Source: Textbook Ch. 6–7
Difficulty: Introductory to Intermediate | Prerequisites: Ch. 4–5 (schemas, attribution). Ch. 7 also benefits from understanding of cognitive dissonance basics.
Emotions are brief, targeted responses to specific events that motivate goal-directed behaviour. This chapter covers how emotions arise (appraisal processes), whether they are universal or culturally shaped (both), and how they influence cognition and social relationships. Emotions connect forward to persuasion (Ch. 8), where mood affects which processing route people take, and to relationships (Ch. 10), where emotional mimicry and oxytocin play central roles.
Emotions arise from how we appraise events relative to our goals. They have five components (appraisal, physiology, expression, subjective feeling, action tendency). Basic emotional expressions are universal, but cultures shape when and how emotions are displayed. Positive moods promote top-down, schema-driven thinking; negative moods promote careful, bottom-up analysis. Happiness is driven more by social relationships and intrinsic goals than by money beyond a basic threshold.
Appraisal
The cognitive evaluation of an event in relation to one's current goals, which determines which emotion is experienced.
Think of it as: the same event (a surprise party) produces joy or panic depending on what you were expecting.
Primary appraisal
The initial, rapid assessment of whether something is pleasant or unpleasant.
Secondary appraisal
The more deliberate evaluation of why you feel the way you do and how you want to respond, producing specific emotions.
Display rules
Cultural norms governing when, where, and to whom particular emotions may be expressed.
Focal emotions
Emotions that a culture emphasises and expresses more frequently (e.g. collectivists express more shame; individualists express more pride).
Affect Valuation Theory
The idea that cultures differ in which emotions they value. Western cultures tend to value high-arousal positive states (excitement, achievement); East Asian cultures tend to value low-arousal positive states (calm, contentment).
Emotional mimicry
The automatic tendency to mirror others' emotional expressions, which increases liking and closeness.
Two-Factor Theory of Emotion (Schachter and Singer)
The theory that the experience of emotion requires both unexplained physiological arousal and a cognitive label for that arousal.
In simple terms, your body gets worked up and your mind decides which emotion that is.
Duration neglect
The finding that the length of an emotional experience has little effect on how it is later evaluated. Peak intensity and the ending matter more.
Affective forecasting
Predicting how you will feel during or after a future event. People are often inaccurate because they underestimate their resilience (immune neglect) and focus on only one aspect of the event (focalism).
Infrahumanization
The tendency to view outgroup members as less capable of experiencing complex emotions than ingroup members.
All five are present in a full emotional experience:
Appraisal process
Physiological responses
Expressive behaviours (facial expressions, body language)
Subjective feelings
Action tendencies (urge to approach or avoid)
Evolutionary approach
Emotions are biologically based adaptations for survival and reproduction
Should be universal across cultures
Evidence: facial expressions recognised cross-culturally; blind people produce the same expressions as sighted people (Darwin's hypothesis)
Cultural approach
Emotions are shaped by views of self, social values, and social roles, all of which vary across cultures
Emotion accents: culturally specific ways of expressing emotion (e.g. biting the tongue for embarrassment in India)
Display rules govern when and to whom emotions can be shown
Focal emotions differ across cultures
Some cultures hyper-cognise specific emotions (many words for subtle variations)
Both approaches are correct: culture accents and modifies emotional universals.
Touch is pleasurable and rewarding (connected to orbitofrontal cortex, releases oxytocin)
Soothes and relieves stress, especially from a loved one
Encourages reciprocity and cooperation
Can convey social emotions like gratitude and compassion
Friends mimic each other's laughter, strangers do not
Mimicry promotes friendship (not just a result of it)
College roommates' emotional responses converge over a year
Emotions influence judgements by being taken as informative ("How do I feel about this?")
Affect complex judgements more than simple ones
Moods have more influence when schemas are lacking
Positive moods promote top-down thinking (schemas, heuristics, stereotypes, creative thinking, agreement)
Negative moods promote bottom-up thinking (more systematic, analytical processing)
Autonomic nervous system: sympathetic branch (fight or flight) vs parasympathetic branch (rest and restore)
Each emotion has a distinct physiological pattern (physiological specificity)
Two-Factor Theory (Schachter and Singer): unexplained arousal + cognitive label = experienced emotion
Peak-end rule: emotional experiences are evaluated based on their peak moment and their ending, not their duration (duration neglect)
Affective forecasting is often inaccurate (immune neglect + focalism)
Money increases happiness only up to roughly $75k
Social relationships are a stronger predictor of happiness
Intrinsic goals produce more happiness than extrinsic goals
Writing about negative events provides insight and reduces distress; writing about positive goals may improve performance
Six basic emotions: Anger, Disgust, Happiness, Sympathy, Guilt, Surprise (mnemonic: GS-DASH)
Attitudes are evaluations with three components (affect, behaviour, cognition) that shape and are shaped by our actions. This chapter's central tension is that attitudes are surprisingly poor predictors of behaviour, and often it is behaviour that changes attitudes (not the other way round). The key theories here, cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory, explain why people rationalise their actions after the fact.
