General Psychology: Theories of Emotion

• General Psychology I is a lecture course taught by Ass.-Prof. Dr. Dominik Mihalits, MSc., BA.pth.
• The course is worth 3 ECTS credits and has 2 hours per week (HPW).
• Class Schedule is Tuesday morning from 9:30 to 11:45.
• The course begins with a historical overview of general psychology.
• It proceeds to cover perception, memory, learning psychology, classical and current theories with models of sensory and memory systems, and learning theories including classical and operant conditioning.

General Psychology

• Is a specific branch within the broader field of psychology.
• The term is sometimes misleading in English-speaking areas and is often referred to as just "Psychology".
• Has a universal aim to target similarities rather than differences (e.g., Differential Psychology).
• Focuses on the processes and mechanisms of mental phenomena instead of their contents.
• Universalism and Functionalism are main ideas of general psychological research.
• Specific areas include the perception, cognition, memory, motivation, and emotion, etc.

Psychology of Emotions

• Is a lecture covering important concepts and theories, natural scientific approaches, emotions and sociology, and selected emotions from transdisciplinary perspectives.

Emotion Definitions

• Emotion comes from Latin "e-movere" - to move away, remove, or dislodge.
• It was initially used to describe migration processes.
• Emotion means 'agitation' in 16th century England with the social riots and public emotions.
• Emotion signified changes to the psyche, like affective upheaval, in the 19th century.
• Emotion has been regarded as a loss or disruption of a former balanced state of the psyche.
• Feelings are seen as emotional components, finding expression in subjective experience and mental processing.

Affect

• Used as a synonym for emotions or as an umbrella term for current disposition
• Affect is a broader concept than emotion.
• Because of its vagueness, it is used in combination (affect disorders, core affects, affect regulation).
• Psychology defines affect as anything emotional - Lindquist et al. (2012).

Mood

• Lasts longer than emotions.
• Can be non-object-specific.
• A mood trigger does not need to be consciously represented (non-focal).
• Mood can be an affective residue of specific emotions.
• It also influences the experience of subsequent emotions and judgments.
• Solomon views emotions as judgments, conceptually more sophisticated intentional states
• Judgment has objects outside of the body - Ratcliffe, 2018, p.3.

Philosophical Perspectives: Roots of Emotions

• The key traditions are those of Aristotle and Plato.
• Plato views emotions as uncontrollable forces, making reasoning and emotion antithetical.
• Aristotle highlights the importance of the functions of emotions.
• Aristotle believes that different types of appraisal lead to different emotions.
• René Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, and William James mark the first Platonic stream.
• Magda Arnold, Anthony Kenny, and William Lyons mark the second stream (Aristotelian source) in the 20th century.

Psychological View

• Emotions are episodic, relatively short-term, biologically-based patterns of perception, experience, physiology, action, and communication.
• These patterns occur in response to physical and social opportunities and challenges.
• Emotions control the individual's relation to the external environment - Keltner & Gross, 1999, p.468

Psychological-Developmental

• Emotions are a kind of radar and rapid response system.
• It helps construct and carry meaning across the flow of experience.
• Emotions are tools to appraise experience and prepare actions - Cole, Martin & Dennis, 2004, p.319

Early Theories of Emotion

• Explains how it all started for emotion theories.

James Lange Theory

• Established by William James (1884) and Carl Gustav Lange (1885)
• Physiological arousal causes the experience of emotion.
• There is an experience of fear because a person has shaky hands, which goes against 'we do not have shaky hands because we experience fear'.
• After an object is apprehended, a threatening stimulus leads to immediate bodily changes, such as visceral reactions and motoric reactions, that are subsequently felt.
• James W. asked, "What is Emotion?" in Mind, 9 (34), 188-205 (1884).
• Lange contrasts James, stating changes in blood vessels and accompanying changes in blood supply produce emotions.
• James and Lange are summarized together.
• The emotional reaction includes an Addition of appraising component, which is triggered by vital elements of an overall situation
• Bear in a cage is an example, compared to a bear in the wild. Stresses on automatic visceral reactions, not voluntary actions.

