Scientific Approaches to Emotions: Measuring and Understanding, Study notes of Computational Methods

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What is this thing called General Psychology?

• General psychology is a specific branch within the total undertaking of psychology.
• Universalistic aim: looking for similarities rather than differences.
• It is focused on process and mechanism in which mental phenomena occur and not so much on their contents.
• Universalism and functionalism apply as main ideas of general-psychological research.
• Specific areas: e.g. perception, cognition, memory, motivation and emotion. Emotion I: language origins Emotion: from latin e-movere, to move away, remove, dislodge.
• Originally used for describing migrations processes
• England (16th century): tumult, agitation (social riots - public emotions)
• 19th century: changes of the psyche (affective upheaval / tumult of feelings)
• Emotion as a loss, disruption or disorder f a former balanced state of the psyche
• ‘Common sense’ meaning: keep a cool head Definitions - Feelings
• Feelings -> emotional component:
• A part of emotion that finds expression in the subjective experience
• (^) Mental experiences of body states
• e.g. hunger, tiredness Emotions are something very complex and they consist of different type of feelings. Feelings appear to be as something that is happening in the subjective experience such as body states. Definitions - Affect
• Affect
• (^) English: often synonymously used for emotions
• Umbrella term for current or dispositional states that contain representations of appraisal
• (^) Affect regulation: umbrella term, when you try to cope with emotions
• (^) Lindquist (2012): The word “affect” is used to mean anything that is emotional.

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Definitions - Mood

• Mood
• (^) Is longlasting: you had a bad dream in the night and you wake up sad and this mood last all day
• (^) Can be non-object-specific Object/trigger does not need to be currently consciously represented
• Can be affective residue of specific emotions
• (^) Can influence the experience of subsequent emotions and judgements In philosophy , Solomon says that Emotions are judgements rather than feeling, emotions are conceptual sophisticated intentional states that have objects outside of the body.
• Plato: emotions as uncontrollable forces (reasoning and having emotion antithetical to each other)
• Aristotle: importance of functions of emotions (different types of appraisal lead to different emotions)
• After them: first platonic stream (Descartes, Locke, Hume and James); second stream in 20th century (Arnold, Kenny and Lyons) Definitions III from a psychological perspective
• It is something in response to what is happening outside. We can define^ emotions^ as episodic, relatively short-term, biologically-based patterns of perception, experience, psychology, action and communication that occur in response to specific physical and social challenges and opportunities (they are happening in relations to the environment). Emotions regulate the individual’s relations to the external environment (Keltner & Gross).
• Emotions are the tools by which we appraise experience and prepare to act on situations (Cole, Martin & Dennis). Emotions are something that is individually experienced (mental process, physical process); they have an interrelation with our environment, they are interactive; environment acts basing on our emotions and our responses. Important Emotion Theories (James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Two-Factor theory) James-Lange Theory (periphilistic)
• (^) Acc. To James (1884) and Lange (1885), summarised due to similarity.
• Basic premise: physiological arousal causes the experience of emotions
• We don’t have shaky hands, because we experience fear, we experience fear because we have shaky hands. Stimulus -> physiological response -> experience that -> emotion.

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• (^) James: after the object is simply apprehended, a threatening stimulus leads to immediate changes in the body and motoric reactions which are subsequently perceived (object emotionally felt).
• (^) Revision of James due to critiques (1894):

1. Addition of an appraising component (emotional reaction is triggered by vital elements of an overall situation.
2. Stronger emphasis on the automatic visceral reactions (than voluntary actions).
3. Not all visceral changes triggers emotion (=isolated bodily sensations). Cannon-Bard Theory (centralistic)

• 5 issues of critique:

1. Total separation of viscera from the central nervous system does not alter emotional behavior
2. The same visceral changes occur in very different emotional stases and in non-emotional states
3. The viscera are relatively insensitive structures
4. Visceral changes are too slow to be a source of emotional feeling
5. Artificial induction of the visceral changes typical of strong emotions does not produce them (Cannon 1927).

• A stimulus is process by parts of the brai and triggers (parallel) to an arousal od the autonomous nervous sistema as well as to the experience of emotion. Schachter & Singer Two-Factor Theory (cognitive-physiological approach) Event -> arousal -> cognitive labels -> emotion (1962)
• Why do different situations produce different or the same emotions? Overview

1. Evolutionary theories
2. Appraisal Theories
3. Psychological Constructionism Addressing: antecedents of an emotion (what causes them), biological givens (innate emotional capacities), integration of emotional experience (how components of emotion fit together).

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Evolutionary Theories Charles Darwin (1972-1998)

• (^) Facial expression as support for his general theory of evolution by natural
• (^) Study object: possibility that the same facial expressions of emotion were found all over the world
• Theses:

1. Cross-species: continuity and universality of a number of facial expressions of emotions
2. Facial expressions as serviceable habits or gestures
3. Comunicative function Leading the way for Buck, Ekman & Friese.

• Basic assumption of Evolutionary Theory
• Emotions as designed by evolution to solve problems
• (^) Signs of danger as biologically prepared stimulus: have the same meaning for all people (they are innate); cause particular emotions, adaptive benefit as it makes a person ready to perform (adaptive benefit).
• Plutchik (1980-1984)
• (^) Identified stereotypical responses to problems of adaption
• (^) Thesis: humans have specific behavioural answers to adaptive problems due to a specific emotional responses.
• Current theories main concern the survival of the Gene -> a particular feature of a species’ neural architecture will spread over generations because it enhance the possibility of dealing successfully with recurring reproductive opportunities (Niedenthal, 2017).
• Basic emotions - Tomkins (1962), Izard (1977) and Ekman (1922): basic emotions are innate neural and bodily states that are elicited rapidly and unintentionally - automatically - by biologically prepared stimuli (signal stimuli). Criteria for classifying ‘basic’ emotions (6):
• Universal expressions, which may involve more than just the face (e.g. the voice)
• (^) Discrete physiology
• Presence in the other primates
• Automatic appraisal or evaluations of the environment

