Happiness

I was walking through campus today when I saw a guy fall off of his bike. It was not a very big crash and it was at pretty low speeds. However I saw a bunch of people that were close to him go up and help him get up and make sure he was okay! This made me really happy! I was so glad people actually cared about others! Sometimes I can get into rather pessimistic moods and think everyone is just a big jerk.

The emotion was really pleasant! It was probably like the 2nd best part of my day. It brought a real smile to my face. I would say this was happiness. Not very intense but it did put me in a pretty good mood for a couple hours. The source was the generosity of others.

Embarrassment

My dad came up to Ames yesterday to have dinner with my girlfriend and me. Since he had not seen my apartment with all my things moved in and set up I offered to show him. I guess I was not aware that it was so messy. My room mates were messing around the night before and had thrown a lot of things around including some food. The place was an absolute disaster! I was really embarrassed! I knew my dad wouldn't mind but I still felt pretty bad. So I thought "Oh I will show him my room! Its much cleaner" When we got in I remembered that I was looking for something that I thought I lost that morning so I took a bunch of things out of my closet and just put them on my bed so my room was also very messy!

It was an unpleasant experience. Not the worst thing ever of course. Like a 6/10 where 10 is complete disaster. I wouldn't say my dad is a neat freak or anything but he does like to see things in order. I don't like disappointing him so that is why I felt this way.

The emotion was embarrassment. It was not an acute emotion nor did it last a very long time. It was sort of like a mix between a mild nervousness and very low anger. In regards to physiological response, I did not feel much.

I think My dad was the cause of the emotion, or his response to my terribly messy apartment.

Discussion Questions 5

Isen et al. (1987)  (positive effects)

Do you ever try to "psyche" yourself up (give yourself positive emotions) for a test or event? How successful is that? Any recommendations?

Mathews & MacLeod (2002) (negative effects)

To me negative emotions tend to act in a cyclical fashion to perpetuate themselves. So if I am feeling bad or stressed out it seems like all my thoughts continue to make me feel like that or worse. Do you feel the same? What could the significance of this be in light of today's readings as well as previous articles?

Mayer & Salovey (1997) – Pp. 10-22 (emotional intelligence)

Teaching of emotional intelligence to children seems to be left mostly up to parents. Do you think a class on emotional intelligence should be incorporated into primary education? Do you think there would be disagreements on what to teach? Why has this not been done?

Assignment 5

1. How do positive and negative emotions affect cognition (e.g., attention, focus, creativity, judgment, memory)?
According to research by Matthews and MacLeod, people who are more disposed to be anxious tend to focus more on negative stimuli and interpret ambiguous stimuli as negative. This has an impact on attention, focus and judgement. Also, according to research by Isen, it has been shown that creativity can be boosted by positive emotions.


2. How does EI help us engage others (e.g., be sensitive to our OWN emotions AND the emotions of OTHERS)?
By understanding how emotions better we are capable of recognizing emotions faster. Also, we would know how to respond to particular emotions better.

Consider mathematics as an analogy. You could (although difficult) solve each math problem by building up mathematics from its roots each time. This is inefficient and burdensome. Once we know how to solve certain problems we can apply either algorithms or heuristics to help us solve future problems.

Engaging with people works similarly. By being away of emotions (knowing what kind of math problems exist) and knowing how to respond to these emotions (using algorithms or heuristics in math) will help us better communicate and respond to others.

3. Integration:
a. Connect the readings to content: How does this information relate to or connect with other information? What additional previous content can be connect? How?


This reading is very connected to ideas about emotional development as well as origins of emotion.

Evolution - The positive, negative effects of emotion on our cognition could have developed to help our ancestors survive. Negative emotions such as fear or anger could have primed our ancestors to be more wary and careful in dangerous situations. Emotional intelligence could have developed to promote group affinity and synchronization. People fare better in groups after all.  

Development - It is interesting to watch children gain more emotional intelligence. In a previous article we saw how some kids who talked about their emotions more to their parents or siblings (ie developed a better emotional intelligence) were better able to tease (ie take advantage of) others because they could understand their emotions better.

b. Connect the readings to the world: How does what you read connect to the world outside of your formal education or professional practice? Why? What difference does it make? Who else needs to know this information? What are the potential implications?


These readings show us that emotions are not something that is tacked onto human beings. They are fully integrated into us and affect how we operate, do day to day activities, and engage with others. Emotions can have a tremendous impact on our activities. Imagine an Olympic athlete. They train daily and push their body to the limits just to improve their performance by fractions of units. According to these articles, athletes like this should put alot of consideration into how their emotions will impact their performance. By increasing their Emotional intelligence they will be more away of how different emotions will impact them and to optimize these impacts. The same generalizes to the public of course.

