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Emotion, Cognition, and Social Interaction - Information from Psychology and New Ideas topics self help

By: Mark Pettinelli
This selection and arrangement of content as a collection is copyrighted by Mark Pettinelli.
Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Collection structure revised: 2013/03/31
For copyright and attribution information for the modules contained in this collection, see the "Attributions" section at the end of the collection.

1How do Emotion, Attention, Thought, and Arousal Work Together?*

You can buy a hardcopy of this from connexions here - another emotion article I wrote is more basic than this you may want to read first is online The Psychology of Emotions, Feelings, and thoughts

Unconscious and Conscious Processes

A Study by Douglas Derryberry and Mary Klevjord Rothbart titled "Arousal, Affect, and Attention as Components of Temperament"[7] concluded that "This study demonstrates that the general temperamental constructs of arousal, emotion, and self-regulation can be successfully decomposed into more specific subconstructs revealing interesting patterns of relations."

I believe that statement makes a lot of sense - there are several key factors that influence what a person is going to feel, and the main ones are probably affect, arousal and attention. If you think about it, when you are in a social situation, your affect is constantly changing, and so are your levels of arousal and attention. Those things constantly fluctuating is going to determine the emotions you are feeling on a moment to moment basis. Your attention can change and be directed at many different things in a brief time period - the only other significant factors other than the attention changes are going to be your affect (which shows your subtle emotions) and your arousal (which shows your more powerful emotions).

Actually your thinking and physical response is also going to be significant - in the study they had a number of items they defined - here is the "thinking" one:

  • Cognitive Reactivity (CR). The amount of general cognitive activity in which the person engages, including daydreaming, problem solving, anticipatory cognition, and the ease with which visual imagery or verbal processes are elicited by stimulation. "A continuous flow of thoughts and images runs through my head."

In a way there is always a continuous flow of thoughts and images running through a humans mind. People are always processing information from their minds or from their environment. I would think that the cognitive thinking aspect directs the emotional and physical ones. Information or thoughts trigger you to feel different things or react in different ways all of the time, probably many different times in a minute. Every slight physical reaction, such as you looking at something different, or shifting your position, or a subtle change in affect, was somehow triggered by thought.

In this article I am going to analyze things such as... what types of emotion are generated in which high arousal situations, and what is the level of attention involved. For example, when you are in a high intensity social situation, your arousal and attention are higher, but there is also fear. By "arousal" in that example I don't mean sexual arousal, I just mean non-sexual arousal.

The thoughts someone experiences all of the time are incredibly complex, my understanding from observing my own thoughts is that you have natural impulses that cause thoughts to arise automatically all of the time. These thoughts usually aren't clear to the person having them that they are having the thought possibly because it directs a behavior or response that they aren't aware they are doing. For example if you experience an emotion generated by someone else in a social situation, your affect might change in a subtle way that you are not aware of. That change in affect is an unconscious thought because thought was necessary in order for your affect to change.

In the study they separated out these natural impulses (which I would say are unconscious thoughts) into the positive ones and the negative ones:

  • Inhibitory Control (1C). The capacity to suppress positively toned impulses and thereby resist the execution of inappropriate approach tendencies. "I can easily resist talking out of turn, even when I'm excited and want to express an idea."

  • Behavioral Activation (BA).The capacity to suppress negatively toned impulses and thereby resist the execution of inappropriate avoidance tendencies. "Even when I am very tired, it is easy for me to get myself out of bed in the morning."

Your positive emotions might cause you to want do something and because you are so positive about it there is that strong, impulsive drive which could cause you to do things. It is the opposite with negative emotions, if you feel very strongly these feelings are going to cause you to do things and think things automatically in order to satisfy the feeling.

This "impulsive drive" as I called it in the previous paragraph, is related to a persons level of arousal. Arousal would be someones stronger, more potent emotions and therefore would cause someone to become impulsive because the drive is powerful. If you are feeling very strongly (such as high arousal), then you are going to be consciously and unconsciously motivated to think and do things you wouldn't otherwise do. In addition, I already mentioned how even without feeling strongly, people have many different reactions in a minute (such as slight changes in affect). These probably increase if you are feeling more strongly. That makes sense, when you are talking to someone and you say something that gets a reaction, the other person usually changes their expression more or something.

