PSYB30H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Hyperconnected Space, Trait Theory, Eudaimonia
Chapter 13: Emotion and Personality
• Emotions defined by 3 components
1) Emotions have distinct subjective feelings or affects, associated with them
2) The’e aopaied odil hages, ostl i the N“, hih podue hages i eathig, heat ate,
muscle tension, blood chemistry, facial and bodily expression
3) Accompanied by distinct action tendencies or increases in the probabilities of certain behaviours
• Ex. With fear, have subjective feelings of anxiety, confusion and panic. Changes in bodily functions include: increase
in heart rate, decreased blood flow to digestive system, increased blood flow to large muscles of legs and arms.
These changes prepare you for the activity or action tendency to flee or to fight
• Different people react differently in the same situation and understanding how and why people differ in their
emotional reaction is part of understanding personality
• Other theories of emotion explain the function of emotions such as generating short-term adaptive actions that help
us survive
• I his ook The Epessio of the Eotios i Ma ad Aials, Dai poposed functional analysis of emotions
and emotional expression → focused on whether emotion and expression increase fitness of individuals
o Evolution by natural selection also applied to emotions and their expressions
o Coluded that eotioal epessios ouiate ifoatio fo oe aial to aothe aout hat’s likel
to happen → many modern theorists accept this but most approach emotions with an interest in how and why
people differ from each other in terms of emotions
Issues in Emotion Research
Emotional States Vs. Emotional Traits
• Emotional states are transitory → they come and go, and they depend more on the situation a person is in than on
the specific person
o They have a specific cause, and that cause originates outside of the person (something happens in the
environment)
• Emotions can be thought of depositions or traits, people often characterized by stating what emotions they
frequently experience or express (ex. John is frequently angry and loses his temper)
o Eotioal taits ae osisteies i a peso’s eotioal life
o Emotional trait is a pattern of emotional reaction that a person consistently experiences across a variety of life
situations → this pattern of emotional experiences is stable over time and characteristic for each person (ex.
Mary is cheerful and enthusiastic, then expect her to be cheerful at home, school work, can expect she was
cheerful last year and most likely will also be next year)
Categorical Vs. Dimensional Approach to Emotion
o What is the best way to think about emotions?
1) Some suggest emotions are best thought of as a small number of primary and distinct emotions (anger, joy, anxiety)
=categorical approach
o Many terms describe different categories of emotions → similar to situation of starting off with thousands of
trait adjectives and search for fundamental factors that underlie those many variation
o Those who take this approach have tried to reduce complexity of emotions by searching for the primary
emotions that underlie the great variety of emotional terms
o Lack of consensus found in this area results from different criteria that researchers use for defining emotions as
primary
o Primary emotions are the irreducible set of emotions, combinations of which results in the huge variety of
experienced emotions
o One criteria for figuring out primary emotions requires that a primary emotion have a distinct facial expression
that is recognized across cultures
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• Ex. People blind from birth frown when sad and clench and bare teeth when angry and smile when happy.
Seems like these expressions are part of human nature
• Based o this, Eka’s list of pia eotios otais disgust, sadess, jo, supise, age ad fea
o Another criterion created by Izard is that the primary emotions are distinguished by their unique motivational
properties → emotions are understood to guide behaviours by motivating a person to take specific adaptive
actions
▪ Ex. Fear motivates person to avoid
danger
▪ Interest motivates person to learn
and acquire new skills
▪ Izards list includes: anger, contempt,
disgust, distress, fear, guilt, interest,
joy, shame and surprise
2) Most studies suggest that people categorize
emotions using two primary dimensions:
how pleasant or unpleasant the emotion is
and how high or low on arousal the emotion
is
o based on empirical research rather than theoretical
criteria: in dimensional approach, researchers gather
data by having subjects rate themselves on wide
variety of emotions, then apply statistical technique
(factor analysis) to identify the basic dimensions
underlying the ratings
o Thee’s eakale osesus aog eseahes o
the basic dimensions that underlie self-ratings of affect
o This model suggests that every feeling state can be
described as a combination of
pleasantness/unpleasantness and arousal
o Ex. Person can feel unpleasant in a very high arousal way (nervous, anxious, terrified) or in a low arousal way
(bored, fatigued, tired)
o Person can feel pleasant in high arousal way (excited, enthusiastic, elated) or in low arousal way (calm, relaxed)
o emotions that occur together, which are experienced as similar to each other, are understood as defining a
common dimension
o Ex. Emotions of distress, anxiety, annoyance and hostility are similar in experience and anchor one end of a
dimension of negative effect
o Dimensional approach refers more to how people experience their emotions than to how they think about their
emotions
o Suggests that what we experience are various degrees of pleasantness and arousal and that every emotion we
are capable of experiencing can be described as a combination of pleasantness and arousal
• Some prefer the categorical perceptive, find it useful to think about emotions as distinct categories rather than
dimensions → ex. Anger and anxiety are similar in terms of being high-arousal negative emotions but are associated
with different facial expressions, feelings and action tendencies
o Those who support this are interested in how people differ from each other in primary emotions (ex. Are there
individual or group differences in sadness, anxiety?)
