Emotion

Emotion

1. Primary Emotions: evolutionarily adaptive, shared across cultures, and associated with specific physical states (ex: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise, contempt)

   • Secondary Emotions: blends of primary emotions (ex: remorse, guilt, submission, shame, anticipation)

2. Three Theories of Emotion

   • James-Lange Theory: emotions result from the experience of physiological reactions from the body
   • Cannon-Bard Theory: Emotions and bodily response both occur simultaneously
   • Schachter-Singer two-factor theory: How an emotion is experienced is influenced by the cognitive label applied to explain the physiological changes explained

3. Emotional Brain

   • Amygdala: The "quick and dirty" system, processes emotional significance of stimuli & generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions; assists in reading facial expressions
   • Prefrontal Cortex: left and right frontal lobes are affected by different emotions, damage to either lobe impairs emotional experience
     • Right prefrontal cortex: associated with negative emotions
     • Left hemisphere: associated with positive emotion

4. Humor has many mental and physical health benefits

5. Distraction: Involves doing or thinking something other than the troubling activity or thought

6. Display Rules: rules that are learned through socialization and dictate what emotions are suitable in each situation

   • these rules tend to be different for men and women from culture to culture

7. Emotions influence thoughts

   • Affect-as-information: people use their current mood to make decisions and judgments even without knowing the source of their mood
   • Decision Making: anticipating how choices might affect our emotions can serve as a guide in decision making

8. Guilt: a negative emotional state associated with anxiety, tension, and agitation

   • socialization is sometimes considered more important than biology in determining how children experience guilt

9. embarrassment: often felt after violating a cultural norm, doing something clumsy, or experiencing something else that would cause a threat to their self image

   • People frequently blush when they feel embarrassed which indicates that there is an understanding of social awkwardness