Exam 9: Emotion, Motivated Reasoning, and Critical Thinking

The process of experiencing an emotion often begins with interpretation of the situation, which is called a(n):

Westen and his colleagues used fMRI to examine the activation of brain areas of committed Democrats and Republicans when confronted with statements by their favored candidates that were inconsistent with their party's positions. Initially, participants showed an increase in activation of the amygdala. This effect may have occurred because the amygdala is:

Theories maintaining that emotions are discrete assume that basic emotions, such as fear and anger, are:

Which kind of evidence is the citation related to the writings of Plato, the influential Greek philosopher who wrote that reason should subdue and master emotion?

The introduction of mood induction procedures was a major advance in the scientific study of emotion and mood states because it:

Researchers using mood induction procedures induce and manipulate moods in participants and then make comparisons to control conditions presumed to induce a neutral mood. In a neutral mood state, a participant would not experience any mood strongly and so would lack a specific emotion. What is an unwarranted assumption that researchers may be making when using procedures to induce neutral mood as a control condition?

The text discusses a UFO cult and its leader, Dorothy Martin. Even though Martin's prophecy about aliens did not come to pass, she told her followers that she maintained contact with the aliens. Martin's response provides a good example of which thinking error?

Research studies on the effect of emotion on risk-taking found that participants induced to be:

The BEST interpretation of the reaction shown by people who were affected by the 1938 radio play broadcast of The War of the Worlds suggests that:

Travis has been dreading his required statistics class for two years. Although his previous math course performance has been average, he has told himself that he is not good at math. When he finally takes his first exam in the statistics class, Travis reads the first question and does not know how to answer it. His mouth is dry and he feels tense and jittery. From that point on, he cannot concentrate on any other questions and he runs out of time. As a result, he fails the exam. To deal with the problem that emotion is contributing to his thinking, Travis should: