WEEK 1 Emotion Theories
● The functionalistic view on emotions (Frijda, 1986)
○ concern is at stake
○ changes in action readiness: aimed to change or maintain relationships
○ Emotions arise with a reason, are not just a feeling but a process, are an adaptive reaction
to change in situation and reflect strategic approach to situation. Each emotion contains a
unique action tendency that reflects what one wants to achieve in that particular situation.
Different emotions reflect different concerns or outcomes.
● What is an emotion? Based on functionalisitic view on emotions (Scherer, 2000)
1. Physiological arousal
2. Motor expression
3. Cognitive processing (appraisal)
4. Subjective feeling state
5. Action tendency: urge to act without the actual action.
● Deaf children
○ >90% grows up in hearing environment
○ Consequences: fewer communication means & little communication time
○ Problems in social ‐ emotional development
● Anger or sadness?
○ Sadness (> deaf children)
■ focus on consequence
■ Evaluation: reinstatement desired situation is impossible
○ Anger
■ focus on cause
■ Evaluation: reinstatement desired situation is possible
● Emotions have interpersonal functions. Interpersonal function of
1. Fear: avoiding harm
2. Anger: stop another from harming you
3. Love: strengthens relationship with other
4. Jealousy: protecting “mine”
5. Shame: failed to live up to ego‐ideal in context of social norms and values
6. Pride: reinforces behavior valued positively within social context
● James-Lange Theory
, ○ Emotion is our feeling (awareness) of the bodily changes as they occur
○ Thus, subjective feeling state is a consequence rather than a cause
○ Problem with theory: open to misinterpretation!
● Emotions vs Mood states
○ Emotion: direct link with specific event / situation / memory
○ Mood state: not linked to specific situation, cause unclear, longer duration, lower
intensity
Emotional socialization/ How do children learn about emotions?
● Sources of information teach children about emotions: Self-observation, Other-observation,
(verbal) passing on
● Deaf children have difficulties distinguishing emotions from young age → Verbal passing on is
essential for interpretation of facial emotion expression → Social context is needed for reading
faces
● Children with communication problems have problems labelling emotions at a young age
● Emotional Intelligence
○ Emotion recognition
○ Emotion awareness
○ Regulation emotions (coping)
○ Others’ emotions empathy
○ Emotion vocabulary
○ Moral emotions
Emotion by Klaus R. Scherer
● Key concepts: - Facial feedback hypothesis - Feeling - Mood - Proprioceptive feedback - Social
constructivism - Sympathetic arousal - Universality
● Emotional contagion (LeBon) in large crowds used to explain mass/irrational behavior (most
infectious are yawning and laughter)
,What is emotion?
What is the fundamental tenet of the James-Lange theory of emotion?
How can emotion be denied in a fashion that is useful for social-psychological research?
● James-Lange Theory (peripheral position (focus on peripheral - autonomic and somatic NS
rather than central NS))
○ Emotion is elicited by a person’s awareness of bodily
changes and the consequent interpretation of the event in
terms of emotions
○ Emotion = feelings
■ Feeling: earlier used synonymously with emotion.
Today is restricted to components of subjective experience of emotional arousal,
often conscious and verbalizabe by using emotion words/expressions.
● Emotion as a social-psychological construct
○ Affect: often used synonymously with emotion. SOme social psychologists restrict the
use to the valence aspect, pleasant vs unpleasant, pos vs neg, of feelings
○ Emotion is a hypothetical construct which is not directly observable but which is inferred
from a number of indices and their interaction. Today emotion ≠ feeling. Feeling = one
of several components of the total emotion construct
○ Emotion components:
1. Subjective feeling
2. Neurophysiological response patterns (central and autonomous NS)
3. Cognitive processing
4. Motor expression (muscular actions in the face, the vocal organs, the hands and
the skeletal musculature that are linked to the internal states of the organism.
Communication purposes.)
5. Action tendency (Urge to act. NOT overt instrumental behavior → actual action
are not components of emotion but rather behavioral consequences of behavior)
○ Emotional reaction triad (social psychologists): Emotion’s three response components
1. Physiological arousal
2. Motore expression
3. Subjective feeling
● Crisis response: all bodily and mental systems are being coordinated and synchronized to
deal with a possible emergency situation
● If emotion is defined as an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in the emotion
components, the sequence problem becomes an issue concerning the dynamic
interrelationship between the components in an emotion episode.
Why do we have emotions?
