The Nature of Emotions

Author(s):Robert Plutchik
Source:American Scientist. 89.4 (July 2001): p344.
Document Type:Article

Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2001 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

http://www.americanscientist.org/

Full Text:
Human emotions have deep evolutionary roots, a fact that may explain their complexity and
provide tools for clinical practice

Almost everyone agrees that the study of emotion is one of the most confused (and still open)
chapters in the history of psychology. By one estimate, more than 90 definitions of "emotion"
were proposed over the course of the 20th century. If there is little consensus on the meaning of
the term, it is no wonder that there is much disagreement among contemporary theoreticians
concerning the best way to conceptualize emotion and interpret its role in life.

In everyday human existence we conceive of an emotion--anger, despair, joy, grief--as a

feeling, an inner state. The internal experience of emotion is highly personal and often
confusing, particularly because several emotions may be experienced at the same time.
Imagine, then, how difficult the objective study of emotion must be. Most of us often censor our
own thoughts and feelings, and we have learned to be cautious about accepting other people's
comments about their feelings. The empirical study of a psychological phenomenon so complex
and so elaborately cloaked cannot help but present a special challenge.

Compounding the distrust of verbal reports of emotion are the influences of behaviorism and
psychoanalysis on psychological research. The behaviorists of the 20th century believed that the
only truly reliable, objective information obtainable from living creatures was information about
their behavior. A classical behaviorist would hold that emotion is an inner state and thus simply
outside the realm of science. For their part, psychoanalysts have made us aware
that emotionsmay be repressed, inhibited or unconscious, and thus unavailable to introspection.
Finally, language itself introduces ambiguity and does not make it easy to describe
mixed emotions in an unequivocal way. The meaning of emotion terms is often obscure. For
example, many people are not sure about the differences between fear and anxiety, guilt and
shame, or envy and jealousy As a result, we often resort to metaphor to attempt to
describe emotion. Think, for example, of such expressions as "blowing off steam," "hating
someone's guts," "pain in the neck," "lump in the throat" and "a broken heart."

How, then, can emotion be studied and understood? The challenge of developing a theoretical
approach is important, because emotions are an essential part of who we are and how we
survive; emotional distress impels people to seek help, and indeed the primary concern of
psychotherapy is the repair of emotional disorders. To simply declare emotion outside the
bounds of scientific study would be irresponsible.
I believe that a scientific and therapeutically useful understanding of emotions is possible. In
fact, there are several scientific intellectual traditions that have dealt with this issue. There are
an evolutionary (launched by Charles Darwin), a psychophysiological (William James), a
neurological (Walter Cannon) and a psychodynamic tradition (Sigmund Freud), in addition to the
cognitive perspective that began emerging in the 1950s. More recently neurobiological evidence
has begun to inform the discussion; however, identifying the structures of the brain related
to emotion is not a theory of emotion, nor can such a theory be built from a knowledge of the
chemicals involved in mood states, just as an adequate theory of depression cannot be
constructed simply from a knowledge of the availability of serotonin. As the University of Iowa
neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has pointed out, when the amassing of data does not resolve a
complex issue, it may be necessary to find new ways to conceptualize the problem.

In my view evolutionary theory provides a way to unify a number of theoretical perspectives.

Using the tools and methods of evolutionary biology, and pulling together information from other
species, we can put emotions in a functional framework--define them in terms of what their
adaptive function might be, and thus understand better their biological basis and the apparent
connections between them.

Some work along these lines has been widely popularized in recent years: By now we've all
heard authors of best-selling books describe jealousy, love, anxiety and fear in dogs, cats,
chimpanzees, baboons, elephants and lions. The bestiaries of the medieval period contained
detailed descriptions of emotions in animals. The popular appeal of such explanations may lie in
their ability to touch a deep-seated sense of the connectedness of all living things. Although
many psychologists have warned of the dangers of anthropomorphism, recent thinking by
cognitive scientists and others sees this attitude as an outdated prejudice. The Rockefeller
University zoologist Donald Griffin, one of the founders of the field of animal cognition, believes
that the "charge of anthropomorphism is a conceited claim that only our species is capable of
even the simplest conscious thinking." But there is danger in oversimplifying: A sophisticated
understanding is needed to inform clinical practice.

