EVOLUTIONARY
PSYCHOLOGY
Social behaviour - 2 Social interaction; Expression of Emotion.
WHAT functions do emotions & emotional
expression serve?
Social life is made up of many interactions
with others – WHAT function do these interactions serve? HOW have they evolved?
HOW do we communicate feelings to others during interactions?
The Massive Modularity Hypothesis
What is the function of emotion?
Conscious vs. nonconscious emotion
What is emotional intelligence, ‘EI’?
The Evolution of the Socially Intelligent Mind
The Massive
Modularity Hypothesis
Unlike most cognitive psychologists who
regard the mind as a general-purpose problem-solver, evolutionary psychologists
argue that the mind consists of a large number of special-purpose devices,
which are usually referred to as 'modules'. This view has since become known as
the 'Massive Modularity Hypothesis' (Murphy and Stich, 1998; Samuels, 1998),
after a phrase originally coined by Dan Sperber (Sperber, 1994).
Those cognitive psychologists who argue that
the mind has some degree of modularity usually restrict this to input and
output systems. That is, they claim that input systems such as vision, and
output systems (those responsible for direct muscular control), are likely to
be modular, but that central systems (those responsible for 'higher' cognitive
processes like reasoning) are nonmodular (Fodor, 1983). Evolutionary
psychologists, on the other hand, argue that the whole mind, including the
central processes, are likely to be modular (Sperber, 1994).
If this is true, it has important
consequences not just for our understanding of reasoning and other classically
'cognitive' processes, but also for our understanding of emotion and mood.
Evolutionary theories of emotion have their
roots in
According to this theory, the expression of
emotion, and even the emotions themselves, were culturally specific, learned
phenomena (La Barre, 1947). In the early 1970s, however, studies by Paul Ekman
and colleagues began to provide strong evidence against the culturalist view.
Studies of a remote preliterate culture in
helped our ancestors to deal with
'fundamental life-tasks'(Ekman, 1992: 171).
As Paul Griffiths has argued, the properties
that Ekman associates with the six basic emotions are among those that
characterise Darwinian modules (
Furthermore, the co-occurrence of these
properties supports the contention that basic emotions are adaptations in
exactly the same way that it supports the view that modules are adaptations.
It is therefore plausible to identify basic
emotions with a subset of Darwinian modules.
To be more precise, it is not the basic
emotions themselves that should be identified with modules, but rather what
Ekman calls the 'automatic appraisal mechanism' of the basic emotions.
Ekman defines a basic emotion as a
distinctive pattern of facial signals and physiological responses that is
regularly associated with a distinctive kind of antecedent event. This analysis
can appear rather behaviouristic, in that it links certain stimuli with certain
responses without specifying the psychological mechanism that mediates the
response. However, Ekman does not neglect the psychological dimension entirely,
as is clear from his discussion of the mechanisms that detect and appraise
emotionally relevant stimuli and co-ordinate the various facial and
physiological changes that constitute the appropriate response to these
stimuli. He terms these mechanisms 'automatic appraisal mechanisms' (AAM), and
develops a basic model of how they work (Ekman, 1992: 185-87). Each emotion
would be subserved by a distinct AAM, which would only attend to a particular
range of stimuli. It is the AAM of a given emotion, rather than the emotion
itself, that should be conceived of as a Darwinian module.
The claim that the AAMs associated with
basic emotions are Darwinian modules involves more than the idea that basic
emotions are subserved by psychological mechanisms that are domain specific,
informationally encapsulated, hardwired, and so on. It also involves the claim
that these mechanisms are adaptations. This is also consistent with Ekman's
view of basic emotions.
Similar arguments have also been advanced by
a number of other theorists, including Robert Plutchik, R. S. Lazarus, Randolph
Nesse, and John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (Plutchik, 1980; Nesse, 1990; Tooby and
Cosmides, 1990; Lazarus, 1991). A crucial part of all these accounts consists
of formulating hypotheses about the function of each of the various basic
emotions.
Such hypotheses state that a given
emotion evolved because it helped our ancestors to solve a particular problem. For example, all the theorists argue that fear
evolved because it helped our ancestors to solve the problem of evading
predators. Those of our ancestors who had the capacity for fear survived longer
than, and thus out-reproduced, those who did not. This kind of hypothesis is
often referred to as an 'adaptationist hypothesis' because it claims that
natural selection was the major force in the evolution of a given trait rather
than, say, genetic drift.
Translated into the terminology of
evolutionary psychology, then, the work by Ekman and other evolutionary
theorists of emotion suggests that there is a class of Darwinian modules whose
function is to produce the characteristic patterns of facial expression and
physiological change that we refer to as surprise, joy, sadness, fear, anger
and disgust in response to certain situations. But what about other kinds of
affective phenomena? Can the evolutionary model be extended to cover other
emotions such as guilt, shame, and love? (Griffiths, 1997: 120-22). If so,
might it extended even further, to cover moods such as anxiety, elation and
depression?
