perspectives agree that there are a handful of basic emotions, including anger, fear, joy, sadness, disgust, and interest.
The fourth question is, “What good are the emotions?” Emotions are part of our biological core. They serve as a coping function, meaning that emotion motivates behavior in adaptive ways. This is why there’s no such thing as “bad” emotions; all emotions direct behavior. Emotions also have social functions, like communication and creating and maintaining relationships. An interesting distinction was made here: emotions can be both functional and dysfunctional. This is based on whether one has master self-regulation of emotions or if one is regulated by their emotions.
Finally, what is the difference between emotion and mood? Distinguishing criteria of mood include different antecedents, different action-specificity, and different time course. Everyday mood is a way of feeling that is often an aftereffect of an emotional episode. I thought it was interesting that good and bad moods are not considered opposites. Rather, they only work independently from each other.
Chapter 12 looked further into the different aspects of emotion, including biological, cognitive, and socio-cultural aspects. Biological processes of emotion includes the automatic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback. The facial feedback hypothesis states that emotions are “sets of muscle and glandular responses located in the face.” This aligns with the belief that smiling can make you happy.
Cognitive aspects of emotion give explanation to complex emotions, emotions that go beyond the basic few (fear, emotion, sadness, etc.). Cognitive aspects include appraisal, emotion knowledge, and attributions. Appraisal is an estimate of the personal significance of an event, and it precedes and provokes emotions. Emotion knowledge is the mental representation of different emotions, how they relate to each other, and the situations that produce them. Attributions are the reasons that a person uses to explain an important life event, which generates emotional reactions.
Lastly, chapter 12 discusses social and cultural aspects of emotion. This line of thought aligns with the belief that if you changed the culture you lived in, then your emotional repertoire would also change eventually, too. Our most frequent source of day-to-day emotion comes from other people. This is also why we find ourselves mimicking other people’s expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements; we “catch” other people’s emotions (emotional contagion). I found this particularly interesting, along with much of the content of these two chapters.

Terms: emotions, motives, feedback, biological, cognitive, socio-cultural, anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, interest, self-regulation, mood, facial feedback, appraisal, emotion knowledge, attributions, emotional contagion

Chapter 11 has the main focus of answering what, when, where, why, and how. We first see that is answers what an emotion is and how emotion is related to motivation. Then we see what causes an emotion by focusing on the biological and cognitive perspectives of emotion. Next how many emotions do people have in the biological perspective and the cognitive perspective and how do people react to certain situations with these emotions. And lastly, what is the value of having emotions. Why do people need emotions in order to make it through a day on earth.

With a solid base of why and how emotions work the way they do, we get into chapter 12 to learn the different aspects of emotion, including the biological, cognitive, and social-cultural aspects. The main aspects of the biological side of emotions is that there are 10 different emotions that can be associated with emotional activation. The cognitive aspects focus on the central construct of appraisal within emotional responses to a situation. Within the social-cultural aspects, the main focus is that other people are our richest sources of emotional experiences.

The most surprising and interesting thing I learned was the idea behind the facial feedback hypothesis. This theory states that the facial expressions that one makes in a situation feeds back into the cortical brain to trigger a particular emotional experience. The process begins with an internal or external event that triggers an emotion already genetically wired into the limbic system. When this emotion is activated, the program send impulses to the basal ganglia to generate a facial expression. Within microseconds of receiving the impulse, the brain interprets the proprioceptive stimulation, deciding whether to contracts muscles, increase body temperature, change blood flow and glandular secretion. After this happens, the emotion is made sense of and this gives rise to stimulated emotion. The body is now consciously aware of the emotional state that it is in. The key point in this hypothesis is that facial feedback is simply the emotional activation. It is not in charge of recruiting further cognitive and bodily participation to maintain the emotional experience over time: that’s the job of the emotional program that was activated by the facial feedback. In regards to testing this hypothesis, the strong version of the test involved focusing solely on the idea that manipulating someone’s facial expression into one corresponds to a specific emotion display will activate that emotional experience. The results for this were about 50/50; manipulating the facial expression did result in changes in the physiological reactions, but when looking at how it affected posed emotional experience, it shows only a small effect. The weaker version on the other hand focuses on facial feedback being able to modify the intensity of the emotion, but not necessarily activate the emotion. Findings for the version were much stronger than the previous study, where it found that exaggerating naturally occurring facial expressions did augment both physiological and emotional experiences, just as suppressing them softed physiological and emotional experiences. In the end, the consensus was that emotions activate facial expressions, and these facial expression then feed back to exaggerate and suppress the emotions we feel.

Emotions are a key component for energizing and directing out behavior. An example of this could be used for anger. Anger is an arousing emotion that increases our heart rate and makes us contract our muscles. This arousal, in many different situations, can ultimately drive us towards a particular goal, which is motivation. Emotion is also used as what is called a “readout” system, which ultimately is the humans way of deciding how well they are doing in society and in their personal adaptations. Ultimately, emotion is extremely important when talking about motivation because emotion is always in our lives, and I believe this fact is a big component towards how people are motivated.

