1. Nature of Emotion:
Five Perennial Questions
Chapter 11

2. FIVE QUESTIONS
1. What is an emotion?
2. What causes an emotion?
3. How many emotions are there?
4. What good are the emotions?
5. What is the difference between emotion and mood?

3. WHAT IS AN EMOTION?
Feelings Bodily Arousal
• Subjective Experience • Physiological Activation
• Phenomenological Awareness • Bodily Preparation for Action
• Cognition • Motor Responses
EMOTIO
N
Social-Expressive
Sense of Purpose
• Goal-Directed Motivational State Significant • Social Communication
Life Event • Facial Expression
• Functional Aspect
• Vocal Expression
Figure 11.1 Four Components of Emotion

4. Four Components of Sadness
Feelings Bodily Arousal
• Aversive
• Decreased heart rate
• Negative • Low energy level
• Feeling of distress
Sadnes
s
Sense of Purpose Separation from a Loved Social-Expressive
• Wanting to take action to One, Failure on an • Inner Eyebrows raised
overcome or reverse separation Important Task • Corners of lips lowered
or failure • Crying, trembling

5. Definition of Emotion
 Emotions are short lived, feeling-arousal-
purposive-expressive phenomena that help
is adapt to the opportunities and challenges
we face during important life events
 Different aspects of emotion complement
and coordinate with one another

6. Relationship Between Emotion and
Motivation

7. WHAT CAUSES AN EMOTION?
Cognitive
Processes Feelings
Significant
Situational Sense of Purpose
Event
Biological Bodily Arousal
Processes
Social-Expressive
Figure 11.3 Causes of the Emotion Experience

8. Two-Systems View
Parallel,
Interactive, &
Significant
Coordinated
Stimulus
Output to
Event
Activate and
Regulate
Emotion
Figure 11.4 Two-Systems View of Emotion

9. Chicken-and-Egg Problem
 Plutchik (1985)
• Cognition versus biology debate as a chicken-and-egg quandary.
• Emotion is a chain of events that aggregate into a complex feedback system.
Significant
Stimulus Emotion
Event
Figure 11.5 Feedback Loop in Emotion

10. How Many Emotions Are There?

11. Basic Emotions
Themes of Basic Emotions
Positive Emotions
Negative Emotions Motive
Treat and Harm Involvement and
Satisfaction

12. Fear
 Arises from a person’s interpretation that the
situation he or she faces is dangerous and a threat to
one’s well being
 Common fear activating situations are rooted in the
anticipation of physical or psychological harm, a
vulnerability to danger, or an expectation that one’s
coping abilities will not be sufficient
 Fear motivates defense
 Can provide motivational support for learning new
coping responses

13. Anger
 Belief that the situation is not what it should be
 Most passionate emotion
 Also most dangerous
 Angry person becomes stronger and more
energized
 Increases one’s sense of control, sensitivity,
and awareness of the injustices of what other
people do

14. Disgust
 Involves getting rid of or getting away from
a contaminated, deteriorated, or spoiled
object
 Function of disgust is rejection
 Plays a positive motivational role in our lives
 Ex. We engage in behaviors like washing the
dishes, brushing our teeth, taking showers,
and working out to avoid an out-of-shape or
“disgusting” body

15. Sadness
 Most negative, aversive emotion
 Arises principally from experiences of separation
or failure
 Motivates the individual to initiate whatever
behavior is necessary to alleviate the distress-
provoking circumstances before they occur again
 Ex. The rejected lover apologizes, sends flowers,
or telephones to repair the broken relationship
 Feels miserable but can motivate and maintain
productive behavior

16. Joy
 Desirable outcomes bring joy- success at a task,
personal achievement, progress toward a goal,
getting what we want, gaining respect, receiving
love or affection, receiving a pleasant surprise
 Opposite emotion of sadness
 Joy facilitates or willingness to engage in social
activities
 Joy has a “soothing function”
 Allows us to preserve psychological well-being

17. Interest
 Most prevalent emotion in day to
day functioning
 Some level of interest is ever-present
 Interest creates desire to explore,
investigate, seek out, manipulate,
and extract information from the
objects that surround us

18. What Good Are The Emotions?

19. Coping Functions
Table 11.1 Functional View of Emotional Behavior (Plutchik, 1980)
Emotion Stimulus Situation Emotional Behavior Function of Emotion
Fear Threat Running, flying away Protection
Anger Obstacle Biting, hitting Destruction
Joy Potential mate Courting, mating Reproduction
Sadness Loss of valued person Crying for help Reunion
Acceptance Group member Grooming, Sharing Affiliation
Disgust Gruesome object Vomiting, pursing away Rejection
Anticipation New territory Examining, mapping Exploration
Surprise Sudden novel object Stopping, alerting Orientation

20. Social Functions
Emotions
1. Communicate our feelings to others.
2. Influence how others interact with us.
3. Invite and facilitate social interaction.
4. Create, maintain, and dissolve relationships.

21. What Is Difference Between
Emotion And Mood?
Criteria
Antecedents
Action-
Specificity
Time course

22. Everyday Mood
Positive affect and Negative affect are independent ways of feeling.

23. Positive Affects
Everyday, low-level, general state of feeling good.

24. “The Emotions aren’t
Always immediately
Subject to reason,
but they are always
immediately subject
to action”
~ William James