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• Basic emotions changes as science goes forward: contempt (Ekman), shame and pride (Tracey and Robins, 2004).
• Evolutionary Theory Assumption: components (feelings, facial expression, change in autonomic activity) are co-occuring every time we have an emotion
• Components of emotions cohere because Affect Program (Tomkins and McCarter, 1964):
• (^) Innate brain systems that are pre-set to tell the body what to do when faced with a particular event
• (^) Existence of a distinct program for each of the basic emotions
• Tested by correlations between facial expressions and self-reported feeling states. Critical evaluations (e.g. small reproduction rates for disgust)
• In sum: biologically prepared signal stimuli reliably elicit affect programs designed to respond adaptively: stimulus -> affect program -> emotion. Appraisal Theories
• Starting point: very few objects or events inevitably cause the same emotion in all people:
• Basic assumption: linkage of emotions to people’s immediate evaluation of their circumstances
• (^) Emotions are determined by how an individual appraises his or her circumstances Major current appraisal theorists: Frijda (1986), Roseman (1984), Scherer, Smith and Ellsworth. Appraisal is the mental process that allows you to detect objects and events in your environment and evaluate their significance for your immediate well-being.
• Characteristics: appraisals are experienced on a continuum (=dimension) and they happen rapidly, usually unconsciously and unintentionally.
• Specific appraisal patterns:
• A particular appraisal pattern is assumed to be the cause of emotions
• (^) Different components that result in a pattern: pleasantness, certainty, attentional activity, personal (self/ other) control, and situational control, injury to self-esteem blame and others.
• E.g. studies found that fear occurs when circumstances are appraised as novel, negative, uncontrollable and insistent with expectation.
• Magda Arnold (1960)
• Thesis: first step in emotion is an appraisal of the situation; initial appraisal lead to emotions and argues both adequate action and the actual emotional experience.
• (^) Appraisal process as an “intuitive” assessment of the “here and now” aspects of situations and not deliberative, rational process
• (^) Main assumption: organism are costly evaluating whether the environment is beneficial or harmful for them
  • this leads to an action tendency.
• Speaking of primary & secondary appraisals, see also Scherer (2001) - distinction between:
• (^) Adaptive primary appraisals (very fast and clear-cut), e.g. appraisals of novelty and of valence

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• (^) Learned or secondary appraisals, e.g. interpreting a harmless snake as undgngerous
• Frijda^ (1988): emotions are lawful phenomena and thus can be described in terms of a set of laws of emotions. Input some event with its particular kind of meaning; out comes an emotion of a particular kind.
• Componential Theories^ (Scherer, 2009): different components of emotion can be caused indipendente by different appraisals; component might be facial expressions, tendency toward fight.
• (^) Components of emotions could be due to different objects or events + might also proceed independently
• In Sum: stimulus -> appraisal… along a set of dimensions -> emotion Psychological Constructionism
• Tries to explain the huge variation in how emotions look and feel. Emotions as psychological realities.
• Discrete feeling states are modeled into a psychological reality by the mental processing. How are ‘primitive’ feeling states transferred into specific emotional experiences.
• Emotions are the result of applying learned categories to the experience.
• Major theorists: Barret, Lindquist, Gendron and Russel.
• Categorisation:
• Mental process of structuring and attributing meaning to experiences by learning to recognize emotion and to label it - general responses are shaped into discrete ones.
• (^) Emotion categories within a given culture and language group come from a social consensus.
• Core affect as the innate component of emotion (Russel, 2003): “At the heart of emotion, mood, and any other emotional charged event are states experienced as simply feeling good or bad, energized or enervate”.
• Composed between 2 dimensions: pleasant versus unpleasant; activated versus deactivated
• Thesis: any given emotion can be described as a blend of pleasantness and activation. Core affect is a neurophysiological state that underlines simply feeling good old bad, drowsy or energized.

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• In^ sum:^ stimulus^ (encountered^ event)^ ->^ core^ affect^ ->^ categorisation^ (acc.^ to^ relevancy^ of^ current circumstances -> emotion

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martedì 23 ottobre 2018

UNIT 2

Natural scientific approaches to emotions

1. Measuring emotions
2. The Emotional Brain
3. Expression of Emotion
4. The Role of Cognition in Emotion Psychology Natural Scientific Paradigm Deductive model of doing research (hypothetico-deductive model) What is considered scientific? We need to have a look to the methatheoretical approach of the Logical Positivism : empirical is either the directly perceptible by the senses or the measurable The principle of induction, processed by the method of verification, results in a “never-ending- story”, in an endless regress Popper says that scientific statements need to be falsifiable, that means that scientific statements must be refutable to be scientific

• The core process is deduction by the method of hypothesis-testing
• We need some tools or technique to made the research and the results objective
• The problem with this method of verification is the proof, no proof of the truth Deductive: the important process is not induction but deduction, ‘cause there are fundamental theory on the basis Experimental Laborarory
• Replicable experiments^ in the laboratory as ‘the’ natural scientific method of researching emotions
• It is important to proof the validity, the replicability and the objectivity of an experiment
• as a researcher you can control variables in an experiment
• than you think of an artificial design in order to build your experiment (experimental setting) Main goals (precise way of testing) :
• Test^ predictions^ of a specific theory of emotions: if A happens so B will happens ex. which facial expressions of psychological changes correlates with a distinct emotion?
• Test^ causal^ relationships ex. whether a state reliably causes as a particular behavior
• correlations never have to be causal, causal ≠ correlation
• Test^ influence^ of emotions on cognitive behaviors ex. whether a specific emotions has an impact on the capability to solve a moral dilemma
• Ethical guidelines :
• we as psychologist we have to follow specific rules
• (^) American Psychological Association (APA)

1. Scientists should not create a situation that is extreme, the intensity of participants emotions should not surpasses these that they typically experience in daily life
2. Experimentally induced emotions should be promoted by experience, that are, or are likely to be, encountered in everyday life rather than by very unusual inventions
3. Emotions should be extinguishable , particularly if they are negative or painful, and alleviated before the participant leaves the laboratory (so the experiment should be extinguishable)

