Chapter Outline

Chapter Outline

Introduction

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  Emotions include three components
  
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  Associated with distinct subjective feelings or affects
  
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  Accompanied by bodily changes, mostly in the nervous system
  
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  Accompanied by distinct action tendencies, or increases in probabilities of certain behaviors
  

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  People differ in emotional reactions, even to the same event, so emotions are useful in making distinctions between persons
  

Issues in Emotion Research

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  Emotional states: Transitory, depend more on the situation than on a specific person
  
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  Emotional traits: Pattern of emotional reactions that a person consistently experiences across a variety of life situations
  
  
  

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  Categorical approach
  
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  Focus on identifying a small number of primary and distinct emotions
  
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  Lack of consensus about regarding which emotions are primary
  
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  Lack of consensus is attributable to different criteria used for defining an emotion as primary
  

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  Dimensional approach
  
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  Based on empirical research rather than theoretical criteria
  
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  People rate themselves on a variety of emotions, then the researcher applies statistical techniques (mostly factor analysis) to identify dimensions underlying ratings
  
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  Consensus among researchers on two basic dimensions: Pleasant/Unpleasant and High Arousal/Low Arousal
  
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  Two-dimensional model suggests every emotion can be described as a combination of pleasantness/unpleasantness and arousal
  
  
  

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  Content refers to the specific kinds of emotions that a person experiences
  

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  Style refers to how emotions are experienced
  
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  Content and style have trait-like properties (stable over time and situations, meaningful for making distinctions between people)
  

Content of Emotional Life

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  Pleasant Emotions
  

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  Happiness and life satisfaction
  
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  Researchers have defined happiness in two complimentary ways
  
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  Judgment that life is satisfying
  
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  Predominance of positive relative to negative emotions
  

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  Self-report and non-self-report measures of happiness correlate with self-report scores on social desirability
  
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  Part of being happy is to have positive illusions about the self, an inflated view of the self as a good, able, desirable person
  

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  Survey measures of happiness and well-being predict other aspects of people’s lives we would expect to relate to being happy
  
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  Compared to unhappy people, happy people are less abusive, less hostile, report fewer diseases, are more helpful, creative, energetic, forgiving, and trusting
  
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  Thus, self-reports of happiness are valid and trustworthy
  

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  What we know about happy people
  
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  No sex difference in overall happiness, global well-being, life satisfaction, and across cultures and countries
  
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  No age differences in overall happiness, although circumstances that make people happy change with age
  
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  Ethnic group membership is unrelated to subjective well-being
  
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  National differences in subjective well-being
  
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  People in poorer countries are less happy
  
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  People in countries that provide citizens fewer civil and political rights are less happy
  
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  Differences in economic development of nations may be a key source of differences in happiness of countries
  

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  Personality and well-being
  

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  High extraversion and low neuroticism contribute more to happiness than gender, ethnicity, age, and all other demographic characteristics
  
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  Two different models of relationship between personality and well-being
  
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  Indirect model: Personality causes a person to create a certain lifestyle, and lifestyle causes emotional reactions
  

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  Direct model: Personality causes emotional reactions
  

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  Research by Larsen et al. to assess the direct model
  

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  Best predictor of responsiveness to positive mood induction is extraversion
  
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  Best predictor of responsiveness to negative mood induction is neuroticism
  
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  Thus, it is easy to put an extravert into a good mood and a high neuroticism person into a bad mood
  
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  Suggests personality had a direct effect on emotions
  

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  Unpleasant emotions
  

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  Anxiety, negative affectivity, or neuroticism
  
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  Person high on neuroticism is moody, touchy, irritable, anxious, unstable, pessimistic, and complaining
  

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  Eysenck’s biological theory
  
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  Neuroticism is due primarily to the tendency of the limbic system in the brain to become easily activated
  
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  Limbic system is responsible for emotion and for “fight-flight” reaction
  
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  No direct tests of this theory, but indirect evidence supports
  
