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Emotional Blogging

Cycling
[Photo by Claudecf]
One of the problems with blogging is that content gets old really fast. This can mean that great old posts can get lost under the sheer weight of new ones. To rectify this, and as I'm currently writing about emotion here, I've searched some of the other blogs I read to see what they've had to say about it. In the process I've dug out some old, and not so old, posts which provide some interesting insights into different aspects of emotion research.

Developing intelligence has this piece on robotic behavior.
"...a team lead by David Bell from Queen's University is using emotions to guide robotic behavior. Their robot responds to new objects with a cascade of feelings; initial fearfulness gives way to caution and inquisitiveness."
AlphaPsy describes neural dissociations between shame and guilt in an fMRI study:
"Moral philosophers have long made the distinction between guilt (the awareness of doing something intrinsically wrong) and shame (the awareness that your behavior is an object of laughter and spite from others)."
The BPS Research Digest has two posts on recognising emotions in others. The first study found we empathise better with those we identify with:
"Just as we're better at recognising people who share our ethnicity, we are also better at interpreting the emotional facial expressions of people from the same ethnic, national, or regional group as ourselves."

The second that depression was linked to emotional sensitivity towards others:
"Depressed people are normally thought of as being somewhat disengaged from the rest of the world, but psychologists at Queen's University in Canada have found that mildly depressed students actually have a heightened ability to detect other people's emotions."
Mind Hacks points out a piece from the Guardian about why the search for happiness could be pointless, and why the unemotional are better gamblers.

Mixing Memory on 'fear goggles' and one of the:
"...the coolest studies ever [...] they had participants cross a footbridge suspended 230 feet above a river. There were two manipulations. One involved who approached experimenters and asked them to complete a survey."

...and again on nostalgia:
"Anytime I hear songs from when I was in high school or college, I get very nostalgic. I remember people I knew, places I went, good times I had. It's a powerful and complex feeling, with all sorts of interesting psychological aspects."

And again on how emotions influence moral judgements. This research left Mixing Memory 'a bit disturbed':
"It seems that when we encounter a moral problem, we're unable to distinguish the emotions that are elicited by the problem, and those that are a result of other properties of the context in which we encounter the moral problem."

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Neural Correlates of Emotional Judgements

EEG
[Photo by robertrazrblog]
At the outset of this journey into the emotions, I considered the philosophical work of Robert Solomon. Recall that Solomon argues that emotions are judgements and strategies rather than experiences that well up unbidden from the deep. This post asks whether it is possible to find any empirical evidence for this attractive idea.

Using EEG recording, Hajcak, Moser & Simons (2006) investigated the way people's physiological responses varied with the type of judgement they made to emotionally arousing stimuli. Participants were shown pictures from the International Affective Picture System three times with different instructions each time:
  • First time (or block): Participants just looked at the pictures naturally - or as naturally as you can with a load of wires attached to your scalp.
  • Second block: participants were asked to make judgements about the emotional content of the pictures
  • Third block: participants were simply asked to indicate how many people were in the image.

The recording being made in this study were via EEG and, more specifically, focussed on a particular response called the 'late positive potential' (LPP). To interpret their results we need to understand something about what this LPP is. Here is how Hajcak et al. (2006) describe it:
"...the enhanced LPP may relate to augmented attention to arousing stimuli [...] the LPP might, like increased blood flow in visual cortex, index the facilitated perceptual processing that results from the activation of structures such as the amygdala..." (Hajcak et al., 2006:517)
So, the theory goes that the LPP is related in some close way to emotional processing. What this study found, then, was that the LPP was greater when participants were attending to the emotional content of the images, rather than when they were attending to a non-emotional aspect. This seems to provide some nice evidence that appraisals impinge on the processing of emotions.

The use of EEG is not as sexy as fMRI but in this paradigm it has one major advantage, it is 'temporally sensitive'. fMRI has a lag of a few seconds between activity in the brain and its measurement. EEG, on the other hand, only lags in the order of milliseconds so it is much better at telling when something has happened in the brain.

