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Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 1
This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without
attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee.
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Chapter 3 Social Affect
Huge Fall in Global Markets Causes Fear and Panic for Investors
September 16, 2008, as a result of the failure of over a dozen large banks in the United States, was the
beginning of a stock market crisis around the world. On October 11, 2008, the head of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that the world financial system was teetering on ―the brink of systemic
meltdown.‖
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 21 percent in one week, and BusinessWeekreferred to the crisis as a
―stock market crash–the ―Panic of 2008.‖
Over the next year, the crash erased $8.3 trillion in shareholder wealth.
Stock traders, bankers, and everyday investors all responded with panic:
―We aren’t dealing with a fundamental economic issue any longer,‖ said James Paulsen, chief investment
strategist for Wells Capital Management. ―We are dealing with fear. And that doesn’t respond to economic
medicine.‖
―I think right now there are just some very powerful negative images that are alive in many people’s
minds—images of the Depression, images of people selling apples,‖ said George Loewenstein, a behavioral
economist at Carnegie Mellon University.
Some investors, like software engineer Sandeep Bhanote, did their best to keep their emotions in check:
―Fear is the most dangerous emotion. It can really do the market a lot of harm when maybe it is not
necessary to be afraid,‖
―When investors act purely on emotion, there is greater chance of them sabotaging their financial goals,‖
said Stuart Ritter, a certified financial planner at T. Rowe Price.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-10-09-145686747_x.htm?csp=34.
Although a good part of our social behavior is determined by cognitive, thoughtful, and rational processes,
another part—and particularly those behaviors that have substantial impact on our health and
happiness—is the result of affect. Our everyday experiences arouse in us a wide range of moods and
emotions, both positive and negative, and these feelings have profound consequences for our lives.
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Emotions are particularly social, and that is why they are of such interest to social psychologists. Although
we may get angry at our computer, frustrated by our stock trading decisions, or be in love with our car,
most emotions have a social component (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Keltner & Haidt, 1999). [1] We
experience love, anger, guilt, shame, jealousy, and embarrassment for a reason—because these emotions
help us develop and maintain positive relationships with others.
We share our emotions with others through our social behavior, including our facial expressions, touch,
voice, and posture, and even in our art, poetry, and music (Hertenstein, 2002; Oatley, 2003; Scherer,
Johnstone, & Klasmeyer, 2003). [2] And emotions influence our social judgments (Howard & Gengler,
2001; Ramanathan & McGill, 2007). [3] When we are subliminally exposed to a happy facial expression of
another person just before we see another stimulus, we perceive that stimulus more positively than we do
when angry facial expressions have been primed (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Winkielman, Berridge, &
Wilbarger, 2005). [4] Viewing sad faces of other people makes music seem more sad (Strahan, Spencer, &
Zanna, 2002), [5], and viewing happy faces of others make us like TV shows more (Ravaja & Kallinen,
2004).[6] When we are with another person who is smiling, we rate products more positively (Tanner,
Ferraro, Chartrand, Bettman, & Van Baaren, 2008). [7]
The goal of this chapter is to review the wide influence of affect on our social lives. We’ll see how we use
moods and emotions to help us understand our social worlds and how they relate to our current
happiness and well-being (our sense of satisfaction with our everyday experience). We’ll consider the
negative outcomes of powerful negative affective states, including anxiety, depression, and stress, but also
the healing power of positive emotions. And we will review some of the most effective ways to cope with
negative emotions in order to improve our everyday affect.
[1] DeSteno, D. A., & Salovey, P. (1996). Jealousy and the characteristics of one’s rival: A self-evaluation
maintenance perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 920–932; Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (1999).
Social functions of emotions at four levels of analysis. Cognition & Emotion, 13, 505–521.
[2] Oatley, K. (2003). Emotional expression and experience in the visual and narrative arts. In R. J. Davidson, K. R.
