Motivation Notes PDF

MOTIVATION The concept of motivation is central in our at tempt to understand behavior and its causes. The term itself comes from the Latin word movere meaning “to move.” Psychologists use the con cept to help explain how internal factors seem to move animals and people toward certain goals. We ther...

MOTIVATION The concept of motivation is central in our at tempt to understand behavior and its causes. The term itself comes from the Latin word movere meaning “to move.” Psychologists use the con cept to help explain how internal factors seem to move animals and people toward certain goals. We therefore defi ne motivation as a process that infl uences the direction, persistence, and vigor of goal directed behavior. Perspectives on Motivation Because of its centrality as a scientifi c construct, every theoretical perspective has addressed the topic of motivation, and all of them have pro vided insights into the nature, functions, and consequences of motivation. Evolution, Instincts, and Genes Darwin’s theory of evolution inspired early psy chological views that instincts motivate much of our behavior. An instinct (also called a fi xed ac tion pattern ) is an inherited characteristic, common to all members of a species, that automatically produces a particular response when the organism is exposed to a particular stimulus. By the 1920s, research ers had proposed thousands of human instincts (Atkinson, 1964). Human instinct theories faded because little evidence supported them, and they often relied on circular reasoning: Why are people greedy? Be cause greed is an instinct. How do we know that greed is an instinct? Because people are greedy. As we have seen in earlier discussions of scientifi c thinking, circular reasoning explains nothing. Scientists now study genetic contributions to motivation more productively. In gene knockout experiments done with animals (see Chapter 3), they disable specifi c genes and then examine the resulting effects on motivation. Researchers also conduct twin and adoption studies to examine how strongly heredity accounts for differences among people in many aspects of motivated behavior, such as the tendencies to be outgoing or to behave an tisocially. Modern evolutionary psychologists also propose that many human motives have evolution ary underpinnings expressed through the actions of genes (Palmer & Palmer, 2002). Homeostasis and Drives Your body’s biological systems are delicately bal anced to ensure survival. For example, when you are hot, your body automatically tries to cool it self by perspiring. When you are cold, your body generates warmth by shivering. In 1932 Walter Cannon proposed the concept of homeostasis, a state of internal physiological equilibrium that the body strives to maintain. Maintaining homeostasis requires a sensory mechanism for detecting changes in the internal environment, a response system that can restore equilibrium, and a control center that receives information from the sensors and activates the response system ( Figure 11.2 ). The control cen ter functions somewhat like the thermostat in a furnace or air-conditioning unit. Once the ther mostat is set at a fi xed temperature, or set point, sensors detect temperature changes in either direction. The control unit responds by turning on the furnace or air conditioner until the sensor indicates that the set point has been restored, and then turning it off. According to Clark Hull’s (1943) infl uential drive theory of motivation , physiological disruptions to homeostasis produce drives, states of internal ten sion that motivate an organism to behave in ways that reduce this tension. Drives such as hunger and thirst arise from tissue defi cits (e.g., lack of food and water) and push an organism into action. Hull, a learning theorist, proposed that reducing drives is the ultimate goal of motivated behavior. Homeostatic models are applied to many as pects of motivation, such as the regulation of hun ger and thirst (Woods & Seeley, 2002). But drive concepts are less infl uential than in the past. For one thing, we often behave in ways that seem to increase rather than reduce states of arousal, as when we skip meals in order to diet or fl ock to tension-generating horror movies. Approach and Avoidance Motivation: The BAS and BIS Motivation impels us toward some things and away from others. We seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain; we gravitate toward rewards and avoid punishment and deprivation. These seemingly universal tendencies refl ect the activity of two distinct neural systems in the brain. Accord ing to Jeffrey Gray (1991), the behavioral activation system (BAS) is roused to action by signals of potential reward and positive need gratifi cation. Activity in this neural system causes the person to begin or to in crease movement toward positive goals (the things we want) in anticipation of pleasure. The BAS pro duces emotions of hope, elation, and happiness. Avoidance motivation refl ects the activity of the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), which responds to stimuli that signal potential pain, nonreinforcement, and punishment. The BIS produces fear, inhibition of behavior (as when humans and other animals freeze in terror), as well as escape and avoidance behaviors ( Figure 11.3 ). People high in BAS prefer change and novelty, whereas BIS fosters a prefer ence for the familiar (Quilty et al., 2007). Brain researchers are looking for the spe cifi c brain mechanisms underlying the pleasure- seeking and pain-minimizing functions of the BAS and the BIS. These mechanisms involve not only different neurotransmitter systems but also differ ent brain regions. EEG and fMRI studies suggest that the prefrontal area in the left hemisphere, aregion involved in goal-directed planning and self-regulation, is part of the BAS (Coan & Allen, 2003; Gray & Burgess, 2004). The BIS system is thought to involve several structures of the limbic system and the right frontal lobe (Sutton, 2002). However, there is still much to be learned about the neural underpinnings of the BAS and BIS. The BAS and BIS are at the forefront of motiva tional research because they not only address the obviously important distinction between approach and avoidance motivation, but they also help or ganize the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral process involved in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. These systems tie motivation and emotion to gether as well, for the BAS links approach motives and desired incentives with positive emotions, and the BIS links avoidance motives with negative emotions, such as fear, depression, and guilt. Cognitive Processes: Incentives and Expectancies Whereas drives are viewed as internal factors that push an organism into action, incentives represent environmental stimuli that pull an organism toward a goal. To a student, anticipating a good grade can be an incentive for studying, just as food can be an incentive for someone who is hungry (i.e., some one motivated by the hunger drive). Why is it, however, that people often respond differently to the same incentive? Consider James, Lenora, and Harrison, students in a calculus class who have similar math aptitudes. James studies hard, but Lenora and Harrison put forth little ef fort. According to one cognitive approach, the expectancy ⫻ value theory, goal-directed behavior is jointly determined by the strength of the person’s ex pectation that particular behaviors will lead to a goal and by the incentive value the individual places on that goal (Brehm & Self, 1989). These two factors are multiplied, producing the following equation: Motivation ⫽ expectancy ⫻ incentive value. James works hard because he believes (expectancy) that the more he studies, the more likely it is he’ll get an A (incentive), and he strongly desires an A. Lenora also believes that studying hard will lead to an A, but an A holds little incentive value for her in this course. In contrast, Harrison values an A but believes that studying hard is unlikely to produce a high grade for him. Therefore, Lenora and Harrison do not study as hard as James does. Cognitive theorists also distinguish between extrinsic motivation, performing an activity to ob tain an external reward or avoid punishment, and intrinsic motivation, performing an activity for its own sake —because you fi nd it enjoyable or chal lenging. In terms of incentives, a student who studies hard solely to get a good grade (rather than learn) is exhibiting extrinsic motivation. Psychodynamic Views The psychodynamic perspective views motiva tion within a broader context of personality de velopment. Freud (1923) proposed that energy from unconscious motives—especially sexual and aggressive instincts—is often disguised and expressed through socially acceptable behaviors. Thus hidden aggressive impulses may fuel one’s motivation to be a trial attorney or an athlete. Research offers little support for Freud’s “dual instinct” model, but his work stimulated other psy chodynamic theories that highlight motives such as people’s desires for self-esteem and social belonging (Kohut, 1977). Modern psychodynamic theorists continue to emphasize that, along with conscious mental processes, unconscious motives guide how we act and feel (Westen, 1998). Cognitive psycholo gists hold a different (i.e., information-processing) view of the unconscious mind, but their research— along with studies of human social behavior— indicates that, indeed, people are not always aware of the factors that motivate them to act as they do (Chartrand & Bargh, 2002). Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Abraham Maslow, a humanistic theorist, pro posed a broad motivational model (1954). He believed that psychology’s other perspectives ignore a key human motive: our striving for per sonal growth. He proposed the concept of a need hierarchy, a progression containing defi ciency needs (needs concerned with physical and social sur vival) at the bottom and uniquely human growth needs at the top ( Figure 11.4 ). After our basic phys iological needs are satisfi ed, we focus on our need for safety and security. Once that is met, we then attend to needs at the next higher level, and so on. If situations change and lower-level needs are no longer met, we refocus our attention on them until they are satisfi ed. To Maslow, self-actualization, which rep resents the need to fulfi ll our potential, is the ulti mate human motive. It motivates us to perfect ourselves mentally, artistically, emotionally, and socially, to explore activities for their intrinsic sat isfaction rather than to gain esteem and belong ingness, and to live deep and meaningful lives dedicated to the betterment of all people, not just ourselves. Maslow believed that most people be come so focused on attaining satisfaction of the needs lower in the hierarchy that they spend little time focused on becoming all they can be. Those rare people who approach self-actualization, such as Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr., can make enormous contributions to our world. Some of these people achieve a state of self- transcendence , moving beyond a focus on self to commit themselves to the welfare of others, to spiritual fulfi llment, and to causes higher than themselves (Koltko-Rivera, 2006). Self-Determination Theory A more recent humanistic theory of motivation has been advanced by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985, 2009). Self-determination theory focuses on three fundamental psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness—and on how they relate to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. These three needs are assumed to be just as basic and universal as bio logical needs like food and water. People are most fulfi lled or self-actualized in their lives when they are able to satisfy these fundamental needs. When the needs are thwarted, there can be negative con sequences to both psychological well-being and physical health (Deci & Ryan, 2009). Let’s examine these needs more closely. Competence motivation refl ects a basic human need to experience oneself as capable, to master new challenges, and to perfect skills. This need motivates many exploratory and growth-inducing human behaviors. The need for autonomy (or self determination) is satisfi ed when people experi ence their actions as a result of free choice without external interference. Autonomy leads to greater self-ownership of behaviors, feelings of personal control, and, in the view of self-determination the orists, self-actualization. Relatedness refers to our desire to form meaningful bonds with others—to care and to be cared for. At fi rst glance, relatedness may seem opposed to autonomy, but the two can actually support one another. For example, when adolescents feel that their autonomy is acknowl edged and supported by their parents, they feel a strong sense of relatedness to their parents (Roth et al., 2009; Ryan & Lynch, 1989). The same is true of workers who are given freedom by their bosses to develop their own plans for getting a job done (Tremblay et al., 2009). When true relatedness is achieved, people often feel freer to be themselves, and their relationships can improve and become more intimate. Self-determination theory focuses strongly on distinctions between intrinsic and extrinsic control of motivated behavior. As noted earlier (page 370), intrinsically motivated behavior is done for its inherent ability to provide satisfaction and enjoyment, whereas extrinsically motivated behavior is done in the service of some external infl uence. Actually, this dichotomy is too simple, and self-determination theorists have proposed a continuum that captures the degree to which behaviors are autonomous versus externally con trolled ( Figure 11.5 ). An absence of either extrinsic or intrinsic motivation occurs in the state of amo tivation, shown at the top of Figure 11.5. Here, the behavior has no real motivational purpose, and people either discontinue the behavior or con tinue it out of pure routine. The new model has three levels of extrinsic motivation. The least autonomous basis for ac tion occurs in external regulation, where behavior is wholly under the external control of rewards, punishment, or deadlines imposed by others. Some students with no inherent interest in learn ing study only to achieve a degree that will earn them a higher-paying job after college. Some ath letes are interested solely in personal awards and f i nancial gain, with no real “love of the game.” The next level of extrinsic motivation is introjected regulation, where some internalization of the rea son for doing the behavior has occurred. Here, a student may study because she has internalized, or introjected, from her parents the notion that she “should” do so. The studying occurs not be cause of a love of learning more about the subject, but because not doing so would evoke guilt and doing well will enhance self-regard. Still more in ternalization of the motivation occurs at the level of identifi ed regulation, where the behavior, though not inherently enjoyed, is done out of choice. Here, an athlete who does not like lifting weights at 6:00 in the morning chooses to do so in order to become a better athlete. A student who does not enjoy studying statistics does so as a means to an internalized goal, becoming a better researcher. The most autonomous form of motivation oc curs in internal regulation, where the behavior is done for its own sake because it brings enjoyment, self fulfi llment, and stimulation. When a student fi nds a subject that provides such an outcome, it is like fi nd ing a “true love.” For the athlete, it refl ects a love of the sport regardless of any external incentives. Relations between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motiva tion There is a story of an elderly woman who customarily took an afternoon nap. One day a group of children appeared at the vacant lot out side her bedroom window and began a noisy soc cer match. The next day they returned. On the third day, the woman walked over to the lot as the children were about to begin their match. She called the children over and said, “I enjoy your matches so much that I’ll give you each a quar ter if you’ll come and play every day.” She then gave each of the children a quarter. With that, the delighted children played even more enthusiasti cally than before. The next day, the woman did the same thing, and the next as well. On the sixth day, she approached the children and said, “I can’t afford to give you a quarter any more. From now on, I can give you only a nickel.” One of the chil dren replied, “I ain’t doing this for a nickel. Let’s get out of here.” The children never returned, and the woman resumed her peaceful afternoon naps. How can we account for the children’s sud den loss of enthusiasm for the afternoon soccer matches? In terms of self-determination theory, the extrinsic reinforcer (money) undermined the children’s intrinsic motivation to come to the lot and play soccer. Their play behavior had come under the reward control of the monetary rein forcer and was now externally regulated. When that reinforcer was reduced drastically, the mo tivation to engage in the behavior was likewise reduced. In one real-life example we know of, a 10-year-old champion swimmer now refuses to enter a meet until he determines that the fi rst place trophy is big enough. This story has been acted out in numerous laboratories throughout the world. In many ex periments, introducing extrinsic awards for the performance of intrinsically interesting behaviors has resulted in reduced motivation and perfor mance if the external reinforcer was withdrawn. One meta-analysis of 128 studies resulted in the conclusion that extrinsic rewards can undermine self-determination and thereby reduce intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2009). However, self determination theory also postulates that under certain conditions, extrinsic rewards can enhance intrinsic motivation for a behavior. This is most likely to occur if the external reward is viewed as providing evidence of mastery and thereby satisfying the need for competence. This process causes an internalization of the activity into the self-system so that the activity becomes enjoyable in its own right (Duda & Treasure, 2010). More over, where intrinsic motivation is low to begin with, external rewards can provide a motivational boost until the person reaches a level of compe tence that allows enjoyment for its own sake. The importance of self-determination theory’s three basic needs has been strongly supported by research. The greater the extent to which behav iors help satisfy the basic needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, the more they become internalized and intrinsically motivating (Deci & Ryan, 2009). Satisfaction of the basic needs re sults in positive outcomes such as psychological well-being, happiness, enhanced worker perfor mance and satisfaction, enhanced health-related behaviors (Mata et al., 2009), positive social rela tionships, and a sense of meaningfulness in life (Deci & Ryan, 2002, 2009; Sheldon et al., 2003). The most positive outcomes of all come from a balance among the three needs, which is associ ated with well-being and adaptive behavior in both adolescents and adults (Milyavskaya et al., 2009; Roth et al., 2009). A follow-up study of re cent college graduates revealed that attainment of intrinsically motivated goals was associated with increases in well-being, whereas attainment of extrinsically motivated goals was not (and was sometimes associated with decreases in well- being). Moreover, the association between change in attainment of intrinsic aspirations and change in psychological health occurred as a result of satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Niemiec et al., 2009). From a humanistic perspective, self determination theory represents a new model for the elusive concept of self-actualization. EMOTION Life without emotion would be bland and empty. Our experiences of love, anger, joy, fear, and other emotions energize and add color to our lives. Emotions are feeling (or affect) states that involve a pattern of cognitive, physiological, and behavioral reac tions to events. Emotion theorist Richard Lazarus (2001) believed that motivation and emotions are always linked, because we react emotionally only when our motives and goals are gratifi ed, threat ened, or frustrated ( Figure 11.24 ). Emotions have important adaptive functions. Some emotions, such as fear and alarm, are part of an emergency arousal system that increases our chances of survival, as when we fi ght or fl ee when confronted by threat or danger. But positive emotions, such as interest, joy, excitement, con tentment, and love, also have important adaptive functions. They help us form intimate relation ships and broaden our thinking and behavior so that we explore, consider new ideas, try out new ways to achieve goals, play, and savor what we have (Fredrickson, 1998). Emotions are also an important form of so cial communication. By providing clues about our internal states and intentions, emotions infl uence how other people behave toward us (Isaacs, 1998). Consider, for example, the effects of a baby’s cry ing on adults, who generally respond with care taking behaviors that have obvious survival value for the infant. Adults’ expressions of sadness and distress also evoke concern, empathy, and help ing behavior from others. Positive emotional expressions also pay off. A smiling infant is likely to increase parents’ feel ings of affection and caring, thereby increasing the likelihood that the child’s biological and emo tional needs will be satisfi ed. Happy adults also tend to attract others and to have richer and more supportive relationships (Diener et al., 2006). Positive emotions are an important part of life satisfaction, and negative emotions foster un happiness (Diener et al., 2006). Negative emotions also are typically involved in normal stress reac tions (Evans-Martin, 2007) and in many psycho logical disorders (Rottenberg & Johnson, 2007). The ability to self-regulate one’s emotions is one mark of psychological adjustment (Denollet et al., 2007; Garber & Dodge, 2007). The Nature of Emotions Our emotional states share four common features: 1. Emotions are triggered by external or inter nal eliciting stimuli. 