, ● Emotion as a social signalling system
○ Emotion signals particular action tendency which can determine the interaction process
e.g. a mugger reacts different to fear compared to anger
● Emotion affords behavioral flexibility
Decoupling of instinctive stimulus-response contingencies:
○ In S-R (stimulus-response) chains, a response is directly coupled/linked to the eliciting
stimulus BUT emotions decouple stimulus and response (separate event and reaction by
replacing the automatism of instinctive reaction with preparation for reaction alternatives)
→ more flexible, greater choice in its behavioral reactions
■ e.g. mugger opposes a karate champion. S-R response: directly attacking the
mugger. With emotional anger, you will get angry; activation of autonomous NS;
anger decouples stimulus and response, thus you don’t attack immediately.
Latency time that intervenes between emotion elicitation and actual behaviors
allows further evaluation ot the situation e.g. success likelihood/ seriousness of
consequences of an action
○ Preparation and immediate reaction in case of emergency
● Information processing
○ Consists of ‘hot cognition’: emotional reactions to sort relevant from irrelevant info
○ Valence important for turning old cognitions into hot ones
○ Many criteria for stimulus evaluation are acquired during socialization (needs,
preferences, goals, values)
● Regulation and control (Feeling)
○ Feeling = monitoring function, reflection of everything that goes on in the process of
synchronization of different organismic subsystems in an emotional episode →
integration and reflection of situation appraisal, bodily changes action tendency,
expressive signals
○ Feeling is rather a consequence than a cause of emotions
○ No simple causal chains rather complex dynamic network of interrelationships among
different components
How are emotions elicited and differentiated?
● Philosophical notions: Definitions of different kinds of emotions in terms of significance of the
event/action to the person (needs, goals, values)
● Schachter-Singer theory of emotion (Cognitive theory of emotions)
How is the Schachter-Singer theory different from other peripheral theories?
Why has this non-trivial theory lost its appeal for social psychology?
○ Contrary to James, Schachter suggested that the perception of heightened non-specific
arousal (sympathetic activation) is sufficient to elicit emotion = feeling
○ Differentiation of emotions: a ‘steering function’ of cognitions arising from the situation
as interpreted based on past experiences
○ 2 factors for election and differentiation of emotions
1. Perception of heightened sympathetic arousal
2. Cognitions concerning the interpretation of the situation based on
past experiences
● The functionalistic view on emotions (Frijda, 1986)
○ concern is at stake
○ changes in action readiness: aimed to change or maintain relationships
○ Emotions arise with a reason, are not just a feeling but a process, are an adaptive reaction
to change in situation and reflect strategic approach to situation. Each emotion contains a
unique action tendency that reflects what one wants to achieve in that particular situation.
Different emotions reflect different concerns or outcomes.
● What is an emotion? Based on functionalisitic view on emotions (Scherer, 2000)
1. Physiological arousal
2. Motor expression
3. Cognitive processing (appraisal)
4. Subjective feeling state
5. Action tendency: urge to act without the actual action.
● Deaf children
○ >90% grows up in hearing environment
○ Consequences: fewer communication means & little communication time
○ Problems in social ‐ emotional development
● Anger or sadness?
○ Sadness (> deaf children)
■ focus on consequence
■ Evaluation: reinstatement desired situation is impossible
○ Anger
■ focus on cause
■ Evaluation: reinstatement desired situation is possible
● Emotions have interpersonal functions. Interpersonal function of
1. Fear: avoiding harm
2. Anger: stop another from harming you
3. Love: strengthens relationship with other
4. Jealousy: protecting “mine”
5. Shame: failed to live up to ego‐ideal in context of social norms and values
6. Pride: reinforces behavior valued positively within social context
● James-Lange Theory
, ○ Emotion is our feeling (awareness) of the bodily changes as they occur
○ Thus, subjective feeling state is a consequence rather than a cause
○ Problem with theory: open to misinterpretation!
● Emotions vs Mood states
○ Emotion: direct link with specific event / situation / memory
○ Mood state: not linked to specific situation, cause unclear, longer duration, lower
intensity
Emotional socialization/ How do children learn about emotions?
● Sources of information teach children about emotions: Self-observation, Other-observation,
(verbal) passing on
● Deaf children have difficulties distinguishing emotions from young age → Verbal passing on is
essential for interpretation of facial emotion expression → Social context is needed for reading
faces
● Children with communication problems have problems labelling emotions at a young age
● Emotional Intelligence
○ Emotion recognition
○ Emotion awareness
○ Regulation emotions (coping)
○ Others’ emotions empathy
○ Emotion vocabulary
○ Moral emotions
Emotion by Klaus R. Scherer
● Key concepts: - Facial feedback hypothesis - Feeling - Mood - Proprioceptive feedback - Social
constructivism - Sympathetic arousal - Universality
● Emotional contagion (LeBon) in large crowds used to explain mass/irrational behavior (most
infectious are yawning and laughter)
,What is emotion?
