7 Emotions and Culture

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7Emotions and Culture
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• Emotions and Rationality
• People tend to believe that emotions make us do
  irrational things.
• But emotions must be beneficial. Otherwise
  natural selection would have eliminated them.
• Emotions are conscious experiences, but they
  seem immune to conscious control (one cannot
  decide to feel guilty, jealous, joyful,...).

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• Emotions are valuable functions in linking
  motivations to thought and action.
• E.g. one avoids actions which make one feels
  bad, one pursues positive emotions.
• Among cultural animals the emotional system is
  highly plastic.
• E.g. one feels sad about ones team result,
  envious about someones car, . Thus culture can
  influence peoples behavior.

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• The nature of emotions
• emotions vs. affects
• The former are complex, the latter are simply
  positive or negative feelings (anxiety, anger,
  jealousy, are all grouped together as negative
  affects).
• Affects are fast reactions, while emotions can
  take some time to develop.

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• Affects seem linked to the automatic mind while
  emotions seem more closed to the conscious
  system.
• Emotions are usually conscious experiences.
• Affects can occur at the margin of
  consciousness.

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• Emotions have two components
• (i) physical arousal and
• (ii) mental label.
• The arousal doesnt produce an emotion but it
  makes it likely to be felt.
• The mental label is based on how one interprets
  the situation and thus determines which emotion
  will be felt.

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• The temporality of emotions
• Emotions are triggered by changes and departures
  from the status quo. As such they help drawing
  ones attention toward something that just
  changed.
• Affect is one important component of attitudes.
  So attitudes toward most things can be assessed
  on a scale that simply ask for one dimensional
  rating liking vs. disliking.

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• The human psyche has two separate emotion
  systems, one for positive and pleasant emotions,
  the other for unpleasant ones. This reflects a
  mixture of contradictory patterns one cannot
  feel good and bad simultaneously.
• Another dimension of emotions is high/low arousal
  (e.g. sadness is low in arousal).
• Four categories of emotions 1. high arousal
  pleasant 2. low arousal pleasant 3. high
  arousal unpleasant 4. low arousal unpleasant.

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• Emotions and Cultural Differences
• People from different cultures can translate
  emotion words and recognize facial expressions of
  emotions.
• Thus some aspects of emotions are universal and
  innate.
• Innate emotional tendencies babies express
  various emotions long before they could learn
  them (e.g. blind babies smile when happy).

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• Facial expressions
• They translate the natural innate part of
  emotions.
• Culture
• Can teach people to conceal their feelings.
• E.g. people dont maximally express their
  facial expressions.

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• The role of culture is not to create emotions but
  to restrain and conceal them.
• Culture can use emotions to control behavior
  insofar as it can teach people to have various
  emotional reactions to some particular events.

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• The purpose of emotions
• Emotions help to evaluate events in helping to
  compare current circumstances to some goals or
  standards.
• They typically use ones needs and wants as the
  basis for evaluation.
• So emotions apprise events as good/bad depending
  of ones strivings.

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• Emotions communicate from motivation to both
  cognition and action.
• They help keeping the cognitive system focused
  on things that matter.

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• Emotions and Belongingness
• Emotions operate to guide and support the effort
  to belong.
• Positive emotions are linked to
  forming/upgrading relationships.
• E.g. unpleasant emotions coming from damaging
  or breaking off relationships.

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• Anxiety
• Its the most powerful form of emotional
  distress.
• Two main categories (i) less common and less
  powerful is the fear of death and accident
• (ii) more powerful and common is the fear of
  social exclusion (e.g. rejected by loved ones,
  by partner, ).
• Shyness and social anxiety often have the effect
  of making one avoiding other people for fear of
  being rejected.

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• Emotions link motivation and cognition
• Emotions force people to think about things that
  matter (as defined by ones wants and needs).
• One doesnt have emotional reaction about things
  one doesnt care about.

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• Mental effect of emotional arousal
• During emotions one is alert and typically
  focused on the present.
• One performs better at an intermediate levels of
  arousal.
• No arousal means indifference while high arousal
  can be disruptive.

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• Emotions get the body ready for action and arise
  in connection with the image of the anticipated
  outcome.
• As such they help planning.
• Yet the emotional system doesnt distinguish
  well between different probabilities.
• It works on the definitely/maybe scale without
  recognizing the varies scales of maybe. This
  facilitates quick actions.