Terms: Biological and Cognitive Perspective, Facial Feedback Hypothesis, Emotion

Chapter 11 focused on the five perennial questions regarding emotion while giving an overall view of emotions, what they are, where they come from, how many are there, which ones are good, and what is the difference between emotion and mood. Chapter 12 focused on emotion pertaining to the cognitive and biological approach. I noticed that in both of these chapters, life events lead to emotions whether you are sided with the cognitive perspective or the biological perspective.
The most surprising thing I learned was the appraisal aspect of emotion. I took this concept as our ability to read a situation and determine if it is good or bad, and then react appropriately. This cognitive concept can be applied in almost any example. I can relate this to my past experience of moving elementary schools in fourth grade. The life event was changing schools; my appraisal of this situation was bad because I did not know anyone at this new school. I thought I would be left out because all of the other kids had known each other for years before I came and knew more about their school routine than I did. The emotion I had was fear because I was scared that I was not going to make any new friends and that I would have nobody to play with at recess. My action was to withdrawal and wait for other kids in my class to approach me, which happened the first day.
Our emotions motivate our behavior in many different ways. One way that I thought was interesting included the emotions of fear and disgust. These two emotions help to keep us out of harm’s way. I have never associated fear or disgust with safety of my well-being before. The textbook mentions if we find a cockroach in our food, we are disgusted and will psychologically convince ourselves that the food is ruined because a bug was on it, this protects us from diseases. Another way being disgusted helps protect us is through facial expressions. If someone else puts spoiled food in their mouth, they will make a disgusted face which signals others not to consume that food. A common fear that protects us is the fear of spiders. Some spiders are very poisonous so avoiding them through fear of getting bit helps to protect us. Sadness and anger are also protective emotions. Sadness brings us closer to others and pushes us to do better at a task we failed at. The book states that sadness motivates us to restore the environment to how it was around us before we were in a depressing situation. Anger energizes us to fight when in the context of fight or flight. Sometimes people cannot leave a situation (take flight) and needs to fight in order to get out of the harmful situation.
The more positive emotions motivate us to be involved in situations that make us feel good. Joy motivates involvement to reach desired outcomes, such as reaching a goal. Interest determines the amount of attention that is directed towards an activity, and if we are interested in an activity, we have more energy to put into the activity. I was surprised interest is considered an emotion. However, now that I know the criteria for an emotion, I understand why interest is considered a positive basic emotion. The criteria for an emotion is that the feeling must be innate, arise from the same circumstances for all people, can be expressed uniquely and distinctively, and evokes a distinctive and highly predictable physiological response.
Terms:
Emotion, appraisal, fear, disgust, sadness, anger, joy, interest, goal, motivate

Jon Lutz - section 01

Emotion is a tricky concept to define. The text suggests four dimensions that help organize our thinking about emotion. The first is its subjective quality or the cognitive processes leading to the quality or intensity of experience. The dimension of biology involves autonomic and hormonal activation, and perhaps is the easiest dimension to measure. The purposive dimension focuses on the motivational direction resulting from emotion, or more simply put, why do people act emotionally. The final dimension are the social (nonverbal) cues we use to communicate and understand emotion. The interaction between these four dimensions is necessary to construct an adequate emotional understanding, a system greater than the sum of its parts.

In a motivational framework, two uses of emotion emerge: a type of motive that energizes and directs behavior, also a personal readout of our personal adaption. Here would be a good time to make a distinction between emotion and mood. Moods are typically longer lasting, with poorly defined antecedents. While emotions tend to lead to specific behaviors through attention grabbing salience, moods generally modify cognitive ability with subtle rates of positive and negative affect. Many other words get mistaken for emotions in layman language. Often attitudes, beliefs, or even personality traits can be incorrectly attributed as emotions. Even among the hundreds of descriptions that could be correctly be emotions there is disagreement about how many and which emotions are legitimate and most important. The text give six basic emotions under these four criteria: 1) emotion is innate rather than learned or acquired 2) it arises from the same circumstances no matter the person 3) it is expressed uniquely and distinctly 4) it evokes a distinctive and predictable biological response.

Perhaps an even greater source of disagreement is whether cognition or biology is the chief process leading to the arising of emotion. Much of the discussion lays out what order events occur. James Lange suggested stimulus → emotion → bodily reaction. The “emotion” step is or cognitive appraisal of a stimulus and “bodily reaction” is the biological variable. William James suggested stimulus→ bodily reaction→ emotion, claiming emotion is the cognitive process that merely made sense of our bodies reaction to stimulus. Also supporting the biological approach are infant and animal studies, which suppose their subjects lack the cognitive overhead but still display emotions. Tracking neural firing rates maps consistently onto the six basic emotions, Jeffery Grey’s circuit studies show behavioral approach systems, fight-or-flight systems, and behavioral inhibition system track onto their respective emotional constituents. Strong proponents of facial feedback hypothesis claim that mimicking facial expressions is a strong enough to create or even change emotions.

Advocates for cognition note that experience and memories matter. Attribution analysis studies how emotions vary based on how a person interprets a cause of an emotion. Let us say I am experiencing positive affect while driving my new car. If the car was a gift from my parents I will tend to feel pride. Where if I worked many hours to save up for the car I may feel pride instead. The difference between these two scenarios is my mental interpretation as to where the source of my joy is coming from. Examples like this display how cognitive approach to emotion dictates secondary emotions, resulting in a much large pool of potential experience. As usual a mix of both mind and body provides an explanation as well. The two ends and all there moving parts inform one enough, inhibiting or activating the others, creating feedback loops that if strong enough elicit action or inaction. Primary and secondary appraisal illustrate this nicely. When a person first encounters a stimulus they make an appraisal (primary) whether it is pleasant, harmful, or a threat. Once more systems are activated or inhibited they may make another appraisal (secondary) that may move the stimulus into a different category. This process generally continues until the stimulus is dealt with or determined insignificant.

Perhaps most surprising was the realization of how much emotions depend upon social interactions. Whether road rage, appreciation of my girlfriend, or frustration at customers how talk to quietly while ordering food, memorable peaks and valley in experience often times involve other people. It is interesting to notice emotional contagion have a reverse effect in my life though. Usually happy people are infectious, but if I’m having a bad day at work someone who is all smiles just amplifies my bitterness, especially if I am subordinated into assisting them. In this instance emotional neutrality is an important discipline.