Scherer, & H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of the affective sciences (pp. 481–502). New York, NY: Oxford University
Press; Hertenstein, M. J. (2002). Touch: Its communicative functions in infancy. Human Development, 45, 70–94;
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Scherer, K. R., Johnstone, T., & Klasmeyer, G. (2003). Vocal expression of emotion. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer,
& H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of the affective sciences (pp. 433–456). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
[3] Howard, D. J., & Gengler, C. (2001). Emotional contagion effects on product attitudes.Journal of Consumer
Research, 28(2), 189–201; Ramanathan, S., & McGill, A. L. (2007). Consuming with others: Social influences on
moment-to-moment and retrospective evaluations of an experience. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(4), 506–
524.
[4] Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (1993). Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with optimal and
suboptimal stimulus exposures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(5), 723–739; Winkielman, P.,
Berridge, K. C., & Wilbarger, J. L. (2005). Unconscious affective reactions to masked happy versus angry faces
influence consumption behavior and judgments of value. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(1), 121–
135.
[5] Strahan, E. J., Spencer, S. J., & Zanna, M. P. (2002). Subliminal priming and persuasion: Striking while the iron is
hot. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(6), 556–568.
[6] Ravaja, N., & Kallinen, K. (2004). Emotional effects of startling background music during reading news reports:
The moderating influence of dispositional BIS and BAS sensitivities.Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 45(3), 231–
238.
[7] Tanner, R. J., Ferraro, R., Chartrand, T. L., Bettman, J. R., & Van Baaren, R. (2008). Of chameleons and
consumption: The impact of mimicry on choice and preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(6), 754–766.
3.1 Moods and Emotions in Our Social Lives L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Describe the physiology of emotions, including the actions of the sympathetic nervous
system, the parasympathetic nervous system, and the amygdala.
2. Differentiate the basic and secondary emotions and explain their functions.
3. Review the known gender and cultural differences in the experience and expression of
emotion.
4. Summarize the function and outcomes of our mood states.
5. Describe the phenomenon of misattributing arousal and its impact on our emotions.
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Although affect can be harmful if it is unregulated or unchecked, our moods and emotions normally help
us function efficiently and in a way that increases our chances of survival (Bless, Bohner, Schwarz, &
Strack, 1990; Schwarz et al., 1991). [1] The experience of disgust helps us stay healthy by helping us avoid
situations that are likely to carry disease (Oaten, Stevenson, & Case, 2009), [2], and the experience of
embarrassment helps us respond appropriately to situations in which we may have violated social norms.
Affect signals either that things are going OK (e.g., because we are in a good mood or are experiencing joy
or serenity) or that things are not going so well (we are in a bad mood, anxious, upset, or angry). When we
are happy, we may seek out and socialize with others; when we are angry, we may attack; and when we are
fearful, we are more likely to turn to safety. In short, our emotions help us to determine whether our
interactions with others are appropriate, to predict how others are going to respond to us, and to regulate
our behavior toward others.
The Physiology of Affect
Our emotions are determined in part by responses of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS)—the division
of the autonomic nervous system that is involved in preparing the body to respond to threats by
activating the organs and the glands in the endocrine system. The SNS works in opposition to
the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the division of the autonomic nervous system that is
involved in resting, digesting, relaxing, and recovering. When it is activated, the SNS provides us with
energy to respond to our environment. The liver puts extra sugar into the bloodstream, the heart pumps
more blood, our pupils dilate to help us see better, respiration increases, and we begin to perspire to cool
the body. The sympathetic nervous system also acts to release stress hormones
including epinephrine andnorepinephrine. At the same time, the action of the PNS is decreased.
We experience the activation of the SNS as arousal—changes in bodily sensations, including increased
blood pressure, heart rate, perspiration, and respiration.Arousal is the feeling that accompanies strong
emotions. I’m sure you can remember a time when you were in love, angry, afraid, or very sad and
experienced the arousal that accompanied the emotion. Perhaps you remember feeling flushed, feeling
your heart pounding, feeling sick to your stomach, or having trouble breathing.