What is emotion?
Affect, Mood and Emotions:
"It is clear, however, that, without
the preferences reflected by positive and negative affect, our experiences
would be a neutral grey. We would care no more what happens to us or what we do
with our time than does a computer."
C. Daniel Batson, Laura L. Shaw &
Kathryn C. Oleson (Differentiating Affect, Mood, and Emotion: Toward
Functionally Based Conceptual Distinctions, 1992)
The terms affect, mood, and emotion are used
interchangeably throughout much of the literature, without distinguishing
between them (Batson, Shaw, & Oleson, 1992: 294). Some of the confusion may
be a result of the overlap among the concepts (Morris, 1992). Some researchers
have attempted to distinguish these concepts based on structural differences
and functional differences.
[If you are seriously interested in the
area of emotion, affect, and/or mood, investigate the Geneva Emotion Research
Group.
Located at the University of Geneva, this
group conducts research in the area of emotions, including experimental studies
on emotion-antecedent appraisal, emotion induction, physiological reactions and
expression of emotion (including both facial and vocal) and emotional behaviour
in autonomous agents. The
What changes occur during an emotional
experience?
Psychobiology Lecture 6
Schacter & Singer (1962) suggested that
the subjective experience of emotion depends upon both autonomic arousal and
cognitive interpretation of the situation.
What is the
function of emotion?
Emotion is for something, it is not
merely an addition to or by product of cognition - it is the motor of mental
life and directs development and regulates cognition. Emotion is integral to
any cognitive process.
Damasio (1994) points out that the advantage
of conscious awareness of emotion is that it allows emotional information to be
integrated with cognitive processes. If emotions were always unconscious it
wouldn't be possible to voluntarily control emotional responses and
expressions. Rather, such responses would always be based on innate motor
patterns. If emotions are conscious, it is possible to think ahead, avoid, plan
and generalise to similar but unfamiliar situations. Planning ahead requires
drawing on past experiences as reference points. Thus, consciousness extends time
from the present into both the past and future.
Conscious awareness therefore offers
flexibility of response in the moment based on the particular history of an
individual's unique interactions with his or her environment. This flexibility
includes the capacity for emotional control. Thus, it may be that the
capacity to be consciously aware of emotions has evolved through natural
selection because it contributes to adaptational success, including survival.
Some emotions are best explained as
strategies, including action strategies, for coping with challenges presented
to us by our environment. Thus, joy or anger are experiences not separable from
their roles, since they arise from the changes that constitute those roles.
These emotions differ in experience because the bodily (including brain)
changes they result in are significantly different, and these in turn are
identified and explained in reference to their role. Furthermore, anger has
different intensities because these changes can be great or small -- the system
of the organism can be perturbed little or very much.
Many researchers agree that emotion is a
rapid action perception/meaning system that integrates information about
ourselves and our environments in response to personally relevant situations or
stimuli. There are classic stimuli (big looming object) that pull for certain
emotions (fear) which trigger action tendencies that increase our survival
(running/hiding/freezing). The foundation of our emotional lives are these
affective programs, in which perception and action responses are highly
integrated in relation to archetypal life-relevant classes of stimuli. With
such an automated system of responses to these life-relevant stimuli, efficient
biologically-intelligent tendencies to respond are primed without the need to
consciously organise them.
The adaptiveness of such an emotion
system is obvious, high-speed orientation and response.
Our worlds, however, have become more
complex. Due to the complexity of our social-cultural contexts, our emotional
responses are often no longer triggered by simple classes of stimuli but
complex meanings and constructions. Our basic affective programs develop
throughout life becoming more complex emotion schemes formed by experience.
With the development of complex emotion schemes, emotions now tell us something
about the way we conduct our lives. When we wake up in the morning feeling good
we know all is well. When we are down we know something is amiss with self or
circumstance.
"A principal function of emotion is to
connect our biological nature with the world in which it is
embedded"(Greenberg & Paivio, pg. 15, 1996). This provides an enhanced
intelligence, superior to intellect alone. However, while emotions orient us to
needs and concerns, the behaviours that may support satisfaction of those needs
are often no longer simple response tendencies, but complex behaviours
requiring reflection and organisation.
Without awareness and understanding of our
emotional natures and experiences we could not accurately process the impact of
situations on our well-being, and would react automatically. Also, without
conscious experience of emotion, we could not choose socially and culturally
adaptive actions that would be consistent with both our biological tendencies
to respond and our basic needs.
The functional role of subjective emotional
experience is closely connected to the ability to understand patterns in the
complex stimuli affecting our well-being and for flexibility in the adaptive
responses to these stimuli. Emotion gives us gut feelings that guide us in
complex situations.