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• Emotional distress makes people react quickly,
  ignoring risks and focusing merely on the
  outcome.
• Hence emotions dont always produce the optimal
  outcome.

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• Emotionless people
• Patients (with brain damage) lacking emotions
  find it difficult to make up their mind. Theyre
  unable to make choices.
• The thinking system merely contemplate and
  envisage plenty of ideas and potential outcomes,
  but it is unable to evaluate them.
• E.g. a patient was unable to chose among two
  dates and he finally accepted the doctor choice.

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• Emotions are vital for evaluation.
• Evaluation is done by reference to what is
  important (considering the peoples set of wants
  and needs).
• Emotions are a crucial link between motivation
  and cognition.

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• Planning
• Anticipated emotions enable people to compare
  and chose among various options that seemingly
  have noting in common.
• E.g. should I go for a walk, watch the game, do
  the homework, clean the house,?
• The option that promises the best emotional
  outcomes is probably a good choice.

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• Nature furnished us with some way to chose among
  multiple diverse outcomes and to make of rational
  analysis a good guide.
• Otherwise cultural animals would freeze up at
  all sort of dilemma, like a computer lacking the
  program enabling it to select the data.
• Choosing by effect and emotions is a remarkable
  solution to the design problem.

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• Emotions and Actions
• Emotions prepare the body for action (more blood
  and thus more oxygen is sent to the brain and
  muscle so one notices more, focuses, ).
• But emotions dont cause behavior in a direct
  and reliable manner.
• Behavior is based on the outcome.

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• Emotions affect behavior only insofar as they
  affect how people process information and
  envisage potential outcomes.
• It is thus wrong to think that emotions primary
  function is to be the initiators of behaviors and
  even more wrong to think that they trigger
  behavior.
• Emotions are an important consequence of
  behavior rather than a cause.

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• Emotions and Learning
• Emotions contribute to learning and, therefore,
  future actions benefit from past experiences
  (i.e., past emotional outcomes).
• Without emotions people may fail to profit from
  experience.

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• Fear
• It may be the best candidate for the view that
  emotions directly causes action.
• But in most of the cases people dont react fast
  enough when they face a dangerous situation.
• Fear like most emotions may be slow to rise. One
  often feel fearful after one faced a dangerous
  event or situation.

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• Guilt
• It is a good example showing that behavior
  pursues emotions.
• Guild doesnt directly make one to move ones
  body guilt comes after one has done something
  wrong.
• Emotions stimulate counterfactual thinking, i.e.
  imagining events and outcomes that differ from
  reality. This is ideal for learning and planning.

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• People experience emotions when performing new,
  unfamiliar actions (routine does not stimulate
  emotions).
• Habitude and routine do not generally require
  learning, while new and unfamiliar actions are
  linked to learning.
• Thus emotions can facilitate learning by making
  people think and analyze their recent actions.

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• Learning based on emotions is highly suited for a
  cultural animal who understand action within a
  system of values, expectations, communications,
  etc..
• Emotionless peoples reactions are often bad and
  they tend to engage in dangerous behaviors, for
  they dont fear the outcome and the emotional
  reactions.
• The effect of emotions is to consolidate ones
  lesson so as to influence future behavior.

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• Studies on sadness show that sad people are more
  likely to engage in helping. Sadness seems to
  influence behavior.
• A better explanation may be that sad people
  engage in helping to feel better. If this is the
  case we have behavior pursuing emotions.
• Sadness leads people to helping only if the sad
  one thinks that helping will change her mood.
• Helping is a strategy for bringing about a
  change in ones emotional state.

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• Aggression is also done for the sake of improving
  ones mood.
• Angry people tends to behave more aggressively
  because they think that aggression make them feel
  better.
• But if angry people are told that they got a
  mood-freezing pill they dont act aggressively.
• Again, one behaves in order to change ones
  mood.

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• Depressed people eat more cookies and junk food
  than happy people because they expect the food to
  make them feel better.
• Again, the patterns is behavior pursuing
  emotional outcomes.

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• Representation of emotions
• The ability to represents other people emotions
  is as important as mindreading.
• Deficit in this ability (e.g. autism) may result
  in devastating social impairments.

