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Emotion: The Science of Sentiment by Dylan Evans is the featured book for this episode of the Brain Science Podcast. Thanks to Kate from the UK for suggesting this book.
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Episode Transcript (Download PDF)
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Show Notes
This episode is a short introduction to the idea that our emotions are an essential part of our intellligence.
- We discuss the Basic Emotions based on the work of anthropologist Paul Eckman.
- We learn about culturally learned emotions such as “being a wild pig,” which is observed among the Gurumba people of New Guinea
- Paul Griffiths introduced the idea of “higher cognitive emotions”
- Emotions seem to exist on a continuum from the highly innate basic emotions to the culturally specific emotions
- The work of Joseph Ledoux and Antonio Damasio reveal that our emotions are an important element of normal intelligence
- We consider how fear actually follows two pathways in the brain
- We consider the role of the limbic system including the amygdala
- We consider the relationship between emotions and mood
- We consider how mood effects memory and decision making
- This includes Robert Zajonc’s discovery of the “mere exposure” effect
- We briefly consider the question of whether computers could ever display emotions
Further Reading
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (2000)
by Antonio Damasio
{ 12 comments }
Hi Ginger!
I’m downloading this episode! I’ll listen at it immediately!
I’m really interested in the topic… I have listened to some lessons about Damasio and his theories about “Descartes’ error”… Looking foward to learn something more!
I’ll write you some comments soon.
Have a good w-e
F.
This podcast is on a roll! Another great episode. I actually stopped my bike and fished out my (paper) notebook to scribble some things down so as not to forget them. Extremely interesting.
Often, when skeptics like me discuss the paranormal, there is the tendency to argue almost too rational and fact-based. I have often thought that to be more successful, one would also have to appeal to the other side’s emotions – not manipulating them or lying to them, but framing the arguments not merely logically. Nice to hear science agrees :-) Also nice to hear that it’s not a good idea to make debate opponents happy if you want to convince them with facts…
There is, by the way, a typo in the show notes. The New Guinea emotions read “being a wild b-ig”, where I think it should be a “wild p-ig” (or at least a “wild big New Guinea pig”).
Also, I believe the audio quality of the recordings hase gone up. Did you change anything in your settings, or buy a new microphone? Or do I simply misremember from maybe a phone interview you did?
Oh, and two more things.
First, I scribbled down the six basic emotions [joy, anger, surprise, fear, distress, disgust]. It was very interesting to hear that in non-mammals, only anger and fear are likely to be reproduced. No wonder the Birds attacked, then. I mean, always angry or afraid, never a shred of joy in your life – that’s gotta make you aggressive.
But more seriously, this seems to touch upon one of my pet peeves: attaching human thought or emotions to animals. Like when my mother explains how the stray cat in her garden is thankful for the food she gave it and wanted to reciprocate when it brought a half-eaten mouse, or… I’ll only say “March of the Penguins”.
I forgot the second thing… sorry for triple posting.
The (excellent) podcast “The Best of Ideas” from Canadian CBC Radio had an interview with Jerome Kagan, as well. Very good. I couldn’t see the direct link at the show site, but you’ll be able to get it from iTunes. It’s dated Feb 12th, 2007.
The February 12th episode is no longer on the US iTunes store, but if I find another source I will post a link.
I really appreciate Patrick’s enthusiasm. I am looking forward to getting the discussion forums up so we can have a better format for discussing everyone’s ideas.
I love the inclusion of the snake/rope example, a classic Buddhist description of fundamentally confused experience.
Perhaps you might want to expand your comment for the sake of readers not familiar with Buddhist thought.
Throughout the Buddhist traditions you will often hear the story of a person in the dark who mistakes a coiled rope for a snake. They experience all of the emotions and thoughts of someone confronted by a terrifying and imminent danger. But, then the light is turned on and they see that there is no snake. So, the root cause of their experience was illusory. Instantly all of the unpleasant emotion and anxiety departs upon realizing the true nature of the “snake”. It is basically an analogy for what Buddhists consider the primordial or fundamental state of ignorance, literally of “not knowing” which all sentient beings experience.
By default all beings possessing awareness or “sentience” attribute qualities of unity, permanence and existence to both interior mental phenomena and exterior empirical “its” which they do not actually possess. That is not to say that these phenomena are completely non-existent. The world vividly appear to beings, however upon careful analysis of any detail in our experience we can physically and/or conceptually decompose that item into constituent parts ad infinitum.