Attitudes have three components (affect, behaviour, cognition) and can be measured explicitly or implicitly. Attitudes often fail to predict behaviour because of conflicting situational cues, inconsistent attitudes, and automatic processes. Behaviour frequently shapes attitudes through cognitive dissonance (changing thoughts to match actions) or self-perception (inferring attitudes from observed behaviour). System justification and terror management theory are broader forms of this rationalisation tendency.
Attitude
An evaluation of an object, person, or idea comprising three components: affect (emotion), behaviour (action tendency), and cognition (beliefs).
Explicit attitudes
Attitudes measured through direct self-report (strength, response latency, centrality in belief structure).
Implicit attitudes
Attitudes measured indirectly through tools such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT), non-verbal behaviours, facial expressions, and physiological indicators.
Cognitive dissonance
The uncomfortable tension that arises when behaviour is inconsistent with an attitude that is important to one's self-concept. Reduced by changing the attitude, changing the behaviour, or adding new cognitions.
Think of it as: you know smoking is bad, you smoke anyway, and the tension makes you either quit or convince yourself it is not that dangerous.
Effort justification
The tendency to value something more highly when you have worked hard to obtain it, as a way of reducing dissonance.
Induced compliance
A technique in which people are subtly led to behave in ways that conflict with their attitudes. The classic $1 vs $20 study: those paid only $1 to say a boring task was interesting changed their attitude more, because $1 was insufficient justification.
Self-perception theory (Bem)
The theory that people infer their own attitudes by observing their behaviour, especially when attitudes are weak or ambiguous. No internal dissonance is required.
Overjustification effect
The finding that extrinsic rewards can undermine intrinsic interest in an activity.
In simple terms, paying a child to read may make them enjoy reading less.
System justification theory
The motivation to see the existing social and political status quo as legitimate and fair, including just-world beliefs and compensatory stereotypes.
Terror management theory
The theory that awareness of death motivates people to seek symbolic immortality through connection to lasting institutions and high self-esteem.
Mortality salience
The state of being reminded of one's own death, which increases ingroup-outgroup effects and preference for the status quo.
Affect: emotional evaluation
Behaviour: action tendency
Cognition: beliefs, thoughts, ideologies
Bad (negative) attitudes tend to be stronger than good (positive) attitudes.
Behaviour is influenced by situational cues and social norms, not just attitudes
Attitudes can be internally inconsistent (guilty pleasures)
Introspection may alter the attitude (rational reasoning can miss the emotional component)
Attitudes may be based on secondhand information
General attitudes may not match specific situations (attitude toward birth control vs using it)
Some behaviour is automatic and unconscious
Cognitive consistency and balance theory
People are motivated to keep their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours consistent
Balance theory: if two friends dislike each other, you may change your opinion of one to restore balance
Cognitive dissonance
Inconsistency between important attitudes and behaviour causes discomfort
Reduced by: changing thoughts or behaviour to be more consistent, or adding new thoughts ("smoking relaxes me")
Attitudes can shift even before a decision is finalised
Effort justification: the more effort invested, the more the outcome is valued (e.g. harsh club initiations)
Induced compliance ($1 vs $20 study): minimal reward or threat causes greater attitude change because there is insufficient external justification
Resisting forbidden fruit: a mild threat of punishment leads to devaluing the forbidden item more than a strong threat does
When dissonance occurs:
Free choice in acting
Insufficient justification for the action
Negative consequences result
Those consequences were foreseen
Cultural differences in dissonance:
Individualists: triggered by threats to how they see themselves
Collectivists: triggered by threats to how others see them
Self-affirmation can buffer against dissonance by boosting self-esteem in an unrelated domain.