• experiment of Ax (1953) - How to experimentally induce emotions
• Affective images (ex. international affective picture system)
• Recall of Emotions Memories
• Films
• Music
• Scripted Social interaction (ex. studies on guilt): is used for a more complex design of emotions

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Measuring emotions Depending of what you want to do and in what emotion are you interested the are are different way, techniques of measuring emotions

• Theory-driven approach: according to underlying emotion theory, differente component(s) are to be assessed
• High variance in specificity … Questionnaires
• Verbal measures to rate some aspect experience on a scale
• ex. Likert response scale: numerical assessments that are converted into words (not at all, a little, moderate, etc.) -> The Likert Scale is a 5- or 7-point scale that offers a range of answer options — from one extreme attitude to another, like “extremely likely” to “not at all likely.” Typically, they include a moderate or neutral midpoint.
• ex. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) -> The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a self-report questionnaire that consists of two 10-item scales to measure both positive and negative affect. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much).
• Questionnaires of nonverbal formats
• Felling states represented by images
• Ex. Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) -> The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is a non-verbal pictorial assessment technique that directly measures the pleasure, arousal, and dominance associated with a person’s affective reaction to a wide variety of stimuli Facial Expression Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne:
• First who examine facial expression
• He use electric shock in order to produce facial expressions connected to feelings
• He artificially created contractions of the face Ekman & Friesen (1978):
• Facial Action Coding Scheme^ (FACS)
• They identify 44 different action units of facial expressions
• Anatomically based coding system
• Measures the appearance of changes in the face caused by muscular movements
• The observation consume very time so there is something called Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox (CERT): by using computer system there was a great increment of this kind of study over the time Cacioppo (1990) - Facial EMG
• To assess facial expressions that are not detectable by visual inspection by measuring the electrical discharge of contracted facial muscles
• Judgment Method^ (refers back to Darwin 1872-1998)
• Examines how expressed emotions are identified by observers
• This require a long time Psychological Parameteres of the Nervous System It examines physiological changes - Central Nervous System
• (^) EEG Ways to use the EEG for emotion research

1. Exploring different hemispheres of the brain that are activated in specific spaces in generating positive and negative emotions

martedì 23 ottobre 2018

2. Event-related potential (ERP): measuring the electrical activity of those cells relative to a known event (ex. pictures) Recording from cortex, limits in depth but strengths in assessing activation in larger regions (anterior versus posteriors, left hemisphere versus right hemisphere) You can distinguished how long the brain have to work to elaborate a specific stimulus - (^) fMRi

• Images of the brain while the brain is working by detecting along oxygenation and blood flow changes —> What difference parts of the brain are used to perform specific tasks? (activation maps) —> Used for stuffed on emotional regulation (executives functions) The prefrontal cortex has a crucial role in regulation and inhibition of the emotions
• Peripheral Nervous System Linking psychological responses to stimuli to related emotions, ex: - (^) Electrodermal activity : indicates novelty, intensity of affect - (^) Heart Rate : indicates fear, anger, focused attention - (^) Blood pressure : indicates engagement in tasks, anger, stress Correlation of emotions: The Emotional Brain “..of two things concerning emotions, one must be true. Either separate and special centers , affected to them alone, are their brain-seat, or else they correspond to processes occurring in the motor and the sensory centers already assigned..” William James , 1980 The two major concepts about the neural correlates of human emotions are: - Locationist account : - Thesis: different emotions categories have their roots in distinct mechanisms in the brain and body - Underlying mechanism are seen to reside within anatomical locations or as networks in the brain “These models constitute a locationist account of emotion because they hypothesize that all mental states belonging to the same emotion category (e.g., fear) are produced by activity that is consistently and specifically associated with an architecturally defined brain locale [...] or anatomically defined networks of locales that are inherited and shared with other mammalian species”

1. Locationist Hypotheses of Brain-Emotion correspondence: - (^) Amygdala : fear, anxiety, and relates states - Urbach-Wiethe DIsease - (^) Insula : disgust - (^) Orbito-frontal-cortex (OFC): anger - Psychological constructionist account

• Thesis: the psychological function of individual brain region is determined, in part, by the network of brain region it is firing brain 4 basic moments :

1. All mental states, whether they are experienced as an instance of a discrete emotion category or not, are realized by more basic psychological operations or ‘ingredients’ of the mind ( core affect )
2. Conceptualization is the process by which stored representations of prior experiences (like memories, knowledge) are used to make meaning out of sensations in the moment ( categorization )
3. Emotion words that anchor emotion categories work hand in hand with conceptualization
4. Executive attention helps direct the combination of other psychological operations to produce an emotional gestalt

martedì 23 ottobre 2018

• (^) Critics on the locationists account :
• Recent brain imaging studies inconclusive on the role of amygdala (amygdala activation has been found during the perception and experience of several other emotions besides fear)
• Association between disgust and the insula has not always been confirmed
• Specific brain regions as “hubs in the networks”
• The function of distinct brain areas are best understood within the context of the other brain areas A psychological constructionist approach hypothesizes that the same brain areas will be consistently activated across the instances from a range of emotion categories, meaning that that brain region is not specific to any emotion category (or even to emotion per se)
• Problem of “ Hemispheric specialization ?” Shared Representations for Emotion Perception and Production
• (^) Thesis : overlapping brain circuits become active both when somebody experiences an emotion and when perceiving the emotion expressed by somebody else
• (^) Mirror Neurons (di Pellegrino et al., 1992) ”have been claimed to underlie a large variety of psychological functions, including understanding of others’ goals and states, imitation, speech perception, embodied simulation, empathy and emotion recognition” (Niedenthal, 2012, p. 63)
• Today intense debate about the precise role of mirror neurons in emotion understanding
• The^ Neurochemistry of Emotions
• Less in the spotlight of emotion research (neuromodulators act on extended brain networks and have widespread and unspecific effects)
• Serotonine, noradrenaline, dopamine, opioids and oxytocin
• The emotional neurochemistry of the brain remains largely unknown Excursus: Functions of Emotions

