Emotions: States, Traits & Categorical Approach

Introduction

• Emotions consist of distinct subjective feelings or affects
• Emotions are accompanied by bodily changes, mostly in the nervous system
• Emotions include distinct action tendencies, or increases in probabilities of certain behaviors
• Emotional reactions differ among people, even to the same event
• Emotions are used to make distinctions between people

Emotional States vs Traits

• States are transitory and depend more on the situation
• For example, "I'm angry because students cheated on their paper".
• Traits are patterns of emotional reactions continuously experienced across various life situations
• Peter is a "Happy-Go-Lucky” person most of the time

Categorical Approach

• The categorical approach focuses on identifying a small number of primary and distinct emotions
• There is a lack of consensus about which emotions are primary
• Lack of consensus is attributable to different criteria for defining an emotion as primary
• Izzard (1977) stated primary emotions guide behaviors
• Ekman (1992a) stated primary emotions have distinct facial expressions recognized across cultures

Dimensional Approach

• The dimensional approach is based on empirical research rather than theoretical criteria
• People rate themselves on a variety of emotions, and the researcher applies statistical techniques (Factor Analysis) to identify dimensions underlying ratings
• Research has a consensus on fitting emotions on 2 basic dimensions: Pleasant/Unpleasant and High or Low Arousal
• A two-dimensional model suggests every emotion can be described as a combination of each dimension and allows for individual differences

Content vs. Style of Emotional Life

• Content refers to types of emotions experienced
• Style refers to how emotions are experienced

Happiness in Philosophy

• Aristotle: Happiness is the supreme good attained by living a virtuous life and being a good person
• Rousseau: Happiness is the satisfaction of one's desire and the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure
• James: Happiness is the ratio of one's accomplishments to one's aspirations, and can be improved by increasing accomplishments or decreasing aspirations.

Happiness and Life Satisfaction

• Researchers define happiness in two complimentary ways: life satisfaction and hedonic balance
• Self-report and non-self-report measures of happiness correlate with self-report scores on social desirability
• Part of being happy is to have positive illusions about the self, an inflated view of the self as a good, able, and desirable person

Happiness and Well-Being

• Daily diaries, clinical interviews, and reports from family and friends asses happiness
• Survey measures of happiness and well-being predict other aspects of people's lives
• Happy people tend to be less abusive, less hostile, report fewer diseases, and are more helpful, creative, energetic, forgiving, and trusting compared to unhappy people

Seligman's Positive Psychology & Happiness

• Pleasant life: maximizing pleasurable experiences and minimizing painful ones, which is the simplest and least fulfilling
• Engaged life: experiences of flow, accompanied by absorption in tasks and activities
• Meaningful life: cultivating character strengths and virtues and using them to benefit others, which is the hardest and most fulfilling

What we know of Happy People

• No sex difference occurs in overall happiness, global well-being, and life satisfaction
  • Less than 1% of variance occurs
• No age differences occur in overall happiness
  • Circumstances that make people happy change with age
• Ethnic group membership is unrelated to subjective well-being
• National differences exist in subjective well-being
  • People in poorer countries are less happy
  • People in countries that provide citizens fewer civil and political rights are less happy
  • Differences in economic development of nations may be a key source of differences in happiness of countries
  • Income inequality

Wealth and Happiness

• Wealthier countries generally have higher levels of life satisfaction
  • National wealth is often confounded with variables such as health care services and education
• Researchers address wealth relationships by assessing income and happiness within countries
• Economic status predicts happiness in very poor countries but, once people can afford necessities, increased financial status isn't related to well-being
• Within affluent countries, economic growth is not accompanied by a rise in life satisfaction among the population
• Answer might lie in the notion of the threshold of income, and the absence of health and wealth may bring misery, but the presence of health and wealth don't guarantee happiness.