2. Emotional responses result from our apprais als of these stimuli, which give the situation its perceived meaning and signifi cance. 3. Our bodies respond physiologically to our appraisals. We may become physically aroused, as when we feel fear, joy, or anger; or we may experience decreased arousal, as when we feel contentment or depression. 4. Emotions include behavior tendencies. Some are expressive behaviors (e.g., smiling with joy, crying). Others are instrumental behaviors, ways of doing something about the stimu lus that evoked the emotion (e.g., studying for an anxiety-arousing test, fi ghting back in self-defense). Figure 11.25 illustrates the general relations among these four emotional components. For example, an insulting remark from another per son (eliciting stimulus) may evoke a cognitive appraisal that we have been unfairly demeaned, an increase in physiological arousal, a clenching of jaws and fi sts (expressive behavior), and a ver bal attack on the other person (instrumental be havior). As the two-way arrows indicate, these emotional components can affect one another, so that our thoughts infl uence our feelings and our feelings infl uence our appraisals (Frijda et al., 2005). They exist in a larger associative network that also includes links to motives, memories, ideas, and action tendencies. Stimulation of any of the network’s components can trigger other elements, depending on the strengths of the asso ciative links (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004). For example, some people can generate strong anger and a tendency toward aggression just by recalling an event in which they were wronged. We’ll discuss other linkages as well. Thus emotion is a dynamic, ongoing process, and any of its four elements can change rapidly in the course of an emotional episode. Eliciting Stimuli Emotions do not occur in a vacuum. They are responses to situations, people, objects, or events. We become angry at something or someone; fearful or proud of something; in love with someone. Moreover, the eliciting stimuli that trigger cogni tive appraisals and emotional responses are not always external; they can be internal stimuli, such as a mental image of an upcoming vacation that makes us feel happy or a memory of an unpleasant encoun ter that arouses anger in us. Innate biological factors help determine which stimuli have the greatest potential to arouse emo tions (Panksepp, 2005). Newborn infants come equipped with the capacity to respond emotion ally with either interest or distress to events in their environment (Galati & Lavelli, 1997). Adults, too, may be biologically primed to experience emotions in response to certain stimuli that have evolution ary signifi cance. As we saw in Chapter 7, this may help explain why the majority of human phobias involve “primal” stimuli such as heights, water, sharks, snakes, or spiders, rather than modern threats such as guns, electrical transformers, and automobiles (Öhman & Wiens, 2005). A wide va riety of aversive stimuli—pain, heat and cold, foul odors—can evoke anger and aggressive tendencies toward people who had nothing to do with creating the discomfort (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004). Learning also infl uences our emotions. Previ ous experiences can turn certain people or situa tions into eliciting stimuli. The mere sight of one’s lover can evoke feelings of passion; the sight of a disliked person can trigger instantaneous revul sion that seems almost refl exive. On the broadest level, cultures have different standards for de f i ning the good, the bad, and the ugly that affect how we appraise and respond to stimuli. Physical features that provoke sexual arousal and feelings of infatuation in one culture, such as ornamental facial scars or a bone through the nose, may elicit feelings of disgust in another. Cognitive Component Cognitions (thoughts, images, memories, interpre tations) are involved in virtually every aspect of emotion. Mental processes can evoke emotional responses. They are part of our inner experience of the emotion, and they infl uence how we express our emotions and act on them. A situation may evoke pleasure or distress, depending on how we appraise it. For example, a sexual advance may elicit anger, fear, or disgust instead of pleasure if it is unwanted or deemed inappropriate. Cogni tive appraisals are the interpretations and meanings that we attach to sensory stimuli. Both conscious and unconscious processes are involved in appraisals (Feldman-Barrett et al., 2007). Often we are not consciously aware of the appraisals that underlie emotional responses. Some appraisals seem to involve little more than an almost automatic interpretation of sensory input based on previous conditioning (Smith & Kirby, 2004). Indeed, most strong emotions are probably triggered initially in this automatic fashion, after which we may appraise the situation in a more rea soning manner. Even at this more “cognitive” level, however, our habitual ways of thinking can run off in a subconscious shorthand with little or no aware ness on our part (Clore & Centerbar, 2004; Phelps, 2005). We often fail to appreciate how arbitrarily we interpret “the way things are.” The idea that emotional reactions are trig gered by cognitive appraisals rather than external situations helps account for the fact that different people (or even the same person at different times) can have different emotional reactions to the same object, situation, or person ( Figure 11.26 ). Culture and Appraisal Cross-cultural -- researchers have asked people in various countries to recall events that triggered certain emotions and to an swer questions about how they appraised or in terpreted the situations. In one study conducted in 27 countries, people exhibited strong cross cultural similarities in the types of appraisals that evoked joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, and guilt (Wallbott & Scherer, 1988). Whenever any of these emotions occurred, similar apprais als were involved, regardless of the culture. Despite these cross-cultural commonalities in appraisal, particular situations can evoke dif ferent appraisals and emotional reactions, de pending on one’s culture (Mesquita & Markus, 2005). Consider, for example, the circumstance of being alone. Tahitians often appraise being alone as an opportunity for bad spirits to bother a per son, and fear is the most common emotional re sponse. In the close-knit Utku Inuit, an Eskimo culture, being alone signifi es social rejection and isolation, triggering sadness and loneliness. In Western cultures, being alone may at times rep resent a welcome respite from the frantic pace of daily life, evoking contentment and happiness (Mesquita et al., 1997). Thus, where appraisals are concerned, there seem to be certain universals but also some degree of cultural diversity in the more subtle aspects of interpreting situations. The Physiological Component When our feelings are stirred up, one of the fi rst things we notice is bodily changes. Many parts of the body are involved in emotional arousal, but certain brain regions, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system play especially signifi cant roles. Brain Structures and Neurotransmitters Emotions involve important interactions between several brain areas, including the limbic system and ce rebral cortex (Berridge, 2004; Damasio, 2005). If animals are electrically stimulated in specifi c areas of the limbic system, they will growl at and attack anything that approaches. Destroying the same sites produces an absence of aggression, even if the animal is provoked or attacked. Other limbic areas show the opposite pattern: lack of emotion when they are stimulated and unrestrained emo tion when they are removed. The cerebral cortex has many connections with the hypothalamus, amygdala, and other limbic system structures. Cognitive appraisal processes surely involve the cortex, where the mecha nisms for language and complex thought reside.Moreover, the ability to regulate emotion depends heavily on the executive functions of the prefron tal cortex, which lies immediately behind the fore head (Denollet et al., 2007; LeDoux & Phelps, 2000). Groundbreaking research by psychologist Joseph LeDoux (2000) revealed that when the thal amus (the brain’s sensory switchboard) receives input from the senses, it can send messages along two independent neural pathways, a “high road” traveling up to the cortex and a “low road” going directly to the nearby amygdala ( Figure 11.27 ). The low road enables the amygdala to receive di rect input from the senses and generate emotional reactions before the cerebral cortex has had time to fully interpret what is causing the reactions. LeDoux suggests that this primitive mechanism (which is the only emotional mechanism in spe cies such as birds and reptiles) has survival value because it enables the organism to react with great speed before the cerebral cortex responds with a more carefully processed cognitive interpretation of the situation. This may be what occurs when a hiker sees what looks like a snake and jumps out of the way, only to realize an instant later that the object is actually a piece of rope. The amygdala also seems to function as an early-warning system for threatening social stimuli. In one study, participants were asked to rate photos of people on how trustworthy they appeared to be. When the photos were presented later, brain scans using fMRI showed a burst of activity in the amygdala when people viewed those faces they had rated as untrustworthy, but participants showed no such response to faces they judged earlier as trustworthy (Winston et al., 2002). Another fMRI study showed that the amyg dala also reacts to stimuli that evoke strong posi tive emotions (Hamann & Mao, 2002). The existence of a dual system for emotional processing may help explain some puzzling as pects of our emotional lives. For example, most of us have had the experience of suddenly feel ing a strong emotion without understanding why. LeDoux (2000) suggests that not all emotional responses register at the level of the cortex. He also suggests that people can have two simultane ous but different emotional reactions to the same event, a conscious one occurring as a result of cor tical activity and an unconscious one triggered by the amygdala. This might help explain instances in which people are puzzled by behavioral reac tions that seem to be at odds with the emotion they are consciously experiencing: “I don’t know why I came across as being angry. I felt very warm and friendly.” Some psychodynamic theorists are hail ing these discoveries as support for the existenceof unconscious emotional processes (Westen, 1998). Indeed, there is now little doubt that impor tant aspects of emotional life can occur outside of conscious awareness (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). Brain activity is also involved in the regula tion of emotional behavior. Of particular impor tance is the prefrontal cortex, the seat of executive functions