Again, please allow the readings to inform your responses.

Anger

I was on my way home a little late tonight. I was a little stressed out because I had alot to do. I was also talking to my Mom (who I have not been getting along with recently). She is very poor at communicating with others and is very good at making a conversation turn sour and dragging it out. I was sitting outside of my apartment trying to finish the conversation but my mom just kept dragging it on. Suddenly I got extrememly frustrated and upset and felt the urge to stamp my feet out of anger! I got very hot and started losing control of my thoughts. I convinced her to end the conversation and resume it at a later time.

This was very unpleasant. I don't like losing my cool, especially to my mother who I have such strenuous ties with already. This was most definitely anger! I could feel my body temperature rising and I was losing control of my thoughts and I wanted to lash out at EVERYTHING. It was extremely acute emotion but it also persisted for atleast another hour until my girlfriend calmed me down.

My mom was the cause of these emotions. 

Discussion

How do Tompkins’ ideas about how affects (or emotions) develop relate to James view on emotions?

What do you think about Tomkins’ focus on the skin of the face as a primary attribute in affect formation?

Do you feel like you are leading a “scripted” life?

Panic, take 2

I described how I felt panicked the other day in genetics class. Well ever since that incident I felt much more confident that I did not have to worry about being called on until i got an email. In fact this Monday I got an email that I would be presenting on Friday. So I had nothing to worry about. Today I was sitting in class when the teacher once again called the next person to present...of course it was "Benjamin" Even though I KNEW it could not be me and even though I KNEW there was another (yes a third) Benjamin in the class I still panicked! It was kind of interesting though compared to the first time. The intensity was pretty high, perhaps not quite so high as the first time, but the duration and the after effects were much less drastic. It was kind of like the immune system response to a second infection of the same virus. My body was able to recover much faster from this bout of panic. I did not experience any of the dramatic physiological changes such as insane heart beat. It was kind of funny in retrospect.

Even though it was not that bad and I can laugh about it later, I still would consider it an unpleasant scenario. The emotion was fear and the intensity was mild but not a very long duration. Finally I would say the cause was once again the professor. 

stress

Is stress an emotion? More like a mood? maybe just a state of being? More like a constant state of being >_<. This week has been ridiculously stressful. For the honors capstone project a proposal was due on the 21st. I had known what project I would be working on and the professor for quite some time (since last semester). The professor and I had met several times this semester and I had been attending her lab meetings. However, my project still had not completely formed itself. This was because it was part of her graduate students work. So my role in the project was not exactly clear (or I had not made it clear enough since it was up to me). So the weekend before the proposal was due I spent a lot of time worrying that I would not be able to come up with a challenging enough project. I was really panicking. I can't right now pick out any one specific emotion I felt, but there was a general experience of anxiety for several days. Luckily, the day before the proposal was due I met with the professor and we hammered out a solid project that I am looking forward to and I think will be very interesting! I felt SUCH relief after that meeting. It really does feel like someone takes weight off of you. Amazing

Experiencing the relief was so wonderful! Compared to how long I had to worry about it though, I am not sure if it is worth it. I would call the emotion I experienced anxiety and relief. The source was the honors proposal and my project as a whole.

Panic

In genetics class everyone has to do several quick presentations over certain lecture slides throughout the semester (a couple people go everyday). The professor emails the people who have to perform a week in advanced. For some reason every day in genetics I get a crazy nervous panic attack and question whether or not I have to go that day. I worry that I didn't read the email, or that it somehow didn't make it to my e-mail box or some other crazy fluke. The other day in class, the teacher looked down at her list for the name of the next presenter. When she looked up her gaze fell RIGHT on me and she said "...and the next speaker is...Benjamin" I nearly DIED!! It was like my worst nightmare! Such a powerful wave of panic lashed over me. It was like a chilling wave of water that flowed over me. My heart seemed to stop for a second as the whole world got really quiet and my brain raced at a million miles an hour to figure out what was going on. Then someone behind me spoke up and I realized that she had referred to another Benjamin in the class who just so happened to be sitting behind me. PHEW! I began to feel my heart beating again and it was blazing! It took me a few minutes to regain control of myself and composure.

