Lecture 14: Emotions: Where Mind and Body Meet PDF

Lecture 14 Emotions: Where Mind and Body Meet A re emotions aspects of mind that produce a bodily reaction? Or are they bodily phenomena that produce a mental reaction? The answer turns out to be more complicated than either of those options. As a phenomenon where mind and body meet, emotions al...

Lecture 14 Emotions: Where Mind and Body Meet A re emotions aspects of mind that produce a bodily reaction? Or are they bodily phenomena that produce a mental reaction? The answer turns out to be more complicated than either of those options. As a phenomenon where mind and body meet, emotions allow us to trace some of the complex details of mind-body interaction. That’s what we’ll examine in this lecture. Defining Emotion ●● What precisely do we mean by emotion? Or, what precisely do we mean by emotions? Those two ways of phrasing the central question reflect a very basic division of opinion in the field. ●● Many researchers think that we have multiple emotions: distinct modular systems of emotional processing, perhaps reflecting distinct patterns of processing in the brain. ○○ They propose a small set of six primary emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. These primary emotions are thought to be universal across human experience: A frown is taken as a universal sign of sadness. Raised eyebrows indicate surprise. ○○ An alternative proposal is that there are not six but eight primary emotions. This approach adds acceptance and expectancy to the other six. Whatever the number, more complex emotions, such as pride or disappointment, are seen as a mixture of the primaries. 140 M ind - B ody P hilosophy ●● On the other side of the fence are researchers who think of emotion in terms of a single multi-dimensional psychological space. Emotions are points of a single psychological space. It is the space as a whole that constitutes emotion. ●● Wilhelm Wundt proposed that all emotion could be mapped in three dimensions. One dimension was how pleasurable or unpleasurable the emotion was. One was how arousing or subduing. The third dimension was strain or relaxation. In the 1980s, Havlena and Holbrook proposed a three-dimensional field model for emotion in terms of pleasure, arousal, and dominance. ●● Whether framed in terms of multiple primary emotions or in terms of dimensions in an emotional field, most theorists recognize that our emotions are often a complex mixture of simpler elements. We feel guilty pleasure, with elements of both pleasure and guilt. We feel affection streaked with minor irritation, or annoyance tempered by pity. ●● Just how universal are the primary emotions that we have outlined? Some critics have claimed that even the basic emotions require a cultural context. ●● Once we go from primary to complex emotions, it proves still harder to argue for universality. The German language recognizes an emotion for which English doesn’t have a word: schadenfreude. We need a whole phrase to express schadenfreude in English: It’s “delight at someone else’s misfortune.” The James-Lange Theory ●● As in so many areas, it is William James’s observations and speculations that set the stage for later work on emotion. James thought emotions are not an aspect of mind that then produces a bodily response. Rather, it’s precisely the other way around: We don’t run because we’re afraid; we’re afraid because we run. ●● Here’s the way James puts it in 1890: “Common sense says that we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are L ecture 14 — E motions : W here M ind and B ody M eet 141 insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. … [My theory is that the] sequence is incorrect … we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.” ●● This is called the James-Lange theory of emotion. James and the Danish physiologist Carl Lange didn’t work together, but they both developed a bodybased theory of emotion at about the same time. In all his writings, James is scrupulous to give Lange equal billing. ●● According to James, we can’t produce emotion as a purely mental phenomenon. If you try to produce emotions without the initiating physiological cause, you’ll get something hollow. ●● Here is how James puts it: “Can one fancy the state of rage and picture … no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face?” According to James, the answer is no. British scientist Charles Darwin 142 M ind - B ody P hilosophy ●● This argument is convincing, but doesn’t absolutely set in stone the idea physical reactions have to come before emotions. In order to be fear, the trembling may have to be there. But that doesn’t really mean it has to be the instigating cause. ●● At the same time, there is some evidence of a link. Moebius syndrome is a rare genetic disorder in which people are born with facial paralysis and unable to move their eyes. They can’t frown, smile, or raise their eyebrows in surprise. Not only do those with Moebius syndrome have trouble conveying emotion to others, it appears they have trouble feeling emotion as well. ●● The idea that facial expression influences mental state has led to proposals for the treatment of depression. There are clear facial signs of chronic depression in the form of permanent frown lines and a furrowed brow. If we could change those, might we be able to affect the depression itself? ●● The answer seems to be yes, with a mounting chain of evidence. Plastic surgeons have reported that individuals who had Botox treatment for frown lines seemed to lighten their moods. ●● And a 2012 study conducted in Europe found lower signs of depression in those who received Botox injections over a placebo. Botox works by blocking the neurotransmitters sent to the facial muscles. There can be no frown and so no feedback message of frowning from face to the emotional brain. As James said, “Refuse to express a passion, and it dies.” Criticism ●● The James-Lange theory set the stage for later work on emotion. It has also served as a lightning rod for criticism. A major challenge came with the work of the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon and graduate student Philip Bard in the 1920s. ●● Cannon and Bard’s first argument against the James-Lange theory was that the same physiological changes are present in very different emotional states. L ecture 14 — E motions : W here M ind and B ody M eet 143 Increased adrenalin, heart rate, levels of blood sugar, sweating, and pupil dilation occur across many forms of excitement, for example, in both fear and rage. ●● Here’s their second argument: Artificially producing the physiological states characteristic of specific emotions