Over the past four decades I have pulled together evidence from various studies to form a
psychoevolutionary theory ofemotion, with the goals of clarifying what emotions are, finding
ways to measure them, relating emotions to other psychological disciplines, and informing the
practice of psychotherapy. Like many concepts in science, emotions can be best understood by
making inferences from certain classes of evidence. Such inferences suggest that emotions or
their evolutionary precursors (or prototypes) can be found among lower animals as well
as human beings, a fact that can provide fascinating evolutionary insights into our emotions,
moods and personality traits. They suggest further that emotion, cognition and action interact in
feedback loops and that emotion can be viewed in a structural model tied to adaptation.

Evolution and Emotion

What we call cognition--the activity of knowing, learning and thinking, of which emotion is a
part--evolved over millions of years. Charles Darwin recognized that the process of evolution by
natural selection applied not only to anatomic structures but also to an animal's "mind" and
expressive behavior--a conclusion that led him to write a book on emotional expression. Those
who have followed Darwin in studying the evolutionary origins of emotion have sought to
understand how emotionsincrease evolutionary fitness for the individual.

As mentioned above, a few evolutionary origins are easy to postulate. Fear and anxiety in people
closely parallel the state of heightened arousal of an animal who senses a predator or a threat to
its offspring, a similarity that has been found in neurochemical, anatomical and imaging studies
that show these states are mediated by the limbic system, the part of the central nervous
system common to lower and higher animals. Love and emotional attachment clearly promote
pair bonding, reproduction and parental investment, basic to evolutionary fitness
in human beings. But the origins of some other emotionsare harder to find. Is there a general
principle that can be applied?

The place to start might be with the definition problem. An emotion is not simply a feeling
state. Emotion is a complex chain of loosely connected events that begins with a stimulus and
includes feelings, psychological changes, impulses to action and specific, goal-directed behavior.
That is to say, feelings do not happen in isolation. They are responses to significant situations in
an individual's life, and often they motivate actions. This definition of emotions allows the
concept to be generalized to lower animals without difficulty. From his studies of
animals, human infants and human adults, Darwin concluded that expressive behaviors
communicate information from one animal to another about what is likely to happen; therefore
they affect the chances of survival of the individual demonstrating the behavior. "Even insects,"
he wrote in his 1872 book, "express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulations."

Extending Darwin's idea a bit, I pro pose that in general, emotions are activated in an individual
when issues of survival are raised in fact or by implication. Such situations include threats,
attacks, poisonous substances or the sighting of a potential mate. The effect of the emotional
state is to create an interaction between the individual and the event or stimulus that
precipitated the emotion. The interaction usually takes the form of an attempt to reduce the
disequilibrium and reestablish a state of comparative rest.

Protozoologist Nicola Ricci of the University of Pisa in Italy pointed out in 1990 that every single-
celled organism, from the blue-green alga to the eukaryote, is a complete, self-sufficient
organism. Single-celled organisms are exposed to daily risks in their environments. They take in
food, excrete waste products, avoid predators, reproduce by exchange of genes in many cases,
seek safe environments and explore their microbiological world. Thus these simple organisms
adapt to many of the same problems as higher, multicellular organisms. Bacteria are capable of
very complex metabolic pathways, and, as Ursula Goodenough detailed in these pages in 1991,
viruses and bacteria have evolved tactics of camouflage, distraction and mimicry. Even plant
cells such as green algae show defensive reactions to touch, and chemical messages signal
everything from alarm to sexual attraction in organisms from bacteria to human beings.

As one moves up the evolutionary ladder, it is remarkable to note that a small number of
developmental genes can radically alter the behavior of cells and change an amoeba into a
multicelled organism. Developmental biologist William Loomis of the University of California, San
Diego, estimated in 1988 that "the important evolutionary differences between a guppy and a
primate probably lie in only a few hundred genes." Along with the genetic continuum, and
evolutionary continuities in structure, function and development, then, it is not surprising that
one can discern a behavioral continuum.

Writing in 1980, the late zoologist John Paul Scott of Bowling Green State University pointed out
that it is the nature of the environment that creates certain functional requirements for all
organisms if they are to survive. Like Ricci's alga, a higher organism must take in nourishment
and eliminate waste products. It must distinguish between predator and prey and between a
potential mate and a potential enemy. It must explore its environment and orient its sense
organs appropriately as it takes in information about the beneficial and harmful aspects of its
immediate world. Organisms that are relatively helpless at birth must have ways of indicating the
need for care and nurturance.