This was definitely an unpleasant experience. I don't like to feel afraid. Made for quite an interesting story though I think. The emotion I felt was fear. Pure fear. It was extremely intense and seemed to last for a very long time. Even after I realized there was nothing to worry about my body was still in "get the hell outa here mode". The cause of my emotion would be my fear of embarrassment or perhaps my teacher who called upon me without actually calling on me. I guess it depends on how you define cause of emotion.

Discussion Questions

Russell and Fernandez-Dols (1997) –Pp. 14-26

How would you define emotions? What would you take into account?

Davidson (1992)

Davidson portrays how the specialization of brain areas contribute to affective style. Do you think you can train your brain to have a different temperament the same way you could train yourself to be ambidextrous or multilingual?

Damasio et al. (1991)

Do you think theories based on experimental designs on brain damaged individuals have any inherent drawbacks to them? 

Assignment 3

1. Emotions serve functions (orientation, organization, etc.). Why do we experience our emotional states as powerful or at times overwhelming? Is this functional or purposeful?

 Taking an evolutionary approach to this question, one might propose the idea that emotions that cause powerful or overwhelming states have helped our ancestors survive and continue to reproduce. If we were in a life threatening situation, it might be advantageous to be able to recognize that and have the proper associated physiological responses necessary to respond. As Demasio and Davison seem to suggest, there is a clear connection between our emotions and our physical bodies. Both showed how our bodies biological responses are able to impact our emotions.This points to a function that emotions play.

2. Russell and Fernandez-Dols wrote the following about the inability to find a unified definition of emotion through scientific study and discourse: "Emotion is an everyday, ordinary word understood by all rather a precise concept honed through scientific analysis... we have probably reached the point where further usefulness of thinking of facial expressions in terms of emotion requires a clarification of the concept of emotion itself" (pg. 19).

a) what does this mean? what are they saying?
Since emotion is an 'everyday, ordinary' sort of word, it has eluded explicit classification and formal definition. They are saying to proceed with the study of emotion in a more precise and scientific way, some sort of standards are going to need to be erected. 

b) how does this extend to the other readings from this unit?
Davison dealt with this problem the best I believe. He binned all emotions into two primary groups (positive and negative) which was something that could be easily defined. This was followed by a careful scienetif association of these two groups with specific physiological responses. Demasio seemed to consider the emotions involved in case study mainly from a social perspective (how the person's friends and family viewed the emotions0

c) what does this make you think about the scientific study of emotion?
It makes me a little skeptical about the scientific research. It appears to require more arduous formalism or normalization. It seems to be very difficult to compare studies because they all use different views on emotions. Its also challenging when they use views that seem to skew away from the normal everyday understanding of emotions. 

3. Davidson writes about affective style. What are these and how are they specifically influenced by the brain?
The different brain chemistries that each person experiences leads to different profiles for people. Davidson shows that these different patterns of brain activity and chemistry are associated with different emotions. Davidson suggests that these patterns can therefore be linked to a person's "temperament" or as Davidson says affective style. The brain maintains specific chemical configurations which dispose people towards particular emotions. They might for example be more easily angered or tend to be more happy because their brain activity leans toward such activities.

4. Application: Provide an example of the somatic marker theory (Damasio et al., 1991) in your own life.
A simple example would be making a promise to someone. When you make a promise to someone, you believe you are telling them something that will please them (you will in the future do something that they find desirable). For example lets say I promised my Mother I would come to dinner on a particular night. When that future time comes and you must decide how to act  (the night for the dinner has come, but there is another event that is going on that I could attend instead), by using somatic markers that Damasio describes I am able to determine the outcome of not going through with my promise. This would allow me to choose the most favorable course of action. The patient EVR that Damasio described would have a problem seeing the connection between not going through with the promised actions and the unfavorable consequences (my Mom would be sad).

Worry

Today I got pretty anxious and worried. I felt a little overwhelmed by the things I had to do. I didn't feel like I could handle all of my responsibilities and that I perhaps over extended myself. At one point my body just decided to feel completed exhausted and I did not want to do anything. This emotion swept over me and I felt completely incapable and I got into a very anxious mood.

This was very unsettling and unpleasant. Not only did I feel bad (incapable, worried), I also was very unmotivated. Its like one of those tragic cyclic paradoxes.

I would say my emotion was worry. It was pretty severe, maybe an 8 out of 10. Although the emotion did not last too long, it left me in a lame mood (unmotivated and anxious) the rest of the day.

Although I did have lots of things to be worried about (homework, family relationships, my future, etc) nothing in particular when I experienced my emotion sparked it. Woohoo, a spontaneous emotion!