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The arousal that we experience as part of our emotional experience is caused by the activation of
the sympathetic nervous system.
The experience of emotion is also controlled in part by one of the evolutionarily oldest parts of our brain—
the part known as the limbic system—which includes several brain structures that help us experience
emotion. Particularly important is the amygdala,the region in the limbic system that is primarily
responsible for regulating our perceptions of, and reactions to, aggression and fear. The amygdala has
connections to other bodily systems related to emotions, including the facial muscles, which perceive and
express emotions, and it also regulates the release of neurotransmitters related to stress and aggression
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(Best, 2009). [3] When we experience events that are dangerous, the amygdala stimulates the brain to
remember the details of the situation so that we learn to avoid it in the future (Sigurdsson, Doyère, Cain,
& LeDoux, 2007; Whalen et al., 2001). [4]
The limbic system is a part of the brain that includes the amygdala. The amygdala is an important
regulator of emotions.
Basic and Secondary Emotions
The basic emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) are emotions that
are based primarily on the arousal produced by the SNS and that do not require much cognitive
processing. These emotions happen quickly, without the need for a lot of thought or interpretation.
Imagine, for instance, your fearful reaction to the sight of a car unexpectedly pulling out in front of you
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while you are driving, or your happiness in unexpectedly learning that you won an important prize. You
immediately experience arousal, and in the case of negative emotions, the arousal may signal that quick
action is needed.
Video Clip 1
The Basic Emotions
Paul Ekman and his colleagues (Ekman, 1992; 2003) [5] studied the expression and interpretation of the
basic emotions in a variety of cultures, including those that had had almost no outside contact (such as
Papua New Guinea). In his research, he showed people stimuli that would create a given emotion (such as
a dead pig on the ground to create disgust) and videotaped the people as they expressed the emotion they
would feel in that circumstance.
Ekman then asked people in other cultures to identify the emotions from the videotapes. He found that
the basic emotions were cross-cultural in the sense that they are expressed and experienced consistently
across many different cultures. A recent meta-analysis examined the perception of the basic emotions in
162 samples, with pictures and raters from many countries, including New Guinea, Malaysia, Germany,
and Ethiopia. The analysis found that in only 3% of these samples was even a single basic emotion
recognized at rates below chance (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002). [6]
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Figure 3.1
The secondary emotions are derived from the basic emotions but are more cognitive in orientation
(Russell, 1980). [7]
In comparison to the basic emotions, other emotions, such as guilt, shame, and embarrassment, are
accompanied by relatively lower levels of arousal and relatively higher levels of cognitive activity. When a
close friend of yours wins a prize that you thought you had deserved, you might well feel depressed, angry,
resentful, and ashamed. You might mull over the event for weeks or even months, experiencing these
negative emotions each time you think about it (Martin & Tesser, 1996). [8] In this case, although there is
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at least some arousal, your emotions are more highly determined by your persistent, and negative,
thoughts. As you can see in Figure 3.1, there are a large number of these secondary emotions—emotions
that provide us with more complex feelings about our social worlds and that are more cognitively based.