Mood vs emotion
Neural circuits
James Lange theory
Attribution analysis
positive/negative affect
basic/ secondary emotions
primary/secondary appraisal
Emotional neutrality
Emotional contagion

Chapter 11 and 12 focus on emotion. Chapter 11 focuses on emotions, what causes them and the difference between emotion and mood. What I found most interesting in chapter 11 was the relationship between emotion and motivation. Chapter 12 describes the aspects of emotion and what I found most interesting in that chapter was the section on managing emotions.

Emotions are multidimensional, they are subjective, biological, and social phenomena. Emotions are short-lived and help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events. There are two ways that emotions relate to our motivations. The first is that emotions are one type of motive, emotions energize and direct behavior. The example in the textbook is that the emotion of anger can energize resources to achieve a goal or a purpose. Silvan Tomkins believes that the loss of air produces a strong emotional reaction (fear or terror), and it is the terror that provides the motivation to act to get air. If you take away the emotion, you take away the motivation as well. The second is that emotions serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. Emotions read out the persons ever changing motivational states and personal adaptation status. Positive emotions signal that everything is fine, where as negative emotions signal that something is not right. This relates to motivation because if a person who has a goal of working out more to be more healthy, the feeling of joy they get when they notice that they can run more, or life more signals that they are doing well on their goal.

Emotions are caused when a person encounters a significant life event, an emotion comes to life. There are biological and cognitive perspectives that explain what causes emotions. Biological perspective explains that most emotional processing of life remains uncognitive. Emotions happen to us, we react emotionally before we are even aware of the situation. This applies to motivation because it is an instant reaction. If a person walks in on their partner and it looks like they are kissing someone else, their first reaction is to get angry, but they don’t know the full story. Maybe the other person was just on the receiving end of the kiss and didn’t have time to protest before the partner witnessed it. If the partner just asked what was going on, their reaction might only be anger towards the kisser, and not their partner. The cognitive perspective states that without an understanding of the personal relevance of an events potential impact, there is no reason to respond emotionally. This relate to motivation because if a person if unaware of how much danger he or she is actually in, they might not have the motivation to try to escape that situation.

There are there differences between emotion and mood. Emotions emerge from significant life situations and appraisals of their significance to our well-being, influence our behavior and direct courses of action, and emotions come from short lived events that last for minutes. Moods emerge from processes that are ill defined and are often unknown, they influence our cognition and direct how a person thinks, and moods come from mental events that can last for days.

Managing our emotions is important to many professions. For some, it is even required that they manage their emotions in ways that are socially acceptable and personally adaptive. These are important to motivation because if a person really enjoys their job, but sometimes deals with uncooperative individuals, then they have to find ways to cope with that to keep their job. Some ways that individuals can manage their emotions are to accentuate the positive, laugh about it, or just avoid the contact.

Terms: emotion, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, mood, managing emotions

Chapter 11 focuses on emotion and the layout of the chapter sets out to answer the five perennial questions in the study of emotion. The five questions are: What is an emotion? What causes an emotion? How many emotions are there? What good are the emotions? What is the difference between emotion and mood? When defining emotion, the textbook includes four components: feelings (subjective experience and cognition), bodily arousal (physiological activation and motor responses), sense of purpose (Goal-directed and functional aspect), and social-expressive (social communication and facial/vocal expression). Chapter 12 focused on the various aspects of emotion (biological, cognitive, and social and cultural).
Because of all day-to-day stressful situations life brings I think understanding how to cope with the different emotions one experiences is very important and reading about coping functions in the textbook was one of the most interesting things to read. To survive “animals must explore their surroundings, vomit harmful substances, develop and maintain relationships, attend immediately to emergencies, avoid injury, reproduce, fight, and both receive and provide caregiving” (Reeve, 318). Because our physical and social environment has changed a lot and each of our behaviors is emotion produced it is important to facilitate an individual’s adaption for both their physical and social environment. I thought that it was interesting what biologically oriented emotion researchers stress flexibility in emotional ways of coping than what is shown on table 11.1. Although anger is known as motivation that leads to destructive action, it can also prepare people to “enforce social norms or discourage anger causing events before they occur” (Reeve, 319).
Regarding how emotion has to do with motivation the textbook says that emotions relate to motivation in two ways: “Emotions are one type of motive” and “emotions serve as an ongoing, “readout: system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaption is going” (Reeves, 301-302). Emotions, like motivation, energizes and directs behavior. An example of how emotions energize and direct behavior from the textbook that I thought was good has to do with experiencing loss of air. This situation “produces a strong emotional reaction of fear or terror” (Reeve, 302). The feeling of terror, not the air deprivation or bodily threat, motivates the person to act. Emotions also help read out the “person’s ever-changing motivational states and personal adaption status” (Reeve, 303). Positive and negative emotions send different signals. Positive emotions signal “all is well,” and reflect the involvement/satisfaction, and are evidence of our successful adaptation to what is going on. Negative emotions signal that “all is not well,” reflect neglect and frustration when it comes to our motivational state, and evidence our unsuccessful adaptation to what is going on. I thought it was interesting that the textbook said that positive emotions like joy or interest during motivated action “provides a metaphorical green light for continuing to pursue that course of action” while negative emotions “provide a metaphorical red light for stopping the pursuit of that course of action” (Reeve, 303). In summary emotion energizes and direct motivation. When you are faced with any situation (fight at a party, new experiences, joining friend group, or finding your soulmate) emotions will motivate you to do whatever needs done.
Emotion
Cope
Motivation
Readout