This is a very brief and inadequate explanation of the philosophical and some say “empirical” premise of Buddhist practice. The instruction then is to look closer at reality and investigate its qualities to see if you can find anything which exists independently and permanently; find anything which is not composed of other things and entirely dependent upon other things for its existence.
Specifically, when one engages in this injunction and investigates reality through careful study, inference and meditation the EMOTIONS are a primary subject of analysis. After all, the intention of Buddhism is to benefit beings, not just fill their heads with abstract recursive aphorisms (though personally I love abstract recursive aphorisms).
So, to tie this back to the podcast (finally) …Buddhist practice analyzes the contents of our experience along with the concepts and emotions we have about those contents. Steady practice accompanied by a clear understanding of the hypothesis stated earlier (that things are not what they seem) is said to result in a fundamentally altered experience of self and world.
After the recent podcast about brain plasticity along with this podcast’s explanation of the “short path” and the “long path” of emotional neuro-responses, I see possible neurological explanations for what is accomplished by Buddhist meditation. Could training the mind to see that all phenomena are merely coiled “ropes” or maybe “garden hoses” effectively re-route that pathway and result in a radically different experience?
Dear Dr. Campbell,
I am another new subscriber who found you through Scientific American Mind. I just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed your mini-talk on emotions and am looking forward to downloading the earlier podcasts as well.
I am a retired psychiatrist, whose hobby has become reading and learning everything I can about the mindbrain. I have offered a few courses on related subjects at our St. Louis Lifelong Learning Institute. I was so impressed with the thoroughness, breadth, accuracy, and lucidity of your talk, something I clearly hope to emulate. Keep up the good work, and I hope you are accepted by NPR as a regular commentator/interviewer.
C. Leon McGahee, M.D.
PS I read somewhere that Zajonc is pronounced “Zy-unce.” Who would’ve thunk it!
Doc, in your 11th podcast on emotions, you mentioned a study which debriefed people after a traumatic and found that it made things worse, not better. You said that therefore it is not useful to go back to bad feelings, probably because it had a kindling-type effect. I agree that often early debriefing doesn’t work. Some people need to sort things out later, on their own, with people they know, after they’ve regained equilibrium.
However, there are other studies which show otherwise for other people. For some people who go through a traumatic event, the only way to keep it from becoming PTSD is to debrief. It has been found that people who dissociate during the trauma have more problems. Also, it has been found that people who have had many traumatic events in their lives have more problems if they don’t debrief.
Previously traumatized people tend to peri-dissociation. Dissociation during trauma happens without volition. The brain makes an instant decision that it is too much for the person to handle. Haziness and forgetfulness of the experience may result. Sometimes, during the trauma, a person will view one’s self from outside of their body. Dissociation doesn’t allow the individual to process the meaning of the traumatic incident at the time it happens. But if that incident is not processed at some point, it causes all kinds of problems that can lead to PTSD.
The problem, of course, is to know who is who after a traumatic event. It may be useful to ask about peri-traumatic dissociation and other trauma in the individual’s life. If neither appear to be the case, let them go with some common sense advice about handling emotions and recovery after trauma. Otherwise, debrief thoroughly.
We need to remember, also, that how a person healthily handles emotion after a traumatic situation, such as a severe auto accident, is not the way a person would healthily handle emotions after, for eb., a fight with a partner.
Love your podcasts. Thanks for all the work and your enthusiasm too.
Patricia,
I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful comment you left regarding the role of debriefing after traumatic events.
This would make a great contribution to the discussion forum at http://brainscienceforum.com. It would be interesting to know if any listeners have experience in this area.
My gut reaction to your comment is that this situation seems to be another example of the danger of trying to use a “one size fits all” approach to this sort of problem.
This is a great podcast! I discovered it through the interview with you, Dr. Campbell, on Point of Inquiry (another great podcast). Now I am working on catching up on the episodes…
You made a very brief comment in this episode about romantic love. You said something along the lines that there is discussion around whether romantic love is a culturally learned emotion or not. Would you be able to point me to some reading (or listening) on this? My bias is toward seeing romantic love as something culturally learned, especially when it is funneled into a coupled experience, including marriage. It would be great if there’s some research that can either confirm or challenge my suspicion… Thanks!
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