Theory Limitations

• Not all visceral changes trigger emotion (isolated bodily sensation).
• Emotions are broader and diffuse.

Cannon-Bard Theory

• Originated with Walter Bradford Cannon and Philip Bard.
• Includes 5 issues of critique:
  • The separation of viscera from the central nervous system does not alter emotional behavior.
  • Similar visceral changes occur in distinct emotional and non-emotional states.
  • The viscera are relatively insensitive structures.
  • Visceral changes are not fast enough to prompt emotional feeling.
  • Artificial induction of typical visceral changes does not produce them - (Cannon, 1927).

Brain Areas

• Medulla oblongata and Thalamus.

Schachter & Singer Two Factor Theory

• A stimulus is processed by the brain, triggering an autonomic nervous system arousal and emotional experience.
• The theory is a cognitive-physiological approach.
• The same state of physiological arousal could be labeled differently depending on the cognitive aspects

Current Emotion: Evolutionary

• Charles Darwin's theories are from 1872 / 1998.
• Facial expression supports Darwin's general theory of evolution by natural.
• Darwin asks whether emotional facial expressions were universal.
• Cross-species continuity with universality of facial expressions, serviceable gesture habits through facial expressions, and communication functions are all theses.
• Buck (1983), Ekman & Friesen (1971), Horstmann (1975), and Keltner & King (2003) lead the way in emotion theroy.
• Evolution designed emotions for solving problems.
• The sight of danger (e.g., wild animals), prompts biologically prepared stimuli.
• Same survival meaning for all people helps cause particular emotion and adaptive benefit.
• This also leads to the person being ready to perform an action tendency.

Plutchik

• Identified stereotypical responses to problems of adaptation in 1980,1984. Thesis: Humans have specific behavioral answers to adaptive problems due to specific emotional responses.

Survival Theories

• Current theories focus on survival of the gene. A species’ natural architecture will spread over generations to enhance success through reproduction - Niedenthal, 2017, p.6.

Basic Emotions Theories

• Silvan Tomkins (1962,1963) and Carroll Izard (1977, 2007) and Paul Ekman (1992) created theories. Basic emotions are innate, bodily states, elicited unintentionally, and automatically or biologically prepared stimuli
• Criteria for classifying 'basic' emotions:
  • Universal expressions involving the face & voice.
  • There are discrete physiology, presence in other primates, and automatic environment appraisal for classifying 'basic' emotions.
  • Knowledge in basic emotions has changed as science progresses.

E.T. Components Assumption

• Components (feelings-facial expression- autonomic change) co-occur every time an emotion is triggered.
• Emotions occur because of an Affect Program (Tomkins and McCarter, 1964).
• Affect brain systems are innate brain that are preset and tell the body what to do when faced with an event.
  • This includes the existence of individual programs for the basic emotions.

Appraisal Theories

• Critical evaluations tested correlations between facial expressions and self-reported feeling states.
• Most objects do not case the same emotion in all people.
• There is a linkage of emotions to people's immediate evaluation of their circumstances.
• Emotions are determined by individual appraisals.

Theorists

• Frijda (1986), Roseman (1984), Scherer (1984), and Smith & Ellsworth (1985).

Appraisal

• Appraisal process recognizes objects and events in the environment and evaluates their significance for a immediate well-being.
• Appraisals and rapid, unconsciously, and unintentionally.

Specific Appraisal Patters

• A particular appraisal pattern is assumed to be the cause of emotions and is comprised of varying components. The components: pleasantness, certainty, attentional activity, personal (self / other) control, situational control, and injury to self-esteem/blame.
• Fear occurs with circumstances are appraised as novel, negative, uncontrollable, and insistent expectations

Cognitive Appraisal Theory

• 1960 theory by Magda Arnold.
• First emotional step appraises situation; which leads to emotions that arouse actions and emotional experience.
• Appraisal is used to make “intuitive” assessments of the "here and now" aspects of situations; it not a rational process.
• Organisms constantly evaluate environment as good/bad "simple appraisal."
• Emotion means ''a felt tendency toward something that is appraised as good and away from something appraised''; this can lead to action.