Only a few classes of adaptive behavior, Scott noted, are found in most species and at most
phylogenetic levels. These include eating, the fight-or-flight response, sex, caregiving and
investigation. These patterns might be considered prototype adaptations. The connections
between behavior and inner states and processes are less obvious. Yet such connections can be
made by inference from a variety of evidence. This evidence includes knowledge of stimulating
conditions, the effects of behavioral acts, knowledge of typical behavior patterns of the individual
and species, choices made when alternatives exist and reactions of other members of one's
group or species. A single overt display of emotionscan reflect complex states such as approach
and avoidance, attack and flight, sex and aggression, or fear and pleasure. It is not necessarily
easy to detect an emotional substrate in the behavior of lower animals, but neither is it
necessary to exclude the possibility. Emotion is far more complex than the subjective experience
familiar to a human adult, and the concept of emotion can be applied to lower animals as well
as human beings. Emotions have an inherent complexity that is in part related to their
evolutionary history.

Cognition, Emotion and Evolution

Any organism must determine, on the basis of limited information, whether there is food, a mate
or danger in its environment. Depending on the prediction made, the organism makes a decision
to escape, to attack, to eat or to mate. The complex processes that go on in the service of
biological need include receiving sensory input, evaluating it, capturing the important aspects of
the information in symbols and comparing the new information with memory stores. Predicting
the characteristics of environments enables organisms to prepare for those environments.

Psychologist Ulric Neisser of Cornell University compared human beings with computing
machines in a seminal article in 1963. He suggested that cognitive functions serve emotions and
biological needs. Information from the environment, he says, is evaluated in terms of its ability
to satisfy or frustrate needs. What is particularly significant is that each new cognitive experience
that is biologically important is connected with an emotional reaction such as fear, pleasure,
pain, disgust or depression. From the point of view of evolution, cognition developed in order to
predict the future more effectively. Thehuman brain, which has evolved as an adaptation to
changing and difficult environments, has now helped create the very environment to which it
must continue to adapt.

If emotion is a chain of events, cognition is generally near the beginning of the chain. This is
considered an important point in the psychological community, which has put a good deal of
effort into answering the "what comes first?" question, ever since the American psychologist-
philosopher William James in 1884 framed the question this way: Is it the feeling of emotion or
the physiological changes that are part of emotion? This is actually a
pseudoproblem. Emotions are not simply linear events, but rather are feedback processes. The
function of emotion is to restore the individual to a state of equilibrium when unexpected or
unusual events create disequilibrium. Even if cognitions are generally at the beginning of the
chain of events, they can be influenced by events appearing later in the chain-- states of arousal,
say, or ego defenses through a feedback process. Stimulus events, either external or internal (as
in dreams), act as primary triggers that start the emotion process going.

The biological aspects of this process have been the subject of considerable recent study. Animal
research by Joseph E. LeDoux of New York University has revealed that the conditioned fear
response involves several neural pathways with different latencies. Damasio has traced the
events in an initial defensive response (fear): The key features of a dangerous animal or event-
perhaps color, speed of movement, certain sounds-are detected and signaled to the amygdala, a
part of the limbic system deep in the brain. This process is very rapid and is not a conscious one.
Signals from the amygdala to prefrontal areas and other locations precipitate the conscious
feelings associated with an emotion.

Feeling states tend to be followed by impulses to action. Emotion can cause one's muscles to
tense; it can be ex pressed as a facial gesture, clenched fist or an action such as running,
attacking or yelling. Impulses to action are not always followed by action, as clinicians know-
often for fear of retaliation or embarrassment. Even when they are, overt behavior is not the end
of the emotion process.

Such behavior generally has an effect on the stimulus or condition that started the chain of
events in the first place. For example, running from a source of threat reduces the threat and
tends to reestablish the condition that existed be fore the threat. Similarly, if someone loses a
parent, crying and grieving tend to elicit supportive and helpful contacts from members of the
grieving person's social group and, at least in a symbolic way, provide a sort of reattachment
with the lost parent and thus a change in the feeling state.