• Others prefer to think about how people differ with respect to primary dimensions of emotions (Ex. Who are the
people who have a good deal of pleasantness in their lives)
Content Vs. Style of Emotional Life
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• Aothe useful distitio is etee the otet of a peso’s eotioal life ad the stle ith hih that peso
experiences and expresses emotions
• Content is the specific kind of emotion that a person experiences, and style is the way in which an emotion is
experienced
o E. “oeoe is heeful sas soethig aout the otet of the peso’s eotioal life eause it efes to the
specific kind of emotions a person frequently experiences
o To say someone is high on mood variability is to say something about the style of their emotional life (that their
emotions change frequently)
o Both content and style exhibit trait like properties (stable over time and situations and meaningful for making
distinction among people)
Content of Emotional Life
• Content of emotional life means the typical emotions a person is likely to experience over time (ex. Someone who is
angry and hot tempered has an emotional life containing good deal of anger, irritability, hostility vs someone whose
life contains pleasant emotions will be characterized as happy, cheerful)
• Notion of content leads us to consider the kinds of emotions that people are likely to experience over time and
across situations in their lives
Pleasant Emotions
• Happiness and joy are the only pleasant emotions mentioned in the list of primary emotions (some include interest
as a pleasant emotion)
• In trait approach to emotion, the major pleasant disposition is happiness and associated feelings of being satisfied
ith oe’s life
Definition of Happiness and Life Satisfaction
• Some modern psychologist emphasize Eudaimonia, the creation of a life of meaning and purpose, as the route to
happiness
• Jaues Rousseau said that oad to happiess lies i the satisfatio of oe’s desies ad the hedoisti pusuit of
pleasure
• Jaes thought that happiess as the atio of oe’s aoplishets to oe’s aspiatios → happiness achieved by
aoplishig oe i life o loeig oe’s aspiatios
• One way to define happiness is to examine how researchers measure it
o Beause happiess is a sujetie ualit depeds o a idiidual’s o judgeet of thei life eseahes
have to rely on questionnaire
o “oe uestioaies fous o judgeet aout oe’s life e. Ho satisfied ae ou ith life
o while others focus on emotions, particularly the balance between pleasant and unpleasant emotions in a
peso’s life e. What peet of the tie ae ou happ, eutal, uhapp?
▪ example of this type of questioning was proposed by Fordyce
▪ among college students, data indicate that avg. person reports being happy 65% of the time, neutral 15% and
unhappy 20%
▪ percent happy scale is a better measure of happiness in terms of construct validity (predicts wife range of
other happiness-elated aspets of a peso’s pesoalit such as day-to-day moods and peer reports of
overall happiness)
• researchers suggest happiness has 2 complementary components: 1) life-satisfaction component: cognitive and
osists of judgeets that oe’s life has pupose ad eaig 2 oe affetie ad osists of atio of a peso’s
positive emotions to their negative emotions averaged over time called hedonic component
o the two components are highly correlated, although some cases where person is high on one and low on the
other (ex. Starving artist who feel her life has a lot of purpose and meaning yet suffers greatly day-to-day to
produce her art)
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Document Summary
With fear, have subjective feelings of anxiety, confusion and panic. Changes in bodily functions include: increase in heart rate, decreased blood flow to digestive system, increased blood flow to large muscles of legs and arms. Mary is cheerful and enthusiastic, then expect her to be cheerful at home, school work, can expect she was cheerful last year and most likely will also be next year) Categorical vs. dimensional approach to emotion: what is the best way to think about emotions, some suggest emotions are best thought of as a small number of primary and distinct emotions (anger, joy, anxiety) People blind from birth frown when sad and clench and bare teeth when angry and smile when happy. Interest motivates person to learn and acquire new skills. Are there individual or group differences in sadness, anxiety?: others prefer to think about how people differ with respect to primary dimensions of emotions (ex.