I'd like to be able to convincing connect this study with Solomon's ideas about emotions as judgements but the two levels of discussion are just too far removed. The most we can say from this study is that it shows that appraisals (judgements) appear to play some role in emotional processes. Crucially, using EEG also tells us that these processes happen fast, suggesting they are unconscious.

Hajcak, G., Moser, J., & Simons, R. (2006). Attending to affect: appraisal strategies modulate the electrocortical response to arousing pictures. Emotion, 6(3), 517-22. (Abstract)

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Emotion, Learning, Attention and Perception

Don't Shoot!
[Photo by aigarius]
If you were forced at gunpoint to choose the part of the brain that plays the most important role in emotion, you might well plump for the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond shaped structure in the medial temporal lobe, roughly in the centre of the brain. While certainly not the only structure involved in emotional processes, it is the most extensively researched. Generally speaking, the amygdala is thought to play a role in mediating cognitive responses to emotional stimuli. Phelps (2006), in an Annual Review of Psychology article, provides an overview of the findings that have emerged.

Emotional Learning

If someone really did point a gun at your head, you'd probably be afraid, even if you are used to that sort of thing happening. But for some people with damage to their amygdala, this might reveal itself in a rather odd disconnect between what their body 'feels' and what they 'know'.

Phelps (2006) describes a patient with this type of amygdala damage who, while being able to conceptually understand immediate physical danger, cannot seem to understand it in what the rest of us might consider the most obvious way: bodily. Responses that can be conditioned physiologically into normal controls, cannot be elicited in this patient. When you point a gun at her head, she is afraid, but she doesn't start sweating like the rest of us would.

So there seems to be at least two different ways of 'being afraid'. Similarly, there is certainly more than one way of learning to be afraid. You can see someone else have a gun held to their head and that's enough to clue you in that it might not be a pleasant experience. Or someone can simply tell you. These have been investigated in so-called 'instructional' and 'observational' fear conditioning paradigms. As Phelps (2006) points out, the amygdala has been found to be important in both of these processes.

Emotion and Memory

Perhaps the most famous connection between emotion and memory is the idea that arousal enhances episodic memory. Reassuringly (for research psychologists at least) patients with damage to their amygdala do not show this particular enhancement of memory. So, again, the amygdala seems to be important in some way in mediating how memories are layed down.

More recent work, though, has suggested that it's not the memory that's actually being enhanced. Instead it might just be the perceived clarity of the event that's being increased, while the memory for the event itself remains unenhanced. Phelps (2006) uses the example of research examining people's memories of 9/11. Crucially, people's recall was not actually improved despite their significantly raised arousal at that time. Clearly there's something more complicated going on here.

Emotion, Attention and Perception

So, imagine that the guy with the gun is back again. Now the revolver is so close to your face that you can see the bullets loaded into the individual chambers. But it's dark and you're emotional so how can you see that? Phelps (2006) explains that there is some evidence that fear can actually enhance perception. One study carried out by Phelps herself found an increased sensitivity to contrast when subjects were primed with fearful faces (Phelps, Ling & Carrasco, 2006). It seems, then, that emotional situations can send your visual cortex into overdrive.

In the same way, there is also evidence that emotional situations can enhance your attention. Some research has suggested that normal cognitive processes like the attentional blink can be reduced when emotions are running high. Again, patients with certain types of damage to their amygdala do not show this enhancement, lending further weight to the amygdala's claim to emotional fame.

Emotions and Social Stimuli

You stare back into your assailants eyes, trying to work out whether he's actually more scared than you are. If you challenge him to shoot you, as they do in all the best cop shows, will he meekly hand you the gun or will he put a bullet in your brain? Phelps (2006) reports evidence examining the amygdala's role in processing fear on other people's faces. There is some evidence that the amygdala could once again come to your rescue. It seems to have a specialised role in processing fear, especially as, again, those with amygdala damage tend to have difficulties in this area.