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  Neuroticism is highly stable over time
  
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  Neuroticism is a major dimension of personality found with different data sources in different cultures and by different researchers
  
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  Neuroticisms shows moderate heritability
  

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  Cognitive theories
  
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  Neuroticism is caused by styles of information processing—preferential processing of negative (but not positive) information about the self (not about others)
  
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  Related explanation holds that high neuroticism people have richer networks of association surrounding memories of negative emotion—unpleasant material is more accessible
  
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  One type of unpleasant information is poor health—link between neuroticism and self-reported health complaints
  
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  Major diseases categories are not related to neuroticism
  
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  But neuroticism is related to diminished immune functioning during stress
  

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  Matthews’ attentional theory that high neuroticism people pay
  

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  Depression and melancholia
  
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  Diathesis-stress model: Stressful life event triggers depression among those with pre-existing vulnerability, or diathesis
  
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  Beck’s cognitive theory: Certain cognitive style is a pre-existing condition that makes people vulnerable to depression
  
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  Vulnerability lies in the particular cognitive schema, a way of looking at the world
  
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  Three areas of life most influenced by depressive cognitive schema—Cognitive triad: Information about self, world, future
  

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  Explanatory style
  
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  Depressed people maintain an internal, stable, and global explanatory style—pessimistic explanatory style
  

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  Anger-proneness and potential for hostility
  
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  Type A personality and heart disease
  
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  Type A personality: Syndrome or a cluster of traits, including achievement strivings, impatience, competitiveness, hostility
  
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  Research identified Type A personality as a predictor of heart disease
  
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  Research subsequently identified hostility as a trait of Type A most strongly related to heart disease
  
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  Hostility: Tendency to respond to everyday frustrations with anger and aggression, to become easily irritated, to feel frequent resentment, to act in a rude, critical, antagonistic, uncooperative manner in everyday interaction
  
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  Hostility in Big Five: Low agreeableness, high neuroticism
  
  
  

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  Emotional content refers to the “what” of person’s emotional life, whereas style refers to the “how” of an emotional life
  

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  Affect intensity as an emotional style
  

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  High affect intensity people experience emotions strongly and are emotionally reactive and variable
  
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  Low affect intensity people experience emotions only mildly and only gradual fluctuations and minor reactions
  
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  Assessing affect intensity and mood variability
  
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  In early studies, affect intensity was assessed using a daily experiential sampling technique
  
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  Affect Intensity Measure (AIM): Questionnaire measure that allows quick assessment of emotional style in terms of intensity
  

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  Research findings on affect intensity
  
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  High (relative to low) affect intensity people display greater mood variability or more frequent fluctuations in emotional life over time
  
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  Affect intensity relates to personality dimensions of high activity level, sociability, arousability, high extraversion, high neuroticism
  

Interaction of Content and Style in Emotional Life

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  Hedonic balance between positive and negative emotions represents the content of emotional life
  
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  Affect intensity represents the style of emotional life
  
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  Hedonic balance and affect intensity are unrelated to each other and interact to produce specific types of emotional lives that characterize different personalities
  
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  Positive hedonic balance, low affect intensity
  
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  Positive hedonic balance, high affect intensity
  
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  Negative hedonic balance, low affect intensity
  
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  Negative hedonic balance, high affect intensity
  

SUMMARY AND EVALUATION

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  Emotion states versus emotional traits
  
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  Emotional content versus emotional style
  
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  Content and style interact within persons to produce distinct varieties of emotional lives
  

KEY TERMS

Action Tendencies Prefrontal Cortex

Functional Analysis Depression

Emotional States Diathesis-Stress Model

Emotional Traits Cognitive Schema

Categorical Approach Cognitive Triad

Dimensional Approach Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Content Neurotransmitter Theory of Depression

Style Hostility

Happiness Type A Personality

Positive Illusions Syndrome

Mood Induction Affect Intensity

Neuroticism Low Affect Intensity

Limbic System Mood Variability