1. Adapting to environment : affective ‘pre’-processing of internal and/or external stimuli
2. Behavioral preparation and motivation : from basic survival function to helping the individual deal with the environment and interpersonal reactions
3. Communication : conveying emotions as important for satisfying needs, social function (from dyads to social institutions) Expression of Emotion

• Where do facial expressions come from and why they occur?
• contraction of coordinated muscle groups
  • 43 muscles
  • anchored to skin
• 2 functions
  • control sensory organs on the face
  • change shape and surface of the face to express emotion
• Recognizable facial expressions as a sign of evolution

martedì 23 ottobre 2018

• Old’ controversy on innate^ vs.^ learned acquisition of facial expressions
• (^) Evolutionary perspective: facial expressions are innate and universal (ex.Darwin,1872/1998; Ekman1973, Ekman&Friesen,1972)
• Learning Perspective: culture-specific situational elicitors and interpretations (ex. Nelson & Russel)
• Interactionist perspective (e.g. Ekman, 1994): Biological and social/cultural determinants of facial expression are intertwined - What is actually expressed: ‘true’ emotion or an intention?

1. Facial expressions represent the expresser’s internal emotional state (ex. Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971; Tomkins, 1962)

• No matter how much one tries to cover, ‘true’ feelings will always show (‘micro’-expressions)

2. Behavioural Ecology (e.g. Fridlund, 1992)

• Facial expressions represent the expresser's intention
• Thesis: Facial expressions are primarily shown in interpersonal interactions – presence of others (real or imagined) plays a central role
• If the feeling state is very intense and strong we might not have the possibility to control it, but if we have the capability to control we can use it to manipulate expressions
• No matter how hard you try to manipulate expressions, there will be always a part of true (Ekman) - Sensory Feedback : - if you keep smiling you became happier (facial feedback hypothesis) - Emotion perception: recognizing the meaning underling the emotion expression of others - Theory of Embodied Simulation : implicit, seemingly automatic, barely visible, imitation of the perceived facial expression which produces a simulation of the emotional state associated with the expression - Bodily expression
• Specific patterns of body movement associated with emotions, tested by point-light display portrayals
• High accuracy in identifying emotion due to bodily expression (even in the point-light display condition - Vocal expression
• (^) Basic thesis: there are patterns of vocalisations associated with specific emotions - (^) Approaches of research
  • Analysis of sound by testing single features
    • E.g. pitch, loudness, rhythm, tempo, phonation
  • Analysis of sound by testing a combination of features
    • E.g. range of acoustic properties and changes in phonation
  • Analysis of sound by comparing animal vocalisations with musical ideas of harmony
  • Analysis of people’s interpretation of vocalisations
    • E.g. with judges
• Aviezer, Trope & Todorov (2012):^ real-life facial expressions “Specifically, losing faces were posed as more positive when the poser viewed them on winning bodies than on losing bodies. Conversely, winning faces were posed as more negative when the poser viewed them on losing bodies than on winning bodies” ! Conclusion: “Perceived affect and mimicry of the faces shifted systematically as a function of their contextual body emotion”

martedì 23 ottobre 2018

COGNITION AND EMOTION

• Cognition : all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating - Emotion and cognition^ as interdependent processes
• Cognition as possible altering factor for emotion - Emotional sates as influencing cognitive processes - Emotion and perception
• (^) Emotional states alter perception as they influence attention - (^) Attention : is a cluster of processes that involve the abilities to focus selectively on a particular object, sustain focus and shift the focus at will (Niedenthal, 2017)

1. Objects that appear threatening or provoke fear/anxiety most strongly capture attention

• Considered consistent to evolutionary theory!

2. The capturing of attention due to emotional objects happens quickly
3. The attention tends to stay with the emotional object once it is attended
4. Scope of attention is also affected by emotional state Perception influence emotion we experienced

• Emotion and memory
• (^) Mood-Congruent memory : is the tendency for individuals in a particular emotional state, or a mood, to retrive information from memory that has the same emotional or affective tone ex. If you experience something when you are sad, for example you have a negative grade and you have a feedback from the teacher, when you see your work again you will be sad cause you remember the sadness of the memory of the grade. It’s more difficult to remember things learned in a sad way. If you are learning for an exam in a really happy way you will learn better. This is called depending/learning-memory.
• (^) Mood-State-Dependent memory : is a phenomenon characterized by better retrieval during a specific emotional state of any information that was learned during the same state, compared to a different emotional state
• Memory is a long ending mood
• Due to is nature of long lasting and diffuse state is better to conceptualize memory
• Emotion and judgment
• (^) Mood-Congruent Judgement : refers to the fact that people tend to take judgments that are congruent with their current emotional state
• (^) Affect-As-Information Model : individuals use their affective state (which includes the information that their affective state activates in memory) as relevant information when making evaluate judgments, like a judgment about a situation
• (^) Appraisal Tendency Framework : appraisals associated with different discrete emotions lead to predictable effects on evaluation of the current state of the situation, the way we interpret situation, due to our emotions, influence our judgements KEY CONCEPTS Natural Scientific Approaches frequently use experiments or measure (such as by using questionnaires) different aspects of emotions Neuroscientific theories of emotion can be roughly put into two categories: Locationism and psychological constructionism Locationism refers to the belief that specific areas of the brain are responsible for the experience of particular emotions Psychological constructionism holds that emotions are the result of fundamental cognitive functions, which are not specific to emotions and which result from widespread and flexible cortical-subcortical networks Research on the expression of emotion is currently focused on single components, mainly on facial expression. In the future, research on expression needs to address expression regarding the whole body experience

martedì 23 ottobre 2018

There is still an ongoing debate on the questions whether emotion and cognition are separate mental processes There are two ways to theorise the influence of emotional states on memory The Associative Network Models Embodied Simulation Models Perception (e.g. attention), judgment and decision-making processes are influenced by moods and/or by discrete emotions

mercoledì 24 ottobre 2018

UNIT 3

From the individual to the relation of individual and society: Emotion concepts and Social Sciences

