Affect and Emotion
Affect and Cognition
How are affect and cognition related?
- Modern socio-cognitive perspective
- Affect and cognition are intertwined
- Cognition influences emotions
- Emotion influences information processing
What is affect?
Affect relates to
- Preferences: quite similar to attitudes, subtle subjective feelings of
pleasantness or unpleasantness. Could relate to you wanting to approach or avoid
something.
- Emotions (excitement)
- Clear object
- Brief
- Intense
- Feelings
- Action tendencies: i.e. If you’re angry, you might
want to attack or show your anger in someway. Change in motivation
to show a certain behavior.
- Cognitions: i.e. counterfactual thinking, regret,
lecture 5.
- Mood (depression)
- No clear object
- Longer-lasting
- Less intense
Dividing Different Types of Affect
- Many models assume two dimensions (2 factor model)
- Evaluation (negative vs. positive)
- Arousal (low vs. high)
- Autonomic nervous system
- Heartbeat increases, breathing
faster, skin conductance
- Two-factor Model of Affect
- Vertical dimension = arousal/engagement
- Horizontal dimension = pleasantness
The relationship between Arousal and Emotion
- James-Lange theory
- Emotion is interpretation of arousal
- Bear → Body reacts with physiological respons → Then
you infer your emotional state: fear.
- We feel afraid because we run away from the bear
- Facial Feedback
- Emotions are deduced from facial expressions
, - Thus not: happiness → smile muscles
- But rather: smile muscles → happiness
- Muscles gives us information about what we are
feeling
- Experiment Fritz Strack et al.
- Participants hold pencil in mouth
- Smiling or pouting
- Evaluation cartoons: how funny?
- Flexing smile muscle → more positive
affect
- Schachter’s Theory
- Attribution of arousal
- We often don’t know that source of arousal
- We feel arousal, it happens so quickly and we
need to attribute it quickly, which leads to misattribution
- How attractive is this woman?
- Walking on a wobbly bridge → woman was
found more attractive
- Wobbly bridge causes arousal, this sensation is
attributed to the attractiveness of the woman, rather than to the
source, which is the bridge.
- So again, emotion is shaped by arousal
- However, this is a-specific (people often don’t
know the source)
- Arousal is too general to be able to distinguish between specific emotions
- e.g., for both anger and happiness → high skin
conductance (shared arousal component, which makes it hard to
say which direction it will go to eventually).
- Excitation transfer
- Arousal transfers from one stimulus to another
- Film → fear
- Partner → more attractive
Conclusion
- Arousal is an important component of emotion
- But more characteristic and an enhancer that the ultimate source
Is affect completely seperate from cognition?
‘Affect is (somewhat) seperate from cognition’
- Ledoux (1996): The emotional brain
- Before we know if the snake is a snake or a branch, we
already react.
- Zajonc: ‘Preferences need no inferences’
- Affective reaction is immediate, not mediated by cognition
- Mere exposure effect
- Repeated presentation of neutral stimulus leads to a more
positive evaluation
- Repetition as peripheral cue in advertisement
- Subliminal presentation (5 ms.) of chinese characters
- Condition 1: 25 different characters (no
repetition)
Affect and Cognition
How are affect and cognition related?
- Modern socio-cognitive perspective
- Affect and cognition are intertwined
- Cognition influences emotions
- Emotion influences information processing
What is affect?
Affect relates to
- Preferences: quite similar to attitudes, subtle subjective feelings of
pleasantness or unpleasantness. Could relate to you wanting to approach or avoid
something.
- Emotions (excitement)
- Clear object
- Brief
- Intense
- Feelings
- Action tendencies: i.e. If you’re angry, you might
want to attack or show your anger in someway. Change in motivation
to show a certain behavior.
- Cognitions: i.e. counterfactual thinking, regret,
lecture 5.
- Mood (depression)
- No clear object
- Longer-lasting
- Less intense
Dividing Different Types of Affect
- Many models assume two dimensions (2 factor model)
- Evaluation (negative vs. positive)
- Arousal (low vs. high)
- Autonomic nervous system
- Heartbeat increases, breathing
faster, skin conductance
- Two-factor Model of Affect
- Vertical dimension = arousal/engagement
- Horizontal dimension = pleasantness
The relationship between Arousal and Emotion
- James-Lange theory
- Emotion is interpretation of arousal
- Bear → Body reacts with physiological respons → Then
you infer your emotional state: fear.
- We feel afraid because we run away from the bear
- Facial Feedback
- Emotions are deduced from facial expressions
, - Thus not: happiness → smile muscles
- But rather: smile muscles → happiness
- Muscles gives us information about what we are
feeling
- Experiment Fritz Strack et al.
- Participants hold pencil in mouth
- Smiling or pouting
- Evaluation cartoons: how funny?
- Flexing smile muscle → more positive
affect
- Schachter’s Theory
- Attribution of arousal
- We often don’t know that source of arousal
- We feel arousal, it happens so quickly and we
need to attribute it quickly, which leads to misattribution
- How attractive is this woman?
- Walking on a wobbly bridge → woman was
found more attractive
- Wobbly bridge causes arousal, this sensation is
attributed to the attractiveness of the woman, rather than to the
source, which is the bridge.
- So again, emotion is shaped by arousal
- However, this is a-specific (people often don’t
know the source)
- Arousal is too general to be able to distinguish between specific emotions
- e.g., for both anger and happiness → high skin
conductance (shared arousal component, which makes it hard to
say which direction it will go to eventually).
- Excitation transfer
- Arousal transfers from one stimulus to another
- Film → fear
- Partner → more attractive
Conclusion
- Arousal is an important component of emotion
- But more characteristic and an enhancer that the ultimate source
Is affect completely seperate from cognition?
‘Affect is (somewhat) seperate from cognition’
- Ledoux (1996): The emotional brain
- Before we know if the snake is a snake or a branch, we
already react.
- Zajonc: ‘Preferences need no inferences’
- Affective reaction is immediate, not mediated by cognition
- Mere exposure effect
- Repeated presentation of neutral stimulus leads to a more
positive evaluation
- Repetition as peripheral cue in advertisement
- Subliminal presentation (5 ms.) of chinese characters
- Condition 1: 25 different characters (no
repetition)
