Chapter 1 - Approaches to Emotions
Emotion = psychological state relating to an external or internal (concern) event; emotion gives priority to one goal over
another - gives the concern urgency; relate events to personal concerns and prepare us to act in response to
environment
- Locally rational = specific to current social context
- Relational and social ! subjective and intrapersonal, but also interpersonal
- Connect context specific concerns with possible courses of action in the social environment
- Reaction to stimulus, appraisal (important or not important), experience and expression, limited duration,
motivation to behave specifically, capacity to regulate, effect on the individual and others, adaptive
- But only adaptive if
- Accurate appraisal, proper degree of importance attached, prioritizing goals corresponds with
importance, reactions make sense in situation, high emotional intelligence
Other affective phenomena: preferences, attitudes, moods, affective predispositions (personality), interpersonal stances
(social predispositions), aesthetic emotions, utilitarian emotions
Charles Darwin
- Emotions are universal, have physiological explanations
- Emotional expressions are based on reflex mechanisms
- Patterns of adult affections (hugging) based on patterns of parents hugging young infants
William James
- Emotions move us in bodily ways - the core of an emotion is the pattern of bodily responses an event evokes =
embodied nature of emotions
- Changes in the autonomic nervous system, as well as signals from sensory systems
- Emotions give color and warmth to experience
Sigmund Freud
- Certain events can be so damaging they leave emotional scars that last lifetimes
- Gaps in life stories give way for interpretations - which are brought up by therapist and realized by patient
- Psychoanalysis has been critiqued though
- Bowlby - theory of attachment based on idea that initial attachment to parents dictates future attachment
Philosophical and Literary Approaches to Emotions
- Aristotle and Ethics of emotions
- Emotions depend on what we believe = evaluative judgements;
- We are responsible for our emotions because we are responsible for our beliefs
- Tragic dramas - the tragedy is unstoppable because we are not gods (we cannot know everything and
the consequences of everything), but we are still responsible for our actions
- Katharsis = clarification by seeing predicaments of human action in the theatre
- Epicureans (right to pursuit of happiness, in harmony with the environment) and Stoics (Chrysippus - first
and second movements of emotions; emotions from desires) also theorized on emotion
- Stoic “bad desires” became the seven deadly sins - choice in the second movement of emotions
is crucial
- Epicureanism and stoicism are two ethical systems to choose from when building life
- George Eliot
- Sympathies = emotions that connect us to each other can be extended by art and artists
Brain, psychology, sociology, anthropology
- Behaviorism first denied the study of emotions
- Harlow & Singer: Brain science of emotion - phineas Gage
- Frontal lobe is crucial in emotion processing
- Cannon criticized James-Lange Embodied theory of emotion - when viscera are separated from brain, emotion
doesn’t lessen in intensity
- Instead, he theorized that the cortex acts to inhibit subcortical regions where emotions reside
, - Empathy = emotion which is similar to that of another person, elicited by observation or imagination of the
person’s emotion, with the knowledge that the feeling’s source is the other person; mirroring
- Anterior insular and cingulate cortices activate
- sympathy/compassion = responding to other’s pain with concern and motivation to help; mirroring + concern
- Old regions of brain: periaqueductal gray; and reward regions: ventral tegmental area, nucleus
accumbens and orbitofrontal cortex
- Arnold & Tomkins: emotions based on appraisals of events, and related to facial expressions ; Frijda’s concerns
= things in our minds important to us
- Emotion relates self to object, essentially relational, and mediate interior concerns with events and
objects in the world
- Attraction to or repulsion from some object → det whether emotion is positive or negative
- Impulsive = no difficulty in attaining or avoiding the object
- Contention = difficulties in acting
- Tomkins: primary motivational system - emotions are amplifiers of drives; drive = neural message about
object or event; drive amplifier = strong attraction/repulsion;
- Emotions help us prioritize drives
- Goffman, Hochschild, Abi-Lughod: emotions re moral dramas
- We give dramatic presentations of ourselves to each other to create social reality → moral worlds → from
which our selfhood and our image in other people’s eyes
- Each social situation determines a social role and social role determines emotion; social world as series
of “games”
- Performances in social roles can be fulfilling or cause inner conflict (if they are not engaging)
- Hochschild: emotional labor = constructing emotions in oneself to induce them in others (very
much required in the service industry)
- Surface vs deep acting; surface is worse for performance and well-being
- Abu-Lughod - anthropologist, bedouins in Egypt
- Hasham (timiditate) in women (blushing, being in the presence of men in certain ways, within
which they find pride) → emotions define and negotiate social relations of the self in a moral order
Empirical Approach to Emotions
- Ethology = study of animals and people as they live their lives (as opposed to controlled experiments) - natural
setting, evolutionary perspective
- Emotional expressions are the basic elements of interactions
- Gazzaniga: split brain patients see scary movie in left side, info processed in right side, emotional info
processed in unsplit subcortical regions without conscious (linguistic - left side) idea of how it came about
- Isen: positive states can lead to more creative thought, recollection of positive memories, collaborative
negotiations, and more unusual word associations → flexibility and creativity ⇒ emotions have effects on
thought and action
Emotions
-
- Kinda like Bronfenbrenner’s model
- We conceptualize emotional experiences in language and beliefs
, - We feel more than one emotion at once, and we choose to concentrate on one that is important in the situation
→ urgency (not importance!)
Emotions, Moods, Dispositions = Emotional Realm
- Affect = anything to do with emotions, moods, dispositions, preferences
-
- Emotion episodes = limited time
- Mood = hours/days, low intensity, background, no particular “intentional object”
- Emotional disorders - Depression, anxiety
- Personality (enduring collection of traits) and temperament (personality we are born with)
Chapter 2 - Evolution of Emotions
(the rest is integrated into lecture notes)
Evolution of Language and Symbolic Representation
- Flint tools imply an emotional engagement of acquiring and exercising the skills to make them; things like beads,
burials, and use of fire imply emotionally driven acts
- Language
- Convey emotional experience → social bonds → conversation
- Conversation is more efficient in communicating emotion than grooming (like in primates)
- ⇒ theory of mind, perspective taking, etc
- Symbolic representation became possible due to larger frontal lobe, → conversations about others
- Language augments nonvrebal communication
Emotions and Social Behavior
- Initially there were individual goals → joint goals → collective group goals
- Emotions promoting attachment
- Like imprinting, where mother is a secure base in the dynamic; mother is present → security
- Pair bonding, where partners cooperate to raise children, animated by love and desire
- Early affectional bonds due to strong emotions appear early, form patterns that become adult love and
affectional bonds
- Emotions and social hierarchy
- Emotions negotiate rank
- Emotions, affiliation and friendship
- Friendships counter coercive use of power in hunter gatherers - horizontal relationships
- Warmth, empathy, shared laughter, appreciation and gratitude, emotional disclosures, caring and
commitment
- Collective emotions and preference for ingroups
- Collective joy → rituals
Lecture 1 Notes
Evolution
, - Darwin n such - Natural selection is driving force
- Evolution: superabundance of genetic material that produces → variation → natural selection
- Differential reproduction of characteristics toward better survival by adaptation to environment; natural selection
produces adaptation
- Pressures: avoid eating toxins, share costs of raising offspring, find fertile mate, protect offspring → Adaptations:
distaste for bitterness, preference for young/high status mates, cuteness of baby life cues
- Epigenetics - genes turning on/off by environment
- Survival of the fittest = reproductive success (of the genes, nobody cares about individuals
- 2 strategies depending on sex
- Statistical (male) strategy: mate with as many females as possible (sperm is expendable, lots of it to go
around)
- Investment (female): investment in raising offspring, eggs are few and precious
- Sexual selection
- Intrasexual - individuals of one sex evolve traits that enable them to cmpete with other individuals of the
same sex to win mating opportunities (male, usually - showing off to be the alpha male)
- intersexual : individuals of one sex evolve traits (physical and behavioral) that are preferreed nu
members of the opposite sex = mate choice (female, usually)
- Actually, members of one sex select specific traits in the other sex - like agreeableness
- Fitness is increased for those preferred by others as social partners and have strong social networks
(who are also thus preferred as sexual partners)
- Adaptation = genetically based trait that allows individual to respond to environment appropriately - like
dietary likes and dislikes
- Preference for symmetrical faces (in hopes of healthier offspring due to better immune system) is
associated with “inherent goodness” belief → increased activity in medial OFC (processing
rewards), decreased activity in insular cortex
- Periaqueductal gray activity when adults hear baby sounds → nurturing behavior
- ⇒ emotions are adaptations for survival, reproduction and getting along in social contexts
- Understanding the environment of evolutionary adaptedness is necessary to understand Adaptations
- That environment is gone, but the one constant is intense sociality
- Insights from contemporary nomadic hunter gatherers, nonhuman primates (chimpanzees and
bonobos)
- Evolution and the mind - social motivations
- Enhance survival chances → emotions are means by which genes replicate
- Attachment (Bowlby) - for protection, evolving into romantic bonds later - emotional needs?
- Hierarchy - power motivation, status hierarchies: taking care of those lower in hierarchy, stopping
conflicts among alphas → competition (which can be good if it drives achievement, but bad at the
expense of other individuals); human hierarchies are more horizontal than animal ones (where the
alphas are easier to identify)
- Egalitarianism in distribution of resources is important principle
- Leveling mechanisms = social-emotional processes that preserve egalitarian relations (if
somebody boasts, they will be made fun of to ensure equality)
- Affiliation - taking care of one another, cooperation, but not as warm as attachment
- In group preference - survival value for own group, but antisocial behavior toward outgroups is promoted
:( - see table 2.3 - which book is a mystery → tribalism (which appears in both humans and primates)
- When observing suffering, the medial PFC lights up less for people of an outgroup than of an
ingroup
- But tribalism → universal care is important transition
- Jealousy is a consequence of monogamy (which emerged before polygamy, common in hunter gatherer
societies )
- Sex differences:
- Although no diff in the frequency or magnitude of jealousy,
- Women find emotional infidelity more upsetting