involving reasoning, decision making, and control of impulsivity. Defi cits in prefrontal functions cause emotions to be expressed in an unregulated manner that can have negative con se quences (Boes et al., 2009). Neuroscientist Candace Pert (1997) argues that because all of the neural structures involved in emotion operate biochemically, it is the ebb and f l ow of various neurotransmitter substances that activate the emotional programs residing in the brain. For example, dopamine and endorphin ac tivity appears to underlie some pleasurable emo tions, whereas serotonin and norepinephrine play a role in anger and in fear (Damasio, 2005; Depue & Collins, 1999). When the fi nal story of the brain and emotion can at last be told, it will undoubt edly involve complex interactions between brain chemicals and neural structures (Frijda, 2006). Hemispheric Activation and Emotion-- Decades ago in Italy, psychiatrists who were treating clinically depressed patients with electroshock treatments to either the right or the left hemisphere observed a striking phenomenon. The electric current tem porarily disrupted neural activity in the targeted hemisphere. With the left hemisphere knocked out (forcing the right hemisphere to take charge), patients had what physicians termed a “cata strophic” reaction, wailing and crying until the shock effects wore off. But when they applied shock to the right hemisphere, allowing the left hemisphere to dominate, the patients reacted much differently; they seemed unconcerned, happy, and sometimes even euphoric. Research ers noted a similar pattern of emotions in patients in whom one hemisphere had been damaged by lesions or strokes (Gainotti, 1972). These fi ndings suggest that left-hemisphere activation may underlie certain positive emotions and right-hemisphere functioning negative ones (Sutton, 2002). To test this proposition, Richard Davidson and Nathan Fox (1988) obtained EEG measures of frontal-lobe activity as people experi enced positive and negative emotions. They found that when people felt positive emotions by recall ing pleasurable experiences or watching a happy f i lm, the left hemisphere was relatively more ac tive than the right. But when sadness or other negative emotions were evoked by memories or watching a disgusting fi lm, the right hemisphere became relatively more active. Moreover, this hemispheric pattern seems to be innate. Infants as young as 3 to 4 days old showed a similar pattern of hemispheric activation: left-hemisphere activa tion when given a sweet sucrose solution, which infants like, and right-hemisphere dominance in response to a citric acid solution, which appar ently disgusts them. Davidson and Fox also found individual dif ferences in typical, or resting, hemispheric activa tion when they recorded people’s EEG responses under emotionally neutral conditions. These rest ing differences predicted the tendency to experi ence positive or negative emotions. For example, human infants with resting right-hemisphere dominance were more likely to become upset and cry if their mothers later left the room than were those with resting left-hemisphere domi nance. In adults, a higher resting level of right- hemisphere EEG activity may be a risk factor for the later development of adult depressive disor ders (Tomarken & Keener, 1998). Autonomic and Hormonal Processes --You are afraid. Your heart starts to beat faster. Your body draws blood from your stomach to your muscles, and digestion slows to a crawl. You breathe harder and faster to get more energy-sustaining oxygen. Your blood-sugar level increases, producing more nutrients for your muscles. The pupils of your eyes dilate, admitting more light to increase your visual acuity. Your skin perspires to keep you cool and to fl ush out waste products created by extra exertion. Your muscles tense, ready for action. Some theorists call this state of arousal the f i ght-or-fl ight response. It is produced by the sympa thetic branch of the autonomic nervous system and by hormones from the endocrine system. The sym pathetic nervous system produces arousal within a few seconds by directly stimulating the organs and muscles of the body. Meanwhile, the endo crine system pumps epinephrine, cortisol, and other stress hormones into the bloodstream. These hormones produce physiological effects like those triggered by the sympathetic nervous system, but their effects are longer lasting and can keep the body aroused for a considerable length of time. Do different emotions produce different pat terns of arousal? Only subtle autonomic differ ences occur among basic emotions as different as anger and fear (Cacioppo et al., 2000). Moreover, people differ from one another in their patterns of general arousal, so that we don’t all show the same pattern of bodily arousal even when we’re experiencing the same emotion. For example, when afraid, some of us might show marked changes in heart rate or blood pressure but only minor changes in muscle tension and respiration. Others would show different patterns. Thus there are no distinctive and universal physiological signatures for the basic emotions. The Behavioral Component Although we can never directly experience an other person’s feelings, we often can infer that someone is angry, sad, fearful, or happy on the basis of expressive behaviors, the person’s observ able emotional displays. Indeed, others’ emotional displays can even evoke similar responses in us, a process known as empathy. While watching a movie, have you ever experienced the same emo tion as the central character? Professional actors sometimes become so immersed in the expressive behaviors of their characters that the boundaries between self and role begin to fade, as the late Kirk Douglas reported after fi lming the 1956 fi lm Lust for Life. Douglas, having played the role of Vincent Van Gogh, the painter who on one occasion cut off an ear and offered it to a prostitute, said: I was close to getting lost in the character of Van Gogh.... I felt myself going over the line, into the skin of Van Gogh.... Sometimes I had to stopmyself from reaching my hand up and touching my ear to fi nd out if it was actually there. It was a frightening experience. That way lies mad ness.... I could never play him again. (Lehmann Haupt, 1988, p. 10) Evolution and Emotional Expression-- Where do emotional expressions come from? In his classic work The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872/1965), Charles Darwin argued that emo tional displays are products of evolution because they contribute to species survival. Darwin empha sized the basic similarity of emotional expression among animals and humans. For example, both wolves and humans bare their teeth when they are angry ( Figure 11.29 ). As Darwin explained it, this behavior makes the animal look more ferocious and thus decreases its chances of being attacked and perhaps killed in a fi ght. Darwin did not main tain that all forms of emotional expression are innate, but he believed that many of them are. Like Darwin, modern evolutionary theorists stress the adaptive value of emotional expres sion (Izard, 1989; Plutchik, 1994). They believe that a set of fundamental emotional patterns, or innate emotional reactions , are wired into the ner vous system (Panksepp, 2005). Their research shows that certain emotional expressions (e.g., rage and terror) are similar across all cultures, suggesting a universal biological basis for them. The fundamental emotional patterns proposed by three leading evolutionary theorists are shown in Table 11.1. Other emotions are based on some combination of these innate emotions. The evolu tionary view does not assume that all emotional expressions are innate, nor does it deny that in nate emotional expressions can be modifi ed or inhibited as a result of social learning. Facial Expression of Emotion-- Most of us are fairly confi dent in our ability to read the emotions of others. Although many parts of the body can communicate feelings, we tend to concentrate on what the face tells us. Most other species have relatively few facial muscles, so their facial ex pressions are limited. Only monkeys, apes, and humans have the well-developed facial muscles needed to produce a large number of expressions. The development of sophisticated measur ing procedures, such as Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen’s (1987) Facial Action Coding System (FACS), has permitted the precise study of facial expressions. FACS requires a trained observer to dissect an observed expression in terms of all the muscular actions that produced it. It takes about 100 minutes to score each minute of observed facial expression. Although facial expressions can be valuable cues for judging emotion, even people within the same culture may learn to express the same emo tions differently. For example, some people can appear very calm when they are angry or fear ful, whereas others express even mild forms of those same emotions in a highly expressive man ner. Fortunately, we usually know something about the situation to which people are reacting, and this often helps us judge their emotions. Re searchers have found that people’s accuracy and agreement in labeling emotions from pictures are considerably higher when the pictures reveal situ ational cues (Keltner & Ekman, 2000). If a woman is crying, is she weeping because of sadness or be cause of happiness? A background showing her being declared the winner of a lottery will result in a different emotional judgment than one show ing her standing at a graveside. Across many different cultures, women have proven to be more accurate judges of emotional expressions than men (Zuckerman et al., 1976). Perhaps the ability to read emotions accurately has greater adaptive signifi cance for women, whose traditional role within many cultures has been to care for others and attend to their needs (Buss, 1991). This ability may also result from cultural encouragement for women to be sensi tive to others’ emotions and to express their feel ings openly (Taylor et al., 2000). However, it is worth noting that men who work in professions that emphasize these skills (such as psychother apy, drama, and art) are as accurate as women in judging others’ emotional expressions (Rosenthal et al., 1974). What of Darwin’s claim that certain facial expressions universally indicate specifi c emo tions? Do people in different cultures agree on the emotions being expressed in facial photographs? Figure 11.30 shows the results of one study. You can see that there is generally high agreement on these photos of basic emotions, but there are also some cultural variations. Other researchers have found levels of agreement ranging from 40 to 70 percent across a variety of cultures, well above chance but still far from perfect (Russell, 1994). Cultural Display Rules --dictate when and how particular emotions are to be expressed (Yrizarry et al., 2001). Certain gestures, body postures, and physical movements can con vey vastly different meanings in different cul tures. For example, gesturing with an upright thumb while hitchhiking in certain regions of Greece could result in decidedly negative