What's Emotion
How culturally universal are emotional traits e.g. N/NE and E/PE?
The structure of the Big 5 is relatively similar, but not exactly the same, across human nations, languages, and cultures
Through his work with the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, Ekman taught us that the rules for signaling and decoding emotions are ___ .
universal and innate
What sorts of outcomes are strongly predicted by trait-like individual differences in T&P? Name one.
-Academic performance (above & beyond IQ)
-Marital stability & satisfaction
-Mental & physical health and wellbeing (morbidity)
-Death (mortality)
Which technique could one use to rigorously measure the expressive muscles of the face?
Facial Action Coding System (F.A.C.S.) or facial electromyography (EMG) ... and *maybe* computer vision programs
Is the brain ever really at rest? Briefly explain your answer.
No, although it only comprises ~2% of the adult body mass, the brain consumes ~20% of the body's oxygen and glucose at rest. Importantly, this consumption is only modestly altered when subjects are actively engaged in performing mental tasks.
Briefly describe William James’ perspective on the connection between physiological arousal (e.g., heart racing) and conscious emotional feelings
(Hint: Which response does he think results in the other?)
This quote sums up his view:
"The mental aspect of emotion…is a slave to its physiology, not vice versa: We do not tremble because we feel afraid; we feel afraid because we tremble."
(Bodily/Somatic Arousal -> Feelings)
“there [is -or isn't] a one-to-one correspondence between a specific set of facial muscle actions or vocal cues and any and every experience of emotion”
— Keltner & Cordaro
isn't
facial expressions are weakly and noisily related to the inner experience of emotion; show relatively low sensitivity and specificity
Are particular traits (e.g., N/NE) adaptive or maladaptive? Briefly explain your answer.
Can be both - for example, in some environments (e.g. genuinely dangerous contexts), N/NE is likely to be protective and keep the individual safe from danger. The key thing is the fit between the trait and the environment.
What is the value of computing a correlation using 20,000 (Swedish) observations, rather than 25?
more
- power to detect modest associations
- precision ... leading to a more stable and reproducible literature
"Resting" amygdala activity predicts individual differences in N/NE and trait anxiety in monkeys and _____, consistent with ________ [which model]
- humans
- tonic/endogenous model
According to LeDoux, only ____ would be regarded as 'emotions.' Bonus: *Why* does he insist on this?
- Conscious feelings
- Because in everyday language emotions = feelings
- We cannot measure feelings directly in animals
- We want to avoid fooling ourselves, funders, and the public
According to the latest and greatest meta-analysis, do patterns of bodily arousal clearly map onto specific emotions (physiological fingerprints)?
No!
How do individuals with high N/NE react to threat compared to individuals with low N/NE? Bonus: How are their brains different "at rest"?
-Show elevated reactions to threat (bigger peak, slower recovery)
-Show chronically elevated metabolism in regions of the brain that help to orchestrate states of anxiety and arousal
What is one of the main advantages of a longitudinal study design (e.g., the Dunedin study)? Bonus: Downsides?
Provide compelling evidence that antecedents in childhood predict consequences in adulthood, a precondition for establishing causation
Downsides - cost, complexity, possibility of differential attrition (e.g. all of the low C/SC Ss drop-out)
What is regular old conventional fMRI (BOLD signal) good for?
Assessing transient differences in evoked activity, because it's measured in arbitrary units that vary from subject to subject
The work of Darwin, Cannon, Ekman and many others ultimately led to a ‘modal’ or ‘generic’ model of emotion. Describe the modal sequence.
Stimulus --> Brain Appraises Stimulus --> Brain Orchestrates a Whole Constellation of Emotional Responses
- Expressions
- Local Context (e.g. opportunity for escape, degree of hunger, culture, etc.)
Name a key piece of evidence supporting the phasic/interactive/gas-matches-fire model of traits and states.
Dr. Pessoa wants to understand the neurobiology of E/PE. He forms groups of High-E/PE and Low-E/PE individuals. Which brain imaging technique should she use if she wants to assess group differences in amygdala activity ‘at rest,’ in the absence of any particular task or experimental challenge?
Arterial spin labeling (ASL)/perfusion fMRI or FDG-PET
Drew Fox et. al. showed that amygdala metabolism in monkeys predicts individual differences in anxious temperament when it was collected in what contexts? Consistent with which model?
Both stressful (alone in the novel testing cage, human intruder) and secure (home cage alone, home cage with usual cagemate) contexts, suggesting that amygdala metabolism reflects a stable, trait-like feature of brain function that is evident even in the absence of “trait-relevant” challenges...consistent w/ Watson & Clark's tonic/endogenous model
Shackman says there are 9 things that emotion researchers tend to agree on. Name at least 2...
1.Emotions are a central feature of human experience and psychiatric illness
2.Valence (pleasure/displeasure) and Salience* are key features
3.Emotions have a dimensional quality, they can be stronger or weaker
4.Emotions are more persistent and flexible than reflexes (not 1-to-1 with behavior)
5.Emotions are functional, and probabilistically enhance reproductive fitness, even if specific instances are maladaptive
6.Emotion-eliciting stimuli trigger a sequence of events; the brain is a necessary intermediary between emotional triggers and responses; some parts of the brain are more involved in particular emotions than others; there is not a 1-to-1 relationship between brain regions and emotions
7.Key response channels include conscious experience (feelings), peripheral physiology, and overt behavior; and these response systems are only weakly correlated
8.Particular ‘basic’ or ‘discrete’ emotions (e.g. fear) encompass multiple subtypes/varieties, families, or dimensions
9. Aspects of emotion can be studied in nonhuman animals
Name any 1 problem with Ekman's Basic Emotion Theory identified by Alan Fridlund and Jim Russell
- too vague for generative, reproducible science
- empirical disconfirmation (e.g. facial expressions weakly related to feelings)
- no exclusionary criteria; does not specify what's NOT an emotion
- Ekman's 11 characteristics exclude some emotions (e.g. anxiety not necessarily quick) and seem to include some non-emotions (e.g. angina/chest pain)
- The situation is even worse, because Ekman said the characteristics are optional
What is the key finding (that should make us hopeful!) from the Roberts et al., 2017 meta-analysis that examined psychosocial and pharmacological treatments for pathological anxiety and depression?
(Hint: Think of the Big 5)
Key finding: these treatments decrease N/NE, reminding us that emotional traits are not immutable and raising the possibility of developing new intervention strategies aimed at preventing the adverse consequences of high N/NE.
Samiha is an expert psychometrician. A colleague asks her for some advice about the best way to assess the test-retest stability of another experimental survey, this time focused on quantifying trait-like individual differences in C/SC in children. Which statistical test should Samiha recommend?
Test-retest correlation/ICC
Deshawn is a professor at Yale. Using fMRI, he finds that children with high levels of behavioral inhibition show significantly increased activation in the amygdala when viewing angry faces. Looking at the blob of red voxels sitting squarely in the middle of the amygdala, he excitedly imagines herself presenting the results at an upcoming scientific meeting. He asks you for advice about the most appropriate claim for his Conclusions slide - he wants to make *causal* claims. What might you tell him?
While intriguing, these results are correlational, so he should avoid causal claims. As such, the results suggest a hypothesis that could and probably should be tested in a mechanistic follow-up study.