Transcript Document

PSYC18 - Psychology of Emotion
Lecture 7
Professor: Gerald Cupchik
T.A.: Michelle Hilscher
[email protected]
[email protected]
S-634
S-150
Office Hours: Thurs. 10-11, 2-3
Office Hours: Thurs. 10-11, 2-3
Course Website: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik
The Social Constructionist Perspective
Jim Averill
Emotions are “products” of cultures. The ways that emotions are
embodied in a culture’s social practices, including its language,
participates in and partially constitutes the moral order of the culture and
serves to maintain it.
Averill sees emotions as a special kind of “social role”.
Emotions are a “socially constructed syndrome” that includes an
individual’s appraisal of the situation which is interpreted as a passion
rather than as an action.
Averill says that emotion is experienced as an action because we play an
active role in creating situations that are then experienced emotionally.
He also says that emotion is experienced as a passion because when we
experience emotions we often ignore our active role in having created
them and feel overwhelmed and taken over by them. We feel like we have
lost control.
The Social Constructionist Perspective
Jim Averill
Syndrome = a set of events that occur together in a systematic fashion.
Components that tend to occur together:
(A) Subjective Experiences – particular feeling qualities associated with
emotions.
(B) Expressive Reactions – facial expressions and bodily postures that
accompany an emotion.
(C) Patterns of Physiological Response – autonomic nervous system and
other changes.
(D) Coping Reactions – behaviour we engage in while we are emotional.
The Social Constructionist Perspective
Jim Averill
NOTE:
1. Not every emotion is associated with all the components.
For example: Fear = Yes, Hope = No
[Fear has a bodily and cognitive component;
Hope has only a cognitive component.]
2. Not every instance of a particular emotion need include all the
components.
For example: Anger with or without a facial expression like a scowl.
There is no single response, or subset of responses, which is essential to
an emotional syndrome.
Emotional syndromes are “polythetic” or not definable in terms of a limited
number of characteristics.
The Social Constructionist Perspective
EMOTIONS ARE “TRANSITORY SOCIAL ROLES”.
A role is a socially prescribed set of responses to be followed by a person
in a given situation.
Emotions as social roles – temporary enactment of a prescribed set of
responses in which a person may be seen as following a set of rules that
tell him or her the “proper” way to appraise a situation, how to behave in
response to the appraisal, how to interpret his or her bodily reactions to
the appraisal, and so on.
The Social Constructionist Perspective
THE RULES OF EMOTIONS ARE LEARNED!
We learn from our society the sets of rules that implicitly govern our
emotional performances.
This approach emerges from the social constructionist perspective of the
1970s which focused more on the social self than the personal self.
Emotions are associated with attitudes, beliefs, judgments, and desires
reflecting the cultural values of particular communities.
So appraisals are not seen as innate responses to evolutionarily
significant events.
Emotions reflect moral judgments about events in the world.
The Social Constructionist Perspective
As we know, emotions used to be referred to as “passions”, a word that
implies the experience of passivity, as if emotions were alien forces which
overcome and possess an individual.
“GRIPPED” BY FEAR
“SEIZED” BY ANGER
Averill’s approach to emotion is primarily metaphorical. He sees emotions
as ACTIONS rather than passions.
Emotional behaviour is engaged in to realize particular social and
individual goals.
Emotions don’t just happen to us but they are things we do willfully.
The experience of emotions as passive passions is an interpretation or
attribution we make about our own behaviour. We thereby disclaim
responsibility for what we do when we are emotional.
According to Frijda, the experience of passivity is part of what it means to
be emotional in our culture.
Social functions of emotions:
Fear can be seen as one of the means by which social norms are
maintained in the regulation of social behaviour.
We can compare the emotional lexicons of different cultures to get a
sense for which emotions are important in that culture. (e.g., absence of
fear in a warrior culture)
The acquisition of a culturally appropriate lexicon by children is central to
the socialization of emotion and is a major determinant of changes in
children’s experiences of emotion.
Basic Emotions and Darwinian Survival
Fear and a situation of danger.
Anger and the need for defense.
Love and the need for caring attention.