Cultural and Gender Differences in Emotional Responses
Although there are many similarities across cultures in how we experience emotions, there are also some
differences (Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2003). [9] In Japan, there is a tendency to hide emotions in
public, which makes them harder for others to perceive (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis,
1994). [10] And as we would expect on the basis of cultural differences between individualism and
collectivism, emotions are more focused on other-concern in Eastern cultures, such as Japan and Turkey,
but relatively more focused on self-concern in Western cultures (Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, 2006;
Uchida, Kitayama, Mesquita, Reyes, & Morling, 2008). [11] Ishii, Reyes, and Kitayama (2003) [12] found
that Japanese students paid more attention to the emotional tone of voice of other speakers than did
American students, suggesting that the Japanese students were particularly interested in determining the
emotions of others. Self-enhancing emotions such as pride and anger are more culturally appropriate
emotions to express in Western cultures, whereas other-oriented emotions such as friendliness and shame
are seen as more culturally appropriate in Eastern cultures. Similarly, Easterners experience more
positive emotions when they are with others, whereas Westerners are more likely to experience positive
emotions when they are alone and as a result of their personal accomplishments (Kitayama, Karasawa, &
Mesquita, 2004; Masuda & Kitayama, 2004). [13]
There are also gender differences in emotional experiences. Women report that they are more open to
feelings overall (Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001), [14] are more likely to express their emotions in
public (Kring & Gordon, 1998), [15] and are more accurate and articulate in reporting the feelings of others
(Barrett, Lane, Sechrest, & Schwartz, 2000). [16] These differences show up particularly in terms of
emotions that involve social relationships. Kring and Gordon (1998) [17] had male and female students
watch film clips that portrayed sadness, happiness, or fear and found that the women reacted more visibly
to each film. Coats and Feldman (1996) [18] found that it is easier to read the emotions that women
express. Some of these observed gender differences in emotional experiences and expression are
biological in orientation, but they are also socialized through experience.
Moods Provide Information About Our Social Worlds
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One function of mood is to help us determine how we should evaluate our current situation. Positive
moods will likely lead us to maintain our current activities, which seem to be successful, whereas negative
moods suggest that we may wish to attempt to change things to improve our situation. And moods have
other influences on our cognition and behavior: Positive moods may lead us to think more creatively and
to be more flexible in how we respond to opinions that are inconsistent with cultural norms (Ashton-
James, Maddux, Galinsky, & Chartrand, 2009). [19] Ito, Chiao, Devine, Lorig, and Cacioppo
(2006) [20] found that people who were smiling were also less prejudiced.
Mood states are also powerful determinants of our current well-being. To study how people use mood
states as information to help them determine their current well-being, Norbert Schwarz and Gerald Clore
(1983) [21] called participants on the telephone, pretending that they were researchers from a different city
conducting a survey. Furthermore, they varied the day on which they made the calls, such that some of the
participants were interviewed on sunny days and some were interviewed on rainy days. During the course
of the interview, the participants were asked to report on their current mood states and also on their
general well-being. Schwarz and Clore found that the participants reported better moods and greater well-
being on sunny days than they did on rainy days.
Schwarz and Clore wondered whether people were using their current mood (―I feel good today‖) to
determine how they felt about their life overall. To test this idea, they simply asked half of their
respondents about the local weather conditions at the beginning of the interview. The idea was to subtly
focus these participants on the fact that the weather might be influencing their mood states. And they
found that as soon as they did this, although mood states were still influenced by the weather, the weather
no longer influenced perceptions of well-being (Figure 3.2 “Mood as Information”). When the participants
were aware that their moods might have been influenced by the weather, they realized that the moods
were not informative about their overall well-being, and so they no longer used this information. Similar
effects have been found for mood that is induced by music or other sources (Keltner, Locke, & Audrain,
1993; Savitsky, Medvec, Charlton, & Gilovich, 1998). [22]
Figure 3.2 Mood as Information
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The current weather influences people’s judgments of their well being, but only when they are not
aware that it might be doing so. After Schwarz and Clore (1983). [23]
Even moods that are created very subtly can have effects on perceptions. Fritz Strack and his colleagues
(Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988) [24] had participants rate how funny cartoons were while holding a