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• Feelings (cf. Damasio. 1994. Descartes Error)
• It is wrong to consider the working of the brain
  and mind as separate from the working of the
  body.
• The mind is part and parcel of the body.
• E.g. background feelings, i.e. the underlying
  awareness of the state that your body is in.

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• Background awareness depends on the various
  neuronal and hormonal signals arising from the
  body organs (skin, hearth, ) that are sent to
  and processed by the brain.
• These signals provide a continuous update on the
  changes that your body state undergoes.
• These background feelings provide our sense of
  self.

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• We process information emanating from our entire
  body.
• Hence, we wouldnt be the same person if our
  brain were transplanted in another person.
• For the body would provide different
  information.

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• On top of background feelings we also have
  stronger feelings arising when we experience
  emotions in response to particular events.
• New born babies tend to show only primary
  emotions (e.g. fear) which are innate and
  pre-organized.
• As we grow we develop and make more use of
  secondary emotions which are primary emotions
  tempered by experience.
• Emotions become associated with particular
  experiences. Thus their link with learning.

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• Somatic markers (Damasio 1994)
• They are a special category of secondary
  emotions and are used in decision making (often
  unconsciously).
• They can function either as alarm bells (in the
  case of a negative somatic marker such as fear or
  sadness) or add incentive (positive somatic
  marker).

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• Somatic markers can speed up the process of
  decision making by ensuring that only the most
  reasonable options are considered.
• They may be an integrated component of our theory
  of mind by biasing our mindreading abilities
  toward the most appropriate predictions for other
  people behavior and mind states.

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• Peptides
• Are neurotransmitters produced in the brain.
• They are also active in the human immune system
  and endocrine system.
• Hence, they participate in the constant
  relationship between the brain and the body.

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• Brain and emotions (cf. LeDoux. 1994. The
  Emotional Brain)
• Information is transmitted to the brain in two
  distinct ways
• 1. quick and dirty route via the amygdala
  this is unconscious and trigger instinctive
  responses
• 2. via the cortex this produce conscious
  awareness of the emotion (e.g. feeling of fear).

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• The cerebral cortex is a brain structure in
  vertebrates.
• In non-living, preserved brains, the outermost
  layers of the cerebrum has a grey color, hence
  the name "grey matter". Grey matter is formed by
  neurons and their unmyelinated fibers while the
  white matter below the grey matter of the cortex
  is formed predominantly by myelinated axons
  interconnecting different regions of the central
  nervous system. The human cerebral cortex is 2-4
  mm (0.08-0.16 inches) thick and plays a central
  role in many complex brain functions including
  memory, attention, perceptual awareness,
  "thinking", language and consciousness.
  (Wikipedia)

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• Cortex

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• The amygdala are almond-shaped groups of neurons
  located deep within the medial temporal lobes of
  the brain in complex vertebrates, including
  humans. Shown in research to perform a primary
  role in the processing and memory of emotional
  reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of
  the limbic system. (Wikipedia)

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• In complex vertebrates, including humans, the
  amygdalae perform primary roles in the formation
  and storage of memories associated with emotional
  events. Research indicates that during fear
  conditioning, sensory stimuli reach the
  basolateral complexes of the amygdalae,
  particularly the lateral nuclei, where they form
  associations with memories of the stimuli. The
  association between stimuli and the aversive
  events they predict may be mediated by long-term
  potentiation, a lingering potential for affected
  synapses to react more readily. (Wikipedia)

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• Memories of emotional experiences imprinted in
  reactions of synapses in the lateral nuclei
  elicit fear behavior through connections with the
  central nucleus of the amygdalae. The central
  nuclei are involved in the genesis of many fear
  responses, including freezing (immobility),
  tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), increased
  respiration, and stress-hormone release. Damage
  to the amygdalae impairs both the acquisition and
  expression of Pavlovian fear conditioning, a form
  of classical conditioning of emotional responses.

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• Amgdala is evolutionary ancient (its present in
  many vertebrates).
• This doesnt mean, though, that it is not
  involved in higher cognitive processes.
• It is associated with several aspect of the
  theory of mind.

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• The interconnections between the cortex and the
  amygdala runs both ways, but the amygdala can
  exert a much stronger influence over the cortex
  than vice versa.
• This is why we often let our emotions getting
  the better of us.