Complex Emotions and Social Construction
Shame, embarrassment, guilt and so on… more emphasis on situational
interpretation.
The Aesthetics of Action Theory: Reaction model of aesthetics.
The main idea is that cultural materials are chosen which embody
particular qualities that modulate feeling dimensions like pain-pleasure
and calm-excitement.
Want to manipulate a dimension of experience like pleasure or
excitement.
Choose films, books, so on, which embody properties that will modulate
these bodily states.
(A) Romantic film or book and the need for sentimental positive feelings.
(B) Horror or suspense movies and the need for excitement.
Experience oriented approaches to emotion: William
James & Peripheralism
Now we begin the BIG TRANSITION from the Action Approach to a more
Experience
Oriented
Approach
that
encompasses
James’s
PERIPHERALISM, PSYCHODYNAMICS, & PHENOMENOLOGY.
Let me review the transition we are about to make…
The first phase of the course focused on Action Theory which has been
with us in various guises since the British Enlightenment of the 1700s.
This theory shaped both our ideas about emotion and even extended to
an explanation of how drama works.
Philosophers of the Enlightenment, like John Locke, emphasized a
practical approach to life in which we attempt to realize goals and
evaluate events in the environment in terms of how beneficial they are to
us. Our experience of pleasure or pain is an index of whether or not we
have succeeded.
Philosophers of the Enlightenment favoured a kind of Classical approach
to art and drama which emphasized the manipulation of people’s emotion
through the author’s control over action, place and time.
In the 1800s, the Darwinian perspective emphasized challenges posed by
the physical and social worlds and this carried over into the early 1900s
with McDougall’s emphasis on our “capacity to strive toward an end or
ends, to seek goals, to sustain and renew activity adopted to secure
consequences beneficial to the organism or the species.”
Walter Cannon, the great American physiologist, extended this idea with
his Emergency Response theory, the mobilization of our Sympathetic
Nervous System as part of Fear or Anger responses to threat or
frustration.
Duffy and Schachter, among others, continued this tradition of separating
a planful mind, on the one hand, from a body whose function was to
provide energy and focus for the problem at hand.
It is crucial to remember that, among other things, this Action Theory
approach involves a separation of mind and body. The mind does the
planning and the body helps execution or can hinder it if the state of
excitation becomes too great.
The EXPERIENCE APPROACH should be placed in the tradition of
Romanticism which emphasized the role of imagination and interpretation
both in everyday life and in relation to art, poetry and drama. Recall their
focus on critical life episodes or scenes that reveal something special
about the nature of our lived-world.
WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910) and the Peripheral Approach:
EMOTION = The Experience of Bodily Changes
James’s basic principle was that the body is central to the generation and
experience of emotion.
While Darwin was primarily concerned with the expression of emotion,
James was interested in the experience of emotion.
Common sense leads us to say the following about the sequence of
emotional events:
1. We PERCEIVE an emotion eliciting stimulus
2. We EXPERIENCE emotion
3. We EXPRESS it
For example:
1. We lose our fortune, are sorry and weep.
2. We are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike.
3. We meet a bear, are frightened and run.
James argued that this sequence is wrong…
“BODILY CHANGES FOLLOW DIRECTLY FROM THE PERCEPTION OF
THE EXCITING FACT AND OUR FEELING OF THESE SAME CHANGES
AS THEY OCCUR IS THE EMOTION.”
In other words:
1. We feel sorry because we cry.
2. We feel angry because we strike.
3. We feel afraid because we tremble.
These changes are automatic responses of the body and the experience
of these changes is the emotion.
James listed three kinds of bodily changes:
1. Expressive behaviour
2. Instrumental acts such as running away
3. Physiological “changes” in the heart & circulatory system
The modern interpretation is that:
“Bodily changes” = “Visceral changes”
The increase in sympathetic nervous system activity controls the
functioning of the glands and other internal organs such as the heart and
stomach. These changes are expressed as sweating, salivation, shedding
tears, secreting digestive juices and stomach motility.
Implication: Different emotions are accompanied by recognizably different
bodily states. James’s theory permits an almost infinite number of
emotions because it associates individual emotions with specific
physiological states. Each emotion would be characterized by a specific
physiological package.