con sequences, such as tire tracks on one’s body. In those regions, an upright thumb is the equiva lent of a raised middle fi nger in the United States (Morris et al., 1979). In most cultures, spitting on someone is a sign of contempt. Yet in the tradi tions of the Masai tribe of East Africa, being spat on is considered a great compliment, particularly if the person doing the spitting is a member of the opposite sex (Wierzbicka, 1986). One can only imagine what a Masai singles bar might be like. More subtle differences exist as well. Nalini Ambady and colleagues have shown that people are generally more accurate at judging emotions when the emotions are expressed by members of their own cultural group rather than by mem bers of a different cultural group (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2003). Just as people exhibit linguistic dialects, they also appear to have culturally based emotional behavior dialects. An experiment by Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen, and Phoebe Ellsworth (1972) nicely illustrates cultural commonalities and differences in emotional expression. Japanese and American students viewed a gory, stressful fi lm in private. Unbeknownst to them, their facial expressions were being videotaped by a hidden camera. FACS codings of the students’ facial displays showed no differences between the Japanese and American students; they expressed negative emo tions of disgust and anxiety in the same way and with similar intensity as they watched the fi lm. Afterward, the students were individually inter viewed by a person of their ethnic group con cerning their reactions to the fi lm. The Japanese masked their earlier feelings of anxiety and dis gust and presented a happy face throughout the interview, whereas the Americans’ negative facial expressions closely mirrored those photographed while they watched the stressful movie. Based on such fi ndings, many emotion theorists conclude that innate biological factors and cultural dis play rules combine to shape emotional expression across different cultures. Instrumental Behaviors --Emotional responses are often calls to action, requiring a response to the situation that aroused the emotion. A highly anx ious student must fi nd some way to cope with an impending test. A mother angered by her child’s behavior must fi nd a nondestructive way to get her point across. A person in love searches for ways to evoke affection from his or her partner. These are instrumental behaviors, directed at achieving some emotion-relevant goal.People often assume that high emotional arousal enhances task performance, as when athletes try to psych themselves up for competi tion. Yet as students who have experienced ex treme anxiety during exams could testify, high emotional arousal can also interfere with perfor mance. In many situations, the relation between emotional arousal and performance seems to take the shape of an upside-down, or inverted, U. As physiological arousal increases up to some opti mal level, performance improves. But beyond that optimal level, further increases in arousal impair performance. It is thus possible to be either too “fl at” or too “high” to perform well. The relation between arousal and perfor mance depends not only on arousal level but also on how complicated the task is and how much precision it requires (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908). Generally speaking, the more complex the task, the lower the optimal arousal level. Thus even a moderate level of arousal can disrupt perfor mance on a highly complex mental or motor task. Figure 11.31 illustrates this principle and also shows that performance drops off less at high levels of arousal for the simplest task than for the others. In fact, even extreme arousal can enhance performance of very simple motor tasks, such as running or lifting something. This may account for seemingly superhuman feats we hear about occasionally. When a 110-pound New Hampshire woman was asked how she had managed to lift a 4,000-pound van that had rolled on top of her trapped husband, she answered, “I don’t know how I did it. It didn’t feel that heavy. I think it was the adrenaline” ( Newsweek, 2002, March 11, p. 19). In contrast, high emotionality can interfere with performance on complex mental and physi cal tasks. People may underachieve on intel ligence tests if they are too anxious, and muscle tension can interfere with the skillful execution of complex physical movements (Landers & Arent, 2001). For example, the sport of golf requires pre cise and complex movements, so the optimal level of arousal is relatively low. Champion golfers often exhibit peak performance in high-pressure competition because they can control their level of arousal and keep it within the optimal range, whereas their opponents choke under the pres sure of a putt worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. 11.2 Functions of Emotions Emotions play a crucial role in our lives because they have important functions. This module describes those functions, dividing the discussion into three areas: the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, and the social and cultural functions of emotions. The section on the intrapersonal functions of emotion describes the roles that emotions play within each of us individually; the section on the interpersonal functions of emotion describes the meanings of emotions to our relationships with others; and the section on the social and cultural functions of emotion describes the roles and meanings that emotions have to the maintenance and effective functioning of our societies and cultures at large. All in all we will see that emotions are a crucially important aspect of our psychological composition, having meaning and function to each of us individually, to our relationships with others in groups, and to our societies as a whole. Introduction It is impossible to imagine life without emotion. We treasure our feelings—the joy at a ball game, the pleasure of the touch of a loved one, or the fun with friends on a night out. Even negative emotions are important, such as the sadness when a loved one dies, the anger when violated, the fear that overcomes us in a scary or unknown situation, or the guilt or shame toward others when our sins are made public. Emotions color life experiences and give those experiences meaning and flavor. In fact, emotions play many important roles in people’s lives and have been the topic of scientific inquiry in psychology for well over a century (Cannon, 1927; Darwin, 1872; James, 1890). This module explores why we have emotions and why they are important. Doing so requires us to understand the function of emotions, and this module does so below by dividing the discussion into three sections. The first concerns the intrapersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role that emotions play within each of us individually. The second concerns the interpersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role emotions play between individuals within a group. The third concerns the social and cultural functions of emotion, which refer to the role that emotions play in the maintenance of social order within a society. All in all, we will see that emotions inform us of who we are, what our relationships with others are like, and how to behave in social interactions. Emotions give meaning to events; without emotions, those events would be mere facts. Emotions help coordinate interpersonal relationships. And emotions play an important role in the cultural functioning of keeping human societies together. Intrapersonal Functions of Emotion Emotions Help us Act Quickly with Minimal Conscious Awareness Emotions are rapid information-processing systems that help us act with minimal thinking (Tooby & Cosmides, 2008). Problems associated with birth, battle, death, and seduction have occurred throughout evolutionary history and emotions evolved to aid humans in adapting to those problems rapidly and with minimal conscious cognitive intervention. If we did not have emotions, we could not make rapid decisions concerning whether to attack, defend, flee, care for others, reject food, or approach something useful, all of which were functionally adaptive in our evolutionary history and helped us to survive. For instance, drinking spoiled milk or eating rotten eggs has negative consequences for our welfare. The emotion of disgust, however, helps us immediately take action by not ingesting them in the first place or by vomiting them out. This response is adaptive because it aids, ultimately, in our survival and allows us to act immediately without much thinking. In some instances, taking the time to sit and rationally think about what to do, calculating cost–benefit ratios in one’s mind, is a luxury that might cost one one’s life. Emotions evolved so that we can act without that depth of thinking. Emotions Prepare the Body for Immediate Action Emotions prepare us for behavior. When triggered, emotions orchestrate systems such as perception, attention, inference, learning, memory, goal choice, motivational priorities, physiological reactions, motor behaviors, and behavioral decision making (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Tooby & Cosmides, 2008). Emotions simultaneously activate certain systems and deactivate others in order to prevent the chaos of competing systems operating at the same time, allowing for coordinated responses to environmental stimuli (Levenson, 1999). For instance, when we are afraid, our bodies shut down temporarily unneeded digestive processes, resulting in saliva reduction (a dry mouth); blood flows disproportionately to the lower half of the body; the visual field expands; and air is breathed in, all preparing the body to flee. Emotions initiate a system of components that includes subjective experience, expressive behaviors, physiological reactions, action tendencies, and cognition, all for the purposes of specific actions; the term “emotion” is, in reality, a metaphor for these reactions. One common misunderstanding many people have when thinking about emotions, however, is the belief that emotions must always directly produce action. This is not true. Emotion certainly prepares the body for action; but whether people actually engage in action is dependent on many factors, such as the context within which the emotion has occurred, the target of the emotion, the perceived consequences of one’s actions, previous experiences, and so forth (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007; Matsumoto & Wilson, 2008). Thus, emotions are just one of many determinants of behavior, albeit an important one. Emotions Influence Thoughts Emotions are also connected to thoughts and memories. Memories are not just facts that are encoded in our brains; they are colored with the emotions felt at those times the facts occurred (Wang & Ross, 2007). Thus, emotions serve as the neural glue that connects those disparate facts in our minds. That is why it is easier to remember happy thoughts when happy, and angry times when angry. Emotions serve as the affective basis of many attitudes, values, and beliefs that