¡Descarga Understanding Emotions: Definition, Components, and Neuroscience - Prof. Aguado Aguilar y más Apuntes en PDF de Emoción en Psicología solo en Docsity! UNIT 1: Introduction to the study of emotion Feelings (emotions) are conscious. Different emotions have different elicitors and different physiological responses. • What is an emotion? William James, 1884: I should say first of all that the only emotions I propose expressly to consider here are those that have a distinct bodily expression. The bodily disturbances are said to be the "manifestation" of these several emotions, their "expression" or "natural language"; and these emotions themselves, being so strongly characterized both from within and without, may be called the standard emotions. DeGelder’s paper: Everyday explanations of behavior that one way or another appeal to emotions are ubiquitous and there appear almost always to be three components to them. • First, there is a reference to some significant event in the environment or in the person (a source of danger in the environment or the sight of an angry person). • The second component refers to the effects in the mind, brain, and body of the person to whom we attribute an emotion or who attributes an emotion to himself. • The third component consists in reference to the goal of the events. This involves typically a statement of what is good or bad for the organism, how the events that trigger emotions appear to contribute significantly, positively, or negatively, to somebody’s overall life goals. Interior responses to external things, feelings. There are two dimensions of emotions, “arousal” (or intensity) and “valence” (positive or negative, pleasing or unpleasant) Affective valence: emotional states have valence; we feel them as good or bad. Researchers usually divide emotions into primary and secondary emotions. Basic emotions are universal and innate; they are shared by everyone. There are six basic emotions, which are happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. Some species may not have the same emotions as us, but some aspects of them. 1. Why motivation and emotion? Why is emotion important? • Emotion and clinical psychology → Anxiety disorders: phobias, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic/ agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) *classically obsessive compulsive disorder OCD was included in anxiety disorder but now it is usually classified as a category its own → Mood disorders: depression, bipolar disorder. The two approaches to treat anxiety and mood disorders are drugs and psychological therapy, the most popular is cognitive-behavioral therapy. → Stress and physical health • Emotion and development → Social and emotional development → Developmental disorders (Autism Spectrum Disorders, ASD): disorders that appear during early development and may delay or alter normal development. There are many types of autism, for example Asperger’s Syndrome. One of the aspects in which autistic people have problems is empathy. • Emotion and society → Emotion, social cognition and empathy → Emotions as “social glue”: most people have biological need to belong to a human group (religious, fan group, etc.) *Coping behavior: behaviors that you use to face environmental demands. 2. The cognitive neuroscience approach 1. Levels of analysis Stimulus: someone is looking at you with a disgusted face • 1st level of analysis: Behavioral and physiological reactions – Blushing, sweating – Coping behavior, physiological activation – Motor behavior – Bodily reactions • 2nd level of analysis: Cognition – Conscious appraisal (analyzing), “I must have done something wrong, she doesn't like me” – Conscious appraisals – Unconscious biases – Subjective experience • 3rd level of analysis: Brain Processes – Activity in brain system, Increased activity in visual areas; increased activity in emotion-related areas like amygdala (threat), insular cortex (disgust) and limbic system. – Brain systems (e.g. amygdala, insular cortex) – Cellular level (e.g. neurotransmission) – Molecular and genetic levels (e.g. receptor interactions, genes coding for receptors) 2. What is cognitive neuroscience? • Cognitive neuroscience studies the cognitive and neural basis for mental functions such as perception, action, language, attention, memory, emotion… What happens in the brain while you try to make a decision. • Methodology – Behavioral measures – Physiological changes – Cognitive paradigms (e.g., stroop task, priming, learning paradigms, psychophysics...) different procedures aimed to measure mental functions. – Neuroimaging techniques: they all depend on resolution. → fMRI – functional magnetic resonance images: precise information about location but it is too slow (good in terms of location resolution but bad in
