Homework Week 5

1. How do positive and negative emotions affect cognition (e.g., attention, focus, creativity, judgment, memory)?

The article written by Isen et al. mainly explains the link between positive or negative emotions and creativity.  As a result of the Duncker's Candle Test and the Remote Associates Test both show that positive emotions enhance creativity.  The experiments cited in this paper also show that induced negative emotions do not affect on the participants ability to respond creatively.  However, on page 1129 of the article it does mention that negative affect was only induced in one of the experiments and only by one method.  There may have just been something about that particular method that brought about the observed results.  There is a possibility that another method for inducing negative emotions could have more of an impact on the participants creativity.

2. How does EI help us engage others (e.g., be sensitive to our OWN emotions AND the emotions of OTHERS)?

Emotional Intelligence helps us engage others in multiple ways.  From the paper, three aspects of emotional intelligence stood out to me as being the most helpful in these.  First off, the article mentions that EI enables one to monitor emotions in relation to oneself and others.  This in itself is making people more aware of other people's emotions.  By monitoring your surroundings you are being more sensitive and observant of them.  Second, EI enables one to manage emotions in oneself and others.  This ability allows us to respond to other people's emotions more appropriately.  We are able to monitor their emotions and manage our own so that we can react respectively and appropriately.  Lastly,EI allows us to express our emotions accurately.  This is a very simple concept but by being able to do this, we can express our needs and feelings to one another.  This makes it easier for us to engage people because we better understand what they want or need.  When their needs or wants are made more clear it is that much easier to be sensitive to them.

3. Integration:

a. Connect the readings to content: How does this information relate to or connect with other information? What additional previous content can be connect? How?

Both the Isen and Matthew/McLeod articles reminded me of the article discussing activity in the different sides of the frontal lobe and its impact on affective style.  While reading this week's papers, I found myself occasionally wondering if these different ideas were connected.  For example, while reading about the biases towards anxiety I wondered if that was potentially linked with people who had a negative affective style.

Also, the paper written on emotional intelligence made me think of Lazarus.  This is because, the article explains that EI gives us the ability to monitor emotions of other people where as Lazarus wrote about how monitoring our situation (cognitive appraisal) gave rise to our emotions.  I found myself, while reading this paper, wondering if these concepts are contradictory or similar.  Potentially cognitive appraisal is just another way of describing an aspect of emotional intelligence.

b. Connect the readings to the world: How does what you read connect to the world outside of your formal education or professional practice? Why? What difference does it make? Who else needs to know this information? What are the potential implications?

The paper on creativity most clearly connects to my outside world.  I feel that this article had some information that is very beneficial to know.  If it is possible to control one's ability to solve problems creatively, I think it is important to harness that capability and take advantage of it.  I think it would be helpful for everyone to know about this because it can help them be more effectively and efficient in problem solving and decision making.

The information about emotional intelligence also connects well to the outside world.  It is interesting to understand how our ability to express, understand and manage our emotions changes as we grow.  This would be helpful for anyone who spends a lot of time with children.  It can help the children expand their abilities but also allow the adults better understand where the children are coming from when they react in a certain way.  

Career Fair Nerves

As career fair season began today so did my nerves.  I went to the engineering career fair and was a little bit anxious about speaking with the recruiters.  They are usually quite easy people to talk to, it is just intimidating to approach them.  All of this clearly triggered some not too pleasant emotions.  Tonight I am actually having dinner with a few of the recruiters of a company.  This also makes me nervous.  I am hoping that the more casual environment (Hickory Park) will allow for it to all feel more comfortable.  I really do like this company and want to make a good impression and feel that if I allow myself to be nervous I won't really be myself.  I need to just relax before I go to dinner and remind myself that it will all turn out alright!

Emotion Blog 9/26

Last night my friend sent me a text saying she is now engaged! I was so excited when I read it.  We were roommates last year and she is currently off doing a co-op.  I have not been able to see her very much but I am so happy for her.  I have spent time with her and her fiance and they are a perfect match.  She put up some pictures from the proposal and looking at their faces triggered a feeling of joy in me.  I loved seeing her so happy!  This feeling lasted for a while because my current room mates and I kept talking about it throughout the evening.  This was most definitely a pleasant emotion!  I can only imagine how excited she was feeling.  I can not wait to talk to her in person about it all.

