LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

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LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

• SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORIES OF EMOTION

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Emotions Cognitive vs. Social Constructionist
Approaches

• Cognitive approach to emotion states that
  emotions are individual, attributional .
• Does not tackle issue of where attribution comes
  from, or why different cultures might feel
  different emotions.
• Social constructionist approach states that
  emotions are socio-culturally constituted.
  Private, subjective, shaped by social world.
• Moves emotion from individual unit of analysis to
  cultural analysis (cf. cognitive vs. cultural
  theories of stereotypes).
• Assumes emotions are not cultural universals. Is
  this correct?

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The Quest for Universal Emotions Ekman Friesen,
(1975)

• Hypothesis Emotions are universal and innate.
• Compare Darwin (1872) The Expression of
  Emotions in Man and Animals
• Method 6 basic emotions displayed to different
  cultures.
• (A) Happiness (D) Anger
• (B) Surprise (E) Disgust
• (C) Sadness (F) Fear

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The Six Basic Emotions
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Ekman Friesen, (1975) Results

• Result Photos labelled similarly by different
  cultures (even tribal cultures, e.g. Fore, from
  New Guinea)
• Exception Fear and Surprise sometimes confused.
• Also Cultural differences in display rules

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Are All Emotions Universal?

• Apparently not. For example
• being a wild pig
• romantic love
• Cultures seem to have different behavioural rules
  for a given situation.
• Cultures seem to feel different emotions in given
  situation.
• Suggests complete theory of emotion must address
  cultural aspect.

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Being a wild pig

• I will briefly describewild-man behaviour found
  in people who live in the highlands of New Guinea
  which they themselves call being a wild pig.
  This analogy is to a domesticated pig, which has
  escaped, is running wild and has to be
  redomesticated though proper procedure and
  ritual. Being a wild pig involves various
  aggressive acts, such as looting or shooting
  arrows at village members. After several days
  of this behavior the affected individual
  disappears into the woods and then returns in a
  normal state without being able to remember the
  last few days. Alternatively, if he returns in
  a wild state, he is captured and redomesticated
  by ritual. Allegedly, being a will pig is caused
  by the bite of a ghost of a village member who
  has recently died. However, on a deeper level
  there also seems to be some recognition that the
  wild pig behaviour is also caused by difficulties
  the individual has in meeting social demands
  placed on him. Being a wild pig is typically
  experienced by males between 25 and 35 and leads
  to a re-evaluation of the social obligations the
  individual had been expected to fulfil. In that
  sense, being a wild pig serves a social as well
  as an individual function. The experience as
  well as expression of being a wild pig is unique
  to these New Guinea highlanders and can only is
  understood in the particular social context of
  the society in question. Other examples are
  running amok, which is predominantly found in
  several Southeast Asian societies or the syndrome
  of TO NU, which is found in Brazilian Indians.

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Social Constructionist Theories

• Broad class of theories of emotion
• Common themes
• social rules for emotional expression
• cultural differences in emotions felt
• rules are prescriptive (i.e., violations frowned
  upon).
• Methodology tends to be observational not
  experimental.

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Averills (1976) Theory

• Emotions are socially constituted syndromes or
  transitory social roles which include a persons
  appraisal of the situation, and which are
  interpreted as passions (things that happen to
  us) rather than actions (things we choose to do).
  As syndromes, emotions include both subjective
  (experiential) and objective (behavioural)
  elements.. (Averill, 1982).

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Averills (1976) Theory (Cont.)

• Syndromes emotions are complex phenomena -
  coherent sets of responses.
• Responses may be sociocultural, psychological or
  biological (or all at once).
• Biological e.g., fear grimace (innate). Psycholog
  ical e.g., attribution of arousal to anger in
  Schachter Singer's experiment.
• Sociocultural e.g., being a wild pig vs getting
  drunk.
• No necessary and sufficient features for
  particular emotion (compare family
  resemblance)

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Example

• All societies recognise that there are
  occasional violent emotional attachments between
  persons of opposite sex, but our present American
  culture is practically the only one which has
  attempted to capitalise on these and make them
  the basis for marriage. Their rarity in most
  societies suggests that they are psychological
  abnormalities to which our own culture has
  attached an extreme value just as other cultures
  have attached extreme values to other
  abnormalities. The hero of the modern American
  movie is always a romantic lover just as the hero
  of the old Arab epic is always an epileptic. A
  cynic might suspect that in any ordinary
  population the percentage of individuals with a
  capacity for romantic love of the Hollywood type
  was about as large as that of persons able to
  throw a genuine epileptic fit Averill, 1982.

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Averills Analysis Summary

• Falling in love is a syndrome of biological
  responses (attraction to opposite sex) cognitive
  responses (e.g., this person is available) and
  cultural responses (e.g., sending red roses,
  writing poetry, acting crazy).

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Averill (Cont.)

• Averill highlights similarity between roles
  (socially prescribed) and emotions.
• Both roles and emotions are sets of responses
  that covary systematically.
• Both are seen as meaningful unit.
• Boundaries between roles and emotions not clearly
  defined.
• Examples lover (romantic love), mother (maternal
  love), bereaved person (mourning).

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Appraisal of emotional stimuli

• Emotions require interpretation.
• We are not simply happy, proud or angry
• We are happy about.., proud that...'', ''angry
  at.

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Classes of rules of appraisal

• Appraisal norms specify appropriate objects of
  an emotion (e.g., person to be angry at).
• Rules of behaviour govern cultural expression of
  emotion (e.g., wear black)
• Rules of prognostication rules about length of
  emotional display (e.g., a year and a day) and
  its outcome (e.g., may remarry)
• Rules of attribution causal explanations for
  emotion (e.g., bitten by ancestral ghost).

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Concluding Emotions

• Wildly differing view of emotion
• innate view (Ekman)
• physiological/cognitive view (Schachter)
• cultural view (e.g., Averill)
• All capture something about emotions. But how can
  they be reconciled?

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Concluding Emotions (Cont.)

• Possible approach
• There are a few cultural universals. Linked to
  survival?
• Universal theory of mind that attributions are
  necessary to experience emotions.
• But attributions are shaped by cultural
  experience.

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Concluding Emotions (Cont.)

• Study of emotions is a good example of how
  cultural, cognitive and physiological factors can
  interact.
• Cultural theory of emotions has some very
  language-like features (social communicative
  component cognitive attributional component
  prescriptive rules for generation and
  understanding physiological constraints on
  sounds/emotions produced)