1. Theorizing Emotions with Psychoanalysis
2. Discursive Psychology: Emotion Discourse
3. Conceptualizing Emotions Sociologically

• Emotions and Cultural Theory Approaching emotions social -scientifically Social Scientific Paradigm Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences as two complementary sides (Walach 2009)
• Psychology as both: natural science and social science as it comprises ‘natural and ‘social’ object
• Interrelation of ‘object’ of research and recognizing subject Complementarity : the concept that two contrasted theories, such as the w ave and particle theories of light, may be able to explain the same phenomena, although each separately only accounts for.
• They might two ways of seeing things of the same point Human beings as both natural being and social/mental being (‘double-being’)
• Natural being:
• ‘Product’ of evolution
• Physical parameters such as brainwaves, etc. Memory, motivations, affects, perception
• Social being:
• Culture / living intertwined in different complexes of meaning
• Subjective experiences, meaningful constitution of the self within a cultural society, etc. Theorizing emotions with Psychoanalysis
• Freud Psychoanalysis
• (^) Concept of libido : psychic energie, at first it was a considered a source of psychic energy, primarily sexual in nature, but he later on see that individuals seek pleasure and positive emotional energy
• Mental life as divided into three domains:

1. The Conscious
2. The Preconscious
3. The Unconscious

• Instances of personality A. Id : channels libido impulses B. Ego: conscious reflecting towards an external world (physical environment, interpersonal relations, social structures, cultural prescriptions and proscriptions, a person's sexual identity) C. Superego: values, beliefs, norms force Ego to reconcile id impulses There is a distinction between negative and positive emotions, Freud talk about effect of emotion - (^) Ego defenses
• Ego works to reduce the tension between id and superego (unconscious ‘protection’ of the self)
• In order to reduce anxiety
• Vicious cycle of repression of an id implies, resulting in several behavioral pathology Repression : While moderating between the different instances the ego is in conflict and try to reduce tensions by an unconscious processes distinguished things in positive and negative

mercoledì 24 ottobre 2018

Keys insights of Freud’s Psychoanalysis

• What does this mean for conceptualizing emotions? For the case of Anxiety... “And what is an affect in the dynamic sense? It is in any case something highly composite. An affect includes in the first place particular motor innervations or discharges and secondarily certain feelings; the latter are of two kinds— perceptions of the motor actions that have occurred and the direct feelings of pleasure and unpleasure which, as we say, give the affect its keynote.” Linkage to the study of hysteria [...] the core which holds the combination we have described together is the repetition of some particular significant experience. This experience could only be a very early impression of a very general nature, placed in the prehistory not of the individual but of the species. To make myself more intelligible—an affective state would be constructed in the same way as a hysterical attack and, like it, would be the precipitate of a reminiscence“ “Do not suppose that the things I have said to you here about affects are the recognized stock-in- trade of normal psychology. They are on the contrary views that have grown up on the soil of psychoanalysis and are native only to it. What you may gather about affects from psychology— the James-Lange theory, for example—is quite beyond understanding or discussion to us psycho-analysts.” KEY CONCEPTS OF FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYSIS
• Importance of the concept of^ repression “Emotions that are repressed, for Freud, anxiety and guilt being the most prominent — can be transmuted into different emotional expressions through the ego defences [...].” (Turner, 2006, p. 279)
• Ideas plus pleasure-unpleasure sensations together constitute an affect as a mental (psychological) phenomenon.
• Affects begin at the dawn of mental life, when ideas first become associated with sensations of pleasure-unpleasure. The latter are primarily connected with gratification and/or lack of gratification of instinctual drive derivatives (instinctual wishes).
• The development of affects and their differentiation from one another constitute an aspect of ego and superego development (Brenner, 1980)
• Study examples
• Freud’s method: observation of patients in clinical settings, interwoven with theoretical inferences
• Today, inter alia (tra l’altro) :
  • Studies on affect regulation and/or on affects in psychoanalytic/dynamic psychotherapy process
  • Also: psychoanalytic affect theoretical framework adapted in current neurobiology (research on brain structures and functions involved in affect activation
  • …

mercoledì 24 ottobre 2018

Psychology as Social Science “[...] the social researcher is confronted with facts, events and data of a whole new structure. His observational field, the social world [...], has a specific structure of meaning and relevance for the people who live, think and act within it” Schütz, 1953, p. 3 Wearing the social scientific ‘glasses’ psychology offers different objects, objects of the “the social world”

• Central aim: Understanding complexes of meaning and reconstructive description of data
• There is not ‘the’ social scientific method (as there is not ‘the’ natural scientific method) – rather it’s an understanding, a perspective for identifying research objects and providing a frame to research Discursive Psychology and emotions
• It’s about communication, how we talk, how we communicate with other
• The communicative process is fundamental
• Meta-theoretical position:^ Discourse theory^ (based on Foucalut’s theory of discourse)
• Discourse refers to the^ system of spoken and textual objects^ and events in their^ spatial, temporal, social and political contexts. More specifically, it refers to the symbolic order in which speaking, writing and reading take place, and the social roles, institutions and practices through which they are carried out. However, the concept gains different meanings deoendening on the theoretical background on which is presented
• Differentiation between different contest of meaning
• Central Thesis: Language Practices as a Shaper of reality
• Theories of Emotions and Discourse: in order to fully understand emotional experience and expression, [...] we have to account for the specific socio-cultural settings of emotional experiences and interpretations and to consider the impact of language and the production of speech on emotions”
• The Sub-discipline Discursive Psychology: discursive psychology is a^ systematic^ and comprehensive alternative perspective to more traditional psychological approaches such as behaviourism. It is focused on how psychological objects, orientations and displays are parts of discourse practices. The focus is on discourse practices as they appear naturally in everyday and institutional settings. These practices involve talk, but that talk is coordinated with embodied action and often responsive to, or reworking, texts.
• Examines:
• everyday event reporting
• the use of psychological concept in everyday discourses: how people use psychological concepts such as emotion
• Emotion Discourses^ (Edwards,1999,pp.275)
• Thesis: Emotion words provide conceptual resources that permit discursive uses, there’s a rich variety of emotion metaphors
  • High flexibility and rhetorical organization in use of emotional concept that is individually negotiated in specific contexts (e.g. jealousy in dyads)
  • Edwards suggests a set of^ rhetorical contrasts, to account for the different ways that can be applied in the speaking- about emotions - E.g. Emotions as irrational vs rational, Emotional behaviour as controllable action vs passive reaction

22.10.

