Main things to remember about emotion!!

Emotion is a literal Latin translation that means “to move” or “to stir up” Emotion is different from “mood” and “affect”. Brewin (1988) is a broad term and subsumes much behaviour, including mood, feeling, attitude, preferences and evaluations.

Mood= Refers to the frame of mind or “emotional state” of a person which is defined by the individuals internal state and not external behaviour.

Emotions= Thought to be briefer more spontaneous and detectable from the appearance of the organism.

The subcortical structures are thought to be involved in regulation of emotion is the hippocampal system and the amygdale.

The cognitive appraisal theory states that emotions are judgements about the extent that the current situation meets your goals. William James argued that emotions are perceptions of changes in the body like heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration and hormone levels. Happiness is a physiological perception, not a judgement and other emotions like anger and sadness are mental reactions to different kinds of physiological stages.

  Measuring and maniuplating emotions

Tools used to measure emotion is the accelerometers for motion, skin conductance sensors to measure excitement level, temperature sensors and also facial recognition through the use of simple webcams.

Emotion is also assessed and manipulated through mood induction by using thought ( getting the person to think of something) to achieve a required state, through the use of films and music a particular mood can be achieved. Reward and punishment using reinforcer’s to trigger an emotion. Emotions can also be manipulated by loud noises, mild electric shocks, words that represent emotional concepts or pictures of emotional scenes.

Examle of emotion testing Lowa Gambling Task

Lowa Gambling Task was created to stimulate real life decision making. The task was introduced Antonion Damasio. The task was presented as a gambling task it looks at the cognition and emotion.The task consists of participants are presented with 4 virtual decks of cards on a computer screen. They are told each time they choose a card they will win some money in the game. Once in a while choosing a card causes the participant to lose some of the money they have earned in the game. The main goal of the game is to gain as much money as possible to win. Every card drawn will earn the participant a reward and sometimes a card could cause them a penalty. Some decks are “bad decks” and some are “good decks” some will lead to more losses than wins over the period of the game and others will lead to more gains and wins. The decks differ from each other in the number of trials.