Excitement and exhaustion

This weekend was filled with a lot of excitement.  I saw my parents, spent time with friends and went to E-Ball.  It was a whole lot of fun.  Each of these activities triggered more excitement which was positive when judged on a bi polar scale.  These different triggers kept amplifying my good mood.  I hope that this good mood can last into the week as it gets busy with career fairs.
Along with all of this excitement comes some exhaustion.  I have not been getting a whole lot of sleep and have had plenty of school work to keep me busy in what down time I had.  Luckily, I have still maintained my positive mood and it is motivating me to get through all of my work.  I am lucky in that I do not have any tests this week on top of the career fairs.  Hopefully this week goes well and I can hold on to my excitement and avoid to much exhaustion.

Discussion Questions Week 5

1) In the Isen et al. article, it is mentioned that the different negative affects may influence our creativity in different ways.  Do you think there would be a difference in the way our creativity is inhibited or enhanced by sadness compared to fear or nervousness etc?

2) Connecting the Matthews and Isen articles, do you think that a person who is more vulnerable to anxiety would have more inhibited creativity?

3) Do you think, as a culture, discussing our emotions openly is becoming more or less acceptable?  How do you believe that is affecting our emotional intelligence?

Homework Week 4

Prior to reading these articles I had a different idea of how we develop our emotions as we grow up.  I thought that we always felt all of our emotions but did not fully understand those emotions or how to respond to them until we were a little older.  This week, reading these articles helped me to better understand how this actually works.  The paper that I feel explained it well was the article written by Lewis et al.  I appreciated the figure it contained.  It explains that we develop primary emotions (joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust and surprise) and then as our cognitive capacity develops over time we develop our self conscious emotions.  This figure helped me to visualize how things change over time.   Prior to reading these articles, I never thought about the correlation between cognitive capacity and ability to express emotion.  I read about how experiments were affected by children’s vocabulary as well as their self-referential behavior.  I felt that the articles explained all of this well.  It makes sense that emotions that require self consciousness would not be developed until our self referential capabilities develop.  I also have not spent much time thinking about what helps children develop these skills.  The article by Dunn et al. did a good job explaining how our interactions with our families can influence our ability to express and understand emotions.  This connection is very logical it is just not something I would have thought of.  I did not feel that the Tomkins article had a strong connection to the development of emotions in children.  I did find it was interesting as it talked about how our emotions act as amplifiers for our emotions but like I said, I did not see a lot of connection to this topic.  Overall, I thought these articles were extremely informative on a topic that was completely new to me.  It was intriguing and I am looking forward to our class discussion on the topic.

Positive feelings on a pleasant afternoon

Even though the week started out stressful it is turning out to be enjoyable and relaxing.  I got out of my last class early today which triggered an emotion of happiness.  This positive feeling was amplified by the beautiful weather outside.  I greatly enjoyed walking back to my apartment in it.  I am also excited because tonight is my first broomball game of the semester.  This also makes me a little nervous because I usually walk away from the matches with a few bruises.  Luckily the positive feeling out weigh the nervousness.  Hopefully the rest of the week can continue to be positive and enjoyable!

Friday frustration

This weekend I have experienced a variety of emotions.  Friday evening I decided to go to a post office as part of my visa process for studying abroad.  I keep thinking getting ready to study abroad should be an exciting experience but instead it is very frustrating.  Acquiring a French visa is a very long process.  What did not help on Friday was the mistake I made of running my errand during rush hour.  Everyone was frustrated with each other and there were a lot of people in the parking lot.  I tried to focus on the fact that this would all be worth it once I was in France.  Overall this was not a pleasant experience but luckily it was over in about half an hour.

Saturday was much more pleasant.  My sister and I met at the half way point between us in Albert Lea Minnesota for the day.  There is not a whole lot do to in Albert Lea but I was just really excited to get to see her.  It was also exciting to explore an area neither of us had spent much time in before.  We ended up going bowling, getting coffee and discovering some buildings built in the 20's.  It was a very positive day and made me forget about my Friday frustration.

Discussion Questions Week 4

1. The article by Lewis et al. explains the criteria upon which they based the emotion of embarassment.  It says "The  behaviors  necessary to  score  embarrassment were  a smiling facial expression followed  by a gaze  aversion  and  movement  of  the  hands  to touch  hair, clothing,  face,  or other body  parts."  Do you agree that these actions should attributed to embarrassment?  Couldn't the child go through the same motions just out of pure curiousity?

2. After reading the paper by Dunn et al., do you think there would be a link between which emotional themes the children most frequently talked about and which emotions they best recognize?