writing pen in their mouth such that it forced them either to use muscles that are associated with smiling
or to use muscles that are associated with frowning (Figure 3.3). They found that participants rated the
cartoons as funnier when the pen created muscle contractions that are normally used for smiling rather
than frowning. And Stepper and Strack (1993) [25] found that people interpreted events more positively
when they were sitting in an upright position rather than a slumped position. Even finding a coin in a pay
phone or being offered some milk and cookies is enough to put people in good moods and to make them
rate their surroundings more positively (Clark & Isen, 1982; Isen & Levin, 1972; Isen, Shalker, Clark, &
Karp, 1978). [26]
These results show that our body positions, especially our facial expressions, influence our affect. We may
smile because we are happy, but we are also happy because we are smiling. And we may stand up straight
because we are feeling proud, but we also feel proud because we are standing up straight (Stepper, &
Strack, 1993). [28]
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Misattributing Arousal
Although arousal is necessary for emotion, it is not sufficient. Arousal becomes emotion only when it is
accompanied by a label or by an explanation for the arousal (Schachter & Singer, 1962). [29] Thus, although
emotions are usually considered to be affective in nature, they really represent an excellent example of the
joint influence of affect and cognition. We can say, then, that emotions have two factors—an arousal
factor and a cognitive factor (James, 1890; Schachter & Singer, 1962). [30]
Emotion = arousal + cognition
In some cases, it may be difficult for people who are experiencing a high level of arousal to accurately
determine which emotion they are experiencing. That is, they may be certain that they are feeling arousal,
but the meaning of the arousal (the cognitive factor) may be less clear. Some romantic relationships, for
instance, are characterized by high levels of arousal, and the partners alternately experience extreme
highs and lows in the relationship. One day they are madly in love with each other, and the next they are
having a huge fight. In situations that are accompanied by high arousal, people may be unsure what
emotion they are experiencing. In the high-arousal relationship, for instance, the partners may be
uncertain whether the emotion they are feeling is love, hate, or both at the same time. Misattribution of
arousaloccurs when people incorrectly label the source of the arousal that they are experiencing.
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Figure 3.4 Misattributing Emotion
The results of an experiment by Schachter and Singer (1962) [31] supported the two-factor theory of
emotion. The participants who did not have a clear label for their arousal were more likely to take
on the emotion of the confederate.
Research Focus
Misattributing Arousal
If you think a bit about your own experiences of different emotions, and if you consider the equation that
suggests that emotions are represented by both arousal and cognition, you might start to wonder how
much was determined by each. That is, do we know what emotion we are experiencing by monitoring our
feelings (arousal) or by monitoring our thoughts (cognition)?
Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962) [32] addressed this question in a well-known social
psychological experiment. Schachter and Singer believed that the cognitive part of the emotion was
critical—in fact, they believed that the arousal that we are experiencing could be interpreted as any
emotion, provided we had the right label for it. Thus they hypothesized that if individuals are experiencing
arousal for which they have no immediate explanation, they will ―label‖ this state in terms of the
cognitions that are most accessible in the environment. On the other hand, they argued that people who
already have a clear label for their arousal would have no need to search for a relevant label and therefore
should not experience an emotion.
In the research experiment, the male participants were told that they would be participating in a study on
the effects of a new drug, called ―suproxin,‖ on vision. On the basis of this cover story, the men were
injected with a shot of epinephrine, a drug that produces physiological arousal. The idea was to give all the
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participants arousal; epinephrine normally creates feelings of tremors, flushing, and accelerated
breathing in people.
Then, according to random assignment to conditions, the men were told that the drug would make them
feel certain ways. The men in the epinephrine-informed condition were told the truth about the effects of
the drug—they were told that other participants had experienced tremors and that their hands would start
to shake, their hearts would start to pound, and their faces might get warm and flushed. The participants
in the epinephrine-uninformed condition, however, were told something untrue—that their feet would
feel numb, that they would have an itching sensation over parts of their body, and that they might get a
slight headache. The idea was to make some of the men think that the arousal they were experiencing was
caused by the drug (the informed condition), whereas others would be unsure where the arousal came
from (the uninformed condition).
