1. PowerPoint® Presentation by Jim Foley
Unit 8B
Emotions, Stress, and Health
PowerPoint® Presentation
by Jim Foley
© 2013 Worth Publishers

2. Where do emotions come from? Why do we have them?
Emotions are our body’s adaptive response. They exist not to give us interesting experiences but to enhance our survival.
When we face challenges, our emotions focus our attention & energize our action…our heart races, our pace quickens, all of our senses go on high alert.
Receiving unexpected good news: eyes may tear, you feel exuberant & confident.
Yet when prolonged & experienced as stress, emotions can have a damaging effect on our health.

3. Emotion: a response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, (3) conscious experience
There are 2 controversies over our emotions…
a. Does your physiological arousal precede or follow your emotional experience? (Did I first notice my heart racing & then feel anxious? Or did my sense of fear come first, stirring my heart to respond?
b. Does cognition always precede emotion? (Did I think about the threat before reacting emotionally?)

4. Theories of Emotion
According to Psychologist, William James, “We feel sorry b/c we cry, angry b/c we strike, afraid b/c we tremble” (1890).
i.e.:Have you ever skidded your car on black ice? As it careened, you corrected the wheel & regain control. Just after, you notice your heart racing & then, shaking w/ fright, you felt the whoosh of emotion. Your feeling of fear followed your body’s response.
Also proposed by Carl Lange, thus the James-Lange theory ~ 1st comes a distinct physiological response, then (as we observe that response) comes our experienced emotion.

5. Walter Cannon thought the body’s responses were not distinct enough to evoke the different emotions.
Cannon (& later Philip Bard) concluded that our physiological arousal & our emotional experience occur simultaneously: the emotion-triggering stimulus is routed simultaneously to the brain’s cortex, causing the subjective awareness of emotion & to the sympathetic nervous system, causing the body’s arousal.
This Cannon-Bard theory implies that your heart begins pounding as you experience fear; one does not cause the other. Our physiological response & our emotion are separate.

6. Stanley Schachter & Jerome Singer (1962) proposed a 3rd theory: that our physiology & our cognitions – perceptions, memories & interpretations – together create emotion.
In their two-factor theory {schachter two factor!} emotions therefore have 2 ingredients: physical arousal & a cognitive label.
Schachter & Singer presumed that our experience of emotion grows from our awareness of our body’s arousal. Thus, an emotional experience requires a conscious interpretation of the arousal.

7. Schachter-Singer “Two-factor” Theory: Emotion = Body Plus a Cognitive Label
The Schachter-Singer “two-factor” theory suggests that emotions do not exist until we add a label to whatever body sensations we are feeling.
In a study by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer in 1962, subjects experienced a spillover effect when arousal was caused by injections of what turned out to be adrenaline. The subjects interpreted their agitation to whatever emotion the others in the room appeared to be feeling; the emotional label “spilled over” from others.
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Stanley Schachter ( ) and Jerome Singer (d. 2010) developed the “two-factor” theory of emotion in 1962.
I face a stranger, and my heart is pounding. Is it fear? Excitement? Anger? Lust? Or did I have too much caffeine? The label completes the emotion.

9. Embodied Emotion Emotions & the Autonomic Nervous Sx
What is the link btwn emotional arousal & the autonomic nervous Sx?
Your autonomic nervous Sx (ANS) mobilizes your body for action & calms it when the crisis passes; w/o any conscious effort– fight or flight!
Your sympathetic division of your ANS directs your adrenals to release the stress hormones epinephrine~ (adrenaline) & norepinephrine~(noradrenaline); liver pours extra sugar into your blood stream & to help burn this sugar, your respiration increases to supply needed oxygen; heart rate & blood pressure incr.; pupils dilate to allow more light; to cool your body you perspire; if you’re wounded blood clots more quickly…

10. Nervous System

11. -When the crisis passes, the parasympathetic division of your ANS takes over, calming your body slowly. -Arousal is adaptive in many situations… *i.e.:taking a test you want to be moderately aroused but not trembling w/ nervousness.