3. Tomkins refers to affect as an amplifier.  When was a time that you experienced affect acting as an amplifier.

Bummed by the Gloomy Weather

This morning as I was walking to campus the weather was very gloomy.  The gray clouds and the rain puddles really brought down my mood.  It trigger a feeling of being glum and bummed out.  It has been a long week so this made it feel like my Friday was going to be that much harder to get through.  This was clearly not a positive emotion on a bipolar scale.  It also did not help that while walking to a meeting I stepped in a mud puddle.  I got mud on both my shoes and my pants.  At first this triggered a feeling of frustration but it actually got better quite quickly.
I happened to get to the building early and I had time to clean off my shoes.  I also remembered that I had a Tide To-Go stick in my backpack.  As the mud stain on my pants faded so did a lot of my gloomy feelings.  It made me realize that there was no need to be bothered by the weather.  I remembered that it is almost the weekend and I learned not to let a little bit of mud ruin my morning.

Homework Week 3

Week 3 Homework

1. Emotions serve functions (orientation, organization, etc.). Why do we experience our emotional states as powerful or at times overwhelming? Is this functional or purposeful?

I do believe that overwhelming issues have a function or purpose.  We have read papers that say that emotions come about from judging our well-being.  I believe that when emotions are powerful, our mind is just interpreting our well-being as more extreme; either in more extreme danger or going very well.   Having different degrees of emotions allows us to compare situations and know how to act more appropriately.

2. Russell and Fernandez-Dols wrote the following about the inability to find a unified definition of emotion through scientific study and discourse: "Emotion is an everyday, ordinary word understood by all rather a precise concept honed through scientific analysis... we have probably reached the point where further usefulness of thinking of facial expressions in terms of emotion requires a clarification of the concept of emotion itself" (pg. 19).

a) what does this mean? what are they saying?

I believe that this means that emotion does not have a specific definition or connection to a specific process.  It is a term created as a label for the processes and reactions that collectively affect how we interpret our well-being and how we express our feelings.

b) how does this extend to the other readings from this unit?

It can also be seen that in our other readings the word “emotion” is never defined specifically.   They try to explain the processes involved or where they come from but they don’t say exactly what they mean by the term.

c) what does this make you think about the scientific study of emotion?

It shows me how complicated it is to study.  Without out truly knowing what specifically you are studying it would be hard to know where to start.  Some of the readings seem contradictory but they might be approaching the study of emotions form a different definition of the term. 

3. Davidson writes about affective style. What are these and how are they specifically influenced by the brain?

Affective style is how people respond to situations in which their brain triggers specific emotions.  This is influenced by the brain because the symmetry of activation of the frontal lobe is what determines the reaction.  Davidson says in the beginning of his paper that individual affective style is determined by the levels of activation in the left and right frontal lobes.

4. Application: Provide an example of the somatic marker theory (Damasio et al., 1991) in your own life.

When I go for a run I always feel refreshed and energized afterwards.  I now associate running with these positive feelings.  When I lack motivation to go on a run, I am reminded of the benefits and gain the missing motivation.

Emotion Blog 9/13

In the fourth week of classes, all coursework, testing and clubs are in full swing.  I have meetings most nights and my first exam later this week.  This triggers a feeling of nervousness.  I know that I have good time management abilities but I still sometimes stress about being able to get everything done.  This is not a pleasant feeling when judged on a bipolar scale.  To combat my nervousness, I usually resort to list making.  Most likely, before the night is done I will write out a few lists of what all I need to do these next couple days to stay on top of everything.
Yesterday I had a feeling of stress.  I had to take my car into the dealership due to my "service engine soon" light turning on.  I found out later that my car required over $900 in repairs.  This was very stressful at first.  My stress lessened when I learned that only a very small portion of the repairs need to be done now.  The other repairs can be taken care of when I am home with my parents.  My stress also lessened because the staff at the dealership were extremely easy to work with.  They offered a shuttle service that dropped me off and picked me up since I had to leave my car there over night.  This feature was very accommodating.  Even though this was an unpleasant feeling at the time triggered by the high costs, the feeling has subsided and I am now more relieved.

Emotion Blog 9/11

Today I have a mix to two main emotions.  The first being sadness. This sadness is a result of looking back at what happened ten years ago today.  At the time of what happened, I was confused and unsure of what was going on.  It was not until years later that the importance of it all sunk in.  Documentaries have been playing on t.v. and articles are in all sorts of magazines and newspapers.  All of this together allows us to remember that day and the lives that were lost.  This is obviously not a pleasant feeling when put on a bipolar scale.  

At the same time, I am feeling a sense of pride.  A documentary informed me of two men who sacrificed there lives to save many others.  Stories like that remind of all the good that people did to help each other.  So many people sacrificed so much and that makes me proud of the people who live in this country.  This emotion is both pleasant and unpleasant.  It is pleasant to be proud of my country but unpleasant to think all the lives that were lost.  Although this event caused a lot of sadness and loss, it brought us together as a nation.

