THEORIES OF EMOTION
Overview of Topics
Lesson Objectives
General Problems
Early Theories
Related Research
Emotion vs. Sensation
Revised Theory
Emotion & Attention
Emotional Behavior
Emotional Disorders
Lesson Objectives
- Discuss Schacter & Singer's theory of emotion.
- Explain how emotion is a crucial mechanism for survival.
- Explain the relationship of emotion and attention.
- Describe the differential effects of RF vs. PH lesions and discuss the implications regarding emotional behavior.
- Describe the similarities and differences between James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, & Shacter & Singer's theories of emotion.
- Explain what P.T. Young meant by three properties of stimuli.
- Describe the role of the posterior hypothalamus in emotion.
General Problems with Theories
- The term "emotion" refers to behavior and feelings.
- Feelings are subjective and difficult to measure empirically.
- Components of same behavior taken as an indicant of emotion seen in non-emotional context.
Early Theories of Emotion
James-Lange Theory
- James proposed that bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.
- Lange's modification indicated that vasomotor changes are the emotions
- Both viewed emotion as the perception of a response by the nervous system.
- Both suggest that the underlying processes perceived as emotions are autonomic.
Cannon-Bard Theory
Objections to James-Lange
- Isolating the viscera does not impair emotion
- Viscera respond to many non-emotional states (digestion)
- Viscera are insensitive, slow to respond
Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) activity - regarded as preparatory for struggle
- Epinephrine cooperates with the SNS to:
- Free glycogen from liver for muscles.
- Aid in converting lactic acid to glucose by increasing respiration.
- Redistribute blood to needed areas.
Cannon-Bard Thalamic Theory
- Viewed emotions as the result of concurrent brain stem & cortical events
- Cortex inhibits thalamus
- Emotion-producing stimuli remove inhibition
- Impulses released to ANS result in emotional behavior
Lindsley's Arousal Theory
- Both visceral and somatic impulses converge on the reticular formation
- Impulses integrated and projected to the hypothalamus
- SNS activity
- Also operate through diffuse thalamic projection system on cortex
- Emotion falls on arousal continuum
Schacter and Singer's Theory
- Emotional feelings and behavior are the products of information from 2 systems
- Internal state - hypothalamus and limbic system
- External environment (context in which the internal state occurs)
- Humans given adrenaline may report that they feel or behave as if they are more hostile or elated (depending upon the environment stimuli)
- Effects of adrenaline on 3 groups: informed, uninformed, misinformed
- Informed group did not change significantly in hostile or pleasant environment
- Other two groups did change.
Conclusion:
Complexity of emotionality is due to the fact that many different environmental stimuli may be influencing the behavior.
Related Research
Routtenberg (1968) 2-arousal systems:
- Reticular formation - cortical desynchronization; provides organization of cortex for response.
- Limbic system - provides control of response through incentive-related stimuli.
Kawamura, Nakamura, & Tokizane (1961).
- Lesions between reticular formation and DTPS abolish cortical desynchronization but leave limbic system responsive.
- Lesions in posterior thalamus don't influence cortical desynchronization but abolish the limbic system's response to stimuli.
- The limbic system and cortical systems are separate systems that interconnect at brainstem level.
Emotion Vs Sensation
P.T. Young states that
stimuli have 3 properties:
- Sensory - cortex
- Activating - reticular formation
- Hedonic - limbic system (positive or negative reinforcing stimuli)
- Primary - certain stimuli (e.g., pain) produce avoidance behaviors which are negatively reinforcing.
- Other stimuli remove aversive stimuli and produce approach behavior (negative reinforcement).
- Many of the stimuli to which we respond have acquired positively or negatively reinforcing properties by virtue of the fact that they have been paired with primary reinforcing stimuli.
Revised Theory of Emotion
Emotion serves two functions:
- Bring autonomic nervous system into play (SNS) to prepare the organism to cope with a threatening object or situation.
- This SNS activity, beyond certain limits, is aversive; therefore, its presence "motivates" an organism to make a response to decrease it.
- Emotion is a crucial mechanism for survival: If prepared to cope with stimuli and respond, are more likely to survive and reproduce.
- An emotional response is an adaptive response to stimuli in the environment.
- Emotional responses only begin to be maladaptive when the environment becomes very complex (e.g. man).
Emotion and Attention
Stimuli reach all levels of the nervous system, including the cortex, regardless of the state of organism (from sleep to wakefulness).
There are some stimuli which reach cortex and can't be interpreted.
- When incongruent, novel, or partial information is coded, the following result is produced:
- Cortex feeds back to reticular formation, increasing cortical desynchronization
- This information is transferred from the cortex - RF - to the posterior hypothalamus and activates the limbic system
- The limbic system activates the SNS & produces emotional behavior.
- Connection between the limbic system and the cortex is crucial for conditioning.
Emotional Behavior
Emotional behavior refers to the response of the SNS and the overt behavioral response occurring because of these stimuli.
Both the
sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and overt behavioral responses generally occur in response to some stimulus (external or internal)
- External - any environmental stimulus
- Internal - stimulus resulting from changes within an organism (food deficit)
- Emotional behavior is a response to internal stimuli (SNS and limbic system activity) and external stimuli (Schacter and Singer).
The complexity encountered in the study of emotional behavior is due solely to the infinite number of environmental stimuli which may be involved.
Emotional Disorders
Neuroses result from the inability of the organism to suppress Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) activity.
Can be accomplished by:
- Drugs to reduce SNS, ascending reticular influence and behavioral arousal
- Conditioning (changing the perception of environmental stimuli)
- Removing subject from environment producing this behavior
- Psychoses - probably, in part, due to biochemical disturbance and conditioning.
Terms to Know
| Epinephrine |
SNS |
Lindsley's arousal theory |
| James-Lange Theory |
P.T.Young |
Schacter and Singer Theory |
| Cannon-Bard Theory |
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