But, Phelps (2006) points out that while there's some interesting research being produced on the amygdala's role in fear responses, this area is still wide open and there are still considerable controversies.

Down the Barrell

If you're looking down the barrell of a gun, the traditional dividing line in cognitive science between emotion and cognition is not so clear. Your emotional state can have marked effects on basic cognitive processes like learning, attention, perception and memory. And it's the amygdala that seems to play an important role in mediating these processes.

[Thanks to Chris at Mixing Memory for pointing out this article to me]

Phelps, E. (2006). Emotion and Cognition: Insights from studies of the human amygdala. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 27-53. (Abstract | PDF)

Phelps, E., Ling, S., & Carrasco, M. (2006). Emotion Facilitates Perception and Potentiates the Perceptual Benefits of Attention. Psychological Science, 17, 292. (Abstract | HTML Author Manuscript)

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Blurred Definitions of Affect and Emotion

Blurry
[Photo by Hugo]
Blurry and confusing definitions are the stock-in-trade of psychologists, just as they are of many other scientists. Perhaps you have noticed that I have been guilty of using the words 'affect' and 'emotion' rather loosely. I'm not the only one. Similar to many other areas of psychology, emotion researchers are far from decided and united on where to draw the lines, and, indeed, if lines can or should be drawn at all.

Panksepp (2000) offers the following delineation:
  • Emotion is the umbrella term for all of the behavioural, expressive, cognitive  and physiological changes that occur.
  • Affect is the conscious experience of an emotion.
  • Emotional affect is the unconscious component of emotion.
  • Non-emotional affect is rather a vague term that just includes everything that isn't an emotional affect, e.g. nausea and pain. [I don't agree with Panksepp here, how can pain be considered non 'action-promoting'?]
Emotional affect, then, is what Panksepp dismissively refers to as "...'spooky' mental issues..." (Panksepp, 2000:50) and what LeDoux (1996) calls the proper and necessary subject of emotion research.

The well-known neurologist and emotion researcher Antonio Damasio has suggested the following taxonomy:
  • A state of emotion can be started and executed unconsciously.
  • A state of feeling is unconscious.
  • A state of feeling made conscious which is the emotion and feeling made conscious (I think!)
  • Affect, then, is the conscious experience of emotion.
Different purposes require different definitions and Panksepp and Damasio have different purposes for their definitions. That said, there are considerable differences. For example, Panksepp thinks affect is both conscious and unconscious, Damasio think it is only conscious (or nonconscious as he writes). Panksepp thinks emotion is an umbrella term for everything, Damasio thinks it describes only unconscious aspects. And, as each of them is grappling with these vague concepts, just like the rest of us, they are both correct, for their own purposes.

To take a third example, perhaps more typical, Davidson (2003) appears to use the words 'affect' and 'emotion' interchangeably.
"Sin 2: Affect is subcortical. There is a tendency among some investigators to regard emotions as largely subcortical and to sometimes also assume that cognitions are cortical." (Davidson, 2003:129, emphasis added)
Incidentally I'll be returning to this article to talk about the seven deadly sins of emotion researchers.

Given the state of confusion over meaning, I'm forced to reserve judgement over the 'correct' definition of affect and emotion. I'd like to go along with the dictionary definition of 'affect' as a "Feeling or emotion, especially as manifested by facial expression or body language" (Dicitonary.com) but, clearly for psychologists and those in related fields, the word's technical usage has yet to settle down.

Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body Emotion and the Making of Consciousness. London: Vintage.

Davidson, R. (2003). Seven sins in the study of emotion: Correctives from affective neuroscience. Brain and Cognition, 52(1), 129-132.

