Last modified Oct 21, 2025

PSY 101       Class 24: Motivation III: Emotions

  

What is an "emotion"?

• It IS more than a "feeling" but somewhat difficult to define (see below)
  
• Contemporary psychologists say that emotions involve three aspects simultaneously/at the same time:
  
• a subjective conscious experience (thinking/cognition/feeling) along with
• some level of bodily arousal (a physiological component) as well as
  
• some characteristic overt behavior (the behavioral component, a "doing" something)

However, to be very blunt and upfront about it, psychology is still fighting over the concept of emotion. For example, as a recent paper argues, "“Well over a century [after William James’ 1884 essay posed the question “What is an emotion?], there remains no scientific consensus about how “emotion” should be defined or measured…” (Crivelli & Fridlund, 2019, p. 164), One estimate suggests that there may be over 90 different definitions of emotion (in English) proposed over the period from the 1880s to 1980s.

A. Cognitive Component

• Appraisal/evaluation
  
  
• What is the difference between bravery and prudence? Between admiration and jealousy?
  
• Situations change how we respond emotionally
  
• When you have an emotion, what is it like? To answer this you have to give a subjective personal report

• Affective Forecasting ("hedonic" forecasting): Predicting our emotions or how we will feel in response to some future event
  
  
• People are not very good at predicting how they will feel for future events whether these events are good or bad.
• There is a reasonable level of accuracy about whether their emotion will be good or bad (though this is not always true)
• People are very inaccurate in predicting the specific intensity and the length of their emotions in the future
• Dunn, Wilson, & Gilbert (2003) study of college student dormitory assignments (see figure on right) asked these students (1) to rate as desirable or undesirable various dormitories before they knew where they'd be assigned and (2) how happy they'd be if they were assigned to the dormitories on a scale of 1 to 7. A year later, students were asked to rate how happy they were in their dormitory on that same 1 to 7 scale.
• Students who had earlier judged a dormitory as undesirable and where they might be unhappy later rated themselves as much more happy than their earlier prediction.
• Why are we so inaccurate in our prediction of future emotions such as level and intensity of happiness?
• We underestimate our ability to adapt (rationalize, overlook failures, etc.).
  
• Past memories used to make predictions are often inaccurate or distorted
• Often people overlook aspects of themselves that will remain the same while overemphasized aspects of their lives that will change in the future.
  
• Excellent summary article in {Wikipedia}
  

• Autonomic Nervous System

• Sympathetic NS: Arousal => "fight or flight"
• Parasympathetic NS => relaxation & restoration ("rest and digest")
  

• Polygraph ("Lie Detectors") record fluctuations in body responses (blood pressure, heart rate, and galvanic skin response, i.e., electrical conductivity changes because of sweat glands increasing their activity).

• Though the "Lie Detector" was invented over 100 years ago (in 1915), research on its accuracy (validity) is both contradictory and quite limited.
  

• While there seems to be a fairly high rate of "true positive" identification of "guilty" individuals, there is also an unacceptably high level of "false positives" -- that is, actual innocent individuals who are labeled as guilty based on their polygraph responses.
  

• In courtrooms in the US, polygraph results are generally not admissible as evidence. However, in the Federal system and in some states, the judge has the discretion of allowing polygraph evidence. Lie detector evidence is NOT admissible in New York, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia under any circumstances. 
  

• Some US Federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA do use polygraphs in making decisions about hiring personnel.
  

• Neural Circuits

• Joseph LeDoux's work at NYU on fear/anxiety & the central role of the amygdala in signalling threat

• Sent out of the thalamus, there are two pathways which respond to visual and other stimuli: fast & slow
  
• Fast pathway sends sensory data directly to the amygdala and is an unconscious process.
  
• Slow pathway processes sensory data into images, sounds, etc. which we become conscious of.
  
• Hence, the amygdala does not itself cause us directly to experience fear or anxiety. Rather it signals that there is some sort of threat that we are facing. It will begin to mobilize the body to respond even before we have a conscious emotion. LeDoux argues that the fast pathway is kind of "defensive survival" circuit in the nervous system.