Discursive Psychology and Emotions

• Emotion Discourses (Edwards, 1999, pp. 275)
  • Thesis: Emotion words provide conceptual resources that

permit discursive uses – rich variety of emotion

metaphors

Æ High flexibility and rhetorical organization in use of

emotional concept that is individually negotiated in

specific contexts (e.g. jealousy in dyads)

Æ Edwards suggests a set of rhetorical contrasts, to account

for the different ways that can be applied in the speaking-

about emotions

• E.g. Emotions as irrational vs rational, Emotional behaviour as controllable action vs passive reaction LE General Psychology Univ.-Ass. Natalie Rodax, MSc. 137 Discursive Psychology and Emotions
• Emotion Discourses
• Study Example: „Grief and Senitment for Princess Diana“ (Edwards, 1999, pp. 283)

“I always believed the press would kill her in the end.”

LE General Psychology

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The examination of indexical uses of different categories in everyday talk (=social contexts) and text as necessary correction to a prevailing emphasis on verbal categories as reflections of how people make perceptual sense of the world ≠ meaningful sense of the world Why do we need Transdisciplinarity Approaches? Psychology and psychologists are embedded in a matrix comprising a host of extradisciplinary and extrascientific factors that indelibly shape how psychology is defined and practiced, the form and content of the knowledge it creates, and how this knowledge is received”

• Social-Constructionism-Perspective: personal development (throughout the lifespan) as ‘made’ by the relevant contexts of social world (historical, institutional, familial,..)
• We need transdisciplinarity to cope with complexity of the social world and the relationship of individual and their different (micro, meso, macro) contexts
• we don’t know how to address the three context in one theory together Conseptualizing Emotions Sociologically
• Sociology studies modern and contemporary societies
• Sociology as the science that deals with social groups, their internal forms or modes of organization, the processes that tend to maintain or change these forms of organization, and the relationship between groups
• Social constructionism : “what people feel is conditioned by socialization into culture and by participation in social structures
• Emotion is seen as a primarly social constructions - Social Constructionism^ and^ Emotions
• Thesis: the origin of emotions is not in biology but in culture
• The nature of an emotional response unclear until it labeled by a name provided by culture
  • Emotional arousal, which is diffuse and non specific, gets socially interpreted because we learn vocabularies and can thus name and interpret internal sensations
• Elements of emotions:

1. Biological activation of key body systems
2. Socially constructed definitions and constraints on what emotions should be experienced and expressed in a situation
3. The application of a linguistic labels provided by culture to internal sensations
4. The overt expression of emotions through facial, voice and paralinguistic moves
5. Perception and appraisals situational objects or events - Emotions^ and^ Rationality : Yesterday’s debate and the view of sociology - (^) Assumption: emotions guide decisions ( consciously and unconsciously ) - People pursue actions with anticipated positive (emotional) outcomes - avoiding those that lead to negative (emotional) consequences - Emotion as ‘force’ that keeps human behaviour ‘on track’ - ︎Individuals make decisions that are guided by and have consequences for emotions - ︎Rationality and emotions intricately connected at all levels

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- Sociological Theories of Emotions:^ address how^ interaction^ is shaped by emotions, how people develop emotional attachments and commitments to social structures and cultural symbols, how emotions sustain or change social structures and cultural symbols, and how social structures and cultural symbols constrain the experience and expression of emotions - Diverse set of theoretical approaches:

1. dramaturgical and cultural theories,
2. ritual theories,
3. symbolic interactionist theories,
4. Symbolic interactionist theories incorporating psychoanalytic ideas,
5. Exchange theories, structural theories, and
6. evolutionary theories. What is special about a sociological perspective?

• Looking at complexes of interconnections among person, situation, structure, and culture
• ︎Depending on theoretical emphasis, different dimensions of emotional dynamics with macro structures can be analysed A selected sociological theory: Emotions and Cultural Theory
• Shortcomings in natural scientific Psychology

1. The nature scientific way of conceptualizing emotions equated emotions with physical or at least measurable processes - Whilst some variables have been taken into account, much ‘variance’ seems to remain unexplained
2. Psychology has suffered under the tacit assumption that emotion is not covered by social rules. Social rules, for their part, are seen as applying to behavior and thought, but rarely to emotion or felling

• What is^ culture? Culture is understood as the assemblage of norms, institutions, practices, rituals, symbols, interpretative repertories, action scenarios, narratives, discourses, and meaning which shape and gide thought and action. Culture then is both the systematic interpretation of social action and the bestowal of meaning to events, persons and processes Gordon (1981): Emotional Culture
• Analytic^ distinction^ between:^ biological emotions^ (psychological concept) and^ social sentiments (sociological concept)
• (^) Emotion is a product of different processes not only biological
• (^) Sentiments : combination of bodily sensations, gestures, and cultural meaning that we learn in enduring social relationships (Gordon, 1981)
• Emotions are a product of bodily sensations, expressive gestures, social situations or relationships and emotion culture of a society
  • Emotion Culture...is a group’s set of beliefs, vocabulary, regulative norms and other ideational resources pertaining to emotion
• Merit of^ sociological perspective : by conceptualising emotions as emerging from social relationships, more lasting emotions such as love and friendship become research object
• Structural Perspective
• Emotional Socialisation: development learning due to cultural contexts (differential exposure depending on social position)
• Different dealings with emotions
  • Institutional meanings: conformed with norms
  • Impulsive meanings: spontaneous reactions (sometimes counter-normative)
    • One emotion can have different meanings
    • Depending on institutional or impulsive self-concept
    • Area and situation-specifically shifting whit in a person
• At the intersection of culture and structure