12. Physiological Similarities Among Specific Emotions
Do different emotions activate different physiological & brain pattern responses?
-Discerning physiological differences among
fear, anger, & sexual arousal would be very
difficult.
-Different emotions do not have sharply
distinct biological features

13. Physiological Differences Among Specific Emotions
Researchers have found real (subtle) physiological differences among the emotions.
Emotions differ much more in the brain circuits they use…
-Brain scans & EEG recordings show emotions activate different areas of the brain’s cortex w/some tendency for negative emotions to be linked to the right hemisphere & positive emotions to the left.
-The amygdala, the hippocampus & the basal ganglia make up the limbic Sx – the emotional center of the brain.
-Dopamine pathways = the pleasure pathway

14. Cognition & Emotion
To experience emotions, must we consciously interpret & label them?
Sometimes our arousal response to one event spills over into our response to the next event…
-i.e.:get home after invigorating run & find out you got your dream job!!! OMG!!! W/ arousal lingering from the run, would you feel more elated than if you received the news after waking from nap?
To find out if this spillover effect exists, Schachter & Singer – injecting males w/ epinephrine & they discovered that a stirred-up state can be experienced as one emotion or another very different one depending on how we interpret & label it.

16. Cognition Doesn’t Always Precede Emotion
Can you recall liking something/someone immediately, without knowing why?
Robert Zajonc (1980, 1984), we have many emotional reactions apart from, or even before, our interpretations of a situation.
*you’ve forgotten an important deadline or hurt someone’s feelings; as conversation distracts your attention, you lose awareness of the bad news…yet the feeling still churns…you feel a little bad but can’t put your finger on why. The arousal lingers w/o a label.

17. Just like speedy reflexes, some emotions take what LeDoux (2002) calls the “low road”, via neural pathways that bypass the cortex (the alternative “high road” pathway). The shortcut allows our emotional response before our intellect intervenes.
Whalen et.al., (2004) used fMRI scans to observe the amygdala’s response to subliminally presented fearful eyes. Compared w/ a control condition that presented the whites of happy eyes, the fearful eyes triggered increased amygdala activity.

18. Robert Zajonc, Joseph LeDoux, and Richard Lazarus: Emotions without Awareness/Cognition
Theory: some emotional reactions, especially fears, likes, and dislikes, develop in a “low road” through the brain, skipping conscious thought.
In one study, people showed an amygdala response to certain images (above, left) without being aware of the image or their reaction.
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Richard Lazarus ( ) notes that some “top-down” cognitive functions such as threat-appraisal can be involved, but these emotional responses can still operate without conscious thought.
Joseph LeDoux (b. 1949) and Robert Zajonc ( ) proposed their ideas in the second half of the 20th century.

20. When Appraisal Affects Emotion
Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer highlighted the role of appraisal in labeling consciously experienced emotions: “this agitation is fear.”
Richard Lazarus noted that even in emotional responses that operate without conscious thought, “top-down” cognitive functions such as appraisal of stimuli (is that a threat or something I would enjoy?) can be involved .
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21. *Emotions researcher Richard Lazarus conceded that our brains process & react to vast amounts of info w/o our conscious awareness. …so in sum: some emotions require no conscious effort at all (simple likes, dislikes & fears); but other more complex emotions (hatred, guilt, happiness & love) are influenced by our cognition…

22. Detecting Emotion in Others
People read a great deal of emotional content in the eyes (“the window to the soul”) and the faces.
Introverts are better at detecting emotions; extroverts have emotions that are easier to read.
We are primed to quickly detect negative emotions, and even negative emotion words.
Those who have been abused are biased toward seeing fearful faces as angry, as in the test below.
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These faces morph from fear to anger.
Raise your hand when you first see anger under the red box.
Click to reveal bullets. Then, when you see the red box appear, the next click starts the animation.

23. Detecting Lies and Fakes
Brain signs of lying:
Polygraphs (detecting physiological arousal) fail sometimes at correctly identifying when people are lying.
Visible signs of lying: eye blinks decrease, and other facial movements change.
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In which image is Paul Ekman “lying” with a fake smile?
A real smile uses involuntary muscles around the eyes.
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24. Culture and Emotional Expression: Are There Universally Recognized Emotions?
There seem to be some universally understood facial expressions.
People of various cultures agree on the emotional labels for the expressions on the faces on the right.
People in other studies did have more accuracy judging emotions from their own culture.
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Instructor: you can challenge students by asking them to make quicker judgments about similar images. “Which one in the first row is closer to “joy”? [left is happy, right is surprise]. Which one in the second row is “sad”? [left is sad, right is afraid]
Which one in the last row is “angry”? [left is anger, right is disgust]. See if students can see the differences in the nose and eyes in the image on the right.

25. Emotion Detection and Context Cues
What emotions do you see below?
How can you tell what emotions he is feeling?
Because the faces are exactly the same, our detection of emotion must be based on context: the situation, gestures, and the tears.
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26. Is Experienced Emotion as Universal as Expressed Emotion?
Carroll Izzard suggested that there are ten basic emotions: those evident at birth (seen here) plus contempt, shame, and guilt.
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27. Closer Look at a Particular Emotion: Anger
A flash of anger gives us energy and initiative to fight or otherwise take action when necessary.
Persistent anger can cause more harm than whatever we’re angry about.
Some ways to keep anger from persisting: distraction, constructive action, problem-solving, exercise, verbal expression, and allowing others to be wrong.
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The catharsis myth refers to the idea that we can reduce anger by “releasing” it, and we do this by acting aggressively (yelling, punching a pillow).
In most cases, expressing anger worsens it, and any “release” reinforces the aggression, making it a conditioned habit.
Sometimes, releasing anger causes harm, and results in guilt.
Instead, try calming down and moving on.
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28. Closer Look at a Particular Emotion: Fear
Fear is adaptive – it’s an alarm system that prepares our bodies to flee from danger
Fear – binds people together, protects us from injury or harm, restrains our harming one another
People can fear almost anything
Learn fear through experience (conditioning) observation
The amygdala plays a key role in fear
Genetics

29. Closer Look at a Particular Emotion: Happiness
There are behaviors that seem to go with happiness.
Researchers have found that happy people tend to:
However, happiness seems not much related to other factors, such as:
Have high self-esteem (in individualistic countries)
Be optimistic, outgoing, and agreeable
Have close friendships or a satisfying marriage
Have work and leisure that engage their skills
Have an active religious faith
Sleep well and exercise
Age (example: the woman at the laptop in the picture)
Gender (women are more often depressed, but also more often joyful)
Parenthood (having children or not)
Physical attractiveness
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There also may be a genetic basis for a predisposition to happiness. Whether because of genes, culture, or personal history, we each seem to develop a mood “set point,” a level of happiness to which we keep returning.

30. Stress: A Focus of Health Psychology
Many people report being affected by “stress.”
Some terms psychologists use to talk about stress:
Stress refers to the process of appraising and responding to events which we consider threatening or challenging.
a stressor is an event or condition which we view as threatening, challenging, or overwhelming.
Examples include poverty, an explosion, a psychology test, feeling cold, being in a plane, and loud noises.
appraisal refers to deciding whether to view something as a stressor.
stress reaction refers to any emotional and physical responses to the stressor such as rapid heartbeat, elevated cortisol levels, and crying.
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31. Stressors
Stressors refer to the events and conditions that trigger our stress response, because they are perceived/ appraised as overwhelmingly challenging, threatening, and/or harmful.
There may be a spectrum of levels of intensity and persistence of stressors.
We can also see stressors as falling into one of three categories:
catastrophes.
significant life changes.
chronic daily hassles.
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Instructor: the fourth category refers to the daily challenge of managing poverty, powerlessness, being a persistent target for injustice, discrimination, bullying, other low social/economic freedom, or facing oppression as a society or as a subgroup. For example, some readers of this text live under regimes or with competing groups that monitor and control their lives, lacking freedom and risking unexpected violence.