Chapter 11 introduces us to the nature of emotion by answering five questions. “What is an emotion?” Emotions have dimensions of feeling, arousal, purpose, and expression. Feelings give emotion a personal meaning, arousal prepares the body for coping behaviors, purpose gives emotion a goal directed motivation, and expression is how emotion is communicated through facial expressions. “What causes an emotion?” The biological perspective says emotions arise from the brain’s limbic system. The cognitive perspective says emotions arise from mental events. “How many emotions are there?” The biological perspective says we have between two and ten basic emotions, while the cognitive perspective says we have six: fear, anger, distrust, sadness, joy, interest. “What good are emotions?” The different emotions we have help us to adapt to our physical and social environments. “What is the difference between emotion and mood?” “Emotions emerge from significant life situations and from appraisals of their significance to our well-being” (pg. 322). Mood emerge from unknown sources, can be good (positive) or bad (negative), and are long lived.
Chapter 12 explains the different aspects of emotion: biological, cognitive, and social-cultural. The biological aspects of emotion include the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing, and facial feedback. The cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of emotions include appraisals, knowledge, attributions, socialization history, and cultural identities (Table 12.1, pg. 330). The facial feedback hypothesis from chapter 12 was the most surprising thing that I learned. According to the facial feedback hypothesis, “the subjective aspect of emotion stems from feelings engendered by movements of the facial musculature, changes in facial temperature, and changes in glandular activity in the facial skin” (pg. 336). There are two testable versions of the facial feedback hypothesis: strong and weak. The strong version states that “manipulating one’s facial musculature into a pattern that corresponds to an emotion display will activate that emotional experience (pg. 338). For example, frowning will make you feel sad. The weak version states that “facial feedback modifies the intensity of the emotion” (pg. 340). For example, if you are feeling happy and smile intentionally, you will feel a more intense happiness. I also learned that there are 80 facial muscles and 36 of them are involved in facial expression. Of these facial muscles, eight of them are enough to differentiate among basic emotions. The weaker version has more support than the stronger version. “Emotions activate facial expressions, and facial expressions, in turn, feed back to exaggerate and suppress the emotions we feel” (pg. 341).
The concepts from chapter 11 and 12 tie in with motivation because emotions create a motivational desire. If there isn’t emotion, there isn’t motivation. Like the other types of motivation, we have learned about, emotion also energizes and directs behavior. Emotions allow us to adapt to our environments. For example, if a person was never able to feel fear, such as being face to face with a grizzly bear, they would not be “motivated” to escape and would more than likely get killed.

Terms used:
Emotion
Feeling
Arousal
Purpose
Expression
Mood
Facial Feedback Hypothesis

Chapter 11 covered five major questions towards emotion. The first was “What is an emotion?” Emotions are multidimensional and short lived. Emotions also are a sort of motive as they help direct and energize behavior. They also help indicate a person’s adaptations to life events. The next question was “What causes an emotion?” This is where the debate of biological vs. cognition occurs. Just like with the nature/nurture debate, there is no clear answer. They both are influencers of emotion. Emotions occur from a set of cognitions and biological feedback. The third question was “How many emotions are there?” To answer this question easily, there are many emotions. The common agreement is the set of basic emotions of fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and interest. However, these basic emotions are a sort of umbrella over secondary emotions like anxiety, surprise, excitement, and many others. The fourth question was “What good are the emotions?” Both good and bad emotions can be beneficial because they can direct behavior where it needs to be and help people cope. The last question was “What is the difference between emotion and mood?” Like I mentioned earlier, emotions are short lived whereas moods are much longer and can last for multiple days and can create positive affect. Positive affect makes people feel good, which can then create them to help others and enhance creative problem solving.

Chapter 12 was on the aspects of emotion. The first half of the chapter focused on the biological aspects of emotion. This focused on responses that the body has in different situations. Contemporary perspectives support the physiological aspects in a few emotions. Neural firing was another area looked at that may activate different emotions. Another theory believed that the basic emotions served different motivational purposes. The last and most interesting part of the first half of the chapter was the facial feedback hypothesis. The different movements of facial muscles was the most interesting. The face has a lot of different muscles that can be manipulated in many ways to create the face that matches the emotion that one is experiencing. Support has been given to the proposal that facial feedback modifies the intensity of the emotion. Research has also found that facial expressions for same emotions gives evidence that facial feedback is universal. The second half of the chapter focused on the cognitive aspects of emotion. The main understanding for cognition is appraisal, which is how significant a life event is. There are primary appraisals and secondary appraisals; primary appraisals are whether anything is at stake, and the secondary appraisal has to do with the person’s assessment of coping. Another important concept was attributions, which are what people use to explain what happens in their life. Changing an attribution can possibly change an emotion as well. This can come in handy when someone feels bad about something and they blame themselves, but changing the attribution from themselves to an outsider factor, they may change their emotion from shame to a more neutral emotion. Social interactions can affect our emotions, we learn emotions from adults as children, and those adults can also help us learn to manage our emotions.

The most surprising thing that I learned was about how different our importance of expressing our emotions in America is compared to those who live in China. I’ve become so used to knowing what everyone is feeling because they show it on their face that if I went to China, I think I would feel very uncomfortable. If I went to someone’s house, and they made their child feel insignificant, I would feel bad for the child because I rely more on my parent’s approval and praise more than anyone else’s. I just found this cultural difference surprising yet interesting, and I am curious to see how other cultures feel about emotional expression.

I think emotion has a lot to do with motivation. Different emotions motivate us in different ways. For example, if I become fearful in a social situation like being trapped in the middle of Time’s Square, I will become motivated to stay away from social situations like that in the future. Now, I could also experience the opposite. If I were extremely happy and excited to be in this social situation, I would be motivated to put myself in that social situation again. We are motivated in many ways and because we feel emotions often, those two are entwined and flow together.

Terms: motivation, emotion, facial expressions, cognitions, behavioral, attributions, appraisals.