• LeDoux (2015) argues that the emotion of fear is not the same as the emotion of anxiety. Fear is an anticipation of danger from a threat that is physically present (e.g., a tiger is standing in front of you) while anxiety is an anticipation of an uncertain threat (e.g., outside your home there may be tiger or a bear roaming around; see Ahmari, 2015, p. 35).
  

   C. Behavioral Component

• When we experience an emotion, we either do something or, at least, have a tendency to do something.
• Facial and other body signals for emotions: smiles, frowns, shrugging shoulders, pursing the lips, etc.

1.  Facial Feedback Hypothesis

    

• Facial muscles send signals to the brain to label or identify the emotion we are experiencing
• The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial movement can influence emotional experience. For example, an individual who is forced to smile during a social event will actually come to find the event more of an enjoyable experience." {Wikipedia}
• Strack, Martin, & Stepper (1988) tested this hypothesis and found that individuals who were "smiling" by clenching a stick in their teeth found cartoons funnier than those who were holding the stick with their lips and "pouting."
• However, a recent (2016) replication study in The Netherlands with more than 1800 participants in 17 labs failed to find the effect (Wagenmakers et al., 2106).

2.  Botox (Botulinum toxin)

• Studies with Botox which temporarily paralyzes facial muscles find that there is a slightly decreased level of emotional processing as a result.
  

Are behavioral expressions of emotions innate?

• David Matsumoto (above) and Bob Willingham studied blind judo athletes at the 2004 Paralympic Games and compared photos of their reactions to the reactions of sighted athletes. They found identical behavioral responses to victory and defeat, e.g., raised arms, smiling, etc.

Culture and Emotion

Cross-Cultural Similarities

Are emotional expressions perceived the same way all over the world?

Paul Ekman (the model for the psychologist in the television program Lie To Me) used photographs of people's faces showing the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise to study this question. He argues that there are six universally recognized emotions conveyed by the face. This overall thesis is has been known as basic emotions theory (BET).

Evidence of agreement for this hypothesis has been found in both the industrialized world and less developed cultures (e.g., New Guinea) for the emotional meaning of facial expressions. Psychologists have also generally found similarity in physiological arousal associated with different emotions.

(Not in book:) HOWEVER,other personality psychologists such as Lisa Feldman Barrett (Northeastern University) argue that Ekman's hypothesis has not been confirmed on a world-wide basis. She and her colleagues have pointed out that in many studies of other cultures, the participants were shown the pictures of facial expressions and then asked to choose between two different emotion words as their responses. When research is conducted with participants choosing their own emotion words, there is far less agreement than Ekman found. Further, even Ekman's own data showed that people worldwide would correctly identify one of these two emotions when presented with a set of posed photographs about 58% of the time. This is certainly a rate above chance, but there is a significant margin of error (42%).

Feldman Barrett argues that emotions are constructed in the same way that we interpret all the other aspects of our experience. We'll come back to this below.

Cross-Cultural Differences

• Words. Some cultures have no words for certain Western emotions; for example,
  • Sadness: none in Tahiti
  • Depression: none among Yoruba (Nigeria)
  • Anxiety: none among Eskimos (Inuit people)
      
• Nonverbal Expression
  • While natural facial expression of emotion may be the same across cultures, some cultures have display rules, that is, standards for how and when external emotional expression may take place
  • Consider the Japanese norms that negative emotions are not expressed in public

Popular or "Commonsense"

We see an emotion-creating stimulus which leads to a feeling (like "fear") which leads to autonomic arousal of our bodies.