Panksepp, J. (2000). Affective consciousness and the instinctual motor system: The neural sources of sadness and joy. The Caldron of Consciousness: Motivation, Affect and Self-organization, Advances in Consciousness Research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co.

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Separating Emotion From Cognition

fMRI Scan

[Photo by mhuang]
One of the main points I took away from the discussion on unity is that psychology needs to integrate results from different methodologies in order to better understand psychological phenomena. The emotions are a prime example of where this is happening, perhaps because the late blooming of emotion research has coincided with the explosion of brain imaging paradigms. And so the term 'affective neuroscience' has come into it's own. This post asks whether there's any justification for separating affective neuroscience from cognitive neuroscience.



The term 'affective neuroscience' was coined by Jaak Panksepp in the early 1990s to distinguish it from cognitive neuroscience. Panksepp explains his view that affect or feelings are:
"...distinct neurobiological processes in terms of anatomical, neurochemical, and various functional criteria, including peripheral bodily interactions. Emotional and motivational feelings are unique experientially valenced 'state spaces' that help organisms make cognitive choices - e.g., to find food when hungry, water when thirsty, warmth when cold, and companionship when lonely or lusty." (Panksepp, 2003:6)
Panksepp departs from LeDoux who, you'll recall (if not go here), thinks conscious emotions are too bound up in the problem of consciousness to be currently amenable to sensible investigations. Panksepp, meanwhile, argues that 'affect', by definition consciously experienced emotion, is important in the study of emotions.



That aside, one of the most important points that Panksepp (2003) addresses is the question of whether affects and cognitions can be separated in any meaningful way. He argues that while it may not be possible untangle cognitions from affect, there is considerable utility in examining the way in which it is 'embodied'. And here lies an important role for the neuroimaging of humans and animal brain research.



So what evidence is there, for Panksepp (2003), that emotions and cognitions can be separated?

  1. From a considerable amount of research, there seem to be emotional processes that are completely separate, or independent of, pure cognitions.

  2. Removing the higher parts of animal's brains (decortication) still leaves them with affective responses. Put crudely: without their cortexes, animals can still feel, but can't think anymore.
  3. Young children appear to display greater emotionality than adults. This might suggest that higher processes, developed later in life, serve to 'dampen' evolutionarily programmed emotional processes.
  4. Cognition is digital and emotion is analogue.

  5. Emotions are broadly similar cross-culturally, cognitions are not.
  6. The right hemisphere of the brain seems more emotionally-skilled whereas the left is more cognitively-skilled.
Even taken together these points do not prove that affects and cognitions are separate entities, but they do suggest some separation between processes. From the opposite perspective, it is clear that affects and cognitions, while their distinctiveness is being argued here, are massively and necessarily interrelated. Thinking evolutionarily, our cognitions need our emotions and vica versa. A head is no use without a heart to go with it. That doesn't mean there isn't considerable utility in analysing each separately.



In the reality of everyday research, Panksepp (2003) argues, it is useful to emphasise the distinction between affects and cognitions if only to encourage a greater focus on emotion.



Panksepp, J. (2003). At the interface of the affective, behavioral, and cognitive neurosciences: Decoding the emotional feelings of the brain. Brain and Cognition, 52(1), 4-14. (Abstract | PDF)

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Doing Without Feeling

Upside Down
[Photo by wiseacre]
Having introduced the idea of the emotional unconscious in the last post, I am going to dive straight into some of the research which attempts to prove its existence. Kent Berridge at the University of Michigan has carried out some interesting research into the emotional unconscious. But despite some good evidence, Berridge & Winkielman (2003) make the point that the existence of unconscious emotions is still controversial.

This is made clear by the caution with which Berridge Winkielman (2003) discuss the idea when introducing their own studies. Like LeDoux (1996), Berridge & Winkielman (2003) point to the way in which emotion has often been defined as requiring a conscious component.