In chapter 11, we focus on discussing emotions. Emotion is defined as a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thoughts and behaviors. Theories vary, but the basic emotions experienced are joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger, and disgust. However, there are varying degrees and combinations of emotions that result in a much larger spectrum of emotional experience. Emotions are heavily connected to a person's motivation as well.

This was the most interesting part of the chapter for me. To see how external stimuli can create a feeling within someone, and because of that, that person directs behavior in a certain way. Such as when a guy sees a girl he thinks is attractive, he may experience shyness or even fear. This could cause him to avoid any interaction with that person and become self-conscious. He may even do subtle things to make sure his appearance is not embarrassing. All of these little actions and self-doubt because of a external stimulus that made him feel shy or scared. Emotions can also help us achieve our goals. I know from personal experience that failing at a task is a great way to motivate yourself to get it right next time. Perhaps failing a task in front of friends or family is enough to anger or embarrass somebody to the point of more dedication and practice to that task. Whenever I am playing bad golf, I get irritated with myself and sort of give myself a scolding for not focusing very hard. This usually is enough to refocus my attention to the task at hand and help me succeed. Emotions can also be looked at as a kind of constant gauge for how things are going for a person. If someone is striving to achieve a goal, and they are making rapid progress, they are very likely to happy. Strong emotions can also be produced from very meaningful situations, such as a breakup, or a first kiss. From a biological perspective, emotions direct our behavior as well. If someone takes away your air and you can't breathe, you will begin to experience fear. As you begin to suffocate, the fear will become more and more intense. This causes desperate behavior in order to find a way to breathe again. This is an example of emotions being produced in order to help us survive.

The chapter also outlines the differences between emotion and mood. Emotions arise from significant situations and our assessment of how we think they went. These can be very short-lived moments that seem to stay on repeat in our minds for ages. Moods are a bit more obscure. The process which cause moods arise somewhat out of nowhere. Moods are mental events can last for days, often they affect and direct our cognition, which can affect behavior.

Self-regulation is extremely important when it comes to a person's emotions. Emotions are very effective tools to direct the behavior of a person. However, it is very important that people are not overly affected by their emotions, to the point where they may cause harm. It is very important that throughout a person's development, they are educated on their emotions and how to cope with them and the impulses they may cause.

In this week’s reading, chapters eleven and twelve, focused on the nature of emotion and various aspects of it. In chapter eleven, this was done by exploring five perennial questions considering what emotions are and what causes them; among other inquiries. Similarly, chapter twelve, explored biological, cognitive, and social/cultural aspects of emotion. Throughout these chapters, there was an abundance of information that I found interesting. In this blog post, I will focus on information related to the ABC tool used in therapy and how learning about emotion connects to motivation.

Before considering textbook information related to the ABC tool, I will explain what this tool is and how it works. When going to counseling last year, my therapist introduced me to an ABC method of understanding the source of my intense emotionality. This involves understanding the steps (ABC) that range from the initial event (A), the appraisal (B), and the emotion (C). As my therapist explained, it is often B that happens subconsciously and is the reasoning behind emotions. When this is not understood, the emotion can be confusing and difficult to control because of the lack of foundation for the feelings.

In the textbook, I found connections between this ABC tool and the biological and cognitive perspectives on emotion introduced in chapter eleven. When looking at the biological perspective, there are times when emotions are involuntary and do not require an appraisal. For me, this is relatable to my experience with depression. Unbeknownst to me, there were issues with neurotransmitters in my brain that impacted my emotionality. I struggled to explain why I felt down because there was no A or B, only C. When considering the cognitive perspective, the importance of A and B come more into play. The text explains that the way in which we appraise a situation impacts how we react emotionally. Similarly, according to attribution theory, the meaning that we attribute to an event will affect the emotional outcome. This means that two people who experience identical events may experience different emotions due to their attribution and appraisal of that event.

In this course, we have learned extensively about motivation but have touched on emotion less frequently. With these chapters, emotion’s impact on motivation is explored more. The text explains that emotion can work as a motivational agent by determining what things we are motivated to do and what things we are not motivated to do. This mostly comes from the positive or negative emotion attached to the behavior that needs motivated. For example, if attending an event means getting to see your friend, a positive emotion such as joy will motivate you to attend the event. On the other hand, if attending the event means seeing your ex-boyfriend, a negative emotion such as hate will de-motivate you to attend.

Throughout chapters eleven and twelve, I encountered information that related to the ABC tool (used in counseling) and connected emotion and motivation. The ABC tool is used to understand the appraisal of the situation (B) and how that impacted the emotion (C). This tool can be used to understand the biological and cognitive foundations of emotion. When considering how emotion and motivation intersect, it is clear that different emotions can motivate or de-motivate certain behaviors.

Terms:
Emotion
Appraisal
Biological Perspective
Cognitive Perspective
Attribution Theory