Pos & Greenberg (1999) developed a
scheme for assessing some of the different functions served by emotional
experience and expression. In this scheme emotion is classified into four
categories:
It is possible that the usefulness of being
consciously aware of emotion may have much to do with why consciousness arose
in the first place (Flanagan, 1992). Edelman (1989) has speculated that
self-preservation, an essential ingredient in natural selection, is dependent
on successfully distinguishing between self and non-self. Emotional responses
provide information about the status of one's success in achieving one's goals
in interaction with the environment and thus provides direct information
pertaining to the self's adaptational success (Plutchik & Kellerman, 1986).
Baron-Cohen’s theory of mind (1995) suggests
that the capacity to recognise that mental states exist, may have arisen based
on the advantages that this ability brings to social interaction. Baron-Cohen
points out the adaptive advantages of being able to infer what another’s
intentions are, based on their overt behaviour. Thus, the capacity to have a
theory of mind may have arisen originally in the service of social adaptation.
Once such an ability exists, it follows naturally
that such an ability can be applied to the self, and would occur, perhaps, for
the reasons outlined by Edelman. This ability to introspect can significantly
enhance the ability to determine what is going on in another person’s mind, in
that one can be more accurate in figuring out what someone else is feeling by
imagining how one would feel if one were that person in that person’s
situation.
It could be that the emotional experience
system is set up this way to maximise the likelihood of its being used in the
service of social cognition. Incorporating this view with that of Damasio, the
capacity to self-monitor and adjust behaviour on-line can and is used in the
service of self-preservation, meetings one’s goals and enhancing one’s
adaptational success.
Conscious vs.
nonconscious emotion
Addressing the question of a functional role
for the conscious experience of emotion from a scientific perspective requires
that we be able to contrast conscious emotional experience with nonconscious
emotional responses (c.f., Baar's, 1997, "contrastive
phenomenology"). For both the general public and many scientists, emotion
is identified with feeling, and thus inextricably linked to consciousness. Some
theorists (e.g., Clore, 1994; Clore, Schwartz, & Conway, 1994; Lazarus,
1982) assert that conscious experience or feeling is a necessary component of
emotion, with cognitive appraisal (of the personal significance of information)
seen as preceding other emotional reactions. For such individuals, the notion
of "nonconscious emotion" would be a contradiction of terms (see
discussion by Öhman, in press). However, it has become increasingly clear that
the conscious experience of emotion is not invariably correlated with other
emotion components or a necessary contributor to all emotional behaviour.
In humans, autonomic physiological and
motoric aspects of emotion can occur in response to an emotional stimulus that
is not consciously recognised
(e.g., in studies employing backward masking
of visual emotional stimuli) or outside of attentional focus (Öhman &
Soares, 1994). Although some cognitive appraisal (in terms of positive or
negative valuation in relation to personal goals, need states, or
self-preservation) may be a necessary condition for emotional arousal (Lazarus,
1991), such appraisals need not necessarily be conscious (Frijda, 1993).
Other
evidence consistent with the interpretation that important functions of emotion
can occur nonconsciously comes from nonhuman animal
research. As LeDoux's studies of fear (in
rodents) have shown, the amygdala appears to be a key structure in both the
stimulus evaluation of threatening events and the production of defensive
responses (for review, see LeDoux, 1996). These defensive responses appear to
be evolutionarily selected, involuntary, automatic consequences of the initial
rapid evaluation of stimulus significance, and do not require cortical
mediation.
Thus, LeDoux emphasises subcortical (e.g.,
thalamic-amygdala circuitry) emotion systems as involved in fast,
evolutionarily-selected, and probably nonconscious aspects of emotion. In
contrast, he posits cortical inputs (via multiple pathways) as necessary for
the conscious experience of emotion. Recent functional brain imaging studies
have provided evidence consistent with LeDoux's view that the amygdala can
perform its role in the processing of emotional stimuli nonconsciously.
Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Whalen and colleagues
(1998) have demonstrated amygdala activation in response to emotional stimuli
(facial expressions) even when conscious awareness of the stimuli are prevented
by backward masking.