The amount of arousal someone experiences can change from normal to high in a certain time period, or high to low in a similar time period - this was defined in the study:

  • Rising Reactivity (RR). The rate at which general arousal rises from its normal to its peak level of intensity. "I often find myself becoming suddenly excited about something."

  • Falling Reactivity (FR). The rate at which general arousal decreases from its peak to its normal levels of intensity. "I usually fall asleep at night within ten minutes."

So, as I have said, a higher arousal rate is going to result in more reactions from you, or as the people who wrote that study called it, "rising reactivity". A higher arousal rate is also going to cause your attention to change in some way, too. I would think it would cause your attention to increase normally, but it is possible that more excitement or arousal could cause you to pay less attention, though usually when people have more energy they are more attentive. Here is from the study again how they defined someone's ability to focus their attention and someone shifting their attention:

  • Attentional Focusing (AF). The capacity to intentionally hold the attentional focus on desired channels and thereby resist unintentional shifting to irrelevant or distracting channels. "My concentration is easily disrupted if there are people talking in the room around me."

  • Attentional Shifting (AS). The capacity to intentionally shift the attentional focus to desired channels, thereby avoiding unintentional focusing on particular channels. "It is usually easy for me to alternate between two different tasks."

Snygg and Combs speak of a "narrowing of the perceptual field under tension," which means that when people are tense and anxious, they tend to be less observant and less aware of their environment. As these authors say, "the girl too concerned over her appearance entering a room is only too likely to be unaware of the disastrous carpet edge in her path."[8]

There is likely to by many things that people do and think that they aren't aware of. I would say that each minute you have a few unconscious thoughts you aren't aware of. These thoughts probably influence your emotions in subtle ways. These thoughts are going to be influenced anxiety, arousal, your attention, (and, obviously, what is happening). There are obvious unconscious thoughts, such as something you might notice you missed later on, and there are (I believe) more subtle unconscious thoughts, a great level of detail in emotion and thought that occurs every second. Analyzing that level of what is going on I think could reveal more about what someone is feeling and thinking.

The following passage by Lindgren, Henry Clay[9], shows how unconscious processes operate in everyday life.

  • Even though it constitutes a denial of reality, repression often serves a useful function in that it enables us to adjust more easily to the demands of life, relatively unhampered by unpleasant thoughts and feelings and unaware of contradictions in our behavior. It enables us to perform tasks and operations that would be difficult or impossible if w e were bothered by recurring painful reminders of past faflures or by other disturbing thoughts and memories.

  • ...our conscience or superego plagues us with guilt feelings whenever w e indulge in thoughts and actions that run contrary to the accepted standards of our culture. Tliese feelings often cause us to repress certain thoughts that might otherwise lead us to perform forbidden or disapproved acts. Some actions that are disapproved are violations of moral standards, while others involve certain patterns of behavior that are less acceptable than others. For example, there is a tendency in our culture to repress feelings that would lead to an emotional display. Under most circumstances w e disapprove of weeping in public, and this attitude leads us to repress feelings of deep sorrow, particularly when w e are with others. W e condone kissing in public on certain occasions, provided it is more or less formal and perfunctory. But if a nine-year-old girl throws her arms around her mother and effusively kisses her — sa\, on a streetcar or in a department store — the mother is likely to be embarrassed and to scold the child. These are examples of a cultural pattern which stresses emotional control and which regards the expression of strong emotions as babyish, immature, unmannerh', or even abnormal. Thus the typical American not only expresses less emotion than, say, the typical resident of the Mediterranean countries, but wfll often deny that he feels any emotion at all when faced by situations that would evoke considerable emotionality on the part of the Mediterranean person. In our " flight from emotion," w e often try to present ourselves as calm, reasonable, competent, and efficient persons, even though we may not feel this wa}'. W e stress the intellectual aspects of our behavior and attempt to deny to ourselves and others the presence of strong feelings.

