Toward an Understanding of the Universality of Second Order Emotions

Toward an Understanding of the Universality of Second Order Emotions
Daniel M. T. Fessler (1999)


Abstract

For 32 months I studied a community in which much of life revolves around a pair of emotions. Two projects resulted. One, presented elsewhere, is an examination of how and why the given culture shapes and exploits these emotions. The second, presented below, is a consideration of the underlying capacities which make such cultural manipulation possible. Like the other authors in this volume, I hold  that the experience of emotion is the combined product of cultural and biological factors. However, rather than explore that synergy, in this essay I attempt to employ the former as a lens with which to view the latter. I begin with a description of a Malay emotion which appears synonymous with shame. However, closer inspection reveals that this emotion can be elicited by two fundamentally different sets of  conditions. Moreover, it seems that this duality is a pervasive feature of shame-like emotions around the  world. If one adopts the position that the capacity to experience a given type of emotion is the product of evolution, then the duality of shame-like emotions is puzzling, for an evolutionary perspective suggests that each emotion ought to address a discrete facet of life. In order to unravel this puzzle, I search for clues regarding the evolutionary history of shame-like emotions and their opposites, pride-like emotions. I explore the display behaviors and cognitive demands associated with each type of emotion, and conclude that two primitive emotions, which I call Protoshame and Protopride, initially developed in order to motivate the quest for social dominance. I speculate that these emotions served as the foundation for more complex emotions which arose when hominids developed the capacity for a model of mind, that is, the ability to understand that other individuals possess minds like one’s own. Such a capacity creates the possibility of a new class of emotions, the second order emotions, which are a reaction to the subjective experiences of other individuals. After examining such first order emotions as pity and envy, I suggest that Protoshame and Protopride were transformed into two second order emotions, Early Shame and Early Pride, which extended dominance-striving motivations into the new social world created by the advent of the model of mind. However, in addition to enhancing competition, the model of the mind also facilitates cooperation. The possibility of significant cooperation resulted in the development of newersions of Shame and Pride which served to motivate conformity rather than rivalry and, in so doing, set the stage for the blossoming of culture as humankind’s primary adaptation.

From Appeasement to Conformity - Evolutionary and Cultural Perspectives on Shame, Competition, and Cooperation

From Appeasement to Conformity - Evolutionary and Cultural Perspectives on Shame, Competition, and Cooperation
Daniel M. T. Fessler (2007)

Relationship between Smiling and Laughter in Humans (Homo sapiens): Testing the Power Asymmetry Hypothesis

Relationship between Smiling and Laughter in Humans (Homo sapiens): Testing the Power Asymmetry Hypothesis
Marc Mehu & Robin I.M. Dunbar (2008)


Abstract

The power asymmetry hypothesis claims that individuals should have distinct signals of appeasement/affiliation and play when status difference is high, whereas these signals should overlap in egalitarian interactions. Naturalistic observations were conducted on humans interacting in groups that differed in terms of age composition (and presumably social status). Three affiliative behaviours were recorded by focal sampling: spontaneous smiles, deliberate smiles and laughter. Interestingly, young men showed significantly higher proportions of deliberate smiles in comparison to laughter when interacting with people of a different age class than when interacting in same-age groups. The pattern of affiliative behaviours in women remained unaffected by the age composition of groups. This partly supports the power asymmetry hypothesis and suggests that in men, deliberate smiles could play a role in the regulation of hierarchical relationships.

A Winning Smile? Smile Intensity, Physical Dominance, and Fighter Performance

A Winning Smile? Smile Intensity, Physical Dominance, and Fighter Performance
Michael W. Kraus & Teh-Way David Chen (Jan 2013)


Abstract

The smile is perhaps the most widely studied facial expression of emotion, and in this article we examine its status as a sign of physical dominance. We reason, on the basis of prior research, that prior to a physical confrontation, smiles are a nonverbal sign of reduced hostility and aggression, and thereby unintentionally communicate reduced physical dominance. Two studies provide evidence in support of this prediction: Study 1 found that professional fighters who smiled more in a prefight photograph taken facing their opponent performed more poorly during the fight in relation to their less intensely smiling counterparts. In Study 2, untrained observers judged a fighter as less hostile and aggressive, and thereby less physically dominant when the fighters’ facial expression was manipulated to show a smiling expression in relation to the same fighter displaying a neutral expression. Discussion focused on the reasons why smiles are associated with decreased physical dominance.

Rumination and dysphoria: The buffering role of adaptive forms of humor

Rumination and dysphoria: The buffering role of adaptive forms of humor
M. L. Olson, D. S. Hugelshofer, P. Kwon, R. C. Ref

Personality and Individual Differences 39 (2005)

Abstract

The current study examines the effects of rumination and humor on individuals' dysphoria level. Measures of humor (affiliative and self-enhancing), rumination, and depressive symptoms were completed by 303 undergraduate students. Consistent with our hypothesis, both affiliative humor and rumination independently accounted for variance in dysphoria levels. In addition, self-enhancing humor and rumination were independently associated with dysphoria. Moreover, significant interactions between affiliative humor and rumination, and self-enhancing humor and rumination, on dysphoria also emerged. Results indicated that among individuals with high rumination, those with high affiliative and/or self-enhancing humor had significantly lower levels of dysphoria than individuals with low affiliative and/or self-enhancing humor. The combination of low affiliative and/or self-enhancing humor and high rumination led to substantially higher levels of dysphoria than any other combination. Implications for psychotherapy and research in this area are discussed.