does not necessarily produce those emotions. Running on a treadmill causes raised heart rate, sweating, and the like. If the James-Lange theory were correct, shouldn’t running on a treadmill make us afraid? ●● Cannon and Bard surgically cut the connection from the sympathetic nervous system to the brain in cats. In all parts of their bodies that could still express it, these cats continued to show signs of rage when exposed to a barking dog. They concluded that emotion is not simply a response to bodily input. It remains even without that input. ●● As an alternative to the James-Lange theory, Cannon and Bard proposed a branching theory of emotion. They proposed that sensory input goes to the thalamus, located essentially at the center of the brain. From there it is sent in two directions. One route goes directly to the body, stimulating the immediate physiological reactions that James noted. The other route goes to the cortex, resulting in the feeling of emotion. In the branching theory, those two routes are independent. Although the feeling of emotion and the body response come from the same place, neither directly produces the other. ●● Cannon and Bard didn’t succeed in refuting the James-Lange theory on all counts. Cannon and Bard argued that if emotion were physiologically based we should have difficulty distinguishing the two. In fact, it turns out that we do: Sometimes the same physiological input is interpretable in different ways. Dutton and Aron ●● In a classic experiment by Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron, male participants were asked to walk across either a stable bridge or a frightening suspension bridge. At the end of each bridge stood an attractive female experimenter, who 144 M ind - B ody P hilosophy handed the participants an ambiguous picture about which they were asked to write a story. She also gave them her phone number in case they had any further questions about the experiment. ●● The men crossing the scary bridge made up stories that had a higher sexual content than those by the men crossing the stable bridge, and the scary-bridge crossers made more follow-up phone calls to the attractive experimenter. ●● Emotion doesn’t appear to be a merely physiological stimulus. It doesn’t appear to be merely a branching pattern to independent physiology and feeling as suggested by Cannon and Bard. Emotion appears to have a contextual and interpretational element, involving both physiology and cognition. ●● That result supports Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer’s two-factor theory of the 1960s. Schachter and Singer claimed that our emotional response often incorporates two elements. One part is physiological arousal. Another part is the cognitive label that we assign to that arousal on the basis of context. The Full Picture ●● What has now become the standard picture of emotional processing incorporates bits and pieces from the entire history we’ve traced. The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has been a major figure in the development of that standard theory. ●● At the core is the branching hypothesis of the Cannon-Bard model. The stimulus of the charging bear is directed to the sensory thalamus. From there it goes in two different directions: to the amygdala, identified as the emotional instigator, and to the prefrontal cortex, where emotion is felt for the first time. ●● The prefrontal cortex is identified with deliberate judgment and decision, and this is where aspects of the Schachter-Singer model come in. It is the prefrontal cortex that interprets the emotion, shaping and perhaps inhibiting response. L ecture 14 — E motions : W here M ind and B ody M eet 145 ●● From the prefrontal cortex, signals are sent back to the amygdala. Those may be reinforcing: “Run faster.” They may be corrective: “Wait, I can’t outrun a bear. Should I freeze?” ●● Regarding the James-Lange theory, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio takes pains to defend that model against the Cannon-Bard arguments. James’s theory, he says, was unfairly attacked and dismissed. ●● Although it’s not true that the body is the only source for feelings, James was right that feelings can be a reflection of body-state changes. As an example, patients with damage to the spinal cord often do report a damping down of emotion. The higher the damage to the spinal cord, the more seems to be lost. Emotion and Reason ●● From the Greeks, we inherit the view that emotion is a threat to rationality. Plato characterized reason as a charioteer, needed in order to keep the wild horses of emotion under control. ●● Aristotle defines man as a rational animal, with the rational principle in charge of any lower impulses. The Stoics tell us that the best life is one in which we rationally remove ourselves from the turmoil of the passions. ●● In the contemporary picture, it is in the cortex rather than in the amygdala that the feeling of emotion occurs. Damasio reports on a patient called Elliot in whom that route to the cortex was lost. ●● The history of philosophy would suggest Elliot’s case to be the philosophical ideal: a life of reason freed from disruptive emotion. That’s not the case: Without a route from the inner brain to the cortex—without felt emotion— Elliot was lost. He performed normally on all intellectual tests, on tests of background knowledge, and on tests of reasoning, even ethical reasoning. But Elliot could no longer make appropriate decisions. 146 M ind - B ody P hilosophy ●● Without being able to register emotions, Elliot wasn’t able to evaluate alternative courses of action; he couldn’t make up his mind regarding personal and social matters. He lost his job, one marriage, and then a second marriage, along with his sense of responsibility. ●● There is now a wide consensus that rationality requires an emotional component. In 1983, Howard Gardner introduced a theory of multiple intelligences, attempting to expand a concept of rationality beyond the confines of IQ. EQ, or emotional quotient, has been proposed as a necessary supplement. Suggested Reading Damasio, Descartes’ Error. James, “What Is an Emotion?” Thagard, Hot Thought. Questions to Consider 1 Make a list of at least 25 emotions. Are some of these compounds of others? Do some, like awe or pride, demand a particular kind of object or context? 2 Darwin says that bodily expression of an emotion amplifies and intensifies it, whereas dampening the bodily expression can soften the felt emotion as well. Give an example from your experience where that does fit, and perhaps an example where it does not. L ecture 14 — E motions : W here M ind and B ody M eet 147