This indirectly leads to the idea that the voluntary arousal or
manifestation of bodily changes should produce emotions
(e.g., “put on a happy face”).
James was influenced by his own introspections:
1. “Unmotivated emotion” – attacks of anxiety, panic or fear in the
absence of an appropriate cause.
Also, anxiety attacks could sometimes be alleviated by controlling
one’s breathing and changing one’s posture.
2. Persons who could not experience any feelings from his or her body
(corporeal anaesthesia).
Carl Lange (1834 – 1900) developed a similar theory… the bodily
concomitants come first, followed by the experience of emotion.
James also distinguished between COARSE and SUBTLE emotions.
1. COARSE EMOTIONS are fixed action patterns and are wired-in.
2. SUBTLE EMOTIONS are learned or acquired (e.g., resentment). They
can be moral, intellectual or aesthetic emotions and feelings.
Walter B. Cannon (1871 – 1945), the great American physiologist, offered
a critique of William James’s theory which led to a rejection of his work for
a period of time.
Cannon did his research on the physiology of digestion and disturbances
of digestion which led him to reject James’s ideas about “autonomic
specificity”.
The 1920s was a period in medical history when psychosomatic medicine
was established as a separate discipline… for example in the area of
stress.
Critiques:
1. Total separation of the viscera from the CNS does not alter emotional
behaviour.
*
2. The same visceral changes occur in very different emotional states and
non-emotional states.
*
3. The viscera are relatively insensitive structures.
4. Visceral changes are too slow to be a source of emotional feeling.
5. Artificial induction of the visceral changes typical of strong emotion
does not produce them. This is where he applied the data from
Maranon’s study about the 79% who received an injection but did not
experience an emotion.
*
The most important points are Number 2 and 3!
Cannon assumed that the cerebral cortex constantly inhibits emotional
expressions that are integrated in the thalamus. Perception of an emotion
evoking situation produces cortical disinhibition and frees the thalamic
centres from their normal restraint. When disinhibition occurs, the
emotional expression automatically appears. Incoming sensory impulses
from the viscera and skeletal muscles arrive at the thalamus and are
relayed to the cortex. This gives conscious experience an emotional
quality. Cannon therefore argued that emotional reactions are coordinated
at subcortical levels. This is an example of the Centralist Approach to
emotion.
James had argued that there are no special brain centres for emotion. So
James’s peripheral approach to emotion can be contrasted with the
centralist approach in which cognition filters perception and selects
behaviour.
IMPLICATIONS: THE FACIAL FEEDBACK HYPOTHESIS:
“Awareness of one’s own facial expressions is the emotion.”
Floyd Allport (1890 - 1978) argued in 1924 in support of James’s idea that
feedback from facial expressions could help differentiate emotions.
Accordingly, afferent (incoming) feedback from the face differentiates
anger from fear.
Sylvan Tomkins (1911-1991) maintained in the 1960s that feedback from
facial muscles differentiates emotions. Accordingly, affect is primarily facial
behaviour and secondarily it is bodily behaviour, outer skeletal and inner
visceral activity.
On what basis does Tomkins maintain this position?
1. A newborn exhibits greater responsiveness to facial and head
stimulation than to bodily stimulation.
2. The rapid development of head movement, visual fixation and eye-hand
coordination. Standing and walking appear later.
3. The greater density of afferent-efferent channels moving information
between the face and the brain.
4. The facial muscles show greater resistance to habituation.
5. The face is the centre of affective expression.
Ekman and Friesen (1960s) also emphasized the high sending capacity of
the face.
1. Greater number of discriminable stimulus patterns due to the relative
anatomical independence of the brow-forehead, eyes-lid-bridge of nose
and lower face including cheeks, nose, mouth, chin and jaw. (Science
Centre)
2. Physical potential for rapid muscular change or “low transmission time”
permits facial displays to evolve drastically over short periods of time. This
relates to the concept of “micro-momentary affect displays” as brief as
1/50th of a second.
Primary Affect List: Happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, disgust and
sadness
Summarizing:
The face is the place for emotion!!
1. Afferent-efferent routes
2. Anatomical independence
3. Rapid muscular change