  • Unconscious feelings do not always reveal themselves through such obvious means as a slip of the tongue. Usually they express themselves indirectly through subtle little mannerisms, quirks, facial expressions, tones of voice, and so on.

But is that the full mystery behind unconscious operations? It couldn't be - there must be a lot more going on unconsciously that needs explanation. For instance, in each different social situation there are probably different emotional responses. Your anxiety, arousal, attention, perception and emotions could vary - I already stated that those were the main factors involved with psychological functioning.

The following passage (also by Lindgren) shows the importance of empathy, it also explains a little how it impacts your perception and anxiety:

  • Empathy, as used in this sense, is the ability to be aware of the feelings and attitudes of others without necessarily sharing them. W e gain this awareness by observing the speech, facial expression, posture, and body movements of others. As one four-year-old said, " I k n o w m y M o m m y 's mad, 'cause she walks mad." Empathy is the result of sensitive and acute perception. Like other forms of perception, it m a y be sharpened or dulled, depending on the state of our emotions. Sometimes anxiety can serve to sharpen empathic awareness, but usually it operates to distort it.

Empathy, and its influence on anxiety and perception, is just one aspect of psychological functioning. It has to do with how connected people are to other people, but there are many aspects about how people are connected and a complex emotional and intellectual exchange that occurs moment to moment when people interact. Your perception, connectivity, anxiety, arousal, feelings and thoughts are constantly changing.

This next passage by Lindgren mentions how interactions are sort of like unconscious interchanges of feeling:

  • Most of us are capable of empathizing most of the time, and as w e empathize with one another, w e find our actions and atdtudes conditioned or affected by one another's feelings. This amounts to a sort of communicadon or exchange of " feeling-tone " that takes place below the level of consciousness. In many, if not most, situations involving two or more persons, the interchange of feeling-tone at the unconscious level is of greater importance than the verbal exchange at the conscious level.

Lindgren shows an example of feeling-tone by a salesman who is hiding contempt for some of his customers. Even though his contempt isn't obvious in his tone and gestures, nevertheless those customers end up feeling tense and stressed. Here is another example he uses the shows how teachers do a similar thing:

  • Teachers, too, are in a position to use or misuse the communication of feeling-tone. Some teachers are technically competent, but so unsure of their relations with others that they attempt to " cover up " by being grim or pedantic or hypercritical. Teachers of this sort usually succeed in communicating the very feelings they are tr}'ing to hide, with the result that the class becomes tense, hostile, or just bored. Other teachers are able to empathize with their students to the point that they can determine whether students understand or are confused, whether they are recepti\-e, or whether they are in a m.ood calling for a change of pace and subject matter.

Lindgren also showed how some things are unconscious, people may come up with reasons for their behavior, but the real reason could be something that is unconscious and beneath their awareness. The feeling-tone that people convey is similarly beneath awareness most of the time. People could be acting one way, but be communicating something completely different unconsciously.

Here is another example he gives and a conclusion:

  • The communication of feeling-tone is essential, too, in courtship. T w o people may meet accidentally and discuss the weather or the latest television program in a casual fashion. Yet whfle this desultory con\'ersation proceeds, there is an exchange of feelingtone, and each may begin to feel the effects of mutual attraction and warm feelings. This experience leads to other meetings, untfl the participants are sufficienth' a-ware of their feelings to make them a subject for communication on the conscious level.

  • In the situations w e ha\'e described above, the words spoken at the conscious level do not necessarily give clues to the communication taking place at the feeling le\el. And, as we have indicated, the latter type of communicadon realh' plays the more important part in attitude formation, motivation, and the course of action people actually will take.

Here is another conclusion he makes, which shows that you cannot hide or act differently, your feelings are there and going to determine what occurs:

  • The abihty to put oneself in another's place and sense his attitudes and feelings is an unconscious process termed " empathy." It is highly necessary- if one is to understand others and communicate with them effectively. If w e are not empathic, w e are in danger of being chronically disappointed in others. Thus we must be aware of h o w others feel, and of the fact that their feelings are frequently at odds with what the}' say. At the same time, w e must be aware of our own feelings, which have an effect on others. There is, in short, an exchange of feeling-tone.