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Relation of norms and emotions

• Thesis: the idea of ‘properness’ of emotions has an influence on the individual (emotion expression/regulation)
• (^) Self control as one important emotional norm
• Hochschild (1979)
• (^) Two basic types of norms :
  • Feeling rules^ (“what I should feel”)
  • Display rules : when and how feelings are expressed
• Emotion management: type of work it takes to cope with feeling rule
  • Body work, surface acting, deep acting, cognitive work
• (^) Framing rules: Which interpretations and meanings should we give to situations
• Prior to feeling rules
  • In the sense of ideologies
• Gender Ideologies: Interview with 50 married couples

1. traditional
2. egalitarian
3. transitional » Different feeling rules for different ideologies! » Discrepancies can occur – ideologies and feelings in conflict

• ︎Gender strategies: dealing strategies with mis-fit of feelings and ideologies/situations Study Example : Pierce, Jennifer (1995), Gender Trials : Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms
• Case studies of two law offices (private law firm and legal department of a firm), trial^ lawyers and litigation paralegals
• Identified emotion labour of lawyers (“Rambo Litigators”) – mostly men
  • Self-presentations
  • ‘Strategic friendliness’
• Paralegals (“mothering paralegals”) – mostly women
  • (^) Emotion work reveals nurturance
  • (^) Two components: Deference and Caretaking
• When men and women are doing the same job: double standard
• (^) ︎Job is not the same when men and women do it, different emotion work is attributed and expected, different coping strategies are used Resume : Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms This engaging ethnography examines the gendered nature of today's large corporate law firms. Although increasing numbers of women have become lawyers in the past decade, Jennifer Pierce discovers that the double standards and sexist attitudes of legal bureaucracies are a continuing problem for women lawyers and paralegals. Working as a paralegal, Pierce did ethnographic research in two law offices, and her depiction of the legal world is quite unlike the glamorized version seen on television. Pierce tellingly portrays the dilemma that female attorneys face: a woman using tough, aggressive tactics—the ideal combative litigator—is often regarded as brash or even obnoxious by her male colleagues. Yet any lack of toughness would mark her as ineffective. Women paralegals also face a double bind in corporate law firms. While lawyers depend on paralegals for important work, they also expect these women—for most paralegals are women— to nurture them and affirm their superior status in the office hierarchy. Paralegals who mother their bosses experience increasing personal exploitation, while those who do not face criticism and professional sanction. Male paralegals, Pierce finds, do not encounter the same difficulties that female paralegals do. Pierce argues that this gendered division of labor benefits men politically, economically, and personally. However, she finds that women lawyers and paralegals develop creative strategies for resisting and disrupting the male-dominated status quo. Her lively narrative and well-argued analysis will be welcomed by anyone interested in today's gender politics and business culture.

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• Thoits (1990):^ Expanding the emotion management theory
• Source of discrepant feeling
  • discrepancy express triggers stress when: 1. Multiple roles collide 2. Different feelings rules of different cultures collide 3. Roles transition 4. Rigid set of feeling rules is constricting
• (^) Coping styles
• Attempt to bring one’s subjective emotional experience into line with the normative requirements of the situation
• She identifies^ two primary modes^ of coping style:

1. Behavioral
2. Cognitive model —> What happens if the coping style can’t be successful? - (^) Emotional Deviance: stressful situation for a long period

• Inability to manage non normative feelings in an effective way, in case of:
  • Persistence of stressful situations
  • Lack of social supports Study example : Stets and Tsushima (1996): Negative Emotion and Coping responses within Identity Control Theory
• Usage of cognitive and behavioral strategies to cope with anger at work and at home
• Work Setting: Situation focused behavioural strategies, e.g. seeking social support
• Home Setting: Emotion focused cognitive strategies, e.g. prayer
• At the interface to Social Psychology: James Averill
• Social Constructionist View of Emotions
  • Four major assumptions: “First, emotions are responses of the whole person , and hence cannot be defined in terms of subclasses of responses (e.g. physiological or expressive reactions, cognitive appraisals, instrumental acts, or subjective experience). Second, emotions are complex , polythetic syndromes; that is, no subset of elements or kind of response is a necessary or sufficient condition for the whole. Third, the rules that govern the organization of the various elements of the syndrome are primarily social in origin. Fourth, emotions serve a function within the social system , or at least are correlated with other behaviors that have a social function”
    • Emotions as syndrome
  • (^) Syndrome : a set of component parts that often occur together when a particular emotion is experienced
  1. Subjective Experiences
  2. Expressive Reactions
  3. Patterns of physiological reactions
  4. Coping reactions
     • Emotions as social roles
     • Emotions have objects
     • Emotions are not passions but actions

• Thoits (1990): Expanding the emotion management theory

• Coping Styles
  • 2 primary modes: (1) behavioural, (2) cognitive mode LE General Psychology Univ.-Ass. Natalie Rodax, MSc. 165

Emotions and Cultural Theory

• Thoits (1990): Expanding the emotion

management theory

– Emotional Deviance

• Inability to manage nonnormative feelings a in an

effective way, mostly in case of…

» Persistence of stressful situations » Lack of social support LE General Psychology Univ.-Ass. Natalie Rodax, MSc. 166

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Study example: Studies on Anger and Aggression (e.g. Averill, 1982)

- He analyze^ anger^ directly from everyday experience A. What trimmest anger B. What is the target of anger C. The outcome of anger ex. Where was the last time you was anger and what happened? He concluded that:

