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SUSS PSY 369 STUDY UNIT 4: How Emotion Impacts Us - Coggle Diagram
SUSS PSY 369 STUDY UNIT 4: How Emotion Impacts Us
The Development of Emotion
development of emotions occurs throughout our lifespan
Emergence of Emotions.
Our ability to experience emotions develops with age and is shaped by the way we
receive or interpret emotional messages from others
send or express information about our emotions
Receiving – the development of elicitors
To illustrate the development of
elicitors
, consider how the elicitors of fear
change through the course of development
During infanthood, the visual cliff or strangers would elicit fear in older infants.
However, as the child grows older, these elicitors no longer lead to fear. Instead, other themes -i.e. monsters- may evoke fear.
there are
other aspects to consider
First,
certain elicitors
may be associated with specific emotions because of
biologically adaptive
reasons, whereas
others
may become linked via
learned associations
Second, individuals may
differ
in the extent to which the same elicitor evokes different emotions
Finally, the relation between the elicitor and
emotional response may vary with individuals
, depending on each individual’s meaning system
Sending – the development of facial expressions
differential-emotions theory (DET)
According to DET, each discrete emotion comprises
the neural,
expressive, and
experiential components
which form a hardwired system together
proposes that during the course of development,
facial expressions
become organised to
correspond to emotions
as neurological maturation occurs
infants can produce facial expressions that represent the appropriate emotional responses.
For example, by the first few days of life, infants are able to show disgust to sour taste
As infants grow older, they master the skill of social smile in response to other elicitors such as attention and play.
Emotional Communication
our ability to express or communicate our emotions is
closely related to
our
ability to
understand or
interpret emotional cues from others
. Also referred to as social referencing.
For example, by three to four months, infants are able to
match the emotion conveyed vocally
to appropriate facial expressions from the speaker.
Social referencing
This refers to the process where we
rely
on our observation
of other people’s emotional reactions
as a basis for our own appraisal
of an ambiguous situation
For example, one-year-olds depended upon the kind of interaction their mothers had with a stranger to decide their own reaction to the stranger
By their second year of life, social referencing also includes identifying and relying on indirect emotional signals (i.e. facial expression) as the basis for their behaviour
By this age,
toddlers
also
learn to acknowledge that their emotional reactions
may be
different from others
; they are able to compare their own assessments of events with that of others.
By
adolescence
, social referencing becomes increasingly peer-centred. It is the peak time
where emotional difficulties, such as depression and anxiety, emerge
Emotional Development in Adulthood
socioemotional selectivity theory (SST)
This theory states that
as we age, we grow increasingly selective about our social networks
and choose to spend more time with people, whom we have rewarding relationships with
The theory postulates that our perception of
time influences our social and emotional goals
, which in turn
influences how we process information.
Positivity effect
Positivity effect older adults tend to tune themselves towards positive stimuli and away from negative ones.
This positivity effect can be explained by three processes:
increased
experience
of positive emotions;
increased
attention
to positive stimuli; and
increased
ability to regulate
emotions.
Emotion and Personality
Personality Differences in Emotional Experience: The big Five
The Big Five approach is one of the
most commonly used and prominent model
in the trait
perspective
It consists of five global dimensions
Temperament Perspective on Personality-Emotion Link
Affect-level model
Reactivity model
Reconciliating both models
Cognitive Perspective on Personality-Emotion Link
Personality, cognitive processes, and emotion
Emotion and Cognition
Emotion Congruence
Bower’s associative network theory
Emotions are
conceptualised as nodes
that are linked to related concepts.
When an emotion (a node) is activated, other associated concepts (e.g., memories, beliefs) are activated as well.
mood-congruent effect
.
information or memories that are
congruent
with the activated mood state are
more easily retrieved
or
learnt.
This means that a
positive mood facilitates
the encoding or retrieval of
positively valenced material
. people who
experience a positive mood
would
encode information more positively
, recall more positive memories, and
make more favourable associations
Supported by Neuroimaging
imaging of the brain mechanisms involved in mood-congruent memory facilitation suggests that the
brain regions involved in the encoding
of emotional information are
also reactivated
at retrieval
if the mood
at retrieval is
congruent with that at encoding
Not supported by other studies
field and laboratory studies involving natural and induced moods, Parrott and Sabini (1990) found that
participants in sad moods recalled memories that were less negative
than those recalled by participants in happy moods
Mood-incongruent effects and the Affect Infusion Model (AIM)
Affect infusion
Forgas (1995) defined affect infusion as the process whereby affective information influences judgements.