Emotions lie at the heart of social interactions. Subtle changes in emotion occur all of time, and these changes are going to influence what you think and do, and also the larger, more potent emotions that you feel. Empathy is just one important aspect of how emotion works in a social interaction, without it there would be a disconnection, and much of the subtlety involved might not occur. For instance the "subtle little mannerisms, quirks, facial expressions, tones of voice, and so on" might not occur at all.

Cognitive Performance

Someones beliefs and views of the world are obviously going to influence how they socially interact - along with their personal history. Their personal history is going to matter because it is who the person is - people use knowledge of past events and especially experience from them to guide behavior in social interactions. Knowledge may be activated whenever the proper conditions for retrieval are met - that basically means when the time is right, your knowledge is going to be used accordingly.

So someone's knowledge about the world and their understanding of the world is going to be used in social situations (their semantic memory), and so is memories of their personal history (their episodic memory). Knowledge is contextualized, whatever someone knows, this knowledge was learned from some experience that may also be recalled (consciously or unconsciously) at various times.

People might also use knowledge of their attitudes and preferences, their abilities, shortcomings, behaviors or their identity as a whole. They use their knowledge of their own history and of the world around them. They use this knowledge on a moment to moment basis all of the time, in social interactions or otherwise.

When someone uses knowledge of their personal history (their memories), they may interpret this information in their own way. People have their own beliefs and understanding of what happened. Each memory has its own implication to the person, and what each memory means, how the person remembers it, what they learned from it, etc - is going to vary from person to person. Even for two people that were at the same event and remember the same details, the knowledge they learned is going to be different.

Sensory information is also remembered, people have a "feel" for each memory and what it was like being there. How someone learns from memory is something that will never be completely understood because it is so complicated. Different memories are linked in some way, people use all or some of their memories to interpret the facts and information they have. In that way, semantic and episodic memories are linked. People may bias facts and information, memories, and feelings and interpret them in their own personal way instead of a more truthful way or the truth.

Each memory, or even knowledge and information, is going to have a certain personal meaning and emotive power. Memories and knowledge make people feel in possibly deep, meaningful ways - or nothing at all. They may also impact judgement, perception of others, problem solving skills, etc. Memory is a resource for living, it impacts what you feel, forms who you are, and helps determine what you are and aren't conscious of. For instance if you had a personal history of something, say perhaps abuse, then you might be more conscious of such things.

Memories may provide a parallel model of everyone else's inner life. People are constantly interpreting and predicting the behavior of others and, as a result, adjust their conduct according to their analysis. We use our experience to explain the actions of others, or even our own actions. Our awareness of what is going on in a situation is going to to then be related to our memories and past experience. We might be more conscious of certain situations and certain feelings if we have experience of it, giving us more insight into our subjective state and more insight into others feelings.

How do people perceive and evaluate others? Obviously their autobiographical memory is going to play a role in how they do that. People make attributions and other daily explanations. Indeed, in order to analyze the situations in which we find ourselves, to make decisions, or to understand, evaluate and predict the behavior of others, everyday life often leads us to refer to these memories.

A self-schema is basically ideas someone has about themself that were derived from their experience (their interpretation of their experience). Therefore, since they are about the self, they organize information and processing related to the self:

  • Cognitive-affective structures representing one's experience. They organize and direct the processing of info relevant to the self. We hold self-schema for particular domains, domains that are personally important for which we have well-developed self-concepts.(self-concept) Packages of self-knowledge derived from experience and our interpretation of experiences (I’m friendly, a people person, I don’t trust others, “I’m shy) – vary in content and in how elaborate they are, some are interrelated (student athlete) and others are separate; they vary in their temporal focus (past, present, future) and in the extent to which they are congruent or discrepant from each other.[10]

These self-schemas can change the amount of attention someone gives things, for instance if there is something related to independence, someone may pay more attention if they are interested in being independent. There are many ideas about the self someone could have that could motivate them to pay more or less attention to things. Taking that further, someone's attention all of the time, on everything, is partially determined by the ideas they have about themselves - the ideas and thoughts they formed from their experience, and the ideas and conclusions they come to continuously from their knowledge and memory.

