 Allemotions involve a state of mental and

physical arousal focused on some event of

importance to the individual
 They have evolved to help us respond to
important situations and to convey our
intentions to others
 Emotional Styles - Individuals vary
tremendously in their emotional
responsiveness (women differ from men)
 They are both influenced by genetics and
involve learning
Aprocess involving the whole
organism
 Physiological arousal
 Cognitive interpretation

 Subjective feelings

 Sense of the present state

 Memory of past similar states
 Behavioral expression
Experience of emotion is
awareness of physiological
responses to emotion-arousing
stimuli – 3-part sequence
1. Sight of an oncoming car Smiling Joy
(perception of stimulus) Joy Smiling
2. Pounding heart (arousal)
3. Fear (emotion)
 Pounding
heart
(arousal)
Sight of
oncoming  Emotion-arousing
car
(perception of
stimuli simultaneously
stimulus) trigger:
 Physiological responses
Fear  Subjective experience of
(emotion) emotion
 To
experience emotion you have to be
aroused and cognitively label the arousal
Pounding
heart
Sight of (arousal) Fear
oncoming (emotion)
car
(perception of
stimulus)

Cognitive
label

“I’m afraid”
 Physiological
Appraisal activation

Emotional Expressive
response behavior

Event Subjective
experience
 The brain’s shortcut for emotions
 All
of the theories mentioned have scientific
support
 All of the theories mentioned have problems
 The current list of theories exceeds 100
 Given the fact that psychology is a relatively
young science and motivation/emotion is a
highly complex problem it is no wonder
 No single proposed theory explains
all of the nuances of the subjective
experience of emotion
 Emotions can be stimulated by
external as well as internal
(subjective) stimuli
Memories can trigger feelings
 There is more than one process
involved
 Arousal & Cognition
 The limbic system, in particular the amygdala
 The reticular formation (brain stem)
 The cerebral cortex

 Different emotions are processed in different

locations
 Emotions are “lateralized” (left = good, right = bad)
 The autonomic nervous system
 The endocrine system
 GLUCOCORTICOIDS
 Performance
peaks at lower
levels of arousal
for difficult
tasks, and at
higher levels for
easy or well-
learned tasks
 Most human beings are capable of
reading another’s emotions by
paying attention to their body
movements and positions, listening
to their voices, and studying their
faces
 Trying to hide emotions is difficult
and physically taxing
 How people really feel =
 Look @ facial expressions
 Apparently, women are awesome
when it comes to emotions
 Research indicates that women…
 are
generally more sensitive to
nonverbal cues than men
 demonstrate more emotional literacy
than men
 tend
to describe themselves as more
empathetic than men
 empathy = the ability to identify with
others
 While the meaning of gestures may
vary with culture, facial expressions
typically do not
 Children's facial expressions are also
universal
 This tends to support evolutionary
psychology theory – shared heritage
explains shared expressions
Happiness  Based on research
Anger done by Paul
Ekman
Sadness  This list is not

Fear universally
accepted
Surprise  Different cultures
have different
Disgust
“display rules”
Joy
Disgust
Interest-
Contempt
Excitement
Fear
Surprise
Shame
Sadness
Guilt
Anger
 For decades, psychologists have been
studying the connection between negative
emotions (depression, anxiety, stress, etc.)
and health
 In 2005, two prominent health psychologists
counted the number of studies of happiness
and health that had been done up until that
time
 They found that the number of studies that
dealt with negative emotions out numbered
those involving positive emotions by roughly
20 to 1
 Feel-good, do-good
 More helpful when in good mood
 Subjective Well-Being
 Self-perceived happiness or
satisfaction with life
 Used along with measures of
objective well-being
 Physical and economic indicators to
evaluate people’s quality of life
 How do you measure
“happiness”?
 Availability heuristic
problem
 Genes / Environment?
 Happiness as a trait,
not a state?
 Relative Deprivation
 Perception we are worse off relative to those we
compare ourselves with
 Adaptation-Level
 We form judgements defined by our prior experiences
 Happy People Tend To:  FactorsNot Related to
 Have high self- Happiness:
esteem  Age
 Be optimistic,  Gender
outgoing, &  Children
agreeable  No children
 Have close
 Physical
friendships attractiveness
 Meaningful
religious faith
 Sleep well &
exercise