I. Emotion

• A positive or negative reaction to a perceived or remembered object, event, or circumstance, accompanied by a subjective feeling; a state marked by physiological arousal, expressive behavior & mental experience
• Similarities across cultures: basic emotions shared by all humans
• 6 basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust, and fear
• Darwin noticed that we all have very similar facial expressions to signal emotional states: these basic emotions seems to be innate/inborn

We communicate our emotions through 3 main channels…

• The verbal channel: the content of what a person says.
• The visible channel
• Distance: the more friendly/intimate a person feels towards someone, the closer he/she will stand
• Gestures/body language
• Emblems: gestures specific to one culture
• Illustrators: gestures that reinforce emotions (e.g., talking with your hands)
• Regulators: gestures that ease interaction (often unconscious: turn taking, nodding, eyebrow movement)
• Adapters: Unconscious gestures toward oneself (e.g., biting nails, running fingers through hair, etc.)
• Eye Contact: conveys level of interest, fear, shyness, threat, embarrassment, respect, etc.
• Facial Expressions: we often mimic the expression of others
• Paralinguistic channel: variations in speech other than actual verbal contact
• Voice pitch, loudness, rhythm, inflection, hesitations, etc.
• We often are able to deceive someone verbally, but we often give away the real truth through nonverbal leakage.
• True emotions leak out: liars often betray themselves through paralinguistic expressions of anxiety, tension, and nervousness
• Theory: lying is arousing! Hesitation, higher pitch, speech errors, shorter answers, fidgeting, rigidity, inhibition, etc.

• James-Lange Theory
• Conscious experience of emotion results from perception of arousal; for example, the emotion of fear arises because you sense your bodily state as you are fleeing (and not before you run away from hostile stimulus)
• Different emotions arise from different sets of bodily reactions: that is, emotions feel different
• Cannon-Baird Theory
• Emotion occurs when stimulus information goes to cortex & autonomic nervous system
• Subsequently, emotions and arousal happens simultaneously
• Cognitive Theory (a.k.a. Two-Factor Theory)
• When arousal occurs, Schachter suggested that we review our own behavior and the situation to apply a cognitive label for our emotion
• High levels of physiological arousal make us search for an appropriate attribution; if there is no obvious cause for the arousal, then we search the environment for a plausible cause
• Classic Schachter-Singer epinephrine experiment: participants who were not told of drug’s effects looked around their environment to interpret their arousal caused by the epinephrine drug as an emotion
• General arousal occurs first, and then a cognitive label of emotion is applied to the generalized state of arousal

Motivation: directs us and keeps us moving toward our goals; why we do what we do: the requirements and desires that lead animals to behave in a particular way at a particular time and place

A. Theories of Motivation

• Instincts: inherited tendencies to produce organized and unalterable responses to particular stimuli
• Freud: instincts toward sex/aggression (i.e., the id)
• Evolutionary theory: we are “hard wired” to reproduce and perpetuate genetic makeup
• Drive-reduction theory
• Drive: a motivation that pushes you to reach a goal
• Tension is induced by bodily needs, such as for food, water, and oxygen
• Goal of drive is to reduce tension caused by need
• Goal is to restore homeostasis: the process of maintaining a steady bodily state (the body must be kept within a certain range, neither too high nor too low on a certain substance or characteristic)
• Incentive theories
• Sometimes we’re motivated by incentives: external stimuli that draw us toward a particular goal in anticipation of a reward
• Intrinsic motivation: the activity itself is rewarding for its own sake
• Extrinsic motivation: the activity is attractive for other external reasons, such as praise or money for success
• Research suggests that a tangible reward for mere completion of a task decreases intrinsic motivation for that task, but praise for the quality of the work increases intrinsic motivation

The motivation of hunger & eating: Why do people eat?  What is “hunger”?

• Brain: Hypothalamus
• Lateral hypothalamus: “starts” feeling of hunger; ventromedial hypothalamus: “stops” feeling of hunger
• Blood sugar level
• Glucose: a simple sugar; diabetes: Inability to extract it from blood
• Hormones: Insulin must be present to extract glucose from blood; insulin stimulates the storage of food molecules in the form of fat
• Set Point: the particular body weight that is easiest for an animal to maintain; set point is relatively constant, but can go up with prolonged overeating (but does not tend to go down with undereating)
• Best method for decreasing set point is exercise, which can speed up metabolism: chemical events in body that convert food molecules to the energy needed for the body’s cells to function

• Learned preferences & habits
• Stress
• External cues
• It’s “dinnertime”
• Dietary restraints

• Obesity: more than 20% above norm for height/build; we can’t lose fat cells, only shrink them
• Anorexia and Bulimia

Sexual desire influenced by…

• Hormones secreted by gonads
• Estrogens in females
• Androgens in males
• These hormones seem a bit more influential in sexual development rather than as motivators for sexual behavior
• Pheromones: chemicals that function in some ways like hormones but are released outside the body and serve as a means of communication
• Can synchronize menstruation cycles in women
• For some species (although research not as clear for human beings), pheromones signal that female is fertile, serving as an unconditioned stimulus for males, leading them to want to mate with the female

• Ancient Greeks: bisexuality normal; masturbation healthy for youth
• Victorian era: sex should be avoided except for procreation
• Becker’s (1970’s) views on repression of sexual desire
• Sexual acts/desires signify acknowledgment that we are driven by our bodies; awareness of this link to body freaks us out because body will eventually decay
• Late 1940’s: Kinsey’s surveys on sexual behavior
• Masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality all more common than previously thought
• Masters & Johnson’s research (1966): Human sexual response cycle (SRC)
• Sexual Response Cycle (SRC) phases
• Excitement: initial phase of arousal
• Males: penis becomes erect
• Females: nipples become erect, vagina becomes lubricated
• Plateau: full level of arousal
• Heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension & breathing all increase
• Orgasm
• Heart rate & breathing peak, intense, pleasurable sensation of rhythmic muscle contractions; ejaculation in men
• Resolution: release of sexual tension
• Blood flow returns to normal
• Research led to following conclusions…
• Men and women have similar sexual responses; women tend to respond more slowly than men, but stay around longer; many women can have multiple orgasms, whereas men typically have refractory period (blocking of sexual arousal after orgasm); women reported that penis size is not related to sexual performance, unless the man is worried about it

• Genetics: it does tend to run in families
• Brain: part hypothalamus involved in sexual behavior smaller in gay men; more the size found in straight women
• Social factors: Who we hang out with when our sex drive emerges
Bem (1996, 1998) argues that if young boys identify with girls and engage in girl-like behavior, other boys become “dissimilar, unfamiliar and exotic” (i.e., erotic); the reverse would hold true for girls