Personality and Well-Being

• Variables such as gender, age, ethnicity, and income account for only 10-15% of variance in happiness
• High Extraversion and low Neuroticism levels contribute more to happiness than demographic characteristics
• Two models describe the relationship between personality and well-being:
  • Indirect model: personality creates a certain lifestyle that causes emotional reactions
  • Direct model: personality causes emotional reactions

Research on Direct Model (Larsen et al., 2000)

• Mood induction:
  • Extraversion is the best predictor of responsiveness to positive mood induction
  • Neuroticism is the best predictor of responsiveness to negative mood induction
• High extraversion correlates with good moods, and high neuroticism correlates with bad moods
• Personality appears to have a direct effect on emotions

Anxiety, Depression, and Hostility

• People with high N (Neuroticism) are vulnerable to negative emotions
• Descriptions for people with high N = moody, touchy, irritable, anxious, unstable, pessimistic, and complaining

Eysenck's Biological Theory of Neuroticism

• People with high N tend to overreact to unpleasant events and take longer to return to "normal
• Neuroticism stems from the tendency of the limbic system in the brain becoming easily activated
  • The limbic system is responsible for the "fight-flight" reaction
• No direct tests of this theory exist, but indirect evidence supports:
  • N is highly stable over time
  • N is a major dimension of personality
  • N shows the highest heritability from all the traits

Cognitive Theories of Neuroticism

• Matthew's attentional theory: high N people pay more attention to threats and unpleasant info in the environment
• Related explanation holds that high N people have richer networks of association surrounding memories of negative emotion, making unpleasant material more accessible
• Preferential processing of negative (but not positive) information about the self (not about others)
• One type of unpleasant info is poor health, with a link between N and self-reported health complaints
• Major disease categories aren't related to N.
  • N influences perceptions of health, rather than health itself
  • Linked to diminished immune function during stress, and might be more related to immune-related diseases

Depression and Melancholia

• Diathesis-stress model: A stressful life event triggers depression among those with pre-existing vulnerabilities (or diathesis)
• Beck's cognitive theory: certain cognitive styles are a pre-existing condition that make people vulnerable to depression
  • Vulnerability lies in the particular cognitive schema, or the way a person sees the world
  • Three areas of life most influenced by depressive cognitive schema: the Cognitive triad which includes info about the self, world, and the future
• An example is an overgeneralized distortion of the self: "I did bad on a test, therefore I'm a total failure"
• Depression = applying these cognitive distortions to the information from daily life.
  • Applied quickly and unconsciously, leading to automatic negative thoughts that deeply affect the way a person feels and acts
• Biology of depression:
  • Depressed people often describe feeling slowed down and having less energy
  • Depression results from neurotransmitter imbalance at the synaptic level
  • Decreased levels of norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine occur

Anger Proneness & Potential for Hostility

• Hostility: Tendency to respond to everyday frustrations with anger and aggression, to become easily irritated, to act in a rude, critical, antagonistic, uncooperative manner in everyday interaction
  • Hostility in Big 5 = low agreeableness, high neuroticism
• Type A personality and heart disease:
  • Cluster of traits: achievement striving, impatience, competitiveness, hostility
  • Research identified Type A as a predictor for heart disease
  • Research identifies hostility as the trait of Type A the most strongly related to heart disease

Style of Emotional Life

• Content = "what" the person is feeling
• Style = "how" they experience emotion
• Affect intensity as an emotional style:
  • High affect intensity = people experience emotions strongly and are emotionally reactive and variable (positive and negative emotions)
  • Low affect intensity = people experience emotions mildly and have gradual fluctuations and minor reactions

Assessing Affect Intensity and Mood Variability

• In early studies, affect intensity was assessed using a daily experiential sampling technique
• Affect intensity measure (AIM): questionnaire measure that allows quick assessment of emotional style in terms of intensity

Interaction Between Content and Style

• Hedonic balance between positive and negative emotions represents the content of emotional life
• Affect intensity represents the style of emotional life
• Hedonic balance and affect intensity are unrelated to each other and interact to produce specific types of emotional lives that characterize different personalities

How to Increase Happiness

• Spend time with other people
• Seek challenge and meaning in work
• Look for ways to be helpful to others
• Take time out for yourself; enjoy the activities that give you pleasure
• Stay in shape
• Have a plan, but be open to new experiences
• Be optimistic
• Don't let things get blown out of proportion