Motivation and emotion/Lectures/Nature of emotion

Lecture 07: Nature of emotion
This is the seventh lecture for the motivation and emotion unit of study.

Overview

This lecture introduces the psychology of emotion by considering six key questions.

Take-home messages:

Emotions involve subjective feelings, physiological and neurological change, expressive behaviour, and guide motivation
Emotions serve adaptative, functional purposes

Emotions are not easily defined, in part because they are integrated, multi-system experiences
There are at least four distinct aspects (see Figure 1):
- subjective feelings: What most people think of as emotion—the feeling
- bodily arousal: Distinct patterns of physiological activation (e.g., blushing when ashamed)
- social expression: Communicative aspects, including facial expression, body language, and speech
- sense of purpose: Emotion as a stimulation of motivated behaviour

Emotions do not occur randomly; they are functional states (i.e., emotions are purposeful responses to specific types of life events)
Emotional experiences motivate effective adaptation to life events
However, emotions are also "primitive" in that they are approximate, impulsive responses, and may not always be well calibrated (e.g., may go over-the-top or be insufficient or inaccurate)

Emotion models typically identify five to eight core or basic emotions
Reeve (2018) describes six core emotions (4 unpleasant and 2 pleasant):
- Fear
- Anger
- Disgust
- Sadness
- Interest
- Joy
Other common candidate core emotions include:
- Contempt
- Surprise
Core emotion criteria
- Distinct facial expression
- Distinct pattern of physiology
- Automatic (unlearned) appraisal
- Distinct antecedent cause
- Inescapable (inevitable) activation
- Presence in other primates
- Rapid onset
- Brief duration
- Distinctive subjective feeling state
- Distinctive cognition
Core emotion exclusion reasons
- Derived from a core emotion
- Mood
- Attitude
- Personality trait
- Disorder
- Blend
- Aspect of emotion
More complex emotion models represent additional dimensions such as:
- Valence
- Arousal
- Intensity (e.g., see Figure 2)

Emotions are functional; they facilitate adaptation
Avoid referring to "good" and "bad" emotions because, from a psychoevolutionary point of view, all emotions evolved for a reason and serve an adaptive purpose.
Understanding the purpose of one's emotions is part of developing emotional intelligence (i.e., to be able to welcome emotion because it provides important information about how to adapt to one's current life situation)

Emotional self-regulation is the ability to manage one's emotion. This is part of emotional intelligence which consists of:
- Emotion recognition in self: Ability to recognise the type of emotion one is experiencing (emotional literacy)
- Emotion regulation in self: Ability to respond appropriately to one's emotional experience (e.g., if angry, to find appropriate ways of expressing the anger)
- Emotion recognition in others: Ability to recognise the nature of others' emotional experiences
- Appropriate responding to emotion in others: Capacity to respond appropriately to the emotional experiences of others
Emotion regulation strategies
- Situation selection
- Situation modification
- Attentional focus
- Reappraisal
- Suppression

Emotions are short-lived affective responses to specific life events
Moods are more diffuse affective experiences which may last longer than emotions and are not triggered by specific events (e.g., one may just wake up in a bad mood)

Chapter 12: Nature of emotion (Reeve, 2018) or Chapter 11: Nature of emotion (Reeve, 2024)

Feeling all the feels (CrashCourse Psychology #25, YouTube) (2:01 mins): an introduction to emotion
Emotions and the brain (Sentis, YouTube, 2012) (2:02 mins): a simple, clear explanation of emotions, the brain, and emotion regulation
Inside out - Meet Riley's emotions (Pixar, YouTube, 2015) (3:08 mins): Trailer for the animated movie Inside Out which provides an entertaining look at our inner emotions and memories
What is an emotion? (Paul Ekman) (Mind with Heart, 2012, YouTube) (7:35 mins): Paul Ekman explains what emotion is, why we have emotions, and how they can be regulated
Lie to me (Quicksubs, YouTube, 2015) (2:01 mins): Trailer for a TV series about lie detection through analysis of facial expression and body language

James, W. (1884). What is an emotion? Mind, 9, 188–205.