Test: Motivation and Emotion- 2 - Humanities/Arts MCQ

Most emotions have developed by 3 years of age.

External sensory stimuli in the form of smell, touch or even taste provide the immediate reward and the reward value of these stimuli is moderated by the organism’s internal state, such as hormonal status, fatigue, arousal level. The pre-optic area and estrogen are not factors, but an area of the brain and a hormone. Choices C and D are not part of the neural circuitry in the brain contributing to sexual behaviour, although they may influence people’s motivation to seek out sexual relationships.

These factors define high levels of emotional intelligence.

Some research has indicated that women respond differently to partner stimuli depending on their stage in the menstrual cycle, with the most positive response observed during ovulation, or when women are most fertile.

Pennebaker has demonstrated that expressive writing is most effective when it is done on a specific, traumatic topic and includes use of positive emotion words. Writing about any topic does not have the same effect on health. Using few positive and negative emotion words is associated with poor health outcomes. Non-verbal expressions are not part of expressive writing interventions.

The functions of some peripheral factors in the control of eating can be demonstrated by the sham feeding preparation. In this preparation, the animal tastes, smells and eats the food normally, but the food drains away from the stomach. This means that, although the animal consumes the food, the stomach does not become full, since the food does not enter the stomach or intestine.
Experiments have shown that rats, monkeys and humans will work for food when they are sham feeding (see Rolls, 1999), often continuing to eat for more than an hour. This demonstrates that it is the taste and smell of food that provide the immediate reward for food-motivated behaviour. Further evidence for this is that humans are more likely to rate the taste and smell of food as being pleasant when they are hungry. One important aspect of sham feeding is that satiety (reduction of appetite) does not occur. From this we can conclude that taste, smell and even swallowing (i.e. oropharyngeal factors) do not of themselves make us feel satisfied, or satiated. Instead, satiety is produced by food accumulating in the stomach and entering the intestine.

Emotion has its behavioural aspects. An angry conversation takes a different course from a calm conversation. If you were extremely anxious in an examination, you would perform differently than if you were only mildly anxious. You can see emotional behaviour in the facial expressions of other people. You also know that not only does a smile feel different from a frown, but it also has different social consequences. In other words, emotion prepares us for action; it has an ‘action readiness’ associated with it that frequently translates into behaviour.

The glucostatic hypothesis is confirmed by the following findings:

• Rats show a small decrease in plasma glucose concentration just before meals, suggesting that decreased glucose concentration initiates eating (Campfield & Smith, 1990). At the end of a meal, plasma glucose concentration rises, and so does insulin, which helps the glucose to be used by cells.
• Injections of insulin, which reduce the concentration of glucose in the plasma (by facilitating its entry to cells and storage as fat), provoke food intake.
• Infusions, or injections, of glucose and insulin (together enabling glucose to be taken up by the body’s cells) can reduce feeding.
• The brain’s monitoring system for glucose availability seems to be in the part of the brain called the medulla (part of the brainstem), because infusions there of another competitive inhibitor of glucose (5-thio-glucose) also provoke feeding (Levin et al., 2000).

Leptin does not fluctuate in response to meals, but rather over 24 hours, and has been related to long-term appetite and weight regulation. The hypothalamus is not a hormone. Estrogen and cortisol are two hormones that have not been associated with long-term weight regulation. Angiotensin II is a hormone associated with detecting hydration-dehydration.

Emotion involves five main perspectives including physiological arousal, subjective feelings, social context, cognitive appraisal and behavioural responses.

Schacter and Singer emphasized the role of cognition as well as physiological arousal in the experience of emotions. They did not emphasize development or the limbic system differently from James-Lange or Cannon-Bard. Their theory has been criticized and it is equally relevant to society today.

The functioning of the orbitofrontal brain region could have critical implications for survival. In an evolutionary context, without this function of the orbitofrontal cortex, animals might have consumed large quantities of poisonous foodstuffs and failed to learn which colours and smells signify nutritious foods.
The orbitofrontal cortex is important not only in representing whether a taste is rewarding, and so whether eating should occur, but also in learning about which (visual and olfactory) stimuli are actually foods (Rolls, 1996, 1999, 2000c). Because of its reward-decoding function, and because emotions can be understood as states produced by rewards and punishments, the orbitofrontal cortex plays a very important role in emotion (see Rolls, 1999).

In their ingenious (1962) experiment, Schachter and Singer were convinced that they had supported Schachter’s three propositions by manipulating cognition and arousal. Schachter’s (1970) general conclusions were that there is little physiological differentiation between the emotions, the labelling of emotional states being largely a cognitive matter. Even though both Schachter’s ideas and his studies have been influential, they have also been criticized.
To take one example, Schachter did not prove that emotion depends on physiological arousal and cognition. Leventhal goes further, arguing that Schachter has never shown exactly how arousal and cognition combine in emotion, particularly in children. From a Schachterian perspective, how would a young child be able to feel any emotion before knowing the linguistic label for that feeling?

Many of the amygdala’s connections are similar to those of the orbitofrontal cortex, and indeed it has many connections to the orbitofrontal cortex itself. Bilateral damage to the temporal lobes of primates, including the amygdala, leads to the Kluver–Bucy syndrome, in which, for example, monkeys place non-food as well as food items in their mouths and fail to avoid noxious stimuli (Aggleton & Passingham, 1982; Baylis & Gaffan, 1991; Jones & Mishkin, 1972; Kluver & Bucy, 1939; Murray et al., 1996). Rats with lesions in the basolateral amygdala display similar altered food selections.

The question that remains is whether cognition, and in particular cognitive appraisal, is necessary for the perception of emotion. If someone lacks the cognitive capacity to make a particular appraisal of an event, can they experience the emotion that is normally associated with that event? Lazarus (e.g. 1982, 1984, 1991, 1993) has added greatly to our understanding of emotion and coping processes.
He believes that an event must be understood before emotion can follow. On the other hand, Zajonc (e.g. 1980, 1984) argues that cognition and emotion are independent, with emotion even preceding cognition in some cases. The debate about whether cognition necessarily precedes or follows emotion turns on the definition of cognition (see Buck, 1991; Ellsworth, 1991). It is clear that conscious thought is not involved in some rapid emotional reactions. A sudden screech of brakes tends to produce an unthinking, uncontrolled emotional reaction.
But it can also be argued that some appraisals might also occur unconsciously and immediately. If such appraisals are cognitions, then all emotion is preceded by and involves cognition. The alternative is that some emotions involve cognition and others do not. Perhaps this is an arid debate. In everyday life the interplay between emotion and cognition is very intricate. There is a huge difference between the internal lurch you would feel at a sudden loud noise in the middle of the night and the combination of thoughts and feelings you would experience if this turned out to be the precursor to your house going up in flames.
In other words, a simple, immediate reflex action that might send a burst of adrenaline through the system is very different from the complexities of emotional reaction when the cortex is involved and specific hopes, fears, memories and expectations are implicated. The reflex system is primitive and very much centred on the ‘now’, whereas what might be termed ‘real’ emotion also involves the past and the future (through appraisals).