CHAPTER 8
NATURE OF EMOTION
The Five Perennial
Questions of Emotion
What is
the
What How many What good
What is an difference
causes an emotions are the
emotion? between
emotion? are there? emotions?
emotion
and mood?
WHAT IS
AN
EMOTION?
What is an Emotion?
Emotions are multidimensional - exist as subjective, biological, purposive,
and social phenomena
“What’s the problem with actually defining emotion?”
The problem is the following: “Everyone knows what emotion is, until asked to give
a definition” (Fehr & Russell, 1984).
There is simply more to emotion than just a feeling or just an expression.
Definition of Emotion
Emotions are short-lived, feeling–arousal–purposive–expressive phenomena
that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during
important life events.
How different aspects of experience complement and coordinate with one
another.
Imagine this situation..
You were
being rejected
by your
crush,what do
you feel?
WHAT CAUSES
AN
EMOTION?
Biological Perspective
How can these situation happens?
Infants respond emotionally to certain events despite their cognitive shortcomings.
A 3-week-old infant, for instance, smiles in response to a high-pitched human voice.
A 2-month-old expresses anger in response to pain.
Emotions have very rapid onsets, brief durations, and can occur
automatically/involuntarily.
Thus, emotions happen to us, as we act emotionally even before we are
consciously aware of that emotionality.
Cognitive Perspective
Take away the cognitive processing, and the emotion disappears.
The individual’s cognitive appraisal of the meaning of an event (rather than
the event itself) sets the stage for emotional experience.
The role of cognitive appraisal.
What is the price of successes and failures to you?
HOW MANY
EMOTIONS
ARE THERE?
BASIC EMOTIONS
The so-called basic emotions are those that meet the following criteria (Ekman
& Davidson, 1994):
1. Are innate rather than acquired or learned through experience or socialization.
2. Arise from the same circumstances for all people (personal loss makes everyone
sad, irrespective of their age, gender, or culture).
3. Are expressed uniquely and distinctively (as through a universal facial
expression).
4. Evoke a distinctive and highly predictable physiological patterned response.
Fear
An emotional reaction that arises
from a person’s interpretation that
the situation he or she faces is
dangerous and a threat to one’s
well-being.
Fear motivates defense - as in the
flight part of the fight-or-flight
response).
Fear can provide the motivational
support for learning new coping
responses.
Anger
Anger is a ubiquitous emotion – most
often comes to mind.
Where does anger comes from?
Arises from restraint, as in the
interpretation that one’s plans, goals, or
well-being have been interfered with by
some outside force.
Arises from a betrayal of trust,
Being rebuffed
Receiving unwarranted criticism
A lack of consideration from others
Cumulative annoyances
Anger
Anger is the most passionate emotion.
Also the most dangerous, as its purpose
is to destroy barriers in the
environment
½ will be about yelling and screaming,
10% of it will leads to aggression.
Anger is productive when it energizes
vigor, strength, and endurance in our
efforts to cope productively
Disgust
Disgust involves getting rid of or getting
away from a contaminated,
deteriorated, or spoiled object.
Cultural learning determines much of
what the adult considers a bodily,
interpersonal, or moral contamination.
Disgusting things as those that are of
animal origin and spread to contaminate
other objects.
The function of disgust is rejection -
because disgust is phenomenologically
aversive, it paradoxically plays a positive
motivational role in our lives.
Sadness
The most negative, aversive emotion -
arises principally from experiences of
separation or failure.
Sadness motivates the individual to
initiate whatever behavior is necessary
to alleviate the distress-provoking
circumstances before they occur again.
One beneficial aspect of sadness is that
it indirectly facilitates the cohesiveness
of social groups – makes us stays
cohesive with our loved ones.
Joy
The emotional evidence that things
are going well.
The causes of joy:
desirable outcomes related to
personal success and interpersonal
relatedness.
The function of joy is twofold.
Facilitates our willingness to engage
in social activities.
As a “soothing function”.
Interest
The most prevalent emotion in day-to-
day functioning
Involve a shifting of interest from one
event, thought, or action to another.
Interest creates:
The desire to explore, investigate, seek
out, manipulate, and extract
information from the objects that
surround us.
Interest motivates acts of exploration,
and it is in these acts of turning things
around, upside down, over, and about
that we gain the information we seek.
Interest also underlies our desire to be
creative, to learn, and to develop our
competencies and skills.
WHAT IS THE
DIFFERENCES IN
EMOTION
AND MOOD?
The Differences between
Emotion and Moods
Different antecedents, emotions and moods arise from different causes.
Emotions Emerge from Moods
Emerge from
significant life
processes that are
situations and from
ill-defined and are
appraisals of their
oftentimes
significance to our
unknown.
well-being.
The Differences between
Emotion and Moods
Different action-specificity.
Emotions Mostly influence Moods Mostly influence
behavior and cognition and
direct specific direct what the
courses of person thinks
action. about.
The Differences between
Emotion and Moods
Different time course.
Emotions Moods
Emanate from Emanate from
short-lived events mental events
that last for that last for hours
seconds or or perhaps days.
perhaps minutes.
Positive Affect
Positive affect refers to the everyday, low-level, general state of feeling good
Everyday pleasant experiences :
walking in the park on a sunny day
receiving an unexpected gift or good news
listening to music
making progress on a task.
Once instigated by an eliciting event, the warm glow of a positive mood continues
for up to 20 minutes - happy people make decisions and act in ways that maintain
their good moods for longer than 20 minutes
Benefits of Feeling Good
More likely to help others
Act sociably
Express greater liking for others
Be more generous to others
Take risks
Act more cooperatively and less aggressively
Solve problems in creative ways
Persist in the face of failure feedback
Make decisions more efficiently
And show greater intrinsic motivation on interesting activities
WHAT GOOD
ARE THE
EMOTIONS?
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
THROUGHOUT THIS SEMESTER!
Goodluck for you finals and till we meet again.
THE END
