Motivation and emotion/Lectures/Aspects of emotion

Lecture 08: Aspects of emotion
This is the eighth lecture for the motivation and emotion unit of study.

What causes emotion?
Biology?
Cognition?
Sociality?

Overview

This lecture:

Take-home messages:

  • Biology and cognition work together to generate emotion
  • Facial expressions can influence emotional state
  • Other people are the source of most of our emotions
  • Emotions are contagious
  • Computers are increasingly able to detect, imitate, and respond to emotion

Outline

  • Biological
  • Cognitive
  • Social
  • Affective computing

Biological aspects of emotion

Figure 1. What is the role of the body in causing emotion?
Figure 2. The human face has over 80 muscles; ~half of which are involved in expressing ~3,000 different expressions of emotion
  • What is the role of the body in emotion (see Figure 1)?
    • Does bodily reaction follow emotion?
    • Or does bodily reaction lead to emotion?
  • James–Lange theory of emotion:
    • Sequence
      • Stimulus → Bodily reaction → Emotion e.g.,
      • Sudden cold shower → Increased heart rate → Surprise? Fear?
    • Emotion is a way of making sense of bodily changes
    • Criticisms
      • Boldy reactions are part of a general response that does not vary much between emotions
      • Emotional experiences occur more quickly than physiological reactions
    • Contemporary perspective
      • Distinct physiological differences are evident for some emotions, but only a few have distinct autonomic nervous system patterns
      • Emotions recruit bodily reactions to facilitate adaptative behaviours such as fighting, fleeing, and nurturing
  • Brain activations for specific emotions
    • Distinct neural circuits underlie the core emotions of joy, fear, rage, and anxiety (Gray)
      • Behavioural approach system
      • Fight or flight system
      • Behavioural inhibition system
    • Neuroscience studies of brain activity during emotional experiences map core emotions to distinct patterns of neural activity
  • Facial feedback hypothesis
    • The facial feedback hypothesis (FFH) proposes that emotional experience arises from interpretation of one's facial expression
      • Strong view: FF causes emotion
      • Weak view: FF modifies emotion
      • Critics: FF effect is small
    • Facial expression of core emotions is cross-culturally universal (see Figure 2)
      • Some emotions (e.g., joy) are easier to recognise than others (e.g., fear)
      • Some cultures (e.g., Western) are better at recognising emotion (e.g., because they focus on the mouth) than other cultures (e.g., Eastern because they focus on the eyes)

Cognitive aspects of emotion

  • Biology alone doesn't explain all aspects of emotion, particularly complex emotions such as hope, pride, envy, and gratitude
  • Appraisal
    • Appraisals, rather than events per se, elicit emotion
    • Appraisals evaluates significance of events
      • Primary: "Is this event significant to me and my well-being?"; if yes, "Is the event good (beneficial) or bad (harmful)?"
      • Secondary: "Can I cope with this situation?" → emotion (e.g., liking/disliking) → approach vs. withdrawal
    • Complex appraisal models account for approx. 2/3rds of emotional variability by mapping perceived types of benefit/harm/threat to specific emotions
  • Emotion knowledge
    • Ability to differentiate different types and intensities of emotion
    • Part of emotional intelligence
    • Can be taught and developed
  • Attribution
    • Different explanations for why life events occur leads to different emotional experiences
      • Primary: Good or bad?
      • Secondary: Cause?
    • Example:
      • Primary: Good event
      • Secondary: Internal cause
      • Emotion: Pride

Social aspects of emotion

Figure 3. Emotions are socially intense experiences, bringing us together and driving us apart
  • Emotions are socially intense experiences (see Figure 3)
    • Through emotional expression, we signal our needs to others
    • Social experiences are the most frequent source of day-to-day emotion; these experiences:
      • bring us together (e.g., joy and gratitude) and
      • push us apart (e.g., anger, contempt, and schadenfreude)
    • Emotional contagion: People tend to converge on similar emotions due to:
      • Mirror neurons fire in response to observing others' emotion
      • People tend to mimic others' emotional expressions
  • Social sharing of emotion provides conversational context for people to re-experience and recount their emotional experiences
    • Social-affective sharing: Listening, comforting, empathy, support → provides temporary relief
    • Cognitive sharing: Reframing, meaning-making, reprioritising → stimulates cognitive work for emotional healing and recovery
  • Common view of emotions as short-lived is challenged by social research about emotion because emotional experiences tend to be retold and relived through social sharing, contributing to emotional continuity over days, weeks, and even years

Affective computing

Figure 4. Electronic devices such as robots are increasingly able to detect and respond to human emotion.
  • Affective computing is an interdisciplinary field which studies how artificial intelligence can recognise and respond to human emotion
  • If emotions show ANS specificity, then sensors built into electronic devices can monitor human and adjust accordingly (e.g., empathically) (see Figure 4)

Readings

Multimedia

  • Emotions revealed (KQED QUEST, 2008, YouTube) (11:01 mins): Explains Paul Ekman's work on codifying the intricate ways in which emotions are revealed through facial expressions
  • Why we can't not smile (Epic Science, 2014, YouTube) (2:22 mins): Explores unconscious emotional mimicry in relation to smiling
  • How China is using artificial intelligence in classrooms (The Wall Street Journal, 2020, YouTube) (5:43 mins): Shows real-world application of emotion AI being used to monitor students, illustrating potentials and risks of affective computing

Slides

See also

Lectures
Tutorial
Wikiversity
Wikipedia

Topics

People

Recording

References

Gray, J. A. (1987). The psychology of fear and stress (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Multimedia
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