Understanding Emotions - Chapter 1

George Eliot: The world of the arts

"sympathies" (emotions that connect us to each other) can be extended by novelists and other artists to people outside our usual circle of Friends and acquaintances. Emotions act as a compass to find our way in life. They are also the principal means by which we affect other people, there would relationships are made of. Emotions have powerful effect on how we perceive other people and situations

Researches' conceptions of emotions

(Table 1.3) Conceptions of emotions of some researchers; summary of large amounts of research. Can be thought of as definitions, but are not necessarily considered as such

Charles Darwin: The evolutionary approach

1872 - The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Charles Darwin) most important book on emotions to date. He asked to broad questions: 1) How are emotions expressed in humans and other animals? (table 1.1 taxonomy of expressions) 2) Where do our emotions come from? - he proposed that emotional expressions derive largely from habits that in our evolutionary or individual past had ones being useful. So, emotional expressions are based on reflex-like mechanisms, and some of them occur whether they are useful or not. They can be triggered involuntarily in circumstances analogous to those that had triggered the original habits

Emotion

A psychological state or process that mediates between our concerns (or goals) and events of our world.

Tooby & Cosmides, 1990

An emotion corresponds to a distinctive system of coordination among the mechanisms that regulate each controllable biological process. That is, each emotional state manifests design features "designed" to solve particular families of adaptive problems, whereby psychological mechanisms assume unique configuration

Arnold & Gasson, 1954

An emotion or an affect can be considered as the felt tendency towards an object judged suitable, or away from an object judged unsuitable, reinforced by specific bodily changes

Philosophical and literary approaches

Aristotle René Descartes Geroge Eliot

Aristotle and the ethics of emotions (cont.)

Aristotle's thoughts about emotions gave birth to two important schools of philosophy. 1) Epicureanism 2) Stoicism These twophilosophies are called ethical because the members of these schools did not only have the goal of understanding how emotions work, but also the goal of understanding how one could shape one's life for the better

What is an emotion? - First ideas

At any one time and emotion gives priority to one concern over others (Sylvan Tomkins). It gives that concern urgency. Emotions are locally rational: they help us deal adaptively with concerns specific to our current context. They're local to the concern that has achieved priority, and the emotion makes it urgent

Tania Singer: Empathy (cont.)

Based on study, Tania Singer and Frederique de Vignemont defined empathy as: (a) having an emotion, which (b) is in someway similar to that of another person, which (c) is elicited by observation or imagination of the other's emotion, and that involves (d) knowing that the other is the source of one's own emotions

James, 1884

Bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion

19th century founders

Charles Darwin William James Sigmund Freud

Hochschild

Developed a theory of "feeling rules." These rules can be private or unconscious, or socially engineered in occupations that require us to influence other people's emotions and judgements Work that involves constructing emotions in oneself to induce them in others is widespread and Hochschild calls it "emotional labour" (ex: office assistant, flight attendant, debt collector) - not all "emotional labour" jobs are intended to induce pleasant emotions

Alice Isen: New experimentation

Early influential experiments on emotion - investigated how happiness influences our perception of the world. Her research showed that happiness has widespread effects on cognitive organisation (table 1.2), can make people more creative in problem solving, and can induce them to perform better at tasks like word association. Her work provided some of the first evidence on how emotions affect our perceptions and actions in the social world.

Personality traits

Emotional aspects of personality that can last a lifetime. The term trait is used to designate any long-lasting aspect of personality (figure 1.7).

Emotional disorders

Emotional disorders last for weeks or months, sometimes years (figure 1.7).

Lutz & White, 1986

Emotions are a primary idiom for defining and negotiating social relations of the self in a moral order

Goffman

Emotions are constructed within specific roles (being with your family/friends/boss, being on a first date). As well as giving a more or less good performance in a certain situation, we can also ask how engaged we are in a role. Happiness occurs more generally when we are fully engaged in what we are doing, but if there's conflict, such as following the "script" but not being engaged in it, we can feel unsatisfying emotions.

Frijda & Mesquita, 1994

Emotions are first and foremost, modes or relating to the environment: states of readiness for engaging, or not engaging, in interaction with that environment

Summary of theorists' conceptions (cont.)