In the first study Berridge & Winkielman (2003) report, Winkielman, Berridge & Wilbarger (2000) exposed participants to subliminal emotional cues in facial expressions while they thought they were engaged in a study about gender. They then allowed their participants to 'interact' with a fruit-flavoured drink.

The results showed that those who were thirsty and exposed to happy faces drank 50% more of the drink than neutrally primed participants. The mirror effect was seen for the negative-primed participants. Importantly, participants were not aware of the priming and were not aware of being in a better or worse mood depending on their priming condition. Further, the priming conditions had no effect on participants who weren't thirsty.

A similar paradigm was used in Winkielman et al.'s (2000) second study. Here, though, instead of focussing on the amount of drink, participants evaluated the drink. Again, the subliminal priming had the same effect on subjective ratings of the drink. But, this time participants completed a 20-item PANAS scale before and after the subliminal priming and no differences were found.

These two studies certainly look like they provide useful evidence for the emotional unconscious, but Berridge & Winkielman (2003) consider an alternative explanation. Perhaps the unconscious information participants were primed with was purely cognitive. This would explain why participants did not report any affective changes - there hadn't been any. Berridge & Winkielman (2003) argue, however, that this interpretation is not consistent with other evidence. This research suggests that facial expressions do indeed induce an affective response as shown on behavioural or physiological measures, e.g. activation of the amygdala.

But, if this line of argument isn't convincing, then Berridge & Winkielman (2003) argue that a particular order manipulation in their study provides further evidence of an affective rather than cognitive process. Some participants, after subliminal priming focussed their attention on themselves, while other participants focussed on the drink. If the priming was cognitive, in the form of a 'free-floating belief', there should have been a difference between these two conditions. This effect was not seen, suggesting the process was affective.

Winkielman et al.'s (2000) studies certainly provide some useful preliminary evidence to support the idea of the emotional unconscious.

Berridge, K., Winkielman, P. (2003). What is an unconscious emotion? (The case for unconscious "liking"). Cognition Emotion, 17(2), 181-211. (Abstract | PDF)

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: the mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. London: Simon Schuster.

Winkielman, P., Berridge, K., Wilbarger, J. (2000). Unconscious affect for doing without feeling: Subliminal facial expressions alter human consumption. Unpublished manuscript

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Rediscovering The Emotional Unconscious

Man Cries
[Photo by Ali K]
In the last post I started the discussion of emotions with a few general points made by the philosopher Robert Solomon. In this post I'm moving onto a psychologist whose study of the emotions has been extremely influential: Joseph LeDoux. In his book, The Emotional Brain, LeDoux (1996) examines and explains the automatic nature of many emotional processes. But these won't concern us just yet. First we need to consider an important criticism LeDoux makes of much previous research into emotions.

LeDoux (1996) looks back to the cognitive revolution to explain why emotion research has been lacking. The beauty of the cognitive revolution was that it reintroduced the idea that examining unconscious processes was a legitimate target of scientific interest. The behaviourists before had shunned all unconscious processes, arguing that an organism's overt behaviour was the only measure you could trust. Cognitivists, however, said we can make inferences about unconscious processes from the way humans (and indeed other animals) react to particular situations.

Emotions, for LeDoux, have not had the advantage of this revolution. Instead, the focus in emotion research has been on the conscious experience of emotions. For example, after some experimental manipulation, the subject is asked:
  • "How do you feel?"
  • The subject introspects and returns the answer: "Err... I feel fine."
This is often considered a valid method of investigation. But, now imagine using this technique to model basic cognitive processes like memory, the subject is asked:
  • "How many digits can you retain in short-term memory?"
  • The subject introspects and returns the answer: "Err... Probably about 7."
Valid? "Err... Probably not." Obviously I'm taking (considerable) liberties with this example, but the underlying point is valid. Why should anyone be able to properly comprehend their own emotions if they can't properly comprehend their cognitions? After all, it is a well-known phenomenon that other people can sometimes judge our emotional state better than we can ourselves. How is that possible if we have complete access to 'how we feel'?