Emotional Sex Differences:

>Although there are a few exceptions, the majority of studies reveal that women express emotions more frequently and intensely (e.g., wider smile) than men (Buck, Savin, Miller & Caul, 1972; J.J. Gross & John, 1998; Kring & Gordon, 1998; Vigil, in press), although women's and men's expressiveness is moderated by social context (Buck, Miller, & Caul, 1974; M.L. Hoffman, 1977). Gross and John identified five affective facets or subdomains that are common across measures of emotions and feelings: expressive confidence (the ability to act out emotions without feeling them), positive expressivity (the expression of positive emotions), negative expressivity, impulse intensity (intensity of feelings and difficulty controlling their expression), and masking (suppression of feelings). There were no sex differences in expressive confidence, but about 3 out of 4 women reported more positive expressivity than the average man, and 2 out of 3 reported more negative expressivity than the average man.
...
Wether women or men have more intense feelings - that is, unobservable personal experience of an emotion - is not clear. The phenomenon is obviously more difficult to study than observable emotions, but it has nonetheless been assessed using self-report, physiological reactivity, and brain imaging methods. Women typically report more intense feelings than men (Buck, Miller, & Caul, 1974; M. Grossman & Wood, 1993). Using diary methods, Barrett, Robin, Pietromonace, and Eysell (1998) found that women and men reported a similar range of emotions during day-to-day social interactions, but women rated the intensity of their accompanying feelings higher than did men. In their analysis of multiple emotions and feelings scales, Gross and John (1998) found that 6 out of 7 women reported more intense emotional impulses - difficulty in inhibiting the expression of feelings - than did the average man, whereas 2 out of 3 men reported more masking than did the average woman.

The physiological and brain imaging studies reveal a much more nuanced picture. Sometimes women show more intense physiological reactivity (e.g., sweating) than men to affect-eliciting situations (e.g., viewing an injury), consistent with their reports of more intense feelings, but sometimes they do not (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983; Gard & Kring, 2007; Wager, Plan, Liberzon, & S.F. Taylor, 2003). Buck et al. (1974) found disconnections between expressed emotions, reported intensity of accompanying feelings, and physiological indicators of affective reactivity. In situations designed to elicit a range of affective reactions, more women than men expressed emotions, reported intense reactions, but showed little physiological indication of reactivity. In support of Grossand John's (1998) finding that men report more masking, Buck et al. found more men than women inhibited emotional expressions, reported less intense feelings, but at the same time showed stronger physiological reactivity to the situation.
...
In a meta-analysis of brain imaging studies in this area, Wager et al. (2003) found no evidence for more overall brain activation in women than in men during the processing of affective information (e.g., car accident), but there were sex differences in the pattern of activation. The brain activity of men suggested that they focus more on the "sensory aspects of emotional stimuli and tend to process them in terms of implications for required actions, whereas women direct more attention to the feeling state engendered by the emotional stimuli". If Wager et al. are correct, many women experience feelings in a more personally intense way than men.

Men's masking of their feelings is consistent with both socialization and the dynamics of male-male competition. ...  The disconnection between emotions and feelings in many women is intriguing and suggests some women are using emotional expressions strategically. These women are not experiencing the corresponding feelings but are expressing the emotion for social effect.
...<

Male, Female - The Evolution of Human Sex Differences
David C. Geary; 2010

Variety is the spice of life: A psychological construction approach to understanding variability in emotion

Variety is the spice of life: A psychological construction approach to understanding variability in emotion
Lisa Feldman Barrett; 2010
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835153/


Abstract

There is remarkable variety in emotional life. Not all mental states referred to by the same word (e.g., “fear”) look alike, feel alike, or have the same neurophysiological signature. Variability has been observed within individuals over time, across individuals from the same culture, and of course across cultures. In this paper, I outline an approach to understanding the richness and diversity of emotional life. This model, called the conceptual act model, is not only well suited to explaining individual differences in the frequency and quality of emotion, but it also suggests the counter-intuitive view that the variety in emotional life extends past the boundaries of events that are conventionally called “emotion” to other classes of psychological events that people call by different names, such as “cognitions”. As a result, the conceptual act model is a unifying account of the broad variety of mental states that constitute the human mind.

Religiosity and fear of death: a three‐nation comparison

Religiosity and fear of death: a three‐nation comparison
Lee Ellis et al.; 2013


Abstract

Numerous studies have sought to determine if religiosity is correlated with fear of death. Findings have been anything but consistent, with reports of negative relationships, positive relationships, no relationship, and even curvilinear associations. To shed light on this still contentious issue, the present study was undertaken among college students in three countries – Malaysia, Turkey, and the United States. Overall, the patterns in all three countries were similar. When linearity was assumed, there is a substantial positive correlation between most religiosity measures and fear of death. Assuming curvilinearity added slightly to the strength of the relationships in the US data and nothing to data from Malaysia or Turkey. Other findings were that on average females were more religious and feared death more than did males, and Muslims expressed considerably greater fear than did members of any other major religion. Results were discussed in the context of a new theory – called death apprehension theory. Among other things, it specifically predicts that death apprehension will be positively related to most religious beliefs and practices.