Bliss

This weekend I got to spend the entire day with my favorite person. Though we spend a lot of time together, often we are doing things such as homework, studying, cleaning or cooking, so its not what I would consider "quality" time. This day however we had the opportunity to just relax, enjoy each others company and pick the others' brain all day. One moment in particular stood out when she curled onto my shoulder and began to doze off (we were both pretty exhausted from having such a splendid day =D). A feeling of warm joy spread through me. I felt safe, secure and at "home".

The emotion was terrific! A ten out of ten. It felt sort of like a deep low resounding echo coming from somewhere withing me; like the beginning of a symphony.

This person was the source of the happy emotion, it was not spontaneous. I know this because I was rather sad to have to go back home (and school the next day >=O) 

Nervous

A friend of mine and me were supposed to meet up with a third person who we had not been getting along with recently. There had been a big dispute. It was sort of an abruptly set up meeting and so I did not have much time to prepare myself emotionally. I grew rather nervous as the onset of the meeting became imminent. There were "butterflies" in my stomach and I felt a little weak and shaky.


The emotion was rather upsetting and powerful in the fact that it affected all of my somehow, yet not very intense. It left me in a very anxious mood for several hours though.

I think the origin of my emotion was myself and how I thought the meeting would go. I guess I sort of scared myself into being nervous.

Discussion Questions 2

Jankowiak & Fisher (1992) - 

It was hypothesized (by others) that romantic love did not develop in certain cultures around the world because of their lack of industrialization. Similarly, could other emotions have developed in these cultures that did not develop in industrialized cultures and how could we discover those?

Ekman & Friesen (1971) - 

Ekman and Friesen have shown that emotion recognition in photographs is consistent across cultures. The emotions they explored were pretty basic ones though. How would you develop an experimental design to test for more complex emotions (such as romantic love that was explored by Jankowiak and Fisher primarily through anthropological and folklore studies)?

Elfenbein & Ambady (2002) -

Eflenbein and Ambady's studies seem to suggest that culture does have an impact on how well groups of people are able to discern emotion. Do these findings invalidate evolutionary or cognitive theories of emotion?

Assignment 2

1. What does it mean to take a cultural approach to observing and understanding emotion?

Taking a cultural approach to understanding and observing emotion means classifying emotion as a social construct. Moreover, since there are many different cultures in the world, each one could potentially develop emotions differently depending on their inherent cultural differences. 

2. What cultural variations (if any) in emotion exist?

From the readings, it seems that there is not very much variation in understanding of emotion across cultures. Many emotions that were believed to be the result of specific cultural activity (such as romantic love being developed as a result of industrialization in Europe) have actually been found to develop in many other cultures that did not follow these same activities.  Some variation has been discovered in how emotions are expressed in different cultures. However, it is not clear whether these variations were due to faulty experimental design or true cultural differences.

3. Think about last weeks readings.

a) Please highlight differences and similarities between the evolutionary, cognitive, and cultural approaches.

The evolutionary and cognitive approaches to emotion imply that all cultures would have the same emotions and the same understanding of these emotions. Although it has been shown that most cultures exhibit the same emotions and an understanding of them, there is a little variation which might implicate that how a culture develops actually impacts how that culture understands emotion. 

b) What do all of these approaches stand on the following questions:

1. What is an emotion?

                Evolutionary - A set of physiological responses aimed at preserving the longevity of the species

                Cognitive - The biochemical interactions that are associated with specific events

                Cultural - The typical and accepted (by society) bodily reactions to certain situations

2. What are the origins of an emotion?

                Evolutionary - Selective pressures that thin out responses that do not lead to survival

                Cognitive - Brain associations of situations with the  biochemical profile that those situations create

                Cultural - Society

3. Are emotions universal?

                Evolutionary/Cognitive - Yes

                Cultural - not necessarily, but research has shown that it is "mostly universal"

4. What are the functions of emotion?

                Evolutionary - Preservation of future generations

                Cognitive - Preservation of self (physically)

                Cultural - Preservation of self in context of a society (how others view you)

Anxiety

Today I looked at some possible alternative options to graduate school. I actually found a wonderful job in the city that I wanted to be in. This made me really anxious for some reason. I knew I had lots of plans and possibilities for the future, but I was anxious for all of those plans to just happen. I felt pretty uneasy because I was not sure what my future holds for me.

It was rather unpleasant, but not very intense. Just a little thing that put me in not the optimal mood for a few hours. About a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10

I guess I would be the cause of this emotion.

