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[music]
[guitar music]
This is AEDT1170U,
Psychological Foundations and Digital Technology.
Module four, video clip 4.2 –
Emotions, Stress and Health,
certainly something we all know a lot about.
Here are the guiding questions for this video.
Describe some of the theories of human emotion.
What is Selye’s general adaptation syndrome,
and how might this affect you in a sedentary technological world?
Describe some of the physiological responses to stress
that your body exhibits.
And how have we adapted to showing emotions in the online world?
Emotions and Stress.
To begin this clip, let’s take a look
at what exactly are our emotions.
Emotions are composed of physical reactions
such as your heart pounding or thoughts and expressive ideas,
feelings – joy, fear, sadness,
or behaviours which end up being at a quickened or slower pace,
and our conscious experience of the emotion.
So in sum,
emotion is a response of the whole organism
involving physical arousal, expressive behaviours
and conscious experience.
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There are three theories of emotion that we'll look at.
First of all the James-Lange theory,
which says that the idea, uh, of our experience of emotion
is the awareness of our physical response
to emotion-arousing stimuli.
So our body reacts first,
and then we feel the emotions.
The Cannon-Bard theory suggests
that emotion-arousing stimuli
simultaneously st- triggers our physical reaction
and feeling that emotion.
Schachter’s two factor theory of emotion
says that to experience emotion, you have to have that physical arousal
and cognitively label the arousal.
What does this mean?
It means that our body has a similar physical reaction
for very different emotions.
Fear, anxiety, excitement, joy
all cause an increased heart rate and breathing rate.
So we have to cognitively label that emotion
as what we have learned it to be.
This aroused physical state
can be experienced as one emotion or another
and must be cognitively labelled and interpreted.
Our emotional reactions are faster than our thoughts,
so we tend to feel before we think,
which is why you should always put pause
before you send that angry e-mail.
Research on our neurological processes
shows how we can experience emotion before cognition.
The amygdala, our emotional control centre
for anger and strong emotions,
which you might remember from the motivation video,
has a very speedy pathway that bypasses the cortex,
sort of like spinal reflexes
that operate from the brain’s cortex.
One such pathway runs from the eye to the ear,
to the amygdala.
Your body has something called an autonomic nervous system
which mobilizes you for action.
Your heart rate and breathing rate increase.
You start to perspire,
your liver pours more sugar into your blood.
Your pupils let in more light,
your blood would clot more quickly,
and you have hormones like adrenaline rushing through your system.
The autonomic nervous system has two parts.
The sympathetic, which excites your body,
and the parasympathetic, which calms your body.
Remember that we each have individual personalities,
so our reactions to events and our emotional response
is very different, and can also be different
within one individual.
We each have what we call an optimal performance level.
There's an optimal level of stress
needed for best performance in any event,
whether it's athletic, academic or otherwise.
And the point of optimal stress varies for each individual
and can vary within that individual.
So stress itself is not a negative thing –
it's our response to the stress that creates the situation.
The lowest level of arousal would be unconsciousness,
and then sleep,
and the highest would be approaching panic.
So we each need to find our level of best performance.
What happens in our brains when we experience emotions?
Well emotions differ in the brain circuitry that they use.
Negative emotions and people who generally think negatively
show more brain activity in the right pre-frontal cortex.
People who are prone to depression also show mo- more brain activity
in the right frontal cortex.
And happy people tend to show more activity
in the left frontal lobe.
So, if you imagine your brain reacting to a virtual video game
or a scary 3D movie,
it really can't tell the difference
between what is perceptually real or what's virtual,
and so your body has the same physiological reactions,
and your heart rate increases.
Human beings are very good at detecting non-verbal threats,
and anger is probably the most detectable human emotion across cultures.
We read fear and anger mostly from the eyes,
and happiness from the mouth.
And women generally surpass men
at non-verbal sensitivity and reading emotions.
Think back to our session on intelligence
and emotional intelligence from Daniel Goleman.
Women’s intuition, therefore, may have some basis in fact.
So think about this –
how would the presence of avatars
and the lack of face-to-face contact
change our emotional response to each other?
Or does it change at all?
Does the online environment make people feel safer
to express their emotions?
Are they more free to be themselves in an online environment?
We'll talk about this in tutorial.
Let's look at culture and emotions.
Do non-verbal expressions of emotion differ across culture?
The meaning of certain gestures varies greatly across culture,
but facial expression of emotions is fairly consistent.
Despite some differences,
cultures and languages share many similarities
in the way they categorize emotions.
And physiological indicators of emotions
also have similarities across cultures.
The difference lies in the fact that different cultures
are- change how much emotion they express.
In cultures that celebrate individuality
such as Western Europe, North America,
uh, emotional displays tend to be intense and prolonged.
In cultures that emphasize social connections and interdependence,
such as Asia, displays of emotions like shame,
sympathy and respect are more common.
And in cultures that emphasize community,
uh, negative or self-promoting emotions
are limited or hidden such as in Ja- Japanese culture.
If digital worlds across cultures make us more globally aware,
do you think that technology will eventually neutralize
these cultural differences in the expression of emotion?
Here are a few more terms to know.
Catharsis, which means an emotional release,
me- usually means maintaining or releasing
some kind of aggressive energy.
The feel good, do good phenomena,
which refers to people’s tendency to be helpful
when they're already in a good mood.
So our behaviour is affected by our emotions.