James-Lange Theory

We see an emotion-creating stimulus which leads to autonomic arousal of our bodies which leads to a feeling (like "fear")

Cannon-Bard Theory

We see an emotion-creating stimulus which is processed in our subcortical brain which leads simultaneously to both autonomic arousal of our bodies and the conscious experience of a feeling (like "fear")

Stanley Schachter's Two-Factor Theory

We see an emotion-creating stimulus which leads to autonomic arousal of our bodies which leads to a cognitive appraisal of the context which leads to labeling the arousal with the name of a feeling (like "fear")

Evolutionary Theories of Emotion

• Darwin believed that emotions as expressed facially & vocally had adaptive value, that is, they aided in an animal's survival. Consider these examples:
  
  
• fear communicates threat to the existence of the animal and the need to respond (by flight, fight, freezing, or submission)
  
• joy communicates a time of safety, relaxation, and a building of trust bonds with others
  
• disgust communicates that the object of disgust is dangerous.
  
• sadness communicates that something is wrong & needs to be addressed
  

Modern evolutionary theories (Silvan Tomkins, Carroll Izard, & Robert Plutchik)

• See emotions as mostly inborn or innate reactions or responses to stimuli

• Link expression of emotions to subcortical brain structures, particularly the amygdala of the limbic system

• Hold that there are a limited number of basic, primary, or fundamental emotions (with adaptive significance) that all human beings have across the world (they are universal).

• For example, Robert Plutchik's Basic Emotions: Trust, anger, anticipation, disgust, joy, fear, sadness, surprise
• Other emotions are either mixtures of the basic emotions or the basic emotions experienced at lower or higher levels of intensity
  

Evolutionary theories tend to agree that there are "appraisal" mechanisms. But claim that they come in two different types: (1) an automatic & in-built assessment mechanism which uses the minimal amount of data to draw a conclusion very quickly and (2) a more elaborated assessment system which builds on and may overturn the automatic assessment mechanism.

• When startled by a sudden onrush of stimulation, it is more adaptive to automatically assess that you are under threat and respond to that threat. If it turns out that the sudden onrush is no actual threat, the subsequent assessment can alter the emotion, e.g., from fear to happy surprise such as what happens in a successful "surprise" party.

Theory of Constructed Emotion (TCE: not in book)

• Lisa Feldman Barrett's Theory of Constructed Emotions argues that an emotion is ultimately the brain's best guess about how/what you should be feeling right now, at this moment. Notice that this is a theory which uses the notion that the brain is always predicting on the basis of both past and current experience. How does this happen?

• The brain monitors stimuli coming from the external world
  
  
• The brain monitors interoceptive stimuli, that is, the various internal states of the body (often tied to what the autonomic nervous system does)
  
  
• The brain contains a vast array of memories of past experiences (and attitudes!) and the results of how these experiences played out for good or bad.
  
  
• On the basis of all of these data points, the brain then predicts what is happening
  
  
• For Barrett, emotion is not a feeling, but actually a conceptual category that the brain uses to explain what is going on for the individual.

• Consider how this theory can be applied to understand real world incidents and experiences. Over the last few years, we have witnessed a wide range of new stories involving first responders (e.g., police officers or military personnel) in very highly charged interactions with the public as well as front-line medical workers who have had to confront the impact of the novel coronavirus.
  

• In the struggle to understand racially-involved incidents between the police (who may have used lethal force) and minority-group citizens, there are been very passionate but also conflicting emotions expressed.
  

• The appearance of the novel coronavirus in the late winter/early spring of 2020 confronted front-line medical personnel (doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, etc.)  with an often-fatal illness that they had not previously experienced in circumstances with limited protective gear and conflicting guidance from political and other officials.
  

How Happy Are People?

• On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 = "miserable" and 10 = "extremely happy"), how would you rate how you were feeling a few years ago when COVID-19/the pandemic started affecting our lives?
  

• On that same same of 1 to 10, how would you rate how you were feeling now?

• What about how people are feeling in the United States in general?

• What about how people are feeling in the United States according to different age? Here is the summary and the data from the 2024 World Happiness Report:
  
  
• “In many but not all regions, the young are happier than the old. But in North America happiness has fallen so sharply for the young that they are now less happy than the old.” (Helliwell et al., 2024, p. 5)
  
  
• Across 143 countries, people in the United States under the age of 30 ranked only in 62nd place (below the Dominican Republic and just a bit above Peru and Malaysia).
  