• anger is something that people give to legitimize aggression
• anger excuses aggression because it suggests that the person was not in full control of his or her behavior
• acts of passion are treated more leniently than the calculated one
• Conclusions drawn from^ Cultural Theoretical Explanations of Emotions “ Culture plays a role in defining our emotions, connecting emotions and our sense of self, dictating our interactional scripts, determining our emotional reactions to our relationships, using emotion management techniques and performing emotional labor.”
• The^ merit^ of the Cultural Theory For Emotion Psychology is that it identifies and describe social sources of emotions and its dissemination by particular groups and classes; that it states that emotions are collective ways of acting and being; they are cultural acquisitions determined by the circumstances and concepts of a particular culture, community, society
• The^ limit^ is the understanding and or/explanation of the individual micro-structures: more precise conceptualization of the elements of emotion cultures, a clearer description of how they are learned, and a better explanation of how they are used strategically in interaction KEY CONCEPTS - The study of Emotions can also target^ emotions as a social object - Social Scientific Approaches frequently use^ qualitative frameworks, case studies (everyday experiences), group discussions, but also media analyses - Form the perspective of Psychoanalysis, emotions are examined in the microcontext, applying Freud’s key insights (such as the concept of repression and ego theory) to the explanation of emotions (here, mostly anxiety and guilt are focused) - Discursive Psychology takes into accounts for the^ specific socio-cultural settings^ of emotional experiences and interpretations and considers the impact of language and the production of speech on emotions - Sociology looks at complexes of^ interconnections among person, situation, structure, and culture and therefore conceptualises emotions as shot through by macro-structures (≠individualism)
• Cultural Theory – one sociological strand of theory – conceive emotions as collective ways of acting and being; they are cultural acquisitions determined by the circumstances and concepts of a particular culture, community, society

UNIT 4

ANGER

• What do you feel when you experience anger? When you experience anger you feel very frustrated and stressed in particular because you can see anything but the problem. From a physical point of view you feel the acceleration of the heartbeat and so this also lead to anxiety. Sometimes, due to the fact that it’s possible that you can’t control yourself, you can became aggressive.
• How do you act when you are angry? When you are angry you mostly act impulsively because you are so focused on the problem that you can’t manage to see the situation for a more objective point of view. Acting impulsively can bring you to say something that you don’t really thing, or to do something you will regret
• In which situations do you experience anger? You could experience anger in different situations such as:
• when you are not respected
• things don't work out the way you want
• when someone wronged you
• when you don’t feel understood and so you feel attacked
• How would you define anger? I would define anger as a mental and physical state. On the mental side anger in an emotion, on the physical side anger could be considered as a way to act
• Invent a ‘model’ for characterizing and explaining anger? Anger is a mental and physical state that can be experienced by everyone in different context and situations. There are different ways to experience this kind of emotion. In general, anger is characterized by:
• Loss of control
• Impulsivity
• Stress
• Acceleration of the heartbeat
• Anxiety
• Aggression Basic assumptions of traditional (mostly natural scientific) Psychology
  • “marked by uncomfortable cognitions and affect and by unique triggers, physiological reactions expressions, and social consequences” (Schieman, 2006, p. 494)
  • "rather than a single emotion of anger, there can be many varieties of ‘almost anger' and many nuances of the anger experience." (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003)
  • anger as "an emotional state that consists of feelings of irritation, annoyance, fury, or rage and heightened activation or arousal of the autonomic nervous system." (Spielberger et al.,
• Concept overlaps with annoyance, rage, hostility and aggression, etc.
• Complexity and "fuzziness" of anger – An operational definition: “[...] anger as a syndrome of relatively specific feelings, cognitions, and physiological reactions linked associatively with an urge to injure some target. Such a view is compatible with other formulations of emotional states as constellations or networks of particular physiological patterns, behavioral tendencies, and cognitions” (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004, p. 108)

• Appraisal perspective
• Thesis : people become angry when they are kept from attaining an important goal by an external agent’s improper action
• Anger as “response to (appraised) actual or potential harm
• 6 different appraisal components adders one of the two general appraisal issues:
• (^) primary appraisal concerns: whether and how the encounter is relevant to the person’s well- being

1. motivational relevance
2. motivational congruence

• (^) secondary appraisal concerns the person’s resources and options for coping with the encounter

3. accountability
4. problem-focused coping potential
5. emotion-focused coping potential
6. future expectancy

• Evolutionary perspective
• Anger as a basic emotion
• Psychological constructive perspective
• Locationism : Anger is associated with activity in the OFC as well as with left-sided processing
• Also by a biological perspective aggression is distinguished from anger, they are differently activated
• The hypothesis is that the OFC is liked with became anger and experienced anger
  • Anger emerges when more basic pshycological elements such as representations of the body, exteroceptive sensations and concept knowledge about categories combine —> the OFC plays a more general role: - “increased activity in the left hemisphere during instances of anger is not restricted to the OFC, or even the prefrontal cortex” - Instances of anger experience involve areas throughout - The anterior insula - The anterior temporal lobe and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex - The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
• Averill’s studies on Anger (1983)
• Social bases of anger: anger as a social phenomenon
• Examined:
  • the connection between anger and aggression
  • the targets, instigations, and consequences of typical episodes go anger
  • the differences between anger and annoyance
  • possible sex differences in the experience and/or expression of anger
• Differentiated a “straw person’s” view with the examined social situations – stressed on anger as everyday phenomenon
• Aim: “taking the phenomena of interest as it is experienced and conceptualized in everyday affairs” Key insights of Sociology
• Intertwinings of social life and anger “social situations and structural arrangements of individuals' lives will remain relevant because they provide the contexts that provoke or confine anger in patterned, systematic ways; that is, social conditions cause, mediate, and modify the evocation and expression of "hard-wired" emotions” (Schieman, 2006, p. 495)

• ︎individual's position in the social structure shapes the type, frequency, and intensity of anger that will be directed toward him or her or aroused in him or her
• Social contexts: Work, Family, Friends, Neighbourhood (meso) – but also class, age, politics, economy, etc. (macro)
• Steams & Steams (1986): Conventions and standards regarding the experience and expression of anger (examined workplace norms and their affects on the sphere of family)
• Anger needs to be controlled^ (anger as “central emotional enemy" )