Chapter 6 Quiz: Emotion

Section A: Comprehension

1. According to appraisal theory, what primarily determines which emotion arises in response to an event?

a) The severity of the event, objectively measured b) The person's evaluation (appraisal) of the event's relevance to their goals and their capacity to cope c) The person's genetic predisposition to particular emotional responses d) The cultural scripts available for interpreting the event

2. In Gross's process model, which emotion regulation strategy is generally most effective for reducing negative emotional experience?

a) Suppression (hiding emotional expression) b) Distraction (focusing attention elsewhere) c) Reappraisal (changing how you think about the situation) d) Situation avoidance (preventing exposure to triggering events)

3. Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis proposes that:

a) Emotions are primarily located in the stomach and chest rather than the brain b) Emotional signals are essential guides for decision-making, and their absence impairs decisions c) Logical reasoning works best when emotional influences are eliminated d) Physical exercise improves emotional decision-making by increasing serotonin

4. Research comparing guilt and shame (Tangney) shows that:

a) Both guilt and shame produce similar behavioral and relational outcomes b) Shame is more motivating for behavior change because it feels worse c) Guilt (focused on behavior) tends to be more adaptive than shame (focused on the self) d) Shame is primarily experienced by people with low self-esteem

5. Emotional granularity refers to:

a) The intensity with which emotions are experienced b) The precision with which a person can identify and label different emotional states c) The number of different emotions a person is capable of experiencing d) The speed with which a person processes emotional information

6. Which statement about emotional suppression is best supported by research?

a) Suppression reduces both the subjective experience of emotion and its physiological expression b) Suppression effectively manages emotion in the long term and has minimal relational costs c) Suppression hides emotional expression but maintains or increases physiological arousal, and is costly to relationships d) Suppression is equally effective as reappraisal for most emotion regulation purposes

7. Emotional contagion refers to:

a) The spread of mood disorders through social networks b) The automatic tendency to mimic and synchronize with others' emotional expressions, producing convergent emotional experience c) The contagious nature of laughter and tears as social signals d) The transmission of emotional memories across generations through epigenetic mechanisms

Section B: Application

8. Using appraisal theory, explain why two colleagues receiving the same critical performance feedback might experience very different emotional responses. What specific appraisals would distinguish a response of anxiety from a response of motivation?

[Open response]

9. Jordan, in the opening scene, is so preoccupied with managing his own emotional state that he is not fully present in the conversation with Dev. Using Gross's process model, identify where in the emotion regulation sequence Jordan is intervening, evaluate whether his strategy is effective, and suggest a more adaptive approach.

[Open response]

10. A friend tells you they are excellent at emotional regulation because they "never let their emotions show." Using the chapter's research on suppression, evaluate this claim and explain what the costs of this approach might be.

[Open response]

Section C: Critical Thinking

11. The chapter presents two views of emotion: universalist (Ekman) and constructionist (Barrett). What are the practical implications of each view for understanding your own emotional experience? Does it matter, for purposes of emotional regulation, whether emotions are biological universals or cultural constructions?

[Open response]

12. The guilt vs. shame distinction has significant therapeutic and practical implications. But critics argue that the distinction is culturally situated — that some cultures have more shame-oriented emotional systems and these function differently than the research (primarily on Western participants) suggests. How should we hold the guilt-shame findings given this cultural complexity?

[Open response]

13. The chapter argues that emotions carry information essential to decision-making (Damasio). But many emotions — anxiety about unlikely risks, disgust responses to harmless but unfamiliar things, in-group favoritism — produce demonstrably poor decisions. How do we determine when to follow emotional signals and when to override them with deliberate reasoning? Is there a principled answer, or is this always a matter of judgment?

[Open response]

Section D: Integration

14. Connect the concept of emotion regulation through reappraisal (Chapter 6) to the concept of cognitive biases (Chapter 4). Specifically: how might confirmation bias distort the reappraisal process, leading people to construct reappraisals that are motivated rather than genuinely accurate?

[Open response]

Answer Key Overview

Full answers for Section A are in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.

Section A answers: 1-b, 2-c, 3-b, 4-c, 5-b, 6-c, 7-b