Week 1: Introduction and Theoretical Approaches
Emotion: psychological state that relates an event, out in the world
- Gives priority / urgency to a specific concern, and orients us to specific actions
Darwin: emotional expressions are based on reflex-like mechanism, and derive from habits in
the past, some useful and others not (sneering - appendix)
James: emotion is the perception of changes of our body
Freud: psychoanalysis, emotions derive from early life (trauma)
Philosophical and literary approaches:
Aristotle and the ethics of emotions: there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so
- Emotions as evaluative judgements of events in the world
- Drama is about human action and what can happen when human actions have effects
that were unforeseen
- Katharsis: clarification, the clearing away of obstacles to understanding
- Epicureanism: human beings have a right to the pursuit of happiness, one should live in
a simple way and enjoy simple pleasures
- Stoicism: emotions derive from desires, desires while lead to most emotions should be
disciplined out, distinction between first movements of emotions (automatic) and second
movements, are inevitable and up to us
- Lead to acceptance of christianity: bad desires and bad thought became the
seven sins
There are 2 real choices in life: epicureanism and stoicism
Rene Descartes: the passions of the soul (passions = emotions)
- The 6 fundamental emotions occur in the soul - the thinking aspect of ourselves
- Differentiated between emotions from perceptions of events that happen in the outside
world and of those within the body (hunger and pain)
- Emotions cannot be entirely controlled by thinking, but can be regulated by thoughts
- Emotions serve important functions, but can be dysfunctional
George Eliot: the world of the arts
- Sympathies: emotions that connect us, can be extended by artists to people outside
their circle
- Emotions as a compass, guiding us to a destiny
Biological approaches:
- Behaviorism: the mind as a black box, emotions as disruptive forces within the
human psyche
John Harlow attended Phineas Gage
Damage to frontal lobe - inappropriate judgements about risk, morality, money, pleasure or the
trustworthiness of others, struggle in friendships
Cannon: severed subcortical regions - intense emotions, strong anger
1
, - Cortex inhibits the subcortical regions where emotions reside
Frederique de Vignemont and Tania Singer: empathy is having an emotion, which is in some
way similar to that of another person, which is elicited by observation and imagination of the
other’s emotion, and that involves knowing that the other is the source of one’s own emotion
- Anterior insula and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex (activates action) activated
Sympathy: responding to others’ suffering or pain with our own feelings of concern and the
motivation to help that person
- Periaqueductal gray: ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal
cortex activated
Arnold: “emotions are based on appraisals of events”
Tomkins: theory about the relation of emotion to facial expression
- Primary motivational system: human action and thought reflect the interplay of
motivational systems, each capable of fulfilling a certain function, each potentially
capable of taking over the whole person (emotions prioritize them)
- Emotions are amplifiers of drives (bodily changes amplify sex drive)
Arnold and Gasson: emotions relates self to objects, “an emotion can be considered as the felt
tendency toward an object judged suitable, or away from an object judged unsuitable”
Goffman: life as a drama, emotions in social roles
- Our full engagement in roles is enabled by enthusiasm and produces emotional rewards
- Pride and contentment fulfill the expectations of specific roles
Hochschild: theory of feeling rules - emotional feelings are appropriate to the specific context
(method acting)
- Emotional labor: surface vs deep (positive responses) acting
Hasham: embarrassment, shyness and modesty in women (Abu-Lughod)
Inspirations for a new science of emotion:
- Ethology: the study of animals and people as they live their own lives - emotions are the
grammar of social living
- Split-brain epilepsy patients
- Positive states: can lead people to more creative thought, the recollection of more
positive memories, more collaborative negotiations and to produce more unusual
associations to words
2
,Sentiment: prolonged emotional state, like a mood, but usually with an object (love,
resentment)
Features of emotions: reaction to a stimulus, appraisal, experience and expression, limited
duration, motivation to display specific behaviors, capacity to regulate, effect on the individual
and others, adaptive
Lecture Evolutionary Approach
Concern: in the mind
Evolution:
- Superabundance
- Variation
- Selection
Epigenetics: the turning on or off of genes depending on the environment
Different strategies:
- Male: statistical, sperm is expendable
- Female: investment, eggs are precious
Selection pressures: features of the environment in which we evolved that determined whether
or not we survived and reproduced (aversion to bitter foods)
- Intrasexual selection: males evolve so they can compete and win mating opportunities
(hippos pushing one another)
- Intersexual selection: males evolve traits that are preferred by females (bird feathers)
Adaptation: genetically based traits that allow us to respond effectively and efficiently to
selection pressures (fear of snakes and spiders -> avoid danger)
Crucial social motivations:
- Attachment
- Hierarchy: status, competition
- Affiliation: taking care of eachother
- In-group preference
3
, Example emotion: jealousy
- 83% of women found emotional infidelity more upsetting (40% of males)
- 60% of men found sexual infidelity more upsetting (17% of females)
Methods to study evolutionary psychology and emotions:
- Zoology: examining near relatives
- Archeology: human ancestry
- Anthropology: contemporary societies in an earlier stage of development
Emotions: modes of functioning that coordinate physiological, cognitive, motivational,
behavioral and subjective responses in patterns that increase the ability to meet the adaptive
challenges of situations that have recurred over evolutionary time, so they are shaped by
natural selection
What you need to meet an evolutionary recurrent situation:
- Cues that signal the presence of the situation
- Situation-detecting algorithms
- Algorithms that assign priorities
- An internal communication system
-> orchestrated response
Influences of language:
- Development of theory of mind
- Broadening repertoire of emotion expression
- Extending focus of behavior from present moment to the future
- Extending possibilities for cooperation
Classification of emotions:
Valence is most often used: Is the emotion pleasant or unpleasant?
But:
- There are no strict boundaries between emotions
- The internal state is a result of specific kinds of situation:
- Of which there are a lot
- Which overlap in their characteristics
- Overlapping constructs
- Multidimensional space with infinite overlapping emotions
- Valence may be driving behavior, but more fundamental for adaptation
Functions:
- Help us display optimal behavior in a certain situation
Positive emotions: motivate you to take advantage of opportunities
Negative emotions: motivate you to escape, attack, prevent internal harm and repair loss or
damage
4
