Tessa Noonan—Feb. 10 (Week 4)
In chapter five of The Emotional Brain, LeDoux again investigates the different components of emotional responses, this time evaluating the genetic or biological aspects of emotions with the primarily psychological elements of consciousness that contribute to emotional being. LeDoux is very straightforward about the prevalence of emotional behavior in animals, as he asserts that all animals display fear reactions, for example. However, he does distinguish between innate biological responses that could be considered “emotional” and what we could deem “feelings,” which are relative to “the capacity to be consciously aware of one’s self and the relation of oneself to the rest of the world” (p. 125). LeDoux’s main point follows Darwin, that animals display very similar responses to stimuli across species, and that their emotions are in fact related to each other evolutionarily. However, in light of cultural variation in emotional display rules, for example, LeDoux acknowledges other cultural determining factors that may adjust the biologically based emotions in order to interact in specific ways.
Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, and Gross’s article follows from John Searle’s idea of biological naturalism, which extends conscious states of emotion beyond the neurobiological event of that emotion. This places a greater emphasis on the contextual categorization and appraisal of an emotional event than the pure physical state. They deal with a “core affect,” which seems somewhat akin to LeDoux’s biological emotional core, although that is never explicitly stated. The steps to more complex mental representations of emotions for Barrett et al. rely on surrounding content and contexts in which the emotion and stimulus are based.
I heard about a very interesting study that follows somewhere along these lines, as well as with the Bechara and Naqvi article. In this particular study, a group of researchers went to a high, scary bridge, which is something of a tourist site in Vancouver. The study involved a moderately attractive woman who asked a few questions both to men who were not near the bridge and to men who had just passed over it. The questions themselves were not important in that the study actually documented the man’s reaction to his interviewer: men who had just crossed the fear-inducing bridge found the woman interviewer attractive much more attractive than men who were not near the bridge due to their increased state of physical arousal. When asked about the attractiveness of the interviewer, men frequently attributed this arousal to her rather than to the bridge, demonstrating the easy transference of emotional due to contextual events.
On a separate note, I also found the New Yorker article to be fascinating in its implications. In one of the quotes from Eckman in reviewing tapes of interviews, he says, “He’s not doing it voluntarily,” indicating the elusive and perhaps subconscious nature of our physical emotional reactions. Similarly, he restates a finding he already read about, how creating a facial expression could actually drastically affect the body’s assessment of an emotion and begin to feel that way. This just shows the immense connection between the physical body and the mind in terms of emotions. I wasn’t sure if this position was entirely contradictory to the Barrett et al. article, although there did seem to be some contrasting elements.
3 comments:
Sara Dholakia
That study sounds really interesting and makes quite a bit of sense. I can think of personal anecdotes that are quite similar.
As Tessa has already noted, LeDoux asserts the fact that non-human animals also have emotions; although they may take another form, they potentially serve the same evolutionary purpose as corresponding emotions in people. Likewise, similar emotions may appear differently in different people... This point reminds me of my previous conference project about the relationship between stress and eating. To begin, I wanted to know why someone would over-eat when feeling anxious and still lose weight as a result of stress. In fact, my initial line of reasoning was far too basic to consider all of the variables at stake (such as duration of stimuli and genetic inheritance). My findings grew increasingly complex as I came to realize that stress (a symptom of fear) manifests in a number of ways. Namely, the same amount and type of stress can cause one organism to consume food and another (of the same species) to conserve the nutrients they already have. Such a variety largely depends on the individual experiencing the stressful stimuli, not only at the level of personal preference or behavior, but also at the level of biology or psychology. Are these distinctions collapsing into one another? Considering our readings thus far, it is not surprising that there are so many different forms of fear.
Re: The transferrance of emotion anecdote- There is a similar story on Radio Lab (why do I always feel compelled to make a plug?) where they suggest that you take a blind date on a thrilling rickshaw ride and win his/her affections!
I also found The New Yorker article extremely interesting when Gladwell is interviewing Ekman and they are watching videos of people. The subtle emotion that Ekman is able to detect is amazing. He makes a very important point about our the fact that our reliance on language takes precedence over our capacity to interpret facial cues. This is one of the things that makes sign language and methods of communication, that do not rely on spoken cues, so interesting and relevant to neuroscience because it requires a compensation and ability to understand the face. It was also intriguing to think about the involuntary facial movements that can last for only a matter of seconds but are detectable to others if they are paying close enough attention.
I found the Barrett et al. article particularly enlightening not only because they take time to define things but also because it brings us back into the realm of the subjective experience of emotion. I liked that they outline the importance of context in the experience of emotion and also the difference between a phenomenological account versus the actual experience itself.
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