Cognitive Mediational Theory

• Richard Lazarus theory in 1968 (stress research).
• Theory states that, emotions can come and are constantly in flux because of coping.
• Types of Appraisal include: Primary Appraisal, Secondary Appraisal.
  • Primary Appraisal establishes event meaning.
  • Secondary Appraisal assesses the coping ability and cognitive mediator of stress reactions.

Appraisal Theories Basis

• Primary appraisals are adaptive, very fast, and clear-cut.
• Example: appraisal novelty and of valence.
• Secondary appraisals are a function of high-order mental processes.
• Example: harmless snake.

Frijda

• Emotion describes lawful phenomena that follows set of laws of emotion. Meaning with situation is an emotion. With relationship with subject’s concerns and the subjection counts not the events that come after
• Componential Theories (Scherer, 2009): Appraisal causes emotions and the components of these emotions. Components might be facial expressions, physiological, fight etc. Emotions for different objects/events

Modern View

• In many ways to produce experiences- is there tightly or loosely packed experiences? In sum correlation doesn’t = causation. The interest is in the correlation over intensity. Construct: how variation/emotions appear. They are constructed individually

3 Elements

• States modeled in processing/interpretation
• Primitive states transfer into affect
• Result apply learn categories: Therists: Barret Russel
• Mental process give meaning that attribute to experience.
• Recognize emotion = affective shape in separate ones. Social consensus with cultures feelings because of social construcitons.

Core Affect

• Emotions innate component (Russel)
• Component = Emotion, = Good, activated in what a person is doing

Constructionism Dimensions

• Pleasant and Unpleasant and Deactivated
• Blend dimensions

Psychological Model

• The Psychological Model consists of specific emotion such as: Core, categorize with Sum, a particular state of feeling.

Key Concepts

• Lack of standard to determine what emotion are
• Need to differentiate moods/feelings=concepts
  • trans disciplinary
• different theories explain it all and the ones above

Psychological Constructionism is a physical entity.

• Construction: individuals' perception of the experience vs. collective tendency for the theory

Natural Approaches

• Scientific Approaches (experiments measure)
• Roughly put these in categories (location and construction)

Natural Approach

• Frequently experiments There is emotion as the way it’s currently handled.
• There are always debates because it causes things There are influence methods:
  • Associated Network
  • 2 Emblazoned Simulation Models

How it works

• Social Science/individuals: psychoanalysis and Social Science- what inside
  • Theories on psycho
  • Construction-EGO
  • Paradigm to science
    • Social sciences
• Emotions and psychoanalysis/ concepts come from the libido

How it works

• Division life of mental life/
• Ego: Channel drives = Reality
  • Consicousness: external/relationship
    • Norms/value = Tension/reconsile/expereince in pleasure
• Reduction through unconsicuosness
• Affect feel= synonyms. Freud focused on affect and it developed. For the case of annxiety it's dynamic.
• The combination it is with some particular expereince

The Process

• Psycho: anxiety/guilt
• Pleasure/unpleasure together= effect
• Affect= association

Freud's psychoanlysis

• Observation while using the methods
• Affect regulation in therapy
• Adapted as the study of affects

The Science

• Social with facts or events/structure/relevant. Psychology in social offers the meaning complex.

Emotions and Sociology

• Concepts: condition, socialist with culture,
• Emotions - actions in socialist aspect/ behavior
• The emotions have social contact aspect.
• Analysis through macro and micro to view emotions.
• Emotions shot through the lenses to be social but not fully in an individual.
• Actions in being that is acquired through a community

Key TakeAways

• 1)Make a individual with guidelines
• 2. Rational and emotion combine for all levels

Explore the psychological concept of emotion, tracing its Latin origins. Review major theories, including James-Lange and Cannon-Bard, and their differences. Understand emotions as tools for experiencing and acting on situations.