Modern psychology and neuroscience have been dominated by a theoretical perspective that characterizes emotions as being more or less fixed, distinct, and universal circuits in the brain. Of course, cultures influence the ways in which people interpret and express emotions, but the "basic emotions" themselves (e.g. happiness, sadness, fear, anger etc.) are each identified with particular brain regions and functions, according to the mainstream view. Further, these basic emotions are expressed in terms of allegedly universal facial expressions first mapped out by Paul Ekman https://people.ece.cornell..... These facial expressions of happiness,fear, anger, disgust and so on can supposedly be understood by anybody in any cultural setting. So "having" an emotion (e.g. fear) means undergoing phyio-chemical processes in the brain and nervous system which are more or less the same across cultures, individuals and other contexts. Further the basic emotions can be "read" reliably by members of any cultural group, since, for example, angry people scowl in the same telling manner everywhere. The basic emotions all have unique profiles and neural "signatures" or markers that do not vary significantly. Different cultures may combine and emphasize these basic emotions in unique ways. But, according to the "classical" theory, at the core of emotional life we find universal and distinct emotions, just as there are many mixed colors, but all derive from the primary ones. All of this is, more or less. the mainstream view in neuroscience today.
Many anthropologists, sociologists and some philosophers have looked at emotions in ways very much at odds with the above account. They have emphasized the relativity and social construction of emotions. On this view the socio-cultural contexts within which each of us is born and raised will greatly influence what each person feels and how such feelings will be expressed and communicated-- including facial gestures. There are words for emotions in some languages that do not have equivalents in others, and allegedly universal expressions like scowling, sticking the tongue out and smiling do not always express the same emotional content cross-culturally. For example, smiling turns out to be a sign of diverse emotional states and not just the expression of happiness and friendliness according to ethnographic and historical studies:
"In America, a smile is usually regarded as a friendly, positive gesture of trust. Historians have suggested that because the USA was initially a frontier society with little official law enforcement, the ability to communicate that “I am a friend” was quite important. In contrast, among some Asian societies people smile when they are embarrassed, angry, sad, confused, apologetic, and sometimes) happy." - see full article:http://scienceblogs.com/ret...Lisa Feldman Barrett -- one of the foremost researchers and theorists of emotion in psychology and neuroscience-- has been developing a model of emotions that draws on both cultural studies and neuroscience. Her most recent book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life Of The Brain, attempts to lay out her theory in a popular, accessible manner. The following is a short description of her theory, which aims to establish, or at least serve as a possible basis for a new paradigm for affective science (i.e. science of emotions). It is taken from a short summary written by Ivana Galapceva.
"Barrett’s work shows how emotions are not distinguishable at the level of brain activity. Her work describes emotions as widely varied, for example with regard to anger, some individuals may not scowl but be stony faced or even cry when enraged. There are as many types of anger as there are individuals and situations. (emphasis added)The concept and expression of anger is not as ubiquitous as one may initially believe and in neuroscientific terms there is no single discrete circuit for each emotion, processing takes place across the entire brain.The full text can be found here:
Barrett uses examples of remote Tanzanian tribes who do not equate scowling with anger at all; making a strong case for this being learned and culturally transmitted behavior. She notes how our own language and culture may lead us to consider our concept of emotions as absolute. However she doesn’t deny that at some level biology does play a part. She is quick to point out that there is a strong biological element for affects such as attachment or arousal. However the accompanying emotional phenomena that are experienced by the individual are constructed [in the brain] fleetingly in the moment. This distinction between affect and emotion are key to understanding her new theory.
So the long-held assumption that there are hard-wired universal emotions and accompanying expressions is simply not borne out by the evidence. She points out that this idea was first laid out by Plato. It gained further credence from being published in Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Unfortunately he seemed to have missed many of his insights about variation that had appeared in On the Origin of Species and the idea went largely unchallenged, making its way into popular culture.
Despite this fascinating background, Barrett tells us that How Emotions are Made
is not a history lesson. She drives home the important real world application of her findings, using a wide range of examples from healthcare and education to security. She points to multi-million dollar training of US airport staff, directing them to look for certain expressions to reveal individuals who might pose a threat but in light of her findings this is baseless. It is easy to see the tremendous loss of resources incurred and also an alarming basis on which to detain people. She also notes how mature women face higher risk of death due to misreading of emotions: when presenting with heart problems at emergency rooms they are often deemed to be anxious and sent home."
http://www.ideasfestival.co...
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Comments:
1.) The issue of universals: The above summary of Barrett's position states that "There are as many types of anger as there are individuals and situations." While I realize those are not Barrett's exact words there really is a potential problem regarding her dramatic emphasis on the variability of emotions.
If emotions are so variable that they cannot be identified with a) brain regions that have specific functions b) some facial and gestural expressions that can be recognized cross-culturally and c) bodily responses such as increased/decreased skin resistance, pulse, dilation of eyes etc., then what exactly are the units that are being studied and compared? Put differently, Barrett's long overdue emphasis on emotional differences may not be sufficiently counter-balanced by a discussion of the underlying similarities across cultures. Similarity is not universality, and without some account of similarities how can we even make sense of differences? If a psychologist says, "Group X has an emotion called S" and then defines this emotion, what makes it translatable into terms we can understand? If we can study the wide range of emotional differences, doesn't that imply that they are intelligible to us by virtue of some underlying commonalities? I don't know whether Barrett would agree or disagree with my point here, but perhaps in her zeal to explode the "myth of universal and discrete emotions" she glossed over the similarities any comparative study would seem to presuppose. At some level our emotional endowment is probably generic rather than culture-bound. If not it is hard to imagine how cultural *interpretations of emotions* would arise in the first place.
2)Methodological Concerns:There are also methodological issues and challenges. While Barrett is promoting her theory and book, equally prominent neuroscientists like Antonio Demasio and Joseph LeDoux continue to marshal some of the same evidence (fMRIs for example) in order to draw opposite conclusions. Demasio claims that he has identified invariant "somatic markers" by which identical emotions across cultures can be discerned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... LeDoux's theory of "the emotional brain," which is focused largely on the limbic system, does not show signs of disappearing any time soon http://emotionresearcher.co... .This leads me to think that the conclusions drawn from neuroscience studies are underdetermined to a much greater extent than in other sciences. That is, there are more ways to interpret such evidence as brain scan results than should be the case if these are really reliable sources of evidence. Indeed they may be fairly unreliable, something about which I posted on another channel recently: https://disqus.com/home/dis...
Nevertheless, Barrett makes a valuable contribution to the field by debunking naively universalistic theories of emotion. Her multidisciplinary approach is also, I think, a step in the right direction as she draws on ethnography, history, philosophy and neuroscience to get a well-rounded perspective on the topics she discusses. Her familiarity with the literature (past and present) is encylopedic -- indeed she is one of the editors of the very useful Guilford Handbook Of Emotions:
http://scholar.harvard.edu/...
Here is a 3 min. video in which Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses what she believes to be a likely paradigm shift occurring in the science of emotion:
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