Self-perception theory
People infer attitudes from behaviour when attitudes are weak or ambiguous
No internal arousal or discomfort is required (the key difference from cognitive dissonance)
Cognitive dissonance applies when behaviour contradicts a strong, self-relevant attitude
Self-perception applies when no strong prior attitude exists
Overjustification effect
Extrinsic rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation
Rewarding good performance is worse than rewarding performance in general
System justification theory
Motivation to view the status quo as fair and legitimate
Includes just-world beliefs and positive, compensatory stereotypes ("the poor are happy")
System justifiers tend to be more conservative
Conservatives tend toward more structured, persistent cognitive styles; liberals more responsive to complexity and novelty
Terror management theory
Awareness of mortality drives people to connect with long-lived institutions and seek self-esteem
Mortality salience increases ingroup-outgroup effects
Experiment: mortality salience increased preference for the political incumbent
Students confuse emotions with moods. Emotions are brief (seconds to minutes) and tied to specific events. Moods last longer and are more diffuse.
Students assume the Two-Factor Theory means emotions have no distinct physiological signatures. The theory assumes this, but evidence for physiological specificity exists alongside it.
Students think cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory are competing. They apply to different situations: dissonance when a strong attitude is contradicted, self-perception when attitudes are weak or ambiguous.
Students believe the overjustification effect means all rewards are bad. It specifically applies when extrinsic rewards undermine existing intrinsic interest.
⚠️ Know the five components of emotion and be able to list them.
⚠️ Understand the distinction between positive moods (top-down processing) and negative moods (bottom-up processing).
⚠️ Be able to explain duration neglect and the peak-end rule with an example.
⚠️ The $1 vs $20 induced compliance study is a classic exam question. Know which group changed their attitude more and why.
⚠️ Know when cognitive dissonance applies vs when self-perception theory applies.
⚠️ Distinguish effort justification from induced compliance.
⚠️ Be able to explain how mortality salience affects ingroup-outgroup behaviour.
The five components of emotion are __________, __________, __________, __________, and __________. (Appraisal, physiological responses, expressive behaviours, subjective feelings, action tendencies)
True or False: Positive moods lead to more systematic, bottom-up processing. (False, they lead to top-down processing)
In the $1/$20 study, the group paid __________ showed greater attitude change. ($1)
Cognitive dissonance applies when an attitude is __________, while self-perception theory applies when an attitude is __________. (strong/central to self-concept; weak or ambiguous)
True or False: Money continues to increase happiness at all income levels. (False, the effect levels off around $75k)
Q: Participants in a study endure a painful initiation to join a discussion group that turns out to be boring. They later rate the group as more interesting than participants who had an easy initiation. Explain this finding.
A: This is effort justification. The painful initiation creates dissonance ("I suffered for something boring"), which is reduced by inflating the value of the group. The more effort invested, the greater the need to justify it.
Q: A person feels their heart racing on a suspension bridge and encounters an attractive stranger. They interpret the arousal as attraction. Which theory explains this?
A: The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion (Schachter and Singer). Unexplained physiological arousal (from the bridge) is given a cognitive label (attraction to the stranger), producing the experience of romantic interest.
Q: Explain why a child who is paid to draw eventually draws less when the payment stops.
A: The overjustification effect. The extrinsic reward (payment) replaced the child's intrinsic motivation. When the reward is removed, the activity no longer feels worth doing for its own sake.
Q: How does system justification theory explain why some disadvantaged groups endorse the status quo?
A: System justification theory holds that people are motivated to see the existing social order as fair and legitimate. This includes adopting compensatory stereotypes ("the poor are happy") and just-world beliefs ("good things happen to good people"), even when these beliefs work against one's own group interest.
Emotional appraisal connects to attribution (Ch. 5): how you explain an event shapes which emotion you feel. Display rules and focal emotions reappear in cross-cultural discussions of stereotyping (Ch. 11). Cognitive dissonance is central to persuasion (Ch. 8), where attitude change can follow from behaviour change. The overjustification effect has implications for education and workplace motivation.
Emotions, appraisal theory, primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, display rules, focal emotions, affect valuation theory, emotional mimicry, oxytocin, Two-Factor Theory, Schachter and Singer, duration neglect, peak-end rule, affective forecasting, immune neglect, focalism, infrahumanization, sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system, attitudes, ABC model, explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes, IAT, cognitive dissonance, Festinger, effort justification, induced compliance, $1/$20 study, self-perception theory, Bem, overjustification effect, system justification, just-world belief, terror management theory, mortality salience, balance theory, cognitive consistency, forbidden fruit, attitude inoculation