we have about the world and the people around us; without emotions those attitudes, values, and beliefs would be just statements without meaning, and emotions give those statements meaning. Emotions influence our thinking processes, sometimes in constructive ways, sometimes not. It is difficult to think critically and clearly when we feel intense emotions, but easier when we are not overwhelmed with emotions (Matsumoto, Hirayama, & LeRoux, 2006). Emotions Motivate Future Behaviors Because emotions prepare our bodies for immediate action, influence thoughts, and can be felt, they are important motivators of future behavior. Many of us strive to experience the feelings of satisfaction, joy, pride, or triumph in our accomplishments and achievements. At the same time, we also work very hard to avoid strong negative feelings; for example, once we have felt the emotion of disgust when drinking the spoiled milk, we generally work very hard to avoid having those feelings again (e.g., checking the expiration date on the label before buying the milk, smelling the milk before drinking it, watching if the milk curdles in one’s coffee before drinking it). Emotions, therefore, not only influence immediate actions but also serve as an important motivational basis for future behaviors. Interpersonal Functions of Emotion Emotions are expressed both verbally through words and nonverbally through facial expressions, voices, gestures, body postures, and movements. We are constantly expressing emotions when interacting with others, and others can reliably judge those emotional expressions (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Matsumoto, 2001); thus, emotions have signal value to others and influence others and our social interactions. Emotions and their expressions communicate information to others about our feelings, intentions, relationship with the target of the emotions, and the environment. Because emotions have this communicative signal value, they help solve social problems by evoking responses from others, by signaling the nature of interpersonal relationships, and by providing incentives for desired social behavior (Keltner, 2003). Emotional Expressions Facilitate Specific Behaviors in Perceivers Because facial expressions of emotion are universal social signals, they contain meaning not only about the expressor’s psychological state but also about that person’s intent and subsequent behavior. This information affects what the perceiver is likely to do. People observing fearful faces, for instance, are more likely to produce approach-related behaviors, whereas people who observe angry faces are more likely to produce avoidance-related behaviors (Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005). Even subliminal presentation of smiles produces increases in how much beverage people pour and consume and how much they are willing to pay for it; presentation of angry faces decreases these behaviors (Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005). Also, emotional displays evoke specific, complementary emotional responses from observers; for example, anger evokes fear in others (Dimberg & Ohman, 1996; Esteves, Dimberg, & Ohman, 1994), whereas distress evokes sympathy and aid (Eisenberg et al., 1989). Emotional Expressions Signal the Nature of Interpersonal Relationships Emotional expressions provide information about the nature of the relationships among interactants. Some of the most important and provocative set of findings in this area come from studies involving married couples (Gottman & Levenson, 1992; Gottman, Levenson, & Woodin, 2001). In this research, married couples visited a laboratory after having not seen each other for 24 hours, and then engaged in intimate conversations about daily events or issues of conflict. Discrete expressions of contempt, especially by the men, and disgust, especially by the women, predicted later marital dissatisfaction and even divorce. Emotional Expressions Provide Incentives for Desired Social Behavior Facial expressions of emotion are important regulators of social interaction. In the developmental literature, this concept has been investigated under the concept of social referencing (Klinnert, Campos, & Sorce, 1983); that is, the process whereby infants seek out information from others to clarify a situation and then use that information to act. To date, the strongest demonstration of social referencing comes from work on the visual cliff. In the first study to investigate this concept, Campos and colleagues (Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985) placed mothers on the far end of the “cliff” from the infant. Mothers first smiled to the infants and placed a toy on top the safety glass to attract them; infants invariably began crawling to their mothers. When the infants were in the center of the table, however, the mother then posed an expression of fear, sadness, anger, interest, or joy. The results were clearly different for the different faces; no infant crossed the table when the mother showed fear; only 6% did when the mother posed anger, 33% crossed when the mother posed sadness, and approximately 75% of the infants crossed when the mother posed joy or interest. Other studies provide similar support for facial expressions as regulators of social interaction. In one study (Bradshaw, 1986), experimenters posed facial expressions of neutral, anger, or disgust toward babies as they moved toward an object and measured the amount of inhibition the babies showed in touching the object. The results for 10- and 15-month olds were the same: anger produced the greatest inhibition, followed by disgust, with neutral the least. This study was later replicated (Hertenstein & Campos, 2004) using joy and disgust expressions, altering the method so that the infants were not allowed to touch the toy (compared with a distractor object) until one hour after exposure to the expression. At 14 months of age, significantly more infants touched the toy when they saw joyful expressions, but fewer touched the toy when the infants saw disgust. Social and Cultural Functions of Emotion If you stop to think about many things we take for granted in our daily lives, we cannot help but come to the conclusion that modern human life is a colorful tapestry of many groups and individual lives woven together in a complex yet functional way. For example, when you’re hungry, you might go to the local grocery store and buy some food. Ever stop to think about how you’re able to do that? You might buy a banana that was grown in a field in southeast Asia being raised by farmers there, where they planted the tree, cared for it, and picked the fruit. They probably handed that fruit off to a distribution chain that allowed multiple people somewhere to use tools such as cranes, trucks, cargo bins, ships or airplanes (that were also created by multiple people somewhere) to bring that banana to your store. The store had people to care for that banana until you came and got it and to barter with you for it (with your money). You may have gotten to the store riding a vehicle that was produced somewhere else in the world by others, and you were probably wearing clothes produced by some other people somewhere else. Thus, human social life is complex. Individuals are members of multiple groups, with multiple social roles, norms, and expectations, and people move rapidly in and out of the multiple groups of which they are members. Moreover, much of human social life is unique because it revolves around cities, where many people of disparate backgrounds come together. This creates the enormous potential for social chaos, which can easily occur if individuals are not coordinated well and relationships not organized systematically. One of the important functions of culture is to provide this necessary coordination and organization. Doing so allows individuals and groups to negotiate the social complexity of human social life, thereby maintaining social order and preventing social chaos. Culture does this by providing a meaning and information system to its members, which is shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life (Matsumoto & Juang, 2013). Culture is what allowed the banana from southeast Asia to appear on your table. The Role of Emotions in the Function of Culture Cultural transmission of the meaning and information system to its members is, therefore, a crucial aspect of culture. One of the ways this transmission occurs is through the development of worldviews (including attitudes, values, beliefs, and norms) related to emotions (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013; Matsumoto et al., 2008). Worldviews related to emotions provide guidelines for desirable emotions that facilitate norms for regulating individual behaviors and interpersonal relationships. Our cultural backgrounds tell us which emotions are ideal to have, and which are not (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). The cultural transmission of information related to emotions occurs in many ways, from childrearers to children, as well as from the cultural products available in our world, such as books, movies, ads, and the like (Schönpflug, 2009; Tsai, Louie, Chen, & Uchida, 2007). Cultures also inform us about what to do with our emotions—that is, how to manage or modify them—when we experience them. One of the ways in which this is done is through the management of our emotional expressions through cultural display rules (Friesen, 1972). These are rules that are learned early in life that specify the management and modification of our emotional expressions according to social circumstances. Thus, we learn that “big boys don’t cry” or to laugh at the boss’s jokes even though they’re not funny. By affecting how individuals express their emotions, culture also influences how people experience them as well. Because one of the major functions of culture is to maintain social order in order to ensure group efficiency and thus survival, cultures create worldviews, rules, guidelines, and norms concerning emotions because emotions have important intra- and interpersonal functions, as described above, and are important motivators of behavior. Norms concerning emotion and its regulation in all cultures serve the purpose of maintaining social order. Cultural worldviews and norms help us manage and modify our emotional reactions (and thus behaviors) by helping us to have certain kinds of emotional experiences in the first place and by managing our reactions and subsequent behaviors once we have them. By doing so, our culturally moderated emotions can help us engage in socially appropriate behaviors, as defined by our cultures, and thus reduce social complexity and increase social order, avoiding social chaos. All of this allows us to live relatively harmonious and constructive lives in groups. If cultural worldviews and norms about emotions did not exist, people would just run amok having all kinds of emotional experiences, expressing their emotions and then behaving in all sorts of unpredictable and potentially harmful ways. If that were the case, it would be very difficult for groups and societies to