What is the fundamental tenet of the James-Lange theory of emotion?
How can emotion be denied in a fashion that is useful for social-psychological research?
● James-Lange Theory (peripheral position (focus on peripheral - autonomic and somatic NS
rather than central NS))
○ Emotion is elicited by a person’s awareness of bodily
changes and the consequent interpretation of the event in
terms of emotions
○ Emotion = feelings
■ Feeling: earlier used synonymously with emotion.
Today is restricted to components of subjective experience of emotional arousal,
often conscious and verbalizabe by using emotion words/expressions.
● Emotion as a social-psychological construct
○ Affect: often used synonymously with emotion. SOme social psychologists restrict the
use to the valence aspect, pleasant vs unpleasant, pos vs neg, of feelings
○ Emotion is a hypothetical construct which is not directly observable but which is inferred
from a number of indices and their interaction. Today emotion ≠ feeling. Feeling = one
of several components of the total emotion construct
○ Emotion components:
1. Subjective feeling
2. Neurophysiological response patterns (central and autonomous NS)
3. Cognitive processing
4. Motor expression (muscular actions in the face, the vocal organs, the hands and
the skeletal musculature that are linked to the internal states of the organism.
Communication purposes.)
5. Action tendency (Urge to act. NOT overt instrumental behavior → actual action
are not components of emotion but rather behavioral consequences of behavior)
○ Emotional reaction triad (social psychologists): Emotion’s three response components
1. Physiological arousal
2. Motore expression
3. Subjective feeling
● Crisis response: all bodily and mental systems are being coordinated and synchronized to
deal with a possible emergency situation
● If emotion is defined as an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in the emotion
components, the sequence problem becomes an issue concerning the dynamic
interrelationship between the components in an emotion episode.
Why do we have emotions?
, ● Emotion as a social signalling system
○ Emotion signals particular action tendency which can determine the interaction process
e.g. a mugger reacts different to fear compared to anger
● Emotion affords behavioral flexibility
Decoupling of instinctive stimulus-response contingencies:
○ In S-R (stimulus-response) chains, a response is directly coupled/linked to the eliciting
stimulus BUT emotions decouple stimulus and response (separate event and reaction by
replacing the automatism of instinctive reaction with preparation for reaction alternatives)
→ more flexible, greater choice in its behavioral reactions
■ e.g. mugger opposes a karate champion. S-R response: directly attacking the
mugger. With emotional anger, you will get angry; activation of autonomous NS;
anger decouples stimulus and response, thus you don’t attack immediately.
Latency time that intervenes between emotion elicitation and actual behaviors
allows further evaluation ot the situation e.g. success likelihood/ seriousness of
consequences of an action
○ Preparation and immediate reaction in case of emergency
● Information processing
○ Consists of ‘hot cognition’: emotional reactions to sort relevant from irrelevant info
○ Valence important for turning old cognitions into hot ones
○ Many criteria for stimulus evaluation are acquired during socialization (needs,
preferences, goals, values)
● Regulation and control (Feeling)
○ Feeling = monitoring function, reflection of everything that goes on in the process of
synchronization of different organismic subsystems in an emotional episode →
integration and reflection of situation appraisal, bodily changes action tendency,
expressive signals
○ Feeling is rather a consequence than a cause of emotions
○ No simple causal chains rather complex dynamic network of interrelationships among
different components
How are emotions elicited and differentiated?
● Philosophical notions: Definitions of different kinds of emotions in terms of significance of the
event/action to the person (needs, goals, values)
● Schachter-Singer theory of emotion (Cognitive theory of emotions)
How is the Schachter-Singer theory different from other peripheral theories?
Why has this non-trivial theory lost its appeal for social psychology?
○ Contrary to James, Schachter suggested that the perception of heightened non-specific
arousal (sympathetic activation) is sufficient to elicit emotion = feeling
○ Differentiation of emotions: a ‘steering function’ of cognitions arising from the situation
as interpreted based on past experiences
○ 2 factors for election and differentiation of emotions
1. Perception of heightened sympathetic arousal
2. Cognitions concerning the interpretation of the situation based on
past experiences
