Learning Outcome: To what extent do cognitive and biological factors interact in emotion?

Transcription

1 Learning Outcome: To what extent do cognitive and biological factors interact in emotion? Schachter & Singer 1962: Two Factor Theory Aim: to challenge several theories of emotion and test the two factor theory of emotion There have been lots of debate regarding the origin of emotion, mostly centered around the two theories: 1. The brain automatically initiated the fight or flight response by releasing adrenaline, and the emotion of fear was a consequence of the increase in adrenaline 2. The emotional state and release of adrenaline were indepdendent of each other, both caused by the brain at approximately the same time. Adrenaline: - Released from the adrenal medulla of the adrenal gland and increases alertness - When this hormone is secreted, there is either a fight or flight response - Prepares body for action to help the organism deal (fight) with it, or run away (flight) Two Factor Theory: While adrenaline was able to cause emotion, the nature of emotion is dependent on cognitive process of two contextual factors: Factor 1: biological arousal processing Factor 2: cognitive Procedure: Sample: 184 male participants (self-selected sample) Research method: Divided participants into 4 groups Volunteers received a vitamin injection and they were informed that they would be participating in vision experiments None of the participants received the injection they believed they were getting (3 groups received injection of adrenaline and 1 group received a placebo injection of saline solution) 3 groups injected with adrenaline were given different types of information about possible side-effects

2 First group: told they ll experience increased heart rate and shaky hands (actual effects) Second group: not given any information about side-effects Third group: told that some people will experience headaches and numbness or itchiness Participants were put in 1 of 2 contexts Euphoria: confederate encouraged the participant to join in games with office equipment in a waiting room Anger: confederate filled out a mock questionnaire and getting increasingly outraged by the increasingly personal nature of the questions Researchers used observation to assess the participants Participants in each condition were then asked to complete a self-report form that assessed their mood in terms of anger and happiness when they finished Results: Euphoria: group that received adrenaline injection without correct information showed more euphoric behaviors and reported more happiness Anger: did not elicit the corresponding pattern of reporting (might have been a result of discomfort in reporting anger compared to happiness) - Researchers relied on behavioural data instead, which showed that participants without correct information performed more of the angry behaviours Conclusion: emotion occurs by a process of cognitive labelling: the interpretation of physiological cues is combined with contextual cues to construct a person s subjective experience of emotion The same arousal state (produced by adrenaline injection) could be experienced as either of two emotions, depending on how participants interpreted and labelled their arousal state Discussion: Analysis of results are extremely reductionistic - Associates adrenaline with complex behaviour Gender analysis - All participants were male - Cultural backgrounds weren t provided

3 Ethical Consideration - Participants were debriefed about receving a vitamin injection but were then lied to about the side effects Strengths Control group was included (saline solution) 2 contexts were tested Behavioural data was collected - came to use in Anger situation Study helped to draw attention to cognitive component of emotional states (Reisenzein 1983) Limitations No ecological validity High artificiality Replication failures (Mezzacappa et al. 1999) Observations - subjective Only males - can t be generalized to women Results of Euphoria condition were collected from self reports Adrenaline may not actually be benign

4 Speisman et Al. 1964: Appraisal Theory Aim: Investigate the extent in which manipulation of cognitive appraisal influence emotion experience Hypothesis: Participants emotional reactions will differ in the different stimulus. Null Hypothesis: Participants emotional reactions will not differ Research Method: Lab experiment Independent Variable: Soundtrack accompanying the film Dependent Variable: The emotional reaction of the participants. (heart beat and questionnaire responses) Participants: 2 subject populations used One consisted of 42 middle-level airline executives One consisted of 56 undergraduate psychology students. Random sampling Procedure: Participants showed film call sub-incision of genital surgery for young adolescent boys in primitive society. 4 stimuli where film was shown with different soundtracks Control Group: no sound Trauma: pain was emphasized in the soundtrack Denial: participants were shown as happy to have the surgery Intellectualization: the soundtrack gave an objective anthropological viewpoint of the surgery (scientific explanation of the ritual) Half (21) of airline participants were shown denial soundtrack Other half shown intellectualization soundtrack 56 students split into 4 groups of 14 Each group shown each of the sound tracks and the silent Measurements: Heart rate of participants during the viewing of the film Galvanic skin response of the participants during the film (measures change in the electrical resistance of the skin caused by emotional stress, measurable with a sensitive galvanometer)

5 Questionnaires that evaluated participants feelings of stress immediately after film was shown. Results: Participants who heard trauma soundtrack reacted with more emotions related to stress than the control group. Heart rates of the participants in trauma group were high and participants answere questionnaires emotionally compare to control. Participants in denial and intellectualization groups had a lower heart rate than control and reacted with less stress. Conclusion: Participants respond more emotionally to trauma condition suggesting it is the individual s interpretation of the event (subject in video acting in pain or happy) that affect the emotional stress rather than the event itself. Therefore, it can be concluded that manipulating an individual's cognitive appraisal can have a significant impact on physiological stress reactions. Potential Confounding Variables: Demand characteristics in questionnaire The degree of comfort towards the graphics presented in the film Extraneous Variables: Whether the participants were paying attention to the film Controls: Number of participants in each stimulus Video Soundtrack for each stimulus Method of conducting experiment Blind technique: Single blind Cultural influences: US Influence of gender: Both genders Strengths Controls are easier to control in laboratory Random sampling: provides best chance of unbiased representative sample of a target population Replicable No room for researcher bias when analyzing quantitative data Limitations No ecological validity Artificial Demand characteristics in questionnaire Self-reporting data Generalization cannot be done cross-culturally Use of questionnaires don t allow researchers to clarify any answers

6 Ethics: Deception was present, put participants in an uncomfortable situation. However, experiment was don in a time period where many un-ethical studies were conducted (Milgram, Zimbardo and Bandura) LeDoux 1999: Theory of the Emotional Brain Humans emotional reactions are flexible due to evolution. Emotional Feeling: a conscious experience of the emotion which helps to evaluate the level of danger before a response Short Route: - amygdala reacts immediately to sensory input and activates response systems (physiological stress response of fight or flight ) - Useful in case of immediate danger Long Route: sensory input goes via the sensory cortex to the hippocampus

7 - route involves evaluation of the stimulus and consideration of an appropriate response - can be linked to the concept of cognitive appraisal by Lazarus 1975 Aim : To find the neurobiology of fear Hypothesis : The brain reacts to the noise before a shock, triggering a fear response Procedure : Ledoux mostly worked with rats in this study, it was an experiment which conditioned the rats in the experiment to fear a bell sound as a shock followed it soon after. The conditioning resulted so that the had a physical fear response as it activated the autonomic nervous system, which controls the heart rate and blood pressure, as well as the sensory motor system. After which, small lesioning were made in the brain to find if any physical damage could affect the conditioning given to the rats. Results: Ledoux found that with the cuts to the auditory cortex there was no change as the rats still feared the sound. Lesions to the auditory thalamus made it so the rats were not susceptible to fear conditioning. But the most fascinating finding was that when lesions were made to the amygdala, it wiped out fear in the rats- specific studies even showed that lesioning certain sites could result in very specific symptoms to be lost such as blood pressure for one and heart rate for the other. Ledoux and his team found that signals from the auditory thalamus are fast but give crude and general information while signals from the auditory cortex are slower but record more details. Conclusion: Overall, although the study gives us fascinating findings since it was done on rats, the study cannot be generalized to humans. Application: Ledoux s study gives us a lot of information regarding the physical location of fear and how it could be manipulated- this information could lead us to have a better understanding of phobias, panic attacks, PTSD and many other fear related ailments.