  
• However, people in the United States over the age of 60 ranked in 10th place (just below Canada and Australia and just above the United Arab Emirates and Luxembourg). (Data from 2021-2023; Helliwell et al., 2024).
  
  
• People overall were happiest in Lithuania and most unhappy in Afghanistan
  

What predicts subjective well-being or happiness?
Weak Predictors	Moderately Strong Predictors	Stronger Predictors
Money Wealth itself is associated with happiness, though only weakly Even with higher income, some are dissatisfied they can buy more = high levels of materialism Purchasing "experiences" (concerts, travel, etc.) is more rewarding than buying more goods Age Little differences over lifespan in average happiness (see exception above for North America) Parenthood Parents with children are about as happy as those without Intelligence & Attractiveness Even though these are valued in society, no relationship is found with happiness	Health There is a modest correlation between health status & happiness (r =-0.32) Many people with disabilities learn to cope and are reasonably happy Social Activity Larger friendship networks and satisfaction with social support are correlated with happiness Religious Belief People with stronger religious beliefs tend to be happier than those without Religious belief may give people a sense of purpose and meaning Community aspects of religion (e.g., parish or church involvement) are supportive	Relationship Satisfaction Being in love does bring happiness Married people are happier than those who are single Satisfaction lies in the quality of the relationship regardless of marital status Work Those who like their jobs tend to be happier than those who don't Often there is a satisfaction which comes with what happens at work Genetics & Personality Outlook on life seems to mold how happy people feel across the lifespan There appears to be a significant heritable component to happiness, e.g., extraverts tend to be happier than others (especially those who are energetic in their general life engagement)

Using data from the Gallup World Poll (2005-2015; 166 nations; 1.6 million respondents), Diener et al. (2018) looked at 32 different variables to determine the characteristics of extremely happy individuals ("the happiest people in the world"). They found that the happiest people (versus those with average happiness) across the globe...

1. lived in prosperous societies (and they themselves did not have low income or serious money problems)
   
   
2. experienced strong social support (e.g., being treated with respect; having social relationships via church and other groups)
   
   
3. did not have significant health problems or pain
   
   
4. on the previous day had felt rested, learned something, chose how to spend their time, and were proud of something

• Note that this study determined that there were no individual variable that necessarily led to high levels of happiness
  

• Those who lacked resources (health, income, and social support) tended to be unhappy.

• In light of these findings, we might ask about people living in the United States whether happiness may be undermined by

• Significant disparities of wealth (the US is a wealthy society, but the wealth is not equally shared)
• Significant disparities of access to health care (and the high number of those who experience chronic pain or addiction)
• The need to work more than a single job OR the loss of a job
  
• The dwindling levels of social support within society
  

Conclusions

• How you feel (subjective feeling) is more important than subjective realities

• Judgments of happiness are all relative: we tend to compare ourselves with others like us, not to those unlike ourselves

• People adapt to their circumstances, especially when facing setbacks and difficulties = hedonic adaptation

References

Ahmari, S. (2015, Aug 6). Inside the fear factor. Nature, 524, 34.

Crivelli, C.,& Fridlund, A.J. (2019) Inside-Out: From Basic Emotions Theory to the Behavioral Ecology View. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 43, 161–194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-019-00294-2

Diener, E., Seligman, M.E.P., Choi, H., & Oishi, S. (2018). Happiest people revisited. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 176-184. https://doi.org/10.1177/174569161769707

Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., Sachs, J. D., De Neve, J.-E., Aknin, L. B., & Wang, S. (Eds.). (2024). World Happiness Report 2024. University of Oxford: Wellbeing Research Centre. https://files.worldhappiness.report/WHR24.pdf

LeDoux, J. (2015). Anxious: Using the brain to understand and treat fear and anxiety. New York, NY: Viking.

Strack, F., Martin, L. L., & Stepper, S. (1988). Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 768-777. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.5.768

Wagenmakers, E.-J., Beek, T., Dijkhoff, L., & Gronau, Q. F., et al. (2016). Registered replication report: Strack, Martin, & Stepper (1988). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), 917-928. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691616674458

This page was originally posted on 10/21/03