Chapter 11 was about 5 perennial questions that pertain to emotions. The first question was, “What is an emotion?” Emotion is made up of 4 different parts: feeling – what makes emotions more personal; arousal – what helps us adapt as well as be ready for situations; purpose – motivates our emotions to act in certain ways; expression – the social component of emotion, i.e. facial expressions. Emotion takes these 4 different parts, throws them together and creates a pattern for each individual. The second question was, “What causes an emotion?” Question 2 brings about a discussion on emotion being more of a biological or cognitive issue. The biological reasoning says that emotion comes from influences from our bodies, i.e. neural pathways in the limbic system. The cognitive reasoning says that emotions come from outside influences like mental events. Chapter 11 then goes on to say that the biological and cognitive reasonings work together as a sort of “dynamic duo”. The biological part of emotion is spontaneous, innate, and primitive whereas the cognitive part of emotion is acquired, interpretive, and social-cognitive. Question 3 touches more on the biological and cognitive reasonings behind emotion. Question 3 was, “How many emotions are there?” According to the biological part of emotion it depends on one’s own perspective. There can be anywhere from 2-10 “basic” emotions. These emotions are: interest, joy, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame, guilt, and surprise. Researchers in this field say that our “basic” emotions come from our limbic pathways and include things such as facial expressions. According to the cognitive part of emotion we have secondary emotions that go way beyond our “basic” emotions in number. Researchers in this area say that these emotions are learned throughout our lives via personal experience, developmental history, social influences, and cultural rules. Although both sides do not agree on all things, one thing they can agree on is recognizing the following 6 emotions: fear, anger, distrust, sadness, joy, and interest, as emotions that all exhibit. Question 4 was “What good are the emotions?” Chapter 11 says that emotions serve a purpose to us. They help us adapt to every day life situations and some non every day situations such as facing something that you perceive as a threat. Question 5 was “What is the difference between emotions and mood?” Emotions are short-term. They come about in response to specific events. Moods are long-term. They can be positive or negative in state. Chapter 12 talked about 3 different aspects to emotion: biological, cognitive, social-cultural. Emotions are important to us. They serve as coping resources and they help prepare us to have to adapt in a split second. Emotions energize and direct bodily actions. Out of the 10 “basic” emotions, 4 of them show unique patterns of the autonomic nervous system, 6 are associated with unique rate of neural firing in the cortex, and 4 possess unique anatomical neural circuits in the brain. According to the different emotion theory, the 10 “basic” emotions have cross-cultural facial expressions. There are 2 types of cognitive appraisal when it comes to emotion, primary and secondary. Appraisal is when we scan through all possible emotions during certain situations trying to figure out which is most appropriate. Knowledge is when we learn through experience what emotions go with what situations, i.e. sad at a funeral, happy at a birthday. Attribution appraisal is something that focuses on the post-outcome attributions to help explain when and why people have certain emotions following positive and negative events.

The most surprising thing that I learned was that there are more emotions than the basic ones that we use every day. When I think of that it makes me feel like it has something to do with certain times where we cannot put our feelings into words.

The happier one is the more motivated they are going to be. So if we can figure out how to get a hold onto our emotions and dictate them to be happier more often, then hopefully it will positively affect our motivation.

Key Terms:
Emotion, feeling, arousal, purpose, biological, cognitive, social-cultural, mood

Chapters 11 is all about describing emotions, its causes, consequences, and the difference between emotions and mood. Chapter 12 divides and explains the biological and cognitive aspects of emotion.
Emotions can be understood by a multidimensional approach that consist of four different parts, which are subjective feelings that make us feel in a particular way, biological reactions that prepare the body, agents of purpose that create a motivational desire, and social phenomena, that allow us to communicate to others. To summarize, they help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during live events.
Emotions have a lot to do with motivation, functioning as one type of motive. Some situational events and body changes could produce a strong emotional reaction that provide the motivation to act. It is not the events or body changes themselves, but the emotions that follow, that are the source of the motivated action.
There is some discrepancy about what causes an emotion, seen by two different approaches: biological perspective and cognitive perspective. People who support the cognitive perspective, argue that individuals respond emotionally when there is a cognitively appraisal of the meaning and personal significance of an event. On the other hand, the biological perspective supports that reactions do not necessarily require such cognitive evaluations. One of the explanations they give is that “emotions are biological because they evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental tasks”. These two orientations also differ in explaining how many emotions there are. The biological approach emphasizes primary emotions, and propose that there are from two to ten emotions. The cognitive perspective emphasizes the secondary emotions and they point out that there are almost limitless number of emotions that arise in response to the almost limitless meaning structures of different situations. Nevertheless, to commit to a level of specificity, emotions can be conceptualized at a general or situation-specific level. The basic emotions described are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, threat, harm, joy, interest, motive involvement and satisfactions.
Emotions nowadays could be functional ( with coping and social functions) and dysfunctional ( we have to cope with threats that do not require massive mobilization of our emotion systems).
I have always been interested in how the brain works, so the most surprising things I learned are the different neural circuits that regulate patterns of emotional behavior and the specific brain areas that generate emotions. There are three main neural circuits that regulate: 1) behavioral approach system, 2) fight or flight system, and 3) behavioral inhibition system.
It is interesting to think about the site of effect of pills for depression, which could be the right prefrontal cortex (because it coordinates fear and negative affect) or the limbic system (that underlies positive affect).
The cognitive approach of emotions shows Arnlod’s Appraisal Theory of Emotions, where a life event can cause good or bad appraisals that elicit liking or disliking emotions, which precede to action (approach or withdrawal oriented).
Many emotions originate within social interaction and a cultural context. I found interesting to learn that different cultures have different emotional repertoire, social interaction, emotional socialization, and emotion management.

Terms used:

subjective feelings, biological reactions, agents of purpose, social phenomena biological perspective, cognitive perspective, primary emotions, secondary emotions, prefrontal cortex, limbic system, Arnlod’s Appraisal Theory of Emotions, social interaction, emotional socialization, emotion management.

Chapter eleven focuses on emotion and the five perennial questions. These questions are: what is an emotion, what causes an emotion, how many emotions are there, what are the good emotions, as well as what is the difference between emotion and mood? The chapter also highlighted the four key concepts of emotion; the four concepts are as follows: feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social expressiveness. The book states that emotions come first, and feelings come second because feeling are stronger and last longer than emotions. Chapter twelve focuses on the parts of emotion that are related to biological, cognitive, social, and cultural aspects in the body. This chapter also states that there are social and cultural aspects of emotion. For example, in China, love is viewed as negative or sad emotion; however, here in the United States, love is viewed as a happy and positive emotion.

