Transcript Arousal, Behavior, and Affective Tone Chapter 6

Arousal, Behavior,
and Affective Tone
Chapter 6
I. Arousal and Performance
• A. An Analogy for Arousal
– Arousal: mobilization or activation of energy for
and during behavior.
– Arousal increases the vigor of behavior and affects
the efficiency.
I. Arousal and Performance
• B. Categories of Arousal
– 1. Physiological Arousal
• Changes in sympathetic nervous system, e.g., heart rate,
breathing, muscle tension, and perspiration.
– 2. Brain Arousal
• Positron emission topography and magnetic resonating imaging
measure blood, glucose use, and oxygen flow in active brain
areas.
– 3. Psychological Arousal
• Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List measures the
degree of energetic (tired-lively) arousal and tense (calmanxious) arousal.
• Energetic is highest midday and lowest early morning and
night.
I. Arousal and Performance
• C. Source of Arousal
– 1. Stimuli
• Cue function determines type of response.
• Arousing function determines intensity of response.
– 2. Collative Variables
• Stimulus novelty, complexity and incongruity determine arousal.
– 3. Incentives
• They energize approach/avoidance behavior and heighten
arousal.
– 4. Tasks
• Person becomes aroused to perform a task based on need,
value of task incentive, and likelihood of success.
I. Arousal and Performance
• D. Arousal within and among Individuals
• Stimulation increases arousal. Individuals vary in degree
of increase.
• E. Dimensionality of Arousal
• Unidimensionality: arousal is a single dimension that
ranges from sleep to excitement.
• Directional fractionation of response: arousal varies
along several dimensions that do not all correlate with
one another.
I. Arousal and Performance
• F. Arousal and Behavior
– 1. Inverted-U Relationships
• As stimulation or arousal increases, performance increases,
levels off, and then declines.
• Trait anxiety: personality trait to perceive environment
negatively.
• State anxiety: situation evokes apprehension or tension.
– 2. Yerkes-Dodson Law
• Arousal interacts with task complexity: low arousal for best
performance on difficult tasks; high arousal for best
performance on easy tasks.
– 3. Zones of Optimal Functioning
• Individual inverted-U curves each with a zone of optimal
arousal where an athlete performs best.
I. Arousal and Performance
• G. Explanations for Arousal-Performance
Relationships
– 1. Arousal as Response Magnifier
• Arousal increases strength of all responses, both correct
and incorrect.
I. Arousal and Performance
– 2. Cusp Catastrophe Model
• Cognitive and physiological arousal interact: at higher levels of
cognitive, increases in physiological produces optimal
performance (cusp), further increases shatters performance
(catastrophe).
– 3. Cue Utilization Hypothesis
• With increased arousal, less attention is given to problem cues.
– 4. Arousal and Memory
• As arousal increases, there is better recall of central detail and
a decline in recall of peripheral detail.
– 5. Cool and Hot Memory Systems
• Cool memory in hippocampus works best under low arousal
and hot memory (amygdala) works best under high arousal.
II. Arousal and Affective tone
• A. Variation in Affective Tone
• Arousal may be tinged with positive or negative affect.
– 1. Optimal Level of Stimulation Theory
• As arousal increases, the degree of pleasantness of
affective tone increases, levels off, and then decreases in
an inverted-U fashion.
– 2. Arousal Regulation via the Negative Feedback
Loop
• A person maintains a desired level of arousal by changes
in behavior.
• Arousal model of interpersonal intimacy: people adjust
their behavior (eye contact) with others to maintain a
comfortable level of arousal.
II. Arousal and Affective tone
• A. Variation in Affective Tone
– 3. When Arousal Is Too Low
• Sensory deprivation: reducing sensory stimulation from touch,
sound, and light to lowest level possible. Situation is boring and
aversive.
• B. Arousal, Stimulus Complexity, and Preference
• Intermediate complexity is preferred over lesser or greater
complexity.
• Repeated exposure decreases perceived stimulus complexity.
• This results in decreased liking for simple stimuli and increased
liking for
• complex stimuli.
II. Arousal and Affective tone
• C. Incongruity-Resolution and Affect
– 1. Schemas, Assimilation, and Accommodation
• Schemas: knowledge structures of environmental
regularities.
• Assimilation: new information is integrated into an
existing schema.
• Accommodation: schema is modified to assimilate new
information.
II. Arousal and Affective tone
– 2. Schema Incongruity Model
• Successful assimilation and accommodation of
information yields positive affect. Unsuccessful
accommodation yields negative affect.
– 3. Incongruity Resolution, Arousal, and Humor
• A punch line is resolved when it is assimilated into an
alternative schema imbedded in the joke stem. This
resolution triggers humor.
– 4. Arousal-Safety Model of Laughter
• Incongruities judged safe trigger humor; judged
dangerous trigger fear
II. Arousal and Affective tone
• D. Music
– 1. Music Regulates Arousal
• Music alters arousal and induces positive or negative
affect.
– 2. Incongruity Resolution and Appreciation of
Music
• The enjoyment of music comes from assimilating pieces
of music into activated musical schemas.
– 3. Musical Complexity
• As musical complexity increases, liking of the music
increases, levels off, and then decreases (inverted-U
relationship).
II. Arousal and Affective tone
• D. Music
– 4. Musical Complexity and Experience
• With experience, complex music is enjoyed more and
simple music is enjoyed less.
– `Musical grammar processor: it assimilates
musical notes into a primitivemusical grammar
processor that works the same way each time and
is sealed off from memory.