Emotions are multifaceted responses to events that we see as challenges or opportunities in our inner or outer world, events that are important to our goals - particularly our social goals

Lazarus, 1991

Emotions are organised psychophysiological reactions to news about ongoing relationships in the environment

Ekman, 1992

Emotions are viewed as having evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life-tasks. Each emotion has unique features: signal, physiology, and antecedent events. Each emotion also has characteristics in common with other emotions: rapid onset, short duration, unbidden occurrence, automatic appraisal, and coherence among responses

René Descartes : Philosophically Speaking (cont.)

Emotions cannot be entirely controlled by thinking, but they can be regulated by thoughts, especially thoughts that are true. Like Aristotle, he suggests that emotion depends on how we evaluate events. He was also one of the first to argue that emotions serve important functions - his idea was that our emotions are usually functional but can sometimes be dysfunctional

What is an emotion? - First ideas (cont.)

Emotions for the source of our values, including our deepest values: whom and what we love, what we dislike, what we despise. Emotions help us form and engage in our relationships. Although emotions do occur to us individually, most of our important emotion don't just occur to us individually; they mediate our relationships, and thus most of our important emotions happen between us and others. The interpersonal equivalent of emotion giving priority to a concern is that an emotion is a kind of commitment to another

Summary of theorists' conceptions

Emotions have at least three facets. -Behavioural: we often express emotions in facial and vocal expressions, as well as in other bodily action (this is what Darwin called "expression" -Physiological: emotions involve activations in the brain, the autonomic nervous system, and other systems within the body. James focused on this, said they help to prepare us for actions of a particular kind -Experiential: we often become conscious of our emotions so that we can represent our experience of emotions in language

Charles Darwin: The evolutionary approach (cont.)

For Darwin, expressions showed the continuity of adult human emotions with those of lower animals and with those of infancy. Because they occur in adults, without any apparent use, they have evolutionary significance. He thought them analogous to the appendix, of no use to us but useful to our evolutionary ancestors. He traced other expressions to infancy: he saw crying as the vestige of screaming in infancy, though in adulthood it is partly inhibited. For Darwin, our emotions link us to our past: to the past of our species and to our own infancy. Despite his reservations, Darwin thought that emotions have useful functions; they help us navigate our social interactions.

Sigmund Freud: The psychotherapeutic approach (cont.)

Freud's work suggest that the emotional life of a adulthood derives from relationships and we had in childhood with parents or other caregivers. John Bowlby based his theory of attachment on this principle, a theory that is now essential in our understanding of emotional development.

Izard, 2010

Function of emotion: 1) Interrupts/changes processing and focuses attention and direction of responses 2) Motivates cognition and action and provides emotion information (including evolutionarily conserved communicative signals) to guide and coordinate the engagement of the individual in the physical and social environment for coping, adaptation, affiliation, and well-being

Yellow bile

Gives rise to anger Term choleric

Black bile

Gives rise to despair Term melancholy

Blood

Gives rise to hope and vigour Term sanguine

Phlegm

Gives rise to placidity Term phlegmatic

Erving Goffman, Arlie Russell Hochschild: Selves and others

Goffman - social science observation through theoretical lens. His lens was his idea that life is a kind of drama in which we take on roles. Hochschild - inspired by Goffman, she explored the tension that may occur when the person is in conflict about the role they play, when there are questions about who one is in oneself and the performance one is giving

Aristotle and the ethics of emotions

His most fundamental insight was that whereas many assume emotions happen to us outside of our control, really they depend on what we believe. In a way, we are responsible for our emotions, because we are responsible for our beliefs. Our emotional experiences are shaped by our judgements and evaluations Katharsis: for Aristotle catharsis of the emotions did not mean purgation or purification, instead give meant clarification - the clearing away of obstacles to understanding.

Epicureanism

Human beings have a right to the pursuit of happiness. Living naturally, in harmony with an environment of which we are stewards. The Epicureans taught that one should live in a simple way and enjoy simple pleasures, like food and friendship, rather than chasing after things that make one anxious or are unnatural or ephemeral, like wealth and fame The Epicureans recommended shifts and attention from such irrational desires to more worthwhile ones

The Humours

Ideas of the humours derived from great doctors who thought disease was caused by imbalance among the humours, with an increase in humour giving rise to a distinct emotional state

Phineas Gage

Likeable foreman of a construction crew Accident on the job, metal rod traversed his head, from under left eyebrow to top of head. Recovered in body but not in mind Harlow (attendant) wrote "balance between his intellectual faculties and his animal propensities seems to have been destroyed" Previously amiable, he was now impatient, irreverent, and easily angered Similar cases of damage to frontal lobe all showed a loss of ability to conduct their relationships - cases like these were the main evidence about emotions and the human brain

Magda Arnold, Sylvan Tomkins: New psychological theories

Most researchers now assume that emotions derive from appraisals people make of events. If we know what appraisals are made of an event, we can predict which emotion is likely to occur. Conversely, if we know which emotion is currently being experienced, we can infer what appraisals have probably been made

William James: The psychological approach (cont.)