The thing I found most surprising in chapter eleven was that there are dozens of emotions but there is a debate over which “emotions are more fundamental or more basic than others” (pg 312). Everybody feels a variety of emotions through out the day; however, it can be argued that happiness is the “base” of excitement and joy. Meaning, excitement and joy are less fundamental than the emotion of happiness. Another thing I found interesting in chapter eleven was the fact that there is a relationship between emotion and motivation. Firstly, emotions energize and direct behavior (pg 301). Secondly, emotions serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going (pg 302).

From chapter twelve the most interesting thing I learned was the James-Lange Theory. This theory states that people experience an emotion which results in bodily changes. For example, if you see a squirrel run onto the road as you are driving 30 miles an hour, you may begin to perspire, your heart rate may increase, you may clench the steering wheel, and you may begin to breathe heavily. You would not have done all of those things if the squirrel had not run into the road; heavy breathing and beginning to perspire are directly related to the squirrel running into the road.

This all ties into motivation in several ways. Firstly, our feelings and emotions drive us as humans. If I am sad I am going to take a nap, if I am excited I am going to jump up and down and probably scream – the emotions of sadness and excitement motivated me to act a certain way. Secondly, cultural norms and expectations drive us to show emotions a certain way. For example, I have a South Sudanese friend who is a male. He does not openly discuss his feelings, and if he does he only talks about being happy, never about being sad or scared. He does this because when he was very young he was told “men do not cry. You have to be brave.” On the other hand, my brother who is a white American male, openly discusses feeling sad and scared and does not fear being ridiculed by his family and peers for not being “manly”.

TERMS USED

Excitement
Feelings
James-Lange Theory
Joy
Love
Motivation
Sadness

Chapter 11 focused on the concept of emotions and what role they play in our lives whereas, chapter 12 discussed on the understanding of these emotions and events that occur within in our lives and how our emotions response to these crisis. Chapter 11 targets many great points that I thought were very interesting. For example, what are emotions, what cause these emotions to occur, what are the good emotions and what are the bad emotions, how many types of emotions are there, and most importantly, how emotions are way different than the mood. However, chapter 12 focused more on the facet of emotions. It also talked about many hypotheses and theories that explain the concept of emotions. I personally thought that the answers to chapter 11’s five questions were very interesting.

We often feel many emotions rushing through our bodies but we never really think what are these emotions and why we feel them. Emotions can be described as a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood or relationship with others. It can also be characterized by a temporary feeling that support us acclimate to the events, opportunities and obstacles that we face on daily basis. Just like many motives, our emotions reinforce and direct behavior. Furthermore, emotions also distribute as a continuous readout rule to demonstrate how a person’s variation is going. Another important question that the chapter focused on is how these emotions occur and what causes them. The answer would be that when we face and confront an event of any kind in our lives, that is when our emotions get triggered. Our body and mind react in a certain way. Biological and cognitive processes altogether mobilize the detracting and demanding components of emotions, including a person’s feeling, goal-directed purpose, bodily arousal, and our expressions all over.

The next important questions that rises is how many and what type of emotions there are? Many studies and the researchers agreed that many small emotions can occur. Not only this, the basic emotions are almost universal to all of us and the basic emotions are the device of evolution and biology. The interesting thing that I found was that the when the cognitive researchers stated that many different emotions can emanate from the same biological factors. What are the good emotions? Many studies have shown that presenting these emotions help a person to adaptation similarly as presenting the physical components do. The way these emotions work and the way a person adapt, make these emotion capable for natural selection. Moreover, our emotion help us correspond our feelings and reactions to the people around us. Emotions can also be influential because they can have an impact how people around us would react to our emotions and feelings. Emotions can also help a person to construct, manage and control, and to dissolve a relationship with anyone. It helps us expedite social interactions as well. The next question arises is that what is the difference between an emotion and mood? This is something I have always wondered about. I personally thought there is not any difference between these two but there is. Our emotions and mood can strike from totally different situations. Emotions appear from a certain crisis in our lives whereas, the mood arises from the ill-defined processes and most of the time they are unknown.

I have learned many things from chapter 12 as well. The most interesting thing from this chapter I would say is when the chapter talked about facial feedback hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, our emotions strike from feelings arouse by the motion of our facial muscles structure. It can also be due to changes in our facial temperature and changes in glandular activities. The chapter describes it as the emotions being the sets of muscle and our glandular response to these emotion on our faces. For example, depending on our mood, if we are happy, our body will be very energized and motivated to do different tasks and you’ll get many things done around you. But, if it is the opposite, you’ll have almost no motivation to do anything. The chapter 12 mentioned that our mood plays a big role in our life. The things we do on daily basis are mostly depended on how we are feeling. How we are feeling can be learned from our facial expressions. Lastly, chapter 12 discussed why this is important when we talk about motivation because by identifying the causes of certain emotions, you can either motivate yourself to reach your goal, or you can stop yourself and choose not to perform certain things in future.

Terms used:
Motivation
Emotions
Mood
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
Cognitive and Biological factors
Natural selection
Relationships

Ch 11 covered the nature of emotion. There are many aspects of emotion, such as the number of them and how they are created. The causes of emotion can be both internal and external, and there are differences in emotions and moods. The basic emotions are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, threat/harm, joy, interest, and motive involvement/satisfaction. These help keep us alive and involved in our social groups, which gives us a better chance of survival. There can be good and bad emotions and actions, called coping mechanisms.

Ch 12 was about the aspects of emotion, or more the physiological side of the coin. There are several types of appraisal when talking about cognitive aspects of emotion. These allow us to see reactions and determine what is good and bad, based on the reactions of others. Just as in almost any other aspect of psychology, there are several aspects at play. Biological, cognitive, and social. These three things combine to allow us to see how emotions work, and shows us the three together combine to equal a person’s emotions.