Discussion Question Week 3

Question 1: The first article mentions the difference between posed and spontaneous faces.  What would be ways to eliminate this potential complication in an experiment?

Question 2: Davidson explains that his testing was done with noninvasive scalp recorded measurements.  Do you think that the patients would react in their regular manner when in this environment?  Do you think that being aware of the experiment would change the way they react or maybe the magnitude of their reactions?

Question 3: Damasio describes emotions as an "assistance device" for making decisions.  What other "assistance devices" do we use in our day to day life?

Emotion Blog 9/10

Well first off, my current emotion is definitely excitement.  As you can probably guess it is due to Iowa State beating Iowa in football earlier today.  There is a lot of energy all around campus now and it is infectious.  This is a very pleasant feeling.  I enjoy that everyone around me is collectively feeling happy.  Times like these bring people together and increase pride in our school and our spirit.
I am also feeling very relaxed.  I have already had a productive weekend and still have plenty of time to get more things done and spend time with friends.  This is a very pleasant feeling because it means that I am not stressed or worrying.  This feeling will hopefully last for the rest of the weekend.  This feeling along with the excitement on campus made my mood very positive.

Week 2 Homework Questions

Homework Questions Week 2:

1. What does it mean to take a cultural approach to observing and understanding emotion?

It means that it is looking at more than just the individual subjects.  It involves looking at elements that differ between various boundaries and how those differences affect emotional expression.  These papers seem to focus on geographical boundaries.  In the paper written by Jankowiak and Fischer, the emotions connected to love were explored over large geographical boundaries.  The large geographical regions included North America, East Eurasia and multiple others.  The paper by Ekman and Friesen also focused on geographical boundaries.  Rather than focusing on love it is looking at people and their ability to recognize emotions.  The reason why they took a cultural approach was to see if recognizing emotions was innate or a skill that we learn from the people around us and our surrounding environment. The Elfenbein and Ambady article focuses on not only looking at different cultures but also looking within cultures.  This article uniquely looks at the differences or relationships between the emotional recognition abilities of majority and minority groups.  It also looks at the in-group advantage.  All of these articles looked at how one’s boundaries and surrounding elements shape how they express they emotions as well as how well they can recognize the emotions of other people. 

2. What cultural variations (if any) in emotion exist?

Cultural variations definitely exist in emotion.  People learn habits from others who surround them and methods of emotional expression are learned in a similar way.  For example, the paper by Elfenbein and Ambady talks about how we better understand the emotions of people from the same group as us.  People who are in the same geographical boundaries and surrounded by the same elements learn to express and interpret emotions in the same way.  This is also present in the paper written by Jankowiak and Fischer.  That paper shows that love is not present everywhere in the same way.  Even though these papers do show that cultural variations in emotion exist there are parts of emotion that are constant across borders.  The paper by Ekman and Friesen shows that some emotions are recognized in the same way across borders.  These cultural aspects of emotion do not vary due to the interaction between cultures.  We are now more than every working with people from around the world and learning from each other how to express and interpret emotions.  In some ways we are a global culture.

3. Think about last weeks readings.

a) Please highlight differences and similarities between the evolutionary, cognitive, and cultural approaches.

Most of these approaches looked at where they believed emotions come from and the order of the process that develops these emotions.  The evolutionary approach believes that these emotions were developed over time and passed down to offspring.  The cognitive approach believes that a mental process occurs that enables us to react with an emotional response.  One paper said that the mental process came first whereas another paper said that a physiological response was the emotional trigger.  Even though they differed on the process of developing emotions they contained similar if not the same elements in their approach.

b) What do all of these approaches stand on the following questions:

                1. What is an emotion? For the most part it seems that all of the articles think of emotions as a reaction.  These reactions either developed as habits and were passed down to offspring or in response to physiological or cognitive processes.

                2. What the origins of an emotion? This differs for the different authors.  Darwin thinks emotions are evolutionary.  How we feel in different situations was learned and eventually passed down to offspring.  Lazarus thinks that emotions are triggered by a cognitive process.  We interpret our well-being and then our emotion is the response.  James believes the trigger is physiological.  Our body reacts and then our emotional response follows.  Finally, Oatley believes that emotions come from assessing our plans.  We have good emotions when we are on track with our plans and negative emotions when something goes wrong.

                3. Are emotions universal? Darwin’s paper talked about this topic the most.  He was studying to see if emotional expression is universal.  He says there are some innate emotions that are but some we have developed due to our culture and surroundings that are unique.  Lazarus seemed to have a similar thought.  He said that society has a “template” by which we compare our well-being.   At the same time he said that we have unique emotions that are shaped by our motives, experiences, beliefs etc.  I believe that James also says we express emotion in unique ways because it is all based on how our body responds physiologically to the trigger. 