Overall, emotion is a kind of homeostatic process in which behavior mediates progress toward
equilibrium; I call it a behavioral homeostatic, negative feedback system. Emotion is a chain of
events made up of feedback loops. Feelings and behavior can affect cognition, just as cognition
can influence feeling.

At the heart of all these descriptions is the idea that emotions have a function in the lives of
individuals. This idea arises from an evolutionary perspective, is consistent with psychodynamic
thinking and is becoming increasingly accepted in contemporary writings. For example, young
organisms require food, protection and transportation. Crying is a major method for getting such
care. Fear protects the self, initiates withdrawal and allows general functioning to continue.
Shame leads to remorse and a decrease in the probability of repetition of the shameful act.

These examples imply that emotions are part of a social regulation process. Evolutionary theory
reminds us that the interests of different individuals are often in conflict: males versus females,
parents versus children, brothers versus brothers, group versus group. Genes are "selfish" and
concerned with self-maintenance and self-reproduction. Social interactions and communications
reflect this conflict. Listening and speaking are regulated by direct and subtle expressions
of emotion--smiles, eye contact or looking away, nods, postural shifts, vocalizations, passive
questions and implicit commands ("Why don't you wear a hearing aid?").

Much social interaction involves individuals in different hierarchical positions. In such situations,
during conversation there is often a censoring of rebellious thoughts, and a covert competition of
ideas. An individual may experience feelings of defiance or may accept a submissive
position. Emotions, at both conscious and unconscious levels, regulate such social processes.

Another way to conceptualize emotions as a social-regulation process is in terms of the views of

animal communication proposed by Eugene Morton of the Smithsonian Institution and his
colleagues. They point out that communication is an assessment/management process aimed at
survival. Communication signals are selected in evolution because they substitute for more risky
behavior such as fighting.
California ground squirrels stimulate a rattlesnake to rattle by kicking earth at it. This is done
because squirrels use the sound of rattling to assess the snake's size and body temperature, two
factors that determine how dangerous the snake is to their pups. With many animals, distress
calls are adaptive because they may startle a predator into letting go, may attract the attention
of other conspecifics to mob the predator, or may attract a larger predator to compete and
possibly allow escape. However, it is not always easy to determine the adaptive nature of a given
signal.

Emotions are part of the management of the process. Anger, for example, intimidates,
influences others to do something you wish them to do, energizes an individual for attack or
defense and spaces the participants in a conflict.

Modeling the Emotions

I have used the term "emotion" as a single, general term for a group of phenomena. As complex
processes with functional value both in communication and in increasing the individual's chances
of survival, emotions represent proximate methods to achieve evolutionary fitness. To integrate
many of the things known about emotions, model-making is useful.

In English there are a few hundred emotion words, and they tend to fall into families based on
similarity. I have found that the primary emotions can be conceptualized in a fashion analogous
to a color wheel--placing similar emotions close together and opposites 180 degrees apart, like
complementary colors. Other emotions are mixtures of the primary emotions, just as some
colors are primary and others made by mixing the primary colors. Such "circumplex" model ing
can be used as an analytical tool in understanding personality as well, and the similarity between
the two models is important. I have extended the circumplex model into a third dimension,
representing the intensity of emotions, so that the total so-called structural model
of emotions is shaped like a cone.

The notion of a circumplex model is not my invention, nor is it new. Social psychologist William
McDougall noted the parallel between emotions and colors in 1921, writing that "the color
sensations present, like the emotions, an indefinitely great variety of qualities shading into one
another by imperceptible gradients...." The first circumplex model was one developed by Brown
University psychologist Harold Schlosberg in 1941, after he had asked research participants to
judge the emotionsposed in a standard set of pictures of facial expression. Schlosberg added the
intensity dimension to his model. My own model was proposed in 1958, when I suggested eight
basic bipolar emotions: joy versus sorrow, anger versus fear, acceptance versus disgust and
surprise versus expectancy.

Over the centuries, from Descartes to the present, philosophers and psychologists have proposed
anywhere from 3 to 11emotions as primary or basic. All the lists include fear, anger and
sadness; most include joy, love and surprise. There is no unequivocal way to settle on a precise
number, although factor-analytic studies, similarity-scaling studies, child-development studies
and cross-cultural studies are useful. But in the final analysis, this is a theoretical decision to be
evaluated in terms of the inferences and insights to which it leads, the research it suggests and
the extent to which empirical data are consistent with it. The psychoevolutionary theory assumes
there are eight basic emotion dimensions arranged in four pairs.