Our experience of many emotions involves changes of the autonomic nervous system, as well as changes from movement of muscles and joints. James also proposed that emotions gifts "colour and warmth" to experience. Without this effects, he said, everything would be pale

John Harlow, Tania Singer: New brain science

Phineas Gage case In modern times research on emotions in the human brain has moved from the study of brain damage to tracking patterns of brain activation Tania Singer and study of empathy

Sigmund Freud: The psychotherapeutic approach

Sigmund Freud proposed that certain events can be so damaging that they leave emotional scars that can shape the rest of our lives. He was one of the first to argue that emotions are the core of many mental illnesses. Like Darwin, Freud thought that an emotion in the present could derive from one in the past, and used psychotherapy as the method for the discovering the root of the emotion.

René Descartes : Philosophically Speaking

Six fundamental emotions - wonder, desire, joy, love, hatred, and sadness - occur in the thinking aspect of ourselves (the soul). At the same time, they're closely connected to our body (bodily reactions). He differentiated emotions from perceptions of the outside world and perceptions from the body. Perceptions of the outside world tell us about our environment, and perceptions of the body tell us about critical events in the body. Emotions tell us what is important in our souls

Stoicism

The stoics were more radical. They thought that because emotions derive from desires, to free oneself from destructive or crippling emotions, one needed to extirpate almost all desires. The stoic understanding was that most emotions, especially anger, anxiety, and lust, we're damaging to the self and to society, and so should be disciplined out of our daily experience

Episodes of emotion

The term emotion, or emotion episode, is generally used for states that last a limited amount of time. Facial expressions and most bodily responses last for seconds (or some minutes) (figure 1.7).

Moods

The term mood refers to a state the typically lasts for hours, days, or weeks, sometimes as a low-intensity background. When it starts or stops may be unclear. Moods are often objectless and free floating (unlike emotions that have an intentional object) (figure 1.7).

Arnold and Gassons

Their idea of appraisal was that an emotion relates self to object. Emotions are essentially relational. Appraisals involve at first attraction to, or repulsion from, some object, and they determine whether the emotion is positive or negative. Later come further distinctions, depending on whether the object is present or not, and whether there are difficulties in acting. "Impulsive" emotions arise if there is no difficulty in attaining/avoiding an object. "Emotions of contention" arise when there are difficulties in acting.

Tomkins

Tomkins saw emotions as central to human life. His central claim was that affect is the primary motivational system. Emotions are amplifiers of drives. Human action and thought reflect the interplay of motivational systems, each capable of fulfilling a certain function (eating, breathing, sex), each potentially capable of taking over the whole person. Emotion prioritises these systems by amplifying one particular drive signal. He argued that changes of facial expressions are the primary amplifiers of emotions in humans. Emotion-related changes in blood-flow and muscle movements in the face direct attention to some particular need or goal

Tania Singer: Empathy

Used fMRI to study the activation of brain regions when a subject was experiencing physical pain and when the subject got a signal that told them that their loved one was experiencing physical pain Although some regions (somatosensory cortex) only activated when they felt physical pain, other regions were activated in both instances. It showed a shared emotional aspect of pain, activated by own physical pain and by imagining loved one in physical pain. The regions involved, including the anterior insula and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, mediate the important emotional quality of empathy

William James: The psychological approach

William James argued against the common sense idea that when we feel an emotion it impels us in a certain way (for example, seeing a bear, feeling frightened, and thus being impelled to run). Instead, he proposed that when we see the bear, "the exciting fact" as he put it, the emotion is the perception of changes of our body as we react to that fact. Women feel frightened what we feel is our heart beating, I our skin cold, our posture frozen, or our legs carrying us away as fast as possible. James' idea it's about the nature of emotional experience. He stressed the way in which emotions move us bodily. The core of an emotion is the pattern of such bodily responses

Campos, Walle, Dahl, & Main (2011)

Working definition of emotion: 1) Registration that an event is important 2) The attempt by the person to establish, maintain, change or terminate the relation between the self and the environment on those matters that are important to the person