Heart and Emotion (eBook)

Michael Myrtek (Ed.) (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: PDF

2004 | 1. Auflage
212 Seiten
Hogrefe Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-61676-286-5 (ISBN)

Infos

The connection between acute emotional arousal and heart rate is well known, both from poetry and from the evolutionary survival reflex known as the fight-flight reaction. The connection between stress and disease is also well known. What is less well known is that the heart reacts to nearly all stimuli, independently of physical exertion, during both the day and the night.

These changes, known collectively as the "additional heart rate" or AHR, are mostly unconscious and to date have been hard or impossible to study in real life. This book first presents a revolutionary new technique for monitoring and analyzing the additional heart rate during everyday life, and then goes on to show that contemporary theories about emotion, stress, and disease are no longer tenable.

This technique, the Freiburg Monitoring System, allows heart rate changes not associated with physical activity to be assessed objectively, in real-life situations, and to be compared with individuals' subjective feelings at the time. After describing the relevant models and the foundations of the technique, the book then moves on to present the most important results of recent research using Freiburg Monitoring. 

Inhalt

Preface 6
Contents 8
Chapter 1 Definitions and models 12
1.1 Emotion 12
1.2 Concepts related to emotion 15
1.3 Work load: Theoretical background 17
1.4 Summary 20
Chapter 2 Basic physiological principles 22
2.1 Nervous control of the heart 22
2.2 Neurophysiology of emotion 25
2.3 Summary 26
Chapter 3 Methods 28
3.1 Freiburg Monitoring System (FMS) 28
3.2 Samples monitored with the FMS 38
3.3 Reliability of the FMS 39
3.4 Validity of the FMS 44
3.5 Special aspects of AHR 52
3.6 Discussion 60
3.7 Summary 62
Chapter 4 Interoception 64
4.1 Some findings from the literature 64
4.2 Cardiac perception in healthy subjects 66
4.3 Cardiac perception in patients 69
4.4 Discussion 81
4.5 Summary 82
Chapter 5 Perception of emotions 84
5.1 Frequency and quality of emotions 84
5.2 Emotional differences between true and random feedbacks and for different social contacts 89
5.3 Physiological profiles of different emotions 90
5.4 Accuracy of the perception of emotional arousal 91
5.5 Influence of personality dimensions on emotions reported 92
5.6 Discussion 93
5.7 Summary 95
Chapter 6 Stress and strain at the workplace 98
6.1 Work load in train drivers, bus drivers, and dispatchers 98
6.2 Work load in white and blue collar workers 112
6.3 Work load in university students 115
6.4 Work load in schoolboys 122
6.5 Discussion 126
6.6 Summary 129
Chapter 7 Stress and strain during leisure time 132
7.1 Work versus leisure time in train drivers, bus drivers, and dispatchers 132
7.2 Work versus leisure time in white and blue collar workers 134
7.3 Effects of television viewing in schoolboys 138
7.4 Driving a car 142
7.5 Stress at the amusement park 150
7.6 Discussion 153
7.7 Summary 155
Chapter 8 Physiological monitoring during the night 158
8.1 Hypotheses 158
8.2 Results 159
8.3 Discussion 168
8.4 Summary 168
Chapter 9 General discussion 170
9.1 Methodological considerations 171
9.2 Interoception and emotions 174
9.3 Stress and strain 177
9.4 Monitoring during sleep 180
9.5 Conclusions 180
Summary 184
References 188
Authors index 204
Subject index 208

Textauszug

Chapter 4 Interoception (p. 53-55)

Interoception means the perception of bodily sensations such as hunger, thirst, tiredness, chest pain, palpitations of the heart, and so on. Some of these sensations are interpreted by the individual as indicating a disease which may lead one to search for medical advice. Other terms in this context are introspection (Mechanic & Hansell, 1987) and symptom awareness. There are individual differences in introspection resulting in different awareness and reports of bodily complaints. Several studies dealt with interoception, especially with the perception of heart rate. These studies are of theoretical interest because they can answer the question to what extent internal physiological processes can be perceived.

Symptom awareness has medical consequences as shown, for example, for the results of cardiac catheterization. About one quarter of all catheterizations show negative angiographic findings. On the other hand, one quarter of catheterizations are made too late with severe positive angiographic results. According to Frasure-Smith 1987), the latter group of patients has a low level of bodily awareness or has not complained enough about symptoms which would have led to an earlier angiography. Men with negative angiographic findings had a high level of bodily awareness whereas men with increasing positive findings had decreasing awareness.

Pennebaker (1982) has shown that bodily symptoms are perceived in the same way as external events. Because information processing is limited, external and internal sensory data compete for processing. The probability of reporting symptoms is inversely related to the quantity of external information at any given time and, therefore, dependent on the actual situational circumstances. A second important fact is that symptoms are interpreted within cognitive schemas or hypotheses available to the individual. According to such hypotheses, attention is directed selectively to that sensory information which supports the present hypothesis. In the opinion of Pennebaker, people are not able to perceive physiological states reliably because the interindividual and intraindividual correlations between symptoms and physiological states are typically low. Moreover, persons who perceive a special physiological state rather well, are not able to perceive another physiological state with the same accuracy. Finally, only changes but not the level of a physiological state are perceived.

4.1 Some findings from the literature.

Several experimental studies investigated the interoception of physiological functions, especially heart rate and blood pressure. The reason for these studies is the idea that interoception might be helpful to improve the therapy of physiological disorders such as hypertension, increased resistance in the respiratory tract, arrhythmias, etc. If it is basically possible to perceive physiological functions, it would offer the opportunity to increase interoception by adequate training.

In a study by Jones, Jones, Cunningham, and Caldwell (1985), the perception of heart rate in myocardial infarction patients as compared to healthy persons was investigated. No difference in interoception between the groups was found and interoception in both groups was low. A low level of interoception was also seen in students by Katkin, Morell, Goldband, Bernstein, and Wise (1982) and by Pennebaker and Hoover (1984). Schandry (1981) investigated the accuracy of heart rate perception and the degree of emotional lability in a group of healthy persons. Emotionally labile persons showed a better perception than emotionally stable persons. The author suggests that the higher anxiety level in emotionally labile persons might be a result of their better perception of physiological functions. On the other hand, it might be that emotionally labile persons have a higher awareness of bodily functions, thus being better trained in discriminative tasks assessing the accuracy of perception. Actually, it has been shown that heart rate perception can be trained to a certain degree (Katkin et al., 1982; Weitkunat, Schandry, Sparrer, & Beck, 1987).

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.1.2004
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Test in der Psychologie
• Schlagworte: Heart disease • heart rate • Psychophysiology
• ISBN-10: 1-61676-286-1 / 1616762861
• ISBN-13: 978-1-61676-286-5 / 9781616762865