LeDoux (1996) expands this idea by pointing out that emotion researchers have accidentally bitten off much more than they can chew. Instead of 'just' examining the problem of unconscious emotional processes, they are also attempting to unpick the problem of 'consciousness' at the same time. In other words, not only are they trying to examine unconscious emotional processes, but also to understand how these move into consciousness.

Two crucial ideas have emerged from the first two posts in this series. Firstly, Solomon argues emotions can be thought of as strategies, not just simply as processes out of our conscious control. The second crucial idea, which LeDoux argues, is that emotions don't seem to have benefited from the cognitive revolution in the same way that cognitions have. Enormous research efforts have been made to understand unconscious cognitive processes, but rather less effort has been made to understand unconscious emotional processes.

Are these viewpoints compatible? On one hand a philosopher is telling us that, in some sense, we actually have control over our emotions. At the other, a psychologist is telling us that, because emotional processes are largely unconscious, we don't have access to them. How can we have control over something we can't gain access to? Actually these points of view are perfectly compatible, for the same reason that I can will my hand to move, but I don't have direct access to the complex series of physiological interactions that are required to achieve this feat.

So, now that we've somewhat devalued the importance of research into conscious emotional processes, what does the research tell us about unconscious emotional processes? Stay tuned...

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: the mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. London: Simon & Schuster.
Joseph LeDoux's website

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Emotional Truth: The Search Starts Here

Surprised
[Photo by Gianmarco Lodi]

"A thought comes when it will, not when I will." - Nietzsche, quoted in Solomon (2003).

Nietzsche's quote raises an important question about both thoughts and, implicitly, about emotions. Many people would say their emotions only come when they will and not when they want. So how do thoughts and emotions interact in everyday life and in therapeutic processes like cognitive behavioural therapy? Do we really have any control over our emotions or are they things that just happen to us?

This is the first in a series of posts examining these and related ideas. But, first of all, I want to lay the groundwork for the discussion with a brief excursion into philosophy. Why start with a philosophical view of emotion? Because once you enter into the helter-skelter scramble for facts and theories that is modern psychology it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees or even which forest you're in. A philosophical view allows us to get a handle on the big picture, to have a general view about what emotions are for and where they come from, before we plunge into the details.

Luckily for us Robert Solomon is the kind of philosopher who keeps his eye on psychological research but provides a birds-eye view. His philosophy of emotions, therefore, takes into account work done by neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux. That's not to say he agrees with their interpretations of the evidence!


Folk Psychology

Before looking at Solomon's view, though, it is useful to reflect on two aspects of the folk psychology view of emotion:
  • The passivity of emotions: Solomon (2003) points out that emotions are popularly regarded as something over which we have little control, experiences that happen to us.

  • The hydraulic metaphor: Solomon (2003) draws attention to the hydraulic metaphor of emotions. The idea that emotions build up inside us like steam in an engine. Crucially it is something that comes from inside and bursts forth, or is held stoically in check.
Both of these ideas are strongly embedded in many cultures around the world. Solomon (2003) argues that both of them are, to some degree, wrong, or at least not useful ideas.


Against Passivity and the Hydraulic Metaphor

Is it possible to be just angry? No, anger is always directed somewhere, at something or someone, even if it is at such a diffuse object as 'the whole world'. Anger requires an object with which to be angry. How does this fit with the folk psychology view of emotion? Not too well. From Solomon's point of view anger is directed outwards whereas the common understanding is of a largely internal process.

Robert Solomon has long been a proponent of the idea that emotions are not just things that happen to us. As existentialist philosophers like Sartre point out, we have a responsibility to take ownership of our emotions. They do not own us, we own them. To say otherwise is to cede control of a fundamental part of ourselves to...well to who?

And then there's the hydraulic metaphor of emotion. Solomon does not agree with the idea that our emotions are primarily physiological pressures building up inside of us. On the contrary, Solomon argues, emotions are in fact choices. But, not necessarily choices in the emotional moment, but patterns of choices over a period of time. Certain ways in which you tend to view the world: your appraisals.

Consider whether it is possible that certain habitual emotional responses that you have are perhaps, just that, habits. And, thinking prosaically, like your shopping habits, they are constrained by certain factors (e.g. your financial resources), but you still have to take control and responsibility for them.

So, rather than a mysterious force welling up from within, Solomon views emotions as choices for which we have to take responsibility. Emotions are, in fact, strategies.

With these thoughts (and feelings!) in mind I will move onto more empirical ideas in future posts.

Solomon, R. C. (2003) Not Passion's Slave. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Journey Through the Psychology of Emotions

"A thought comes when it will, not when I will." - Nietzsche, quoted in Solomon (2003).

Nietzsche's quote raises an important question about both thoughts and, implicitly, about emotions. Many people would say their emotions only come when they will and not when they want. So how do thoughts and emotions interact in everyday life and in therapeutic processes like cognitive behavioural therapy? Do we really have any control over our emotions or are they things that just happen to us? This is a series of posts examining these and related ideas.


1. Emotional Truth: The Search Starts Here
"A philosophical view allows us to get a handle on the big picture, to have a general view about what emotions are for and where they come from, before we plunge into the details."

2. Rediscovering The Emotional Unconscious
"Solomon argues emotions can be thought of as strategies, not just simply as processes out of our conscious control. The second crucial idea, which LeDoux argues, is that emotions don't seem to have benefited from the cognitive revolution in the same way that cognitions have."

3. Doing Without Feeling
"...despite some good evidence, Berridge & Winkielman (2003) make the point that the existence of unconscious emotions is still controversial."

4. Separating Emotion From Cognition
"...while it may not be possible untangle cognitions from affect, there is considerable utility in examining the way in which it is 'embodied'. And here lies an important role for the neuroimaging of humans and animal brain research."

5. Blurred Definitions of Affect and Emotion
"Blurry and confusing definitions are the stock-in-trade of psychologists, just as they are of many other scientists. Perhaps you have noticed that I have been guilty of using the words 'affect' and 'emotion' rather loosely. I'm not the only one."

6. Emotion, Learning, Attention and Perception
"If you were forced at gunpoint to choose the part of the brain that plays the most important role in emotion, you might well plump for the amygdala."

7. Neural Correlates of Emotional Judgements
"...Solomon argues that emotions are judgements and strategies rather than experiences that well up unbidden from the deep. This post asks whether it is possible to find any empirical evidence for this attractive idea."

8. Emotional Blogging
"One of the problems with blogging is that content gets old really fast. This can mean that great old posts can get lost under the sheer weight of new ones. To rectify this, and as I'm currently writing about emotion here, I've searched some of the other blogs I read to see what they've had to say about it."

9. Appraisal Processes in Emotion
"...how come the same event provokes different emotional reactions in different people? Or, in what sense is emotion irrational? How are our emotions (largely) appropriate to the situations in which we find ourselves?"

10. A Process Model of Appraisal
"Emotional changes that appear to have no apparent (conscious) cause, or that occur in the blink of an eye, are familiar to all of us. If so, how can appraisal theories hope to explain these phenomenon?"

11. What is empathy?
"Like many terms in psychology, it can seem intuitively obvious what 'empathy' means, but on closer inspection the definition is not so clear."

12. Emotion Processing Deficits in Alexithymia
"Alexithymia is a subclinical condition characterised by an inability to express or identify felt emotions (Berthoz et al.. 2002). It is thought to affect 10% of the population (Linden, Wen & Paulhaus, 1994)."

13. Emotion Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders
"...ordinary social interactions contain considerable emotional components. This post looks at studies which have examined how those with ASDs may have deficits in the automatic processing of emotions."


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