function effectively, and even for humans to survive as a species, if emotions were not regulated in culturally defined ways for the common, social good. Thus, emotions play a critical role in the successful functioning of any society and culture. theorIeS of eMotIon In the early days of psychology, it was assumed that feeling a particular emotion led first to a physical reaction and then to a behavioral one. According to this viewpoint—we’ll call it the common sense theory of emotion—seeing a snarling dog in one’s path causes the feeling of fear, which stimulates the body to arousal, followed by the behavioral act of running; that is, people are aroused because they are afraid. (See Figure 9.7 on the next page.) jAMeS-lAnge theory of eMotIon William James (1884, 1890, 1894), who was also the founder of the functionalist per spective in the early history of psychology disagreed with the common sense viewpoint. He believed that the order of the components of emotions was quite different. At nearly the same time, a physiologist and psychologist in Denmark, Carl Lange (1885), came up with an explanation of emotion so similar to that of James that the two names are used together to refer to the theory—the James-Lange theory of emotion.. In this theory, a stimulus of some sort (for example, the large snarling dog) produces a physiological reaction. This reaction, which is the arousal of the “fight-or-flight” sympa thetic nervous system (wanting to run), produces bodily sensations such as increased heart rate, dry mouth, and rapid breathing. James and Lange believed that the physical arousal led to the labeling of the emotion (fear). Simply put, “I am afraid because I am aroused,” “I am embarrassed because my face is red,” “I am nervous because my stomach is flutter ing,” and “I am in love because my heart rate increases when I look at her (or him).” What about people who have spinal cord injuries that prevent the sympathetic ner vous system from functioning? Although James-Lange would predict that these people should show decreased emotion because the arousal that causes emotion is no longer there, this does not in fact happen. Several studies of people with spinal cord injuries report that these people are capable of experiencing the same emotions after their injury as before, sometimes even more intensely (Bermond et al., 1991; Chwalisz et al., 1988). CAnnon-BArd theory of eMotIon Physiologists Walter Cannon (1927) and Philip Bard (1934) theorized that the emotion and the physiological arousal occur more or less at the same time. Cannon, an expert in sympathetic arousal mechanisms, did not feel that the physical changes caused by various emotions were distinct enough to allow them to be perceived as different emotions. Bard expanded on this idea by stating that the sensory information that comes into the brain is sent simultaneously (by the thalamus) to both the cortex and the organs of the sympathetic nervous system. The fear and the bodily reactions are, therefore, experienced at the same time—not one after the other. “I’m afraid and running and aroused!” (See Figure 9.9.) This theory, known as the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, also had its critics. Lashley (1938) stated that the thalamus would have to be pretty sophisticated to make sense of all the possible human emotions and relay them to the proper areas of the cortex and body. It would seem that other areas of the brain must be involved in processing emotional reactions. The studies of people with spinal cord injuries, which appear to suggest that emo tions can be experienced without feedback from the sympathetic organs to the cortex and were cited as a criticism of the James-Lange theory, seem at first to support the Cannon Bard version of emotions: People do not need feedback from those organs to experience emotion. However, there is an alternate pathway that does provide feedback from these organs to the cortex; this is the vagus nerve, one of the cranial nerves (LeDoux, 1994). The existence of this feedback pathway makes the case for Cannon-Bard a little less convincing. SChAChter-SInger And CognItIve AroUSAl theory of eMotIon 9.9 The early theories talked about the emotion and the physical reaction, but what about the mental interpretation of those components? In their cognitive arousal theory (two factor theory), Schachter and Singer (1962) proposed that two things have to happen before emotion occurs: the physical arousal and a labeling of the arousal based on cues from the surrounding environment. These two things happen at the same time, resulting in the labeling of the emotion. For example, if a person comes across a snarling dog while taking a walk, the physical arousal (heart racing, eyes opening wide) is accompanied by the thought (cognition) that this must be fear. Then and only then will the person experience the fear emotion. In other words, “I am aroused in the presence of a scary dog; therefore, I must be afraid.” Evidence for this theory was found in what is now a classic experiment, described in the accompanying Classic Studies in Psychology. the fACIAl feedBACk hypotheSIS: SMIle, yoU’ll feel Better In his 1898 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin stated that facial expressions evolved as a way of communicating intentions, such as threat or fear, and that these expres sions are universal within a species rather than specific to a culture. He also believed (as in the James-Lange theory) that when such emotions are expressed freely on the face, the emotion itself intensifies—meaning that the more one smiles, the happier one feels. angry/happy man case study In 1962, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer designed an experiment to test their theory that emotions are determined by an interaction between the physiological state of arousal and the label, or cognitive interpretation, that a person places on the arousal. Male student volunteers were told that they were going to answer a questionnaire about their reactions to a new vitamin called Suproxin. In reality, they were all injected with a drug called epinephrine, which causes physical arousal in the form of increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and a red dened face—all responses that happen during a strong emotional reaction. Each student then participated in one of two conditions. In one condition, a confeder ate* posing as one of the participants started complaining about the experimenter, tearing up his questionnaire and storming out. In the other condition, there was one man who acted more like he was very happy, almost giddy and playing with some of the objects in the room. The “angry” man and the “happy” man in both conditions deliberately behaved in the two different ways as part of the experiment. After both conditions had played out, participants in each of the two conditions were asked to describe their own emotions. The participants who had been exposed to the “angry” man interpreted their arousal symptoms as anger, whereas those exposed to the “happy” man interpreted their arousal as happiness. In all cases, the actual cause of arousal was the epinephrine and the physical symptoms of arousal were identical. The only differ ence between the two groups of participants was their exposure to the two different con texts. Schachter and Singer’s theory would have predicted exactly these results: Physiological arousal has to be interpreted cognitively before it is experienced as a specific emotion. Although this classic experiment stimulated a lot of research, much of that research has failed to find much support for the cognitive arousal theory of emotion (Reisenzein, 1983, 1994). But this theory did serve to draw attention to the important role that cognition plays in determining emotions. The role of cognition in emotion has been revisited in some more modern theories of emotion, as you will see in the remainder of the chapter. Modern psychologists have proposed a theory of emotion that is consistent with much of Darwin’s original thinking. Called the facial feedback hypothesis, this explana tion assumes that facial expressions provide feedback to the brain concerning the emo tion being expressed, which in turn not only intensifies the emotion but also actually causes the emotion (Buck, 1980; Ekman, 1980; Ekman & Friesen, 1978; Keillor et al., 2002). As the old song goes, “put on a happy face” and yes, you’ll feel happier, accord ing to the facial feedback hypothesis. One fairly recent study does cast some doubt on the validity of this hypothesis, however. If the facial feedback hypothesis is correct, then people who have facial paralysis on both sides of the face should be unable to experience emotions in a normal way. But a case study conducted on just such a person revealed that although she was unable to express emotions on her paralyzed face, she could respond emotionally to slides meant to stimulate emotional reactions, just as anyone else would (Keillor et al., 2002). Clearly, the question of how much the actual facial expression de termines the emotional experience has yet to be fully answered. lAzArUS And the CognItIve-MedIAtIonAl theory As mentioned in the Classic Studies in Psychology section, Schachter and Singer’s (1962) study stressed the impor tance of cognition, or thinking, in the determination of emotions. One of the more mod ern versions of cognitive emotion theories is Lazarus’s cognitive-mediational theory of emotion (1991). In this theory, the most important aspect of any emotional experience is how the person interprets, or appraises, the stimulus that causes the emotional reaction. To mediate means to “come between” and in this theory the cognitive appraisal mediates by coming between the stimulus and the emotional response to that stimulus. For example, remember the person who encountered a snarling dog while walking through the neighborhood? According to Lazarus, the appraisal of the situation would come before both the physical arousal and the experience of emotion. If the dog is behind a sturdy fence, the appraisal would be something like “no threat.” The most likely emo tion would be annoyance, and the physical arousal would be minimal. But if the dog is not confined, the appraisal would more likely be “danger—threatening animal!” which would be followed by an increase in arousal and the emotional experience of fear. In other words, it’s the interpretation of the arousal that results in the emotion of fear, not the labeling as in the Schachter-Singer model, and the interpretation comes first. Not everyone agrees with this theory, of course. Some researchers believe that emo tional reactions to situations are so fast that they are almost instantaneous, which would leave little time for a cognitive appraisal to occur first (Zajonc, 1998). Others (Kihlstrom et al., 2000) have found that the human brain can respond to a physical threat before conscious thought enters the picture. And as addressed earlier, the amygdala can prompt emotional reactions before we are consciously aware of what we are responding to (LeDoux, 1996, 2007; LeDoux & Phelps, 2008). Which theory is right?