I should note here that this means people have a lot of ideas about themselves, or you could call them "self-evaluations", and that these ideas form their perception and how their memories are created. This also means that they might have certain expectations about their own behavior and the behavior of others based off of these ideas - which may or may not be accurate.

Autobiographical memory could help someone put themselves in the right or wrong emotional state. Based off of what someone would like to be and what their own self concept is, psychological states of emotional discomfort could result because they aren't corresponding their self-concept with their emotional state. Self-standards (such as standards of how they want to be, what they want their emotional state to be like) may have been internalized during childhood. So certain autobiographical memories are associated with certain emotional states. For instance, if you put yourself in the emotional state of happiness, or happiness with a little sadness, then the corresponding childhood memories (or recent memories) may be easier to bring up.

People can have many different things that they pay attention to at one time. There are going to be things people automatically, unconsciously pay attention to and things they do consciously. There is going to be a priority list of which things you want to pay more attention to in your mind (and how much energy you are going to devote to each task). If your controlled, conscious attention is going to take over a task that is usually unconscious, the person must 1) be aware of the automatic effect (what the unconscious is doing) 2) have the motivation or intention to think enough to dominate the unconscious and 3) have enough attention capacity to support the flexible, unusual type of unconscious attention usually given to the task.

If someone is trying to pay attention to something, and they are in the wrong emotional state, it may be harder to focus. For instance, if your emotional state is a happy one it may be harder for you to focus on something sad that is occurring. This gets even more complicated if you consider that the emotional state you are in is going to bring up memories related to that emotional state, which are also going to impact your ability to focus or pay attention to certain things. That being said, positive or negative emotions may help or hinder your ability to pay attention, depending on the type of emotion and the set of feelings it is, the memories or thoughts it brings up, and what you are paying attention to.

How does memory of ones past influence how someone thinks? First off, there are two types of memories that might influence thought, one is taxonomical categories (supplies, birds, sports) and the other is categories derived from goals (birthday gifts, camping equipment, things to do by the sea). Of course just regular memories of events could influence thought as well, but how exactly would that occur? If you are just thinking, "I want this for lunch", memories of certain items you wanted for lunch in the past may come up. Those would be a category that is goal related - each item in the goal related category is going to be goal related to a certain degree, some things more desirable than others. I doubt that when you think "I want this for lunch" that a memory of an event is brought up in your mind, it is more likely just items from the past are brought up.

That shows that a lot of your thought is derived from previous items that you have experience with. Your memories of your past aren't going to play an obvious, active role with most of your thinking. But maybe they do, if these memories are personally meaningful for you, then perhaps they influence your thinking in subtle ways. It obviously would if you bring up the memory and recall it while trying to think about something else, or recall the memory then do a related task.

Marks [11] has shown that people tend to think that their opinions are widely shared and their abilities unique, underscoring the existence of a false idiosyncrasy effect or a uniqueness bias. During social interactions, people develop a need for enhancement that turns performances, reinforcements and other events into episodes associated to their cognitive, emotional or behavioral consequences, such as mood and self-esteem. So basically people are constantly striving to increase their self-esteem and mood, by comparing themselves to others, trying to help their own thoughts and emotions and behaviors, and continuously trying to reward themselves. This probably means that self-esteem is a key feature for autobiographic memory - when something that triggers the feeling of self-esteem or wants to start the feeling of self-esteem, memories of the persons personal history may help (and self-esteem is wanted or triggered frequently in life and in social interactions). That makes sense, when I want to feel good I can recall memories. I meant that it was used more automatically and in a more subtle way, however.

For instance, when you are simply interacting with someone, you are probably bringing up lots of old me