Emotion Unit Plan

Day 1: Introduction to Emotion: This lesson will be an introduction to emotion and the brain. This lecture will mostly be direct instruction. I will first define emotion and explain that there is no well-accepted definition of emotion. Difficulty in defining emotion hampered research on it for a long time. Students will have to opportunity to try to define emotion themselves and discuss the reasons emotion is important to humans. Emotion functions to: 1. Increase, decrease, or regulate arousal 2. Direct perception and attention
3. Influence learning and memory
4. Organize and motivate behavior 5. Communicate with others

Day 2: The Neuroscience of Emotion: This lesson will be important to describe what happens in the brain for humans to experience emotion. They will learn about the brain mechanisms of emotional recognition and experience and the brain systems that are important in emotion such as the amygdala. We will also learn about what happens in the brain during the flight or fight response. Students will learn about the different glands and what the symptoms are of the flight or fight response. At the end of the lesson, students will then be put into groups and will each choose one emotion to research. They will research how that emotion comes about and the parts of the brain that are responsible for those emotions.

Day 3: Detection of Emotions: People have tried to develop a reliable way to detect deception for hundreds of years. During the 20th century, devices sensitive to sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity were developed as “lie detectors.” 
The logic is that lying makes people nervous, which is reflected in increased SNS activity (e.g., racing heart, sweaty hands). Critique: Lie detector machines are unreliable. “Good liars” may be judged truthful, and honest people may be judged to be lying. We will watch a few clips form the show “Lie to Me.” Students will then have the opportunity to test what they have learned in by watching clips of police interviews in which the teacher will know the outcomes but the students will try to determine whether or not the suspect is lying.

Day 4: Emotional Experiences: Evaluation of a stimulus causes physical reaction that is experienced as a specific emotion. I would then give the example of a person sees a spider and regards it as dangerous. According to the James–Lange theory, the person would begin to shake and then experience the shaking behavior as fear: “I feel afraid because I am shaking.” We would also discuss the Cannon–Bard theory that the thalamus relays stimuli to internal organs and cortex simultaneously and physical changes and emotional experience occur at the same time. Using the same example: A person sees a spider. According to the Cannon–Bard theory, the person would begin to shake and simultaneously appraise the shaking behavior as fear: “The spider makes me shake and feel afraid.” After the lecture on the different theories, the students will write a short paper (1-2 pages) on their biggest fear and why they think they may have that fear. They will use various models discussed such as classical and operant conditioning. They will then describe which of these theories best explains what their emotional experience is and why that happens in their body.

Day 5: Development of Emotional Competence: Emotional competence includes: 1. Emotional awareness: self and others 2. Mastery of emotion language
3. Acquisition of display rules
4. Emotion regulation. We will discuss how children learn to exaggerate, minimize, or mask emotional expressions. Masking disappointment at an undesirable gift is something that children learn at a young age. Girls develop emotional competence earlier than boys, but gender differences are influenced by society. For example, research shows that parents speak differently to daughters than to sons, using a greater number and variety of emotion words with young daughters than with son. We will also discuss emotional intelligence. We will watch a video from YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D5oWNFR6oY&feature=related) in which the students will determine strong and poor emotional intelligence.