The most surprising thing to me was how much the book focused on theories of emotions. The James-Lange Theory says our emotions are a response to past experiences, and our body and mind react according to how they believe they need to respond. This in terms of survival is good because it allows the body to take over in a situation where we are in danger. In modern times, this is what causes us to be stressed when we know there may not be any real danger, but a perceived danger. If it was up to us to decide these dangers, we would have much less time to respond because the body does so much for us. When we trip on the stairs if we had to decide whether or not to catch ourselves we would fall, whereas the body senses fear or threat/harm, and corrects the problem without us doing anything.

This relates to motivation because emotions drive our body and mind. When we feel strong enough about something we will be more motivated to do it. If we feel the emotion of losing a sporting event, we can either feel more motivated to come back and do better, or be broken and not try at all. Controlling and applying these emotions to our motivations can allow us to drive ourselves further than we normally could go if we did not feel strongly about the issue. People are motivated about issues they feel strongly about. When people are so fed up with a political issue they are motivated to protest in the streets, it is because they have a strong feeling about something, and they would not do it if they did not care about the issue at hand. Getting people to feel emotional about things is one way to motivate them, but can be hard because they have to take the message to heart.

Terms:
Basic emotions
Appraisal
Cognitive aspects of emotions
James-Lange theory

From a biological perspective, there are two to ten primary emotions, depending on which research is being considered. On the other hand, the cognitive perspective believes there are a limitless number of emotions. Finding middle-ground, the researchers agreed that emotions may be split into at least five emotion families: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and enjoyment. (Suddenly, the movie Inside Out makes more sense.) Interest is also discussed as a basic emotion. Emotion arises from a specific event and is short-lived, while mood is a long-lived, positive or negative affect state. Positive affect results in feeling good, resilient, social, and intrinsic motivation. In relation to motivation, emotion energizes and directs behavior, and some researchers believe that emotions are the primary motivational system. Also, emotions help people determine how a person is doing at self-adaptation, both positively and negatively.
There are three aspects of emotion: biological (reactions to important life events), cognitive, and social-cultural. Emotions affect the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, neural brain circuits, rate of neural firing and pace of information processing, and facial feedback. Interest, joy, fear, anger, and disgust are mentioned as emotions again, but the list continues to include distress, contempt, shame, guilt, and surprise. Primary and secondary appraisal regulate the emotion process, helping people predict which emotion a person should experience in a particular situation. Social interactions also play a role in emotion, through the sharing of emotion and cultural expectation of how we should express our emotions.
The most surprising thing I learned was outlined in the beginning of chapter 11, the four dimensions/components of emotion: feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social-expressive. In general, I had not put a much in-depth thought into emotion prior to reading this chapter, and when I thought of describing emotion, it mostly centered around feelings. I have thought about the affiliation between emotion and mood and the connection between emotion and behavior, but I hadn’t thought about the relationships of all four components with emotion, as well as the relationship between the four components themselves (i.e. feelings and sense of purpose or bodily arousal and social-expression). As an example, I will use the emotion surrounding the opening of my new computer last night. I was experiencing joy when I opened the computer; I had anticipated the opening of the computer for several months and was excited to finally open it, feeling energetic. I had considered that I was excited to open the computer, but I had not thought through the bodily arousal, social-expressive, and sense of purpose components of the emotion. Looking back, I now realize that my hands were a bit shaky, and I was smiling a lot, even holding my breath (expressive aspect). My sense of purpose was to open the computer and begin using a more efficient, effective piece of technology, and my bodily arousal was apparent in increased energy levels and an increased heart rate. Therefore, my emotion (joy) was more than just my feeling; it was a combination of the four dimensions.

Terms: Feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, social-expressive, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, self-adaptation, positive affect, negative affect, primary appraisal, and secondary appraisal

Chapters 11& 12 focused on emotions and the aspects of emotions. Chapter 11 asked these five questions, “What is an emotion?”, “what causes an emotion?”, “how many emotions exist?” “what are the good emotions?”, and “what is the differences between emotion and mood?” Emotion is made from four key components, these being feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social expressive. Chapter 12 looked at the aspects of emotions biologically and cognitively. There are many different theories about emotions and they are still up for debate since the concept is so complex.
Our emotions are what causes us to act a certain way, if we are happy we feel motivated to be nice to people, if we are angry we may feel motivated to yell at someone. When we feel positive emotions it makes us want to do the task that made us feel that way because it gave us joy. For example, running and working out makes me feel good. It makes me feel more confident and accomplished, so I try to run as much as possible knowing that it makes me feel good and that’s why I am motivated to continue to do it, knowing how great I will feel. What I found to be interesting was, the part about appraisal. Appraisal is how someone measures how important an event is to them. This can help us understand why why we like or dislike particular events. Appraisal theory helps understand why emotions may motivate you to do a certain thing. An example of this would be I had a bad experience at a ride at Adventureland when I was younger, so now whenever I go to an amusement park I avoid anything that resembles that ride. There is no way I could be motivated to ride this… unless someone was going to pay me a million dollars and I was promised nobody would get sick on me this time. I am still motivated to go to amusement parks however, because they do make me happy and I always find myself having a good time.
Emotion can motivate us in a couple of different ways. The first way is by energizing and finding the behavior. The other way emotion can motivate is by emotions being on an ongoing feedback system on how well or how bad that person is adapting. Emotions are also used to keep us safe, healthy, and ready to go if needed. This is where we get the “fight or flight response”. The James-Lang Theory is based off of the biological model that states that the body reacts to different kinds of events. Another part of the biological responses are facial expressions, learning facial expressions helps us have an understanding of what other people are feeling or experiencing. This also helps us with some of the “survival” aspects we learned about earlier.

Biological Theory
Cognitive Theory
James Lang Theory
Motivation
Emotion
Appraisal Theory
Positive and Negative Emotions