Summary of the lectures of the course Cognition and Emotion, which is a part of the minor Genes, Cognition and Behaviour.
With this summary, a grade of 8.7 was obtained on the exam.
We study emotions because everyday situations are colored by them. Emotions are an
integral part of our lives, they shape our experiences of the world around us. They influence
memory, attention, decision-making, regulation of social behavior, communication, and
health. Emotions occur on different levels: facial expressions, bodily changes, feelings,
actions, and neural responses. We share the same emotions, but there are also individual
differences. Disorders of emotional processing exist, such as autism, phobias, and
psychopathy.
Emotion is a discrete and consistent response to an internal or an external event which has
a particular significance for the organism. The consistent response means that the emotions
manifests in a similar fashion every time, consistent response of the brain, autonomic NS,
and behavior. More properties of emotions:
- Brief
- Embodied: not something abstract, the process cannot exist without bodily
responses.
- Not susceptible to top-down control: if there is a bodily response it takes a while
for the body to calm down
- Not encapsulated: are not isolated from the rest of mental life, they penetrate
other psychological processes.
Mood is a diffuse affective state of often lower intensity than emotion, but considerably
longer in duration. A smeared-out version of an emotional response. Mood is a lot more
difficult to study, it is difficult to find a trigger and brain activity is more difficult to record.
Feelings are subjective representation of emotions. They can be put into words and we can
reflect on them. However, it can only be measured by subjective report.
Other aspects of affective life:
- Attitudes: relatively enduring, affectively colored beliefs, preferences and
predispositions towards objects and persons. Gives structure and organizes
behavior.
- Affective style: relatively enduring stable dispositions that bias an individual
toward perceiving and responding with a particular emotional quality, emotional
dimension, or mood. Three ways we regulate our emotional response: accept,
change, or suppress.
- Temperament: affective styles that are apparent early in life, maybe genetic.
,Theories of Cognition and Emotion 1
Historical background
Ancient Greeks
Separated reason from passion, thinking from feeling, cognition from emotion. In their view
emotions had a place but were viewed as a force opposing cognition, battling for control of
our mental life.
Metaphor in ancient Greece: chariot allegory. Allegory for psyche, 3 components:
- The director controlling the chariot: rational self; cognition, reason, intellect.
- Two horses: desire and spirit, representing our emotions. Dark horse: animal
instincts, white horse: honorable emotions.
Emotions are inferior to reason, however it is not always possible to take control with intellect
(Plato). We sometimes give in to certain emotions and passions. Aristotle also gave names
to the forces: contemplative, hedonistic and political.
Christian tradition
Opposition between cognition and emotion is also present. Emotions are sins/temptations
that you should resist using your intellect. Defines deadly sins (dark horse): pride, greed,
lust, envy, gluttony, wrath (anger), and sloth; and 7 virtues (white horse): prudence, justice,
temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity. We are driven by these motives, we cannot
always control them. So the Christians recognized that control over emotions is limited. This
had a big impact on our legal system: crimes of passion (person is not responsible for his
actions, not thinking clearly possessed by passion).
Descartes (1644)
Descartes was a dualist. Dualism separates mind and body (soul and brain). He suggested
that these are two sperate entities. Body is a machine, but the soul is immortal and can exist
outside of your body. In terms of emotions:
- Occurred not in the body but in the soul (mind)
- Tell us how events affect our thinking
- Are shaped by the way we appraise events, logic/intellect can also affect the way
we experience emotions
- Only conscious operations
Descartes error was that the body is critical for emotional processing, can’t separate it from
emotions.
Freud’s 3 component theory
No scientific method, more a philosophy. We have 3 components:
- ID: unconscious desires; we are not aware of them but have a powerful influence
on our behavior
- EGO: logical self, intellect, self-image
- SUPEREGO: moral and societal rules; determine how we interact with society
The case of Katharina was a famous case of Freud. She experienced panic attacks and they
found out the origin of her fear was a traumatic episode. After talking about the trauma,
Katharina’s condition improves. Freud said that when you become aware of your conflict that
it will help you overcome this and the bodily symptoms.
, Freuds view on emotions:
- Emotions are tied to bodily states.
- Emotions reveal unconscious thoughts and perceptions that are the reasons for
these bodily states, not always known what these reasons are.
- Emotions can precede conscious awareness of important facts.
- Humans can defend themselves against emotionally disturbing facts by
suppressing them, can have effect on your behavior.
- Emotional conflicts lead to psychological and physical ailments.
- Understanding triggers and making them conscious helps to alleviate symptoms.
This has been confirmed by recent research; suggests that people who can put
emotions into words have a better mental state. Alexithymia: when you have
trouble putting emotions into words, you have a hard time regulating them.
Darwin (1872)
Did observation studies trying to understand purpose and origin of emotions, trying to
answer two main questions:
- Are emotions universal? He observed a lot of different cultures and noticed that
emotional expressions seemed to be similar. Noticed that animals also seemed
to be exhibiting the same emotions.
- Are emotions useful? Emotions must have emerged sometime during evolution
and stayed, so must be useful.
To study this, he send questionnaires to missionaries in non-Christian cultures, made
photographs, and observed mental patients.
He observed that there is similarity in expression of emotions, this means the origin of
emotions are the same between humans and animals. Emotions according to Darwin are
evolutionary habits, reflex. Human emotions are vestigial, don’t play a significant role
anymore except for communication, but they don’t help to process a situation.
Darwin made a whole taxonomy on emotions, defined them on expression, (motor)
apparatus (how it was realized), and emotion.
James – Lange theory
There is a common way we think emotions arise: stimulus > feeling > response. However,
James and Lange suggested we switch response and feeling. They said that when there is a
trigger, we first have an automatic bodily response. The interpretation of the bodily response
leads to a certain emotion.
To elaborate: eliciting event > activation of ANS (bodily reaction) > can lead to expressive
behavior, cognitive appraisal, and subjective feeling state.
Criticism by Canon on James – Lange theory
Canon studied emergency responses (fight or flight). Explored ANS and suggested there is
no distinct signature for each emotion, bodily response is not specific enough. This means it
is impossible to read out from bodily state which emotion we are experiencing. Additionally,
the bodily response is too slow, ANS takes a long time for it to be activated and to calm
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