* University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty in Sopot, Poland
** Institute of Psychology, Adam Mickiewicz University, PolandTomasz Maruszewski*
Aleksandra Jasielska**
Dorota Szczygie ł*
Emotions as individual and social phenomena: Seeking new answers to old questions
Abstract : The paper presents state of art in the area of emotion studies. It is stressed that emotions are multicomponent processes including neural, expression, subjective and social elements. We have tried to show that synchronization and coordination of these elements from elementary through intermediate to the most complex level may be understood in terms of emergent processes. Manifestations of emergence may be observed both in social aspects of emotions, as well as subjective and expression ones. Although the idea of emergent processes was not explicitly used by contributors of this volume, the traces of it are present in their papers.
Key words : organization of emotions, emergent processes, emotions in social contextOriginal PapersPolish Psychological Bulletin
2015, vol. 46(3) 320–325
DOI - 10.1515/ppb-2015-0039
An introduction to a journal issue can take a similar form to that of a restaurant menu, which informs what dishes are worth considering. We have decided to adopt a slightly different approach, and think about rules that operate in the kitchen and about consequences of applying different methods of preparing the dishes. In other words, we would like to share our reflections on the condition of and perspectives on our discipline.
Psychological studies spread in many domains in an epidemic manner. A particular problem starts to attract attention of a larger group of researchers – they get infected, and the epidemic spreads in an exponential manner. Then, some part of the infected population give up the primary issue, whereas others become immune to “the virus”, and the epidemic gradually extinguishes. Among examples of such epidemics there were attempts to introduce mathematical models or analyses of attribution processes.
The newest epidemic, the origins of which could be spotted in the 1980s, is connected with the emergence of cognitive science and neuroimaging techniques. A certain response to cognitive science was creating affective science. Comparably to cognitive science, this new discipline has an interdisciplinary character, and includes not only theoretical considerations and psychological studies, but also philosophical, biological, sociological and anthropological concepts (Gross, 2010). In 2012, the Society for Affective Science was created, and the first conference organized by this association took place in April 2014. Affective science has developed as a result of an integration of achievements of various disciplines – not only psychology of emotions, but also psychology of motivation (issues connected with free will), cognitive psychology (the role of working memory in the emergence and regulation of emotions) and personality psychology (dispositional determinants of processes involved in coping with emotion-provoking situations). Studies on affective states are of great importance to medicine, and they find application in the analysis of both psychological disorders and determinants of many somatic diseases (including the special meaning that has been ascribed lately to relationships between affective states and either oncological conditions or chronic diseases, such as diabetes). A separate group – undoubtedly very interesting from the practical point of view – constitute attempts to investigate collective emotions, the outbursts of which can either temporarily disturb social order (Boski & Wilczewska, 2014) or lead to a revolution.
All this contributes to formulating some basic questions. We will not dare to answer the most fundamental Emotions as individual and social phenomena: Seeking new answers to old questions321
question formulated by William James (1884): What is an emotion? Although our questions do pertain to fundamental issues, nevertheless, they do not have such a general character as that of James’.
What processes decide about the emergence of emotions?
Although in the majority of cases emotions emerge spontaneously, they are seldom triggered exclusively by external stimuli. Most often their appearance is an effect of the interplay between internal and environmental factors. As biological beings, we are preprogrammed to receive certain stimuli and, at the same time, we are less prone to stimuli that are not included in this program. Despite the fact that we as a species possess a unique flexibility in reacting to different types of stimuli, there still exist limits of this flexibility. We can refer here to the commonly cited examples of arachnophobia (fear of spiders) or ophidiophobia (fear of snakes). A child who observes its mother reaction to the appearance of a snake or a spider, very quickly starts to be afraid of these animals. Evolution prepared our species for experiencing fear in response to this kind of stimuli (Ohman & Mineka, 2001). This view – although very common – has been challenged recently (Tierney & Connolly, 2013). Irrespective of the result of the dispute (i.e., final conclusions) on evolutionary sources of this emotional reaction, this fear can easily become generalized on similar animals, e.g., earthworms. In turn, it seems difficult to evoke in a child a phobia of, for instance, lilies. A similar situation occurs in the case of internally induced emotions. An example of such an emotion can be jealousy: it emerges as a consequence of thoughts and ideas about the partner, and sometimes also as a consequence of his or her actual behaviors. However, when the partner does not give any reasons to be jealous, the jealous person can construct such reasons. The jealous person may not be able to differentiate between his or her own thoughts and the reality. All things considered, emotions are seldom conditioned exclusively by stimuli that come from the environment. What is the organization of emotions?
Izard (1990, 1993) claims that emotions are multicomponent systems, and that they emerge as a result of an activation of four interrelated systems. Emotions encompass physiological and expressive processes and changes of the behavior. An important component of emotions are feelings, which reflect subjective experiences associated with changes that take place within the other components. Thanks to that, the primary components of the emotional process can undergo changes. A grimace of anger that appears on the face of a subordinate who hears that s\he will be able to take a leave no sooner than in November, disappears when the person realizes that his or her boss could have noticed it. Even more important problem connected with the manner of discussing emotions occurs when we ask what bonds all these components under one verbal label. One could expect that particular elements that constitute emotions correlate with one another. However, a number of studies indicate that correlations between components of the emotional process are very low, sometimes even close to zero (Duffy, 1962). This also pertains to correlations between indicators of physiological arousal, i.e., reactions that are controlled in an entirely automatic manner. Trying to explain the lack of relationships between elements of an allegedly one process, researchers put forward the concept of activation patterns (Lacey, 1967). According to this view, different stimuli, and also different tasks accomplished by a person, cause the emergence of specific patterns of physiological arousal. Specific activation patterns emerge also when a person experiences emotions that differ in terms of their quality (Ekman, Levenson, & Friesen, 1983). To be more specific – increasingly important role in analyses have started to play lately not so much the indicators connected with the activation of the autonomous nervous system, but rather indicators associated with the brain activity. Studies conducted with the use of neuroimaging techniques showed that different brain regions are activated when people experience disgust (Borg, de Jong, Renken, & Georgiadis, 2013; Lane, Reiman, Ahern, & Schwartz, 1997). Still, we cannot be sure whether we are able to observe analogous differences in other complex emotions, such as pride, irony, or disdain.
Researchers refer to different hypotheses when no co-dependencies between subjective feelings and physiological arousal can be observed. For example, it can be hypothesized that it results from a distraction or repressing emotions. In case of distraction, an individual starts to recall different thoughts or undertakes another engaging activity in order to divert attention from the activated emotion. Yet, different situation takes place when expression does not correspond with the actually experienced emotion, as it can be observed in the case of mediocre celebrities. We need to remember, however, that sometimes such discrepancies can be dispositional, like in the case of alexithymia.
All of the examples described above pose a difficult problem to researchers of emotions. For, they contradict the thesis that an emotion is a global process that possesses an internal organization. In order to cope with such theoretical and empirical challenges, researchers resort to ad hoc hypotheses. Probably, the number of such hypotheses will eventually become so large, that the initial model will become so complex, that it will be reasonable to seek for a new model. New theoretical possibilities of solving these contradictions have been enabled by the concept of emergence. One of the creators of this approach writes that “…emotion … [is]… bounded episode in the life of a system that is characterized as an emergent pattern of component synchronization, preparing adaptive action tendencies to relevant events , as defined by their behavioural meaning and aiming at establishing control precedence over behaviour “ (Scherer, 2009, p. 3459). The idea of emergence assumes that elementary processes,