32. The Body’s Stress Response System
When encountering a sudden trauma or other stressor, our body acts to increase our resistance to threat and harm.
Phase 1: The “fight or flight” sympathetic nervous system responds, reducing pain and increasing the heart rate.
The core of the adrenal glands produces norepinephrine and epinephrine (adrenaline).
This system, identified by Walter Cannon ( ), gives us energy to act.
Phase 2: The brain sends signals to the outer part of the adrenal glands to produce cortisol and other stress hormones. These focus us on planning adaptive coping strategies and resisting defeat by the stressor.
Hans Selye ( ) indentified this extended “resistance” phase of the stress response, followed by:
Click to reveal the three phases.
Phase 3: Exhaustion.

33. General Adaptation Syndrome [GAS] (Identified by Hans Selye): Our stress response system defends, then fatigues.
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34. Effects of Prolonged Stress
The General Adaptation Syndrome [GAS] works well for single exposures to stress.
Repeated and prolonged stress, with too much Phase 3 time, leads to various signs of physical deterioration and premature aging:
the production of new neurons declines
neural circuits in the brain break down
DNA telomeres (chromosome tips) shorten,  cells lose ability to divide,  cells die,  tissue stops regenerating,  early aging and death
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35. Health Consequences of Chronic Stress: The Repeated Release of Stress Hormones
The stress hormone cortisol helps our bodies respond to brief stress.
Chronically high cortisol levels damage the body.
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36. Female and Male Stress Response
In response to a stressor such as the death of a loved one, women may “tend and befriend”: nurture themselves and others, and bond together.
The bonding hormone oxytocin may play a role in this bonding.
Women show behavioral and neurological signs of becoming more empathetic under stress.
Men under stress are more likely to socially withdraw and numb themselves with alcohol.
Men are also more likely to become aggressive under stress.
In either case, men’s behavior and brains show LESS empathy and less tuning in to others under stress.
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37. Type A PersonalityStress Heart Disease
Some personality traits tend to cluster into personality types.
People with a type A personality are impatient, verbally aggressive, and always pushing themselves and others to achieve.
People with a type B personality are more relaxed and go with the flow.
In one study, heart attacks ONLY struck people with Type A traits.
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Accomplishing goals is healthy, but a compulsion to always be working, with little time spent “smelling the flowers,” is not.

38. Pessimism and Heart Disease
It can be helpful to realistically anticipate negative events that may happen, and to plan how to prevent or cope with them.
Pessimism refers to the assumption that negative outcomes will happen, and often facing them by complaining and/or giving up.
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Suppressing negative emotions only worsens the risk of heart disease. Reducing risk comes from a genuine change in attitude and treatment of factors related to negative emotions.
Men who are generally pessimistic are more likely to develop heart disease within ten years than optimists.

39. Stress factor: Perceived Level of Control
Experiment: the left and middle rats below received shocks. The rat on the left was able to turn off the shocks for both rats. Which rat had the worst stress and health problems?
Only the middle, subordinate rat had increased ulcers.
It is not the level of shock, but the level of control over the shock, which created stress.
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40. Promoting Health: Social Support
Having close relationships is associated with improved health, immune functioning, and longevity.
Social support, including from pets, provides a calming effect that reduces blood pressure and stress hormones.
Confiding in others helps manage painful feelings.
Laughter helps too.
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“Well, I think you’re wonderful.”

41. Aerobic Exercise and Health
Aerobic exercise refers to sustained activity that raises heart rate and oxygen consumption.
Aerobic exercise reduces depression and anxiety, and improves stress management, and is correlated with high confidence, vitality, and energy, and good mood.
Aerobic exercise triggers certain genes to produce proteins which guard against more than 20 chronic diseases and conditions.
Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, cognitive decline and dementia, and early death.
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Instructor: if you are not familiar with the sport of “Ultimate,” here’s a two-sentence summary. You and up to six teammates make passes (with a disc, usually not a “Frisbee” brand) to each other down a field to score by catching the disc in an end zone. Any incomplete pass is a turnover and the defense instantly picks up the disc and becomes the offense, making passes to move the disc toward the other end zone.
Another comment to make about aerobic exercise in Ultimate: you can’t run with the disc, so catching the disc and looking for a teammate to throw to gives you a running break of about two to ten seconds (the time limit for making the next pass).