Bottom-up and top-down emotion generation: implications for emotion regulation

Bottom-up and top-down emotion generation: implications for emotion regulation
Kateri Mc Rae et al., 2012
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3304475/


Abstract

Emotion regulation plays a crucial role in adaptive functioning and mounting evidence suggests that some emotion regulation strategies are often more effective than others. However, little attention has been paid to the different ways emotions can be generated: from the ‘bottom-up’ (in response to inherently emotional perceptual properties of the stimulus) or ‘top-down’ (in response to cognitive evaluations). Based on a process priming principle, we hypothesized that mode of emotion generation would interact with subsequent emotion regulation. Specifically, we predicted that top-down emotions would be more successfully regulated by a top-down regulation strategy than bottom-up emotions. To test this hypothesis, we induced bottom-up and top-down emotions, and asked participants to decrease the negative impact of these emotions using cognitive reappraisal. We observed the predicted interaction between generation and regulation in two measures of emotional responding. As measured by self-reported affect, cognitive reappraisal was more successful on top-down generated emotions than bottom-up generated emotions. Neurally, reappraisal of bottom-up generated emotions resulted in a paradoxical increase of amygdala activity. This interaction between mode of emotion generation and subsequent regulation should be taken into account when comparing of the efficacy of different types of emotion regulation, as well as when reappraisal is used to treat different types of clinical disorders.

Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour

Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour

Valerie Curtis et al.; 2011

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1563/389.long

Abstract

Disgust is an evolved psychological system for protecting organisms from infection through disease avoidant behaviour. This ‘behavioural immune system’, present in a diverse array of species, exhibits universal features that orchestrate hygienic behaviour in response to cues of risk of contact with pathogens. However, disgust is also a dynamic adaptive system. Individuals show variation in pathogen avoidance associated with psychological traits like having a neurotic personality, as well as a consequence of being in certain physiological states such as pregnancy or infancy. Three specialized learning mechanisms modify the disgust response: the Garcia effect, evaluative conditioning and the law of contagion. Hygiene behaviour is influenced at the group level through social learning heuristics such as ‘copy the frequent’. Finally, group hygiene is extended symbolically to cultural rules about purity and pollution, which create social separations and are enforced as manners. Cooperative hygiene endeavours such as sanitation also reduce pathogen prevalence. Our model allows us to integrate perspectives from psychology, ecology and cultural evolution with those of epidemiology and anthropology. Understanding the nature of disease avoidance psychology at all levels of human organization can inform the design of programmes to improve public health.

Sex Differences in Psychological Abilities / Sex Differences in Emotion Judgments:

>Girls and women were more accurate than boys and men when judging emotion cues on the basis of facial expressions, body posture, and vocal intonation (Rosenthal et al., 1979); These sex differences were found in all nations in which three or more samples were obtained - Australia, Canada, the United States, Israel and New Guinea - and were of the same general magnitude in all of these nations (J.A. Hall, 1984). J.A. Hall concluded that the advantage of girls and women in the decoding of nonverbal messages "is most pronounced for facial cues, less pronounced for body cues, and least pronounced for vocal cues". When all nonverbal cues were provided - offering a more accurate assessment of nonverbal decoding skills in the real world - about 17 out of 20 girls and women were more accurate at decoding the emotion cues of another individual than was the average same-age boy or man (J.A. Hall, 1978).< [This is roughly the effect size of the sex difference on the people-things dimension.]

David C. Geary; Male, Female - The Evolution of Human Sex Differences; 2010

Mammals & Affects:

>The BrainMind is clearly an evolutionary layered organ, grounded on affects, where major passages are still evident in brain organization - the more ancient functions are concentrated in lower and more medial brain regions, and the more recent ones are in higher and more lateral regions. Within an evolutionary framework, animal brain research can provide most profound guidance in understanding the foundations of human feelings. Indeed, with such work, we may eventually come to understand how much human affective experiences arise from mammalian brain dynamics. This is not to suggest that animals develop the sophisticated cognitive-affective sentiments of humans, nor do they ruminate about their misfortunes the way we do, but we should come to recognize that the primary process affects, genetically built into animal BrainMinds in their raw form, are not all that different from the ones that come to guide the affective proclivities of human brains. Sadly, the seemingly endless conceptual debates in human psychology and philosophy often drown out the empirical signals that neuro-evolutionarily sensitive animal research has long provided: All mammals are intensely affective creatures.<

Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MIND, Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, 2012
[Emotions are not luxuries. For mammals emotions are indispensable to survive and reproduce successfully.]

Seven basic affective systems:

[The] ancient subcortical regions of mammalian brains contain at least seven basic affective systems: ... SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy).
Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MIND - Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, 2012