                4. What are the functions of emotion? Emotions help us know if our well-being is threathened.  Whether they are triggered by a cognitive process or a physiological change the emotion that comes about is what we feel that tells us if the situation is good or bad.  Darwin’s paper treats them as a part of evolution.  Emotions have played a role in survival overtime.  

Emotion Blog 9/6/11

Most of my blog entries so far have had a predominantly positive tone to them.  I try to be optimistic and think about things positively.  Today unfortunately, I heard some unfortunate news that created an unpleasant emotion.  I learned that the son of one of my professors past away this past weekend.  I have heard nothing but good things about this professor.  They say she gets very passionate and cares a lot about everyone and everything she gets involved with.  When I heard this news it made me feel very sad.  I had a sense of sympathy for her and her loved ones.
This emotion changed my mood.  My mood was no longer upbeat and positive.  I found out about this information while at a meeting and I could feel the mood of the whole room dropped like mine.  Feeling the emotions of everyone else in the room also impacted my mood.  On a bipolar scale I would definitely say that this experience was unpleasant.
I continue to think about my professor and her family.  I send them my sympathy and some of my club members and I are hoping to help them in some way.  We hope to help them out so that in their time of grieving they don't also have to deal with stress and daily menial tasks.

Week 2 Discussion Questions

Question 1: The first article said that romantic love is present in cultures that have folklore and love songs.  Do you agree that these are proper indicators of this?  Does singing and talking about the existence of true love really prove that it is there?

Question 2:  The second article mentioned that some preliterate cultures had difficulty distinguishing between the emotions of fear and surprise.  Are there emotions in our culture that are so closely linked that we have trouble distinguishing between them?

Question 3:  The third article described the "in-group advantage" but at the same time it said that minority group members sometimes understood the emotions of the majority group members than they did their own.  How can these ideas exist at the same time?  Or, do you think these are too contradictory?

Emotion Blog 9/4/11

Waking up to a sunny and cool morning immediately started my day on the right foot.  I felt quite relaxed and content.  This was also triggered by the fact that I had just gotten nine hours of sleep.  This pleasant feeling lasted for a while because my roomate made me coffee and I had the opportunity to relax with a book I have been meaning to catch up on reading.

Unfortunately, this emotion did not last all morning.  My downstairs neighbors have managed to set off their smoke detectors about 14 times in the last 24 hours.  This triggered an emotion of being annoyed.  The intensity grew with each sounding of the alarm.  Luckily it has not gone off anymore so my annoyed feeling has since past.

More recently, I have had a slight feeling of homesickness.  This was triggered by speaking to my sister on the phone.  She lives close to our parents so she easily goes home for meals which occasionally I am jealous of.  So I guess I also had a feeling of envy.  Neither of these are pleasant feelings but the were low intensity so it wasn't too bad.  These emotions lasted for a little while but upon working on homework I eventually forgot about them.

As I write this blog entry and work on more homework I am back to my content mood.  I have had a productive day so far and I am enjoying the breeze coming in through my open window.  I am looking forward to the day off tomorrow and am hopeful that it will be as beautiful as today.

Three emotions for the three day weekend

My day started with a good mood.  I was already happy knowing that the three day weekend was so close.  This mood continued throughout the day.  There were multiple events during the day that triggered an emotion of excitement that enhanced my good mood further.  I had one class that got out early, a chance to catch up with a few friends over coffee and a lab that was canceled entirely.  These triggers allowed for my feeling of excitement to continue into the afternoon.  This was a very pleasant feeling.  

Once I got back to my apartment after classes, I decided to make a to do list for the weekend.  Looking at all that I need to accomplish over the next three days triggered a feeling of being overwhelmed.  This was less pleasant than how I was feeling earlier.  This emotion affected my mood.  I was no longer as cheerful as I had been.   

Currently, I feel a sense of relief.  I spent some time looking over my list and figuring out what I wanted to accomplish each day.  I realized that my list is actually quite manageable.  I think that earlier when I was making the list I let myself get stressed unnecessarily.  I overreacted even though at the time it seemed like an appropriate response.  This reminds me of Lazarus' cognitive appraisal theory.  Maybe my appraisal process caused be to react with stress because the list seemed overwhelming and nearly impossible to complete.  I now feel that I am capable of finishing all that is necessary and I know that I have three days to do it which is a pleasant feeling.  I am now in my good mood again and ready to get into my weekend.