AIMs is based on
two assumptions
:
The extent of affect infusion depends on the types of processing strategy used
people tend to use the
least effortful processing strategy
The AIM not only accounts for mood-congruent effects on cognition, but also moodincongruent effects, as well as situations whereby there are no mood effects
4 Judgmental Strategies
The motivating strategy.
This strategy also involves
low affect infusion
because judgements and outcomes are
guided by motivational pressures and goals
The heuristic strategy.
This strategy is usually utilised when the target is typical; personal relevance is low; judge has
limited cognitive resources
; or there is
no prior evaluation
or specific motivational goals.
Hence,
judgements may be influenced by one’s current affective state
.
The direct access strategy.
This strategy gives rise to
minimal affect infusion
as it involves using a pre-existing stored evaluation and
does not require a constructive elaborative process.
The substantive strategy.
This strategy is employed when the target is complex and the judge has sufficient cognitive capacity.
It
requires interpreting and assimilating new information
, allowing
affect to influence judgements considerably
via its influence on the information selected
Memory
Emotions direct attention
A
person’s judgments
of the specific significance of particular events to himself or herself (goal relevance, ego involvement, and coping potential),
result in the generation of specific emotional states
Thus affecting memory coding an recall
Example:
Anxiety narrow attention
. Emotional Stroop test found that anxious participants were slower in naming the colours of words that were associated with their anxieties
people recall emotionally salient events and stimuli better than neutral events and stimuli
Mood State-Dependent Memory
reasons and benefits of emotional-memory pegging are:
Better retrieval during a specific emotional state
of any information that was learned during that same state (Bower's theory)
Information being retrieved can be neutral in meaning; the person’s affective state during encoding and recall just have to be similar
Contextualising information
- When you learn something, contextual information is also stored
Re-experiencing the context thus assist in retriggering information recall, whether it is the room or the affective state, facilitates information recal
Information Processing
Emotions influence cognition by influencing our processing styles.
Generally, positive moods promote the use of heuristics and stereotypes,
whereas negative moods lead to more detailed processing that requires analytical thought and attention to situational details
Feelings as information
This approach views
mood as a source of information that influences people’s judgements
information provided by the emotions has motivational implications, prompting people to pay attention to their environment
Schwarz and Clore’s (1983) affect-as information theory
People tend to interpret their current mood as providing information about the target, unless they have reason to believe otherwise, or their mood is attributed to another source
Schwarz and Clore (1983) found that people’s life satisfaction judgements were influenced by their current mood, which in turn was affected by the weather.
people
use their current feelings as heuristics in making judgements
, even for unrelated complex judgements, hence leading to
mood-congruent effects
Used when judgement is evaluative; the target is global and has little personal relevance; there is
little information available; and the judge has limited cognitive capacity.
However, when more detailed processing occurs, this heuristic is unlikely to be used
Explanations for Emotions’ Effects on Information Processing
Informational Models:
such as Affect-asInformation;
positive state
informs person that the
environment is secure
and no action is needed, so no need to engage in careful processing.
Negative state indicates problem in environment, so resources should be invested to resolve it (Bless et al., 1990)
Hedonic View
:
Individuals seek to experience and maintain positive affective states.
Therefore, happy people will avoid engaging in any task that could alter their positive state.
People in
negative affective states
want to change what they are feeling and will therefore
process information in a careful manner
to find a way to change their emotional state
Decision-Making
When deciding among alternative choices, each choice has some degree of utility (value), which decision-maker is usually trying to maximize
It is cognitively intensive to eavlute all factors involved in a decision making
Thus we are subseptable to heuristics particularly emotional heuristics
Judgements of the future
People in positive moods view the future more optimistically, causing them to judge the likelihood of positive outcomes as being greater
Evaluative judgements
Current moods influence people’s judgements, even if the target judged is unrelated to the cause of the emotion.
People in positive mood states tend to evaluate objects and events more positively, even if the source of their emotions is unrelated to the target
Casual judgements or attributions
Positive moods lead people to
attribute pleasant events
to personal factors and unpleasant events to situational factors Converse for negative emotions
Persuasion
When we feel positive, we tend to rely on heuristic processing.
On the contrary, when we are in a negative mood, we tend to be more systematic and detailed in our processing.
In this way, arguments which match one’s emotional states tend to be more persuasive and often, this determines which route of persuasion is more effective.