Emotion: Quick Review

Emotion is a complex, subjective experience that is accompanied by biological and behavioral changes.
Charles Darwin proposed that emotional expressions are hard-wired and that emotions evolved because they had adaptive value.
Current evolutionary theorists believe that emotions are innate.
The James-Lange theory states that people experience emotion because they perceive their bodies’ physiological responses to external events.
The Cannon-Bard theory states that the experience of emotion and the accompanying physiological arousal happen at the same time.
Schachter and Singer’stwo-factor theory states that people’s experience of emotion depends on physiological arousal and the cognitive interpretation of that arousal.
People’s experience of emotion depends on how they evaluate their environment.

Emotion involves activation of the brain and the autonomic nervous system.
Information about emotion-evoking events moves along two pathways in the brain.
The pathway that goes to the amygdala allows people to respond rapidly to events.
The pathway that goes to the cortex allows people to appraise events more slowly.
Researchers use autonomic responses to measure emotion.
The polygraph, or lie detector, is a device that detects changes in autonomic arousal. It is often inaccurate in determining whether or not a person is lying.
Different emotions differ in pattern of brain activation, neurotransmitters released, and autonomic nervous system activity.

People worldwide can identify six primary emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.
The facial-feedback hypothesis states that the brain uses feedback from facial muscles to recognize emotions that are being experienced.
The two genders express different amounts of emotion. This difference depends on gender roles, culture, and context.

People in different cultures can identify six basic emotions.
There are universal physiological indicators of emotion.
People in different cultures categorize emotions differently.
Different cultures consider different emotions to be primary.
The same situation may evoke different emotions in different cultures.
Nonverbal expressions of emotion differ across cultures.
Cultural norms determine how and when to display emotions that are not actually felt.

Subjective well-being depends more on attitudes toward circumstances than on the circumstances themselves.
Circumstances such as social support, marriage, job satisfaction, and religiosity are positively correlated with happiness.
Happiness tends to depend on people’s expectations of life and on the way they compare themselves to others.