Our subjective well-being refers to our self-perceived
level of happiness or satisfaction,
and it can be used to assess people’s quality of life.
The adaptation level principle
means we have a tendency to form judgements
around what's usually normal for us,
whether it's perception of sound or light
or a certain emotional state.
And finally, the relative deprivation principle,
meaning that the perception that we are worse off
than those we compare ourselves to.
Do you see any problems with this
or applications for dealing with each other online?
Generally, our predictors for emotional happiness
are when our adaptation level
means we tend to balance our emotions around normal.
Our na- happiness fluctuates
around our sort of happiness set point.
Both genetics and environment play a role here,
so we can never get away from that nature-nurture discussion in psychology.
Let's move on to the concept of stress,
which you've all experienced.
Stress is not just a stimulus or a response,
it's the process by which we as individual personalities
perceive and respond to certain events called stressors,
something that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
I'm sure you've heard of the term fight or flight,
which is your body’s response to stressful situations.
Where we get into trouble is where we're sitting online
and we cannot have a physical response,
and so we basically sit there and brew in our anxiety.
Selye developed what he called the general adaptation syndrome
which is his concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress.
The three stages of the general adaptation syndrome
are as follows.
First, the alarm reaction, where we suffer a trauma
or some stressful incident.
Then we go to resistance, where our body physically responds
because it thinks we're in fight or flight,
we have a increased sympathetic nervous system activation,
so our heart rate goes up and our breathing rate goes up.
And then finally after a time, we get to the exhaustion point,
where the persistent stress depletes the body’s reserves
and this is where you become vulnerable to illness.
This is why chronic stress
is a really negative impact on our health.
Our personality types can determine how well we respond to stress.
Type A and Type B personalities, developed by Friedman and Roseman
are based on, um, characteristics
of how people respond to certain situations.
The type A people are more competitive,
they're hard-driving, impatient,
uh, reactive, time-conscious, usually very motivated,
and easily angered.
Whereas type B are the easygoing,
light-hearted, relaxed sort of people.
There's a lot of evidence to show
that there's an increased risk of health problems
and coronary heart disease in type A.
But they also tend to be very high achievers,
so it's a matter of balancing your stress
and learning what works for you.
Consider how online situations,
such as obsessive online gamblers, or "gamers,"
are affecting their overall health.
They're getting that response from their body,
but they're sitting still.
So does technology have an affect
on our type A versus type B tendencies?
It does affect our overall health.
[music]
[woman] Smart phones keep us connected all the time,
and some people cope better than others
with the new communication technologies.
But if not used in moderation,
they can make you ill with a series of techno-stress related syndromes.
Fatigue, anxiety
or even burn-out. [fast music in background]
Stephane is a freelance programmer.
He's one of those people who can't switch off his phone.
[Stephane speaks in French] [male voice translates]
I never turn my phone off,
I take it with me to the bathroom or the kitchen.
I feel that if I don't answer right away,
my little world will collapse.
It's foolish I know.
[woman] Stephane is clearly addicted to his phone.
For this top manager who can't reveal his identity,
the smart phone is a must,
if only people didn't abuse it.
[man speaks in French] [man translates]
It's a stress factor.
You've got to drop whatever you're doing
to answer those messages – it's annoying.
If you don't answer in the next two or three hours,
they think you're incompetent.
Lots of executives can't do their job any more.
[speaking in French]
[woman] The theme of techno-stress at work
hasn't been tackled properly yet,
says the Director of the Institute for Occupational Medicine,
which has published a study on the topic.
[Patrick Hunziker speaking in French]
[man translates] The work-pace is faster,
the information load is exploding.
Many companies give their employees a smart phone,
but they don't know how to react
when they realize that the technology that should be a positive tool,
has negative side effects on people.
[Stephane continues in French] [man translates]
One time I was able to switch off for three weeks during the holidays –
no PC, no phone, nothing.
I was simply happy.
But as soon as I returned,
things went back to the way they were before.
[continues in French] [music in background]
[lecturer] Psychophysiological illness, or mind-body illness,
includes things like headaches, hypertension and high blood pressure.
And I'm sure we've all felt this in different, uh, online situations
when the technology doesn't work
or we can't get things as fast as we want.
But this has physical responses.
The immune system has a direct response to stress
by elevating your lymphocytes,
or- that's a type of white blood cells
to fight off invaders and infection.
The immune system can over or under react.
A weak immune system causes diseases and viruses
to, to get stronger, and an over activated immune system
can cause things like allergic reaction.
So stress and negative emotions
do correlate with the increased risk of disease.
What are some things that you can do to improve your stress management?
Well first of all, exercise.
Yep, that means get up from your computer,
get- move around, take your dog for a walk,
uh, do something so that you're not totally wired in,
or if you wanna stay wired in, then keep moving as you do it.
Proper nutrition and social support,
some come- uh, supportive communities can help,
and relaxation, having a good laugh,
and, uh, being part of some kind of spiritual or faith community.
These are all things that can help us handle stress better.
Here are some Synthesis Questions for today.
Has the prevalence of technology affected our health as humans
in a positive way or in a negative way - or both?
What features of the digital environment
help us or hinder us in terms of our psychological and emotional health?
What strategies do you use,
or what ones do you need to begin implementing
in order to stay healthy in the digital environment?
And do you think technology has helped us to express our emotions
more freely, or do we change our personalities online?
[guitar music]