Mikal Shapiro

I suppose it is only appropriate that in the final weeks of conference work, we would be studying emotion regulation. What better way to learn how to manage the end-of-year pressures? For example, according to Lerner et al., subjects expressing anger and disgust versus fear in response to stress-challenge tasks exhibited lower cortisol responses and blood pressures. The lesson here: Frustrated with schoolwork? Don’t get scared… Get pissed! It’s better for your health (Lerner et al, p. 258). I find it particularly funny that the “annoying” tasks used in the above experiment were math-related problems--recalling the arithmetic we were instructed to calculate during a presentation on memory (and the ensuing fear-filled facial expressions). It’s interesting to note that in the Lerner et al article, anger is associated with a greater sense of control over a stress-filled situation and is thus related to optimism; the stuff of progressive social uprising? Vive la Revolution!
When we discussed optimism in earlier readings, we discovered that feeling un-pragmatically positive could have negative effects on our ability to prepare and respond to real situations. Though this may be the case, “people often have positive illusions about themselves that maintain their mental health” (Cacioppo et al, pg. 106). Self-relevant processing (associated with m-PFC activation--a site related to moderating socially-appropriate actions and personality) often results in over-estimating our own abilities to the benefit of our actions. When we think we can do better than we really can, we often do better than we normally would (“Positive Illusions and Well-Being Revisited,” Taylor and Brown, 1994--this was cited in the Cacioppo et al article and I highly recommend it). “Realism” in our self-perceptions is not as important as a positive and consistent sense of “self.” Although the study of social neuroscience has in the past focused mainly on psychopathology, researchers “now pay greater attention to normative emotional regulatory processes” such as maintaining a solid sense of self as it relates to a larger community (Gross, p. 274). By developing a greater understanding of the biology behind socially relevant emotions (which emotions aren’t socially relevant?) and “healthy” emotion regulation, we can develop more clearly an understanding of the bi-directional communication between higher cognitive functions and deeper, less conscious processes of affectation. This understanding can, in turn, facilitate a more vital definition of the importance of emotions in our personal and social lives than psychology, philosophy, or biology can reveal alone. Reading articles about these cross-disciplinary approaches is inspiring, especially given the history of separation between the fields. Kandel’s article on the new directions of psychiatry reminded me of the fact that psychiatrists have suffered en masse from their own ego-driven defense mechanisms by “[spending] most of the decades of [psychoanalysis’] dominance… on the defensive” (p. 458). It’s amazing that he was encouraged not to read or do any research during his studies in psychiatry at Harvard!
Gross furthers the merging of disciplines by dialoging emotions in a way that allows other disciplines to participate in the conversation. By acknowledging the social, psychological and biological economics of emotional processes, he proposes that emotional “well-being may be most likely when we (a) regulate emotion antecedents so that we are emotionally engaged by those pursuits that have enduring value…” (p. 288). These “pursuits” are surely personally and culturally defined and depending on how and in which ways we spend our resources on them, we can either herald or negate (counter-intuitively) what gives our lives meaning. In developing a more sophisticated awareness of our emotional economics--biologically, psychologically, and socially--we can nurture Gross’ notion of a “cooperation between reason and emotion… helping us decide which battles are worth taking up and which to avoid” (p. 288) This kind of cognitive/emotion middle-road approach may pave the way for the multiple disciplines of social neuroscience to move forward with less contention--by contributing to a more inclusive, more effective feeling-brain language.