Panic

The other night I was driving home from my girlfriends house. It was around 10:30 pm, so not too late but definitely dark outside. My thoughts were elsewhere as there were few drivers on the road to take account of. Suddenly out of the corner of my vision I saw some quick movement. I turned my head to see somebody running on their lawn full speed towards the street, and my car. I slammed on the breaks. I seemed to be reacting without any emotion at first. Only after a few milliseconds did fear begin to creep through my body. I was worried something was on the street that I had run over. As I passed the person and his house, I noticed a group of people on the lawn sitting, drinking and laughing. I figured it was just some prank by some drunk kids. As my fear began to subside, a tinge of anger swept over me. I was pretty exhausted that day so neither emotion lasted that long.

The experience was unpleasant. I was really worried. I hate uncertain situations when I am driving.

The emotion was extremely acute (both the fear and the anger) but both lasted for a short duration. The interesting part was the delayed fear reaction. It could be that I was experiencing fear but not aware of it. Or perhaps it wasn't that frightening of a moment. But it certainly was not the same as my previous fear experience that I blogged about. Fascinating.

The person who pulled the prank was the cause of the emotion. Still on the lookout for that ever elusive "spontaneous" emotion.

Fury

So this year labor day was rather laborious. I had a serious discussion with someone in my family. However, they did not communicate very well with me. This person is known for their bad communication skills, but today I could not stand it. Their rudeness, and general disrespect brought me to such a state of anger that I began to tremble. I could feel myself losing control of my thoughts as the emotion began to run rampant through me. I tried to stay civil, but I think it just came out as lots of sarcasm (which is probably for the best since the conversation was not going anywhere from the start).

This was MEGA unpleasant. On a scale of 1 to water-boarding, it was like a 13. Really glad it happened at the end of my 3 day weekend so it did not destroy the entirety of it.

This was anger and frustration at its maximum. I would say it was of intensity nuclear for only a short time but resulting ultimately in a rather hot-headed mood for several hours.

Yes there was a cause, goodness only knows if my body could ever muster up such powerful stirrings of my mental capacities by itself.

Discussion Questions

James
How could our organs respond to the environment without our main cognitive processes? What would be the implications of this?

Lazarus
According to Lazarus, what would be the significance of spontaneous emotions, emotions that do not seem to be influenced by the environment?

Oatley
Does the type of fictional literature impact the change in understanding of self and others? What about the complexity?

Assignment 1

Assignment:

1. Darwin, James, and Lazarus all have interesting views on emotion. What are the perspectives of each author?

Darwin's view on emotion focused on the  phylogenetic origin of emotion. His main questions were whether emotions had some sort of evolutionary origin, or whether they were an innovation reserved for higher species. James and Lazarus however focused on the physiological aspects of emotion and how emotions are connected to bodily responses. 

2. Please tell me how their views are similar and different. 

James proposed a view of emotions that goes against common intuition. His idea was that instead of emotions being the causes of physiological responses, the bodily actions that occur during an event are what lead to emotion. James' view on emotions smudged the connection of cognition and emotion. Lazarus also believed that emotions and physiology are tightly interconnected, but he believed that cognition was also tightly associated with emotions. His main idea is that emotions arise from cognitive processes (sometimes unconscious). Lazarus' theory on emotion leads to a better association of emotions with evolution as we understand it (compared to James' theory). 

3. Do you agree with one of the authors in particular? Why or why not?

I would say I agree with Lazarus, as the theory purported by James seems to lack experimental evidence and also goes against my intuition. Lazarus' theory makes the most sense to me because I believe that the brain is the ultimate receiver of all incoming environmental stimuli. Therefore it makes sense to me that only the brain through cognitive processes could determine the situation one is in and react accordingly. 

4. Think about the Communicative Theory explained in Oatley (2009). How can you apply this theory in your life now or in the future?

I thought it was very interesting how Oatley described communicative theory almost as a way that you can train yourself to better communicate with others. By applying some of the techniques Oatley described in the research such as emotion diaries and reading more fictional literature, I could increase my understanding of myself and others. This would help me be better at communication. 

 

5. Remember those questions I asked? Briefly revisit them now (see below). I'd like to know if the readings influenced your initial responses. How? Why?

 

What is emotion? How do we express them?

Lazarus has introduced me to viewing emotions as the results of cognitive processes. His theory seems to best support the real world situations that I have observed.

Where do our emotions come from?

Again, through Lazarus and a bit of Oatley's communicative theory, I believe that emotions stem primarily from our thought processes but are also heavily influenced by our environment.

The rest is about the same.