-Human emotions are so incredibly complex that it might not be out of place to say that all of the theories are correct to at least some degree. In certain situations, the cogni tive appraisal might have time to mediate the emotion that is experienced (such as falling in love), whereas in other situations, the need to act first and to think and feel later is more important. (See Figure 9.13.) Culture and emotion Emotional expression is guided by the cultural beliefs, values, and rules regarding appropriate expression. Research, too, has evidenced that expressed emotions vary across cultures and situations. Cultural norms vary regarding expression of emotions, for example in China women are encouraged to express grief and conceal happiness, in the United States the reverse is true. The Latin American culture expects hugging and kissing friends while greeting or leaving or crying at weddings is considered normal in some cultures and not in others. Studies have revealed that most basic emotions are inborn and do not have to be learned and that emotions, especially facial expressions, have strong biological ties. For example, children who are visually impaired from birth and have never observed the smile or seen another person’s face, still smile or frown in the same way that children with normal vision do. But on comparing different cultures we see that learning plays an important role in emotions. This happens in two ways. First, cultural learning influences the expression of emotions more than what is experienced, for example, some cultures encourage free emotional expression, whereas other cul tures teach people, through modeling and reinforcement, to reveal little of their emotions in public. Second, learning has a great deal to do with the stimuli that produce emotional reactions. It has been shown that indi viduals with excessive fears (phobia) of elevators, automobiles, and the like learnt these fears through modeling, classical conditioning, or avoidance conditioning. The display rules are learnt as a part of socialization process. For example, in Asian cultures emphasis is on collective effort, social connections and interdependence, and display of emotions such as sympathy, respect, and shame are more common than the display of feelings or negative emotions that might disrupt peace among group members. In contrast, Western cultures encourage individuality and people display emotions openly which are usually intense and prolonged. A felt emotion may be communicated through other non-verbal channels as well, for example, gaze behavior, gestures, paralanguage, and proximal behaviors. The emotional meaning conveyed via gestures (body language) varies from culture to culture. For example, in China, a handclap is an expression of worry or dis appointment, and anger is expressed with laughter. Silence has also been found to convey different meanings across different cultures. For example, in India, deep emotions are sometimes communicated via silence. This may convey embarrassment during communication in Western countries. Cultural differences have also been noted in the gaze behavior. It has been observed that the Latin Americans and the Southern Europeans direct their gaze to the eyes of the interactant. Asians, in particular, Indians and Pakistanis, prefer a peripheral gaze (looking away from the conversational partner) during an interaction. The physical space (proximity) also di vulges different kinds of emotional meaning during emotional exchanges. The Americans, for example, do not prefer an interaction too close; the Oriental Indians consider a close space comfortable for an interaction. In fact, the touching behavior in physical proximity is considered reflective of emotional warmth. For example, it was observed that the Arabs experience alienation during an interaction with the North Americans who prefer to be interacted from a distance. Basic emotions also vary in the extent of elaboration and categorical labels. For example Tahitian language includes 46 labels for the English word anger. The Indian tradition identifies eight such emotions, namely, love, mirth, energy, wonder, anger, grief, dis gust, and fear. In Western literature, certain emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust are uni formly treated as basic to human beings. Emotions like surprise, contempt, shame, and guilt are not accepted as basic to all. Indeed the Indian tradition offers a very rich conceptualization of emotions and its role in life has been conceived and elaborated to encompass physical, social and spiritual planes of existence (Jain, 2002; Misra, 2004; Paranjpe, 2009). Again, it is important to remember that culture plays a significant role in all processes of emotion. In order to illustrate this point let us consider the emotion of Lajja – an Indian emotion. Lajja (shame) in the Indian context has a positive connotation. It means possessing the virtue of behaving in a civilized manner. To experience lajja is to experience a sense of graceful submission and virtuous, courte ous well mannered self; infact, it is equated with “respectful restrain.” In Orissa, India, “Bite your tongue” is an idiomatic expression for Lajja, and also the facial expression used by women as an iconic apology in face of failure to uphold social norms. According to Shweder et al. (2008), Lajja is viewed as the salient ideal of South Asia because it is seen as helping preserve social harmony by helping women swallow their rage. 345 MotivatiLajja illustrates the dependence of emotional experience on social and moral context. The ethics of “autonomy,” “com munity,” and “divinity” and their importance across cultures affect their experience and expression of emotions along with the cultural conceptualization of emotion. Also, emotions felt by those whose morality is based on ethic of autonomy, i.e., focuses on individuals’ striving to maximize their personal selves may not be the same as those whose morality is based on ethic of community where family is of main concern. Menon and Shweder (1994) state that “Lajja will not felt in a culture that sees hierarchy and exclusive prerogative of others as un just than powerful object of others admiration and respect.” Schimmack, Oishi, and Diener (2002) noted that Asian cultures have dialectical view of emotion, i.e., opposite va lence like happy and sad were found to be compatible with each other while in the western view, these are perceived as conflicting with each other. The Buddhist practice of self— observation of emotional states can lead to self-understand ing which can in turn help to develop insight into emotional problems and facilitate wellness. Rasa and bhavya theory of emotion The theory of Rasa and Bhav was propounded by sage Bharat in his treatise entitled Natya Shastra. The Sanskrit term, rasa, which means at once sap or essence of a thing and its taste. Rasa means to taste, to savor, or to sample but when the term is used to refer to the grand meta-emotion of esthetic experience, it is usually translated as es thetic pleasure, enjoyment, or rapture. It is a pleasure which lasts only as long as the dramatic illusion that makes “rasa” a reality. Because it is possible for the members of the audience who witness a drama (the “rasik”) to experi ence enjoyment or pleasure (“rasa”) even from the apprehension of negative emotional states (disgust, fear, anger, sorrow), which in other circumstances one might want to avoid or repress, it is reasoned by Sage Abhinavagupta and others that “rasa” must be an autonomous meta-emotion, a sui generis form of consciousness (Table 10.3).In addition to the eight basic emotions, some scholars have posited Shant (Peace), Bhakti (devotion) and Vatsalya (love for children) as emotions. Sage Bharata has described 33 minor or relatively transient (vyabhicari) emotions: repose or withdrawal (nirveda), debility or weakness (glani), doubt or apprehensiveness (sanka), jealousy (asuya), intoxication or pride (mada), weariness (srama), indolence (alasya), depression (dainya), anxiety (cinta), infatuation (moha), recollecting or turning things over in the mind (smriti), contentment (dhriti), shame (vrida), impulsiveness (capalata), joy (harsa), agitation (avega), stupor (jadata), pride or arrogance (garva), despair (visada), eagerness (autsukya), drowsiness (nidra), convulsions (apasmara), sleepiness (supta), awakening (vibodha), indignation (amarsa), dissimulation or hiding under false appearance (avahittha), ferocity (ugrata), thoughtfulness (mati), sickness (vyadhi), insanity (unmada), the “dying” experience (marana), fright (trasa), and hesitation (vitarka). Emotions are the experiences of particular individuals resulting from particular causes. Shorn of all connec tions with particular persons, the emotion expressed in art is detached from the context of time and place, and thus is truly generalized. Abhinavagupta is very specific and clear about the importance of the ability of works of art to separate emotions from their common loci, namely the egos of particular persons at a particular time and place, leading to particular consequences, experiential or behavioral. When tied to a specific context, the lure or threat of external factors leads to either pleasure or pain, satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the ego. Pried away from that context, the feelings involved in the esthetic experience are neither directly pleasurable nor threatening, and yet they strike a chord deep in the psyche of the esthete. They are enjoyable without being either pleasurable or painful, such that even fear and disgust are “relished”. The experience of bhava or basic emotions takes place by a combination of emotions (sthayibhava), transi tory emotions (vyabhicaribhava), eliciting conditions (vibhava), consequences (anubhava), and organic mani festations of emotions (sattvikabhava). We attain to something of the capacity for variable but universal delight in the esthetic reception of things as represented by Art and Poetry, so that we enjoy the rasa or the taste of the sorrowful, the terrible, even the horrible or repellant; and the reason is because we are detached, disinterested, not thinking of ourselves or of self-defence (jugupsa), but only of the thing and its essence. The recognition of the power of the art experi ence to rise above egoistic concerns is an important aspect of some of the most dominant values of the Indian culture. Rasa invokes the experience of bliss that is said to result from arduous pursuit of self-realization. The Sanskrit expression used to describe the relationship between joy of the art experience and the supreme bliss of Brahman is “brahmananda Sahodara,” which literally means “born from the same womb.” It becomes pos sible through the process of communion which makes the person a competent receptacle of art (Sahridaya). Through continuous appreciation of art the person identifies with the object of art because his mind has been purified and made like a mirror. He is capable of having heart-to-heart communion with the art. art puts the artist in communion with his own self. Rasa is experiences as a revelation of the self. Through communion art transforms all the participants.