Then the men were left alone with a confederate who they thought had received the same injection. While
they were waiting for the experiment (which was supposedly about vision) to begin, the confederate
behaved in a wild and crazy (Schachter and Singer called it ―euphoric‖) manner. He wadded up spitballs,
flew paper airplanes, and played with a hula hoop. He kept trying to get the participants to join in his
games. Then right before the vision experiment was to begin, the participants were asked to indicate their
current emotional states on a number of scales. One of the emotions they were asked about was euphoria.
If you are following the story here, you will realize what was expected—that the men who had a label for
their arousal (the informed group) would not be experiencing much emotion—they had a label already
available for their arousal. The men in the misinformed group, on the other hand, were expected to be
unsure about the source of the arousal—they needed to find an explanation for their arousal, and the
confederate provided one. Indeed, as you can see in Figure 3.4 “Misattributing Emotion”, this is just what
the researchers found.
Then Schachter and Singer did another part of the study, using new participants. Everything was exactly
the same except for the behavior of the confederate. Rather than being euphoric, he acted angry. He
complained about having to complete the questionnaire he had been asked to do, indicating that they
questions were stupid and too personal. He ended up tearing up the questionnaire that he was working
on, yelling, ―I don’t have to tell them that!‖ Then he grabbed his books and stormed out of the room.
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What do you think happened in this condition? The answer, of course, is, exactly the same thing—the
misinformed participants experienced more anger than did the informed participants. The idea is that
because cognitions are such strong determinants of emotional states, the same state of physiological
arousal could be labeled in many different ways, depending entirely on the label provided by the social
situation.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
A major part of our everyday experiences—particularly those behaviors that have
substantial impact on our health and happiness—is the result of affect. Affect helps us
engage in behaviors that are appropriate to our perceptions of a social situation.
Our emotions are determined in part by responses of the sympathetic nervous system
(SNS) and the limbic system (particularly the amygdala). The outcome of the activation
of the SNS is the experience of arousal.
The basic emotions of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise
are expressed and experienced consistently across many different cultures.
There are also a large number of secondary emotions, such as guilt, shame, and
embarrassment, that provide us with more complex feelings about our social worlds and
that are more cognitively based.
There are at least some differences in the experience of emotion between men and
women and across cultures.
We use our mood states as information to help us determine our current situation and
our well-being. Mood states influence information processing through their effects on
processing fluency.
In some cases, it may be difficult to accurately determine the source of the arousal we
are experiencing, and we may misattribute the arousal. E X E R C I S E S A N D C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G
1. Describe a time when a particular secondary emotion had an important influence on
your life.
2. Consider a time when your behaviors or judgments were based more on affect than on
cognition. Were the outcomes positive or negative?
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3. Visit the website of Paul Ekman, who has extensively studied the facial expressions of
emotion (http://www.paulekman.com). Prepare a report explaining the outcomes of
some of his important research.
4. Have you ever misattributed an emotion? If so, what was the impact of doing so?
[1] Bless, H., Bohner, G., Schwarz, N., & Strack, F. (1990). Mood and persuasion: A cognitive response
analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 331–345; Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G.,
Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability
heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 195–202.
[2] Oaten, M., Stevenson, R. J., & Case, T. I. (2009). Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism.Psychological
Bulletin, 135, 303–321.
[3] Best, B. (2009). The amygdala and the emotions. In Anatomy of the mind (chap. 9). Retrieved from Welcome to
the World of Ben Best website:http://www.benbest.com/science/anatmind/anatmd9.html
[4] Sigurdsson, T., Doyère, V., Cain, C. K., & LeDoux, J. E. (2007). Long-term potentiation in the amygdala: A cellular
mechanism of fear learning and memory. Neuropharmacology,52(1), 215–227; Whalen, P. J., Shin, L. M.,
McInerney, S. C., Fischer, H., Wright, C. I., & Rauch, S. I. (2001). A functional MRI study of human amygdala
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