If various aspects of emotional response
(e.g., amygdala activation, facial muscle activity, autonomic physiologic
response) can occur without the conscious awareness of an eliciting stimulus,
then it might appear to make sense to ask what functional role conscious
emotion might play. It should be noted, however, that in studies such as those
of Whalen et al. (1998) or Öhman and Soares (1994), backward masking prevents
conscious awareness of the emotionally-salient stimulus itself, but does not
necessarily prevent the person from being aware of at least some aspects of
emotional experience in response to the nonconsciously-processed stimulus. Such
conscious experience of emotion, despite unawareness of the eliciting stimulus,
might occur via awareness of bodily signals, either through peripheral
autonomic feedback or through efferent feed-forward within the brain (Damasio,
1994). Thus, within backward masking or similar experimental paradigms, the
participant may have a conscious emotional experience even though he/she cannot
consciously identify the eliciting stimulus. It may be the case that there are
components of emotional experience that are dependent upon the conscious
perception of the eliciting stimulus and others that are independent. Some of
Kaszniak’s research on emotional experience in persons with ventromedial
frontal lobe damage (Kaszniak, Reminger, Rapcsak, & Glisky, 1999) has shown
that emotional valence and arousal experience are dissociable, and has
suggested the possibility that the former (valence) may be more dependent upon
conscious perception of the eliciting stimulus while the latter (arousal) may
be dependent upon feedback from the somatic periphery (or brainstem somatic
effectors; c.f., Damasio, 1994). Specific testing of this possibility would
require further experiments with frontally-damaged individuals, in which
eliciting stimuli were prevented (e.g., through backward masking) from being
consciously perceived.
What is emotional
intelligence, ‘EI’?
EI has its roots in the concept of
"social intelligence," first identified by E.L. Thorndike in 1920.
Psychologists have been uncovering other intelligences for some time now, and
grouping them mainly into three clusters: abstract intelligence (the ability to
understand and manipulate with verbal and mathematic symbols), concrete
intelligence (the ability to understand and manipulate with objects), and
social intelligence (the ability to understand and relate to people) (Ruisel,
1992).
Thorndike (1920: 228), defined social
intelligence as "the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys
and girls -- to act wisely in human relations." And (1983) includes inter-
and intrapersonal intelligences in his theory of multiple intelligences (see
Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to
understand other people: what motivates them, how they work, how to work
co-operatively with them. Successful salespeople, politicians, teachers,
clinicians, and religious leaders are all likely to be individuals with high
degrees of interpersonal intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence ... is a
correlative ability, turned inward. It is a capacity to form an accurate,
veridical model of oneself and to be able to use that model to operate
effectively in life.
Emotional intelligence, on the other hand,
"is a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor
one's own and others' emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the
information to guide one's thinking and actions" (Mayer & Salovey, 1993:
433).
According to Salovey & Mayer (1990), EI
subsumes
Observing
yourself and recognising a feeling as it happens.
Handling feelings
so that they are appropriate; realising what is behind a feeling; finding ways
to handle fears and anxieties, anger, and sadness.
Channelling
emotions in the service of a goal; emotional self-control; delaying
gratification and stifling impulses.
Sensitivity to
others' feelings and concerns and taking their perspective; appreciating the
differences in how people feel about things.
Managing emotions in others; social competence
and social skills.
Self-awareness (intrapersonal intelligence),
empathy and handling relationships (interpersonal intelligence) are essentially
dimensions of social intelligence. See the Time magazine piece for an overview
of emotional intelligence. Their article basically summarises Daniel Goleman's
Emotional Intelligence book in a few simple pages.
The Evolution of
the Socially Intelligent Mind
Social interactions of primates have been
studied in order to help us understand the evolution of social intelligence.
According to Andrew Whiten (2000), who has studied many different primate
groups, and observed numerous cultural variations within the same species,
primates apply intelligence to the Social World (as well as the physical)
http://chimp.st-and.ac.uk/cultures/deWaal.htm
The Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis:-
(Primate intelligence is a primary
adaptation to the complexities of social life)
[Crude measures indicate that in primates -
group size (assumed to be an indicator of social complexity) µ neocortex
ratio]
What do we mean by social complexity -
One society was deemed more complex than
another, if, to succeed in it a member had to:
Various aspects studied -
1. Dyadic complexity
2. Polyadic - e.g. coalitions and alliances
3. Variability of response
Social context
effects. Social context may influence outcomes of e.g. grooming requests.
4. Instability
Variability over time - (e.g. alliance
shifts in chimps)
5. Complexity of prediction.
If multiple
factors involved such as alliances and rank
6. Levels of social structure
[Robert Hinde scheme]. Structure and
relationships.
Machiavellian Intelligence itself may be
considered as being made up of -
e.g. who is
affiliated with whom – this can influence whether an animal is likely to fight
another.
Attention to
‘soap opera’. When an interaction is going on, others watch.
Use of social
tools. i.e. using another individual as a tool to solve a social problem – e.g.
getting an older female driven away from food by screaming and feigning an
attack – then when she has gone – the screamer gets the food!
Discriminating
psychological states of others. e.g. baboons have been observed to pretend that
there is a predator in the distance by standing up and looking (not going for a
piece of fruit in the tree), when a dominant animal appears – sensing that the
dominant is after food also. When the dominant is gone, they get the fruit!
Exploiting the
expertise of others. Older chimps copy like 3-4 year-old children.
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