If there are eight basic emotion dimensions (each with a number of synonyms or related terms),
how can we account for the total language of emotions? Various published studies imply that the
few hundred emotion words tend to fall into families based on similarity. If we follow the pattern
used in color theory and re search, we can obtain judgments about combinations--
the emotions that result when two or more fundamental emotions are combined, in the same
way that red and blue make purple. Judges in these studies have agreed that mixing joy and
acceptance produces the mixed emotion of love; disgust plus anger produces hatred or hostility.
Such mixtures have been called primary dyads in the theory. One can continue on this way and
account for hundreds of emotion terms by mixing two or more emotions at different levels of
intensity.

As noted above, it is interesting and perhaps important that one of the hypotheses generated
from this structural model is that personality traits should have a similar structure. Again we can
take cues from language. Although personality is usually taught in universities as if it had little or
nothing to do with emotions, words such as gloomy, resent fill, anxious and calm can describe
personality traits as well as emotional states. An individual can feel depressed, or be a depressed
person, feel nervous or be a nervous person. Often people are able to measure both emotional
states and personality traits using the same checklist of adjectives, with a simple change in
instructions. When research participants are asked how they feel now, or within the past few
days, the instruction asks for a self-report of an emotional state or a mood. But they can be
asked how they usually feel, a question that yields information about personality traits. At the
extremes are pathological states such as mania and paranoia--but even these can be conceived
as extreme expressions of such basic emotions as sadness, joy and disgust. Thus personality
traits may be conceptualized as being derived from mixtures of emotions. With my colleague
Hope Conte, I have been able to find a circumplex structure for certain classes of personality
traits.

Furthermore, in recent years there have been more than 100 published studies concerned with
identifying personality characteristics in lower animals. Of course lower animals probably should
be said to have temperament rather than "personality," but extraversion, emotional stability and
agreeable ness have shown considerable generality across species. Samuel Gosling of the
University of Texas at Austin and Oliver John of the University of California, Berkeley, have
identified extraversion and emotional stability as characteristics of animals as low on the
phylogenetic scale as guppies and octopuses.

Some Implications

An evolutionary framework supplies the study of emotions with such concepts as functional
thinking, the generality of mechanisms across phyla, developmental theory (to explain, for
instance, attachment), and the concepts of inclusive fitness and proximate and ultimate
causation.

Happily, in combination with the sequential, structural and derivative systems described above,
evolutionary the ory can provide not only a way of organizing data in the fields of emotion,
personality and psychopathology, but also new tools for clinical practice.

A therapist must uncover and identify emotions. An evolutionary approach suggests that the
subjective feeling states ofemotion (the labels they are given) are usually more ambiguous and
obscure than are the associated impulses to action. We need not insist like the behaviorists that
only overt behavior is suit able for study; however, impulses to action may be probed whether or
not the action takes place.

In addition, successful adaptation im plies the ability to feel and express all emotions in
appropriate settings. Applied toemotion, the societal dictate that "there is a time and a place for
everything" actually encapsulates the idea that allemotions can be adaptive
within human society. It is a matter of sorting out the specific circumstances in
which emotionscan sometimes fail in their adaptive tasks

The psychoevolutionary theory has guided the development of tests for measuring moods,
personality traits, ego defenses and coping styles. It has also proposed a connection
between emotions and the existential crises that all human beings are subject to--those
involving hierarchy, territoriality, identity and temporality.

Robert Plutchik is professor emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct
professor at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He
has authored or coauthored more than 260 articles, 45 chapters and eight books and has edited
seven books. His research interests include the study of emotions, the study of suicide and
violence and the study of the psychotherapy process. Address for Plutchik: 4505 Deer Creek
Boulevard, Sarasota, FL 34238. Internet: proban@home.com

Bibliography

Agosta, W. C. 1992. Chemical Communication: The Language of Pheromones. New York: W. H.

Freeman.

Damasio, A. R. 1994. Descartes' Error New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Darwin, C. 1965. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. (Original work published 1872.)

Goodall, J. 1987. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap.

Goodenough, U. W. 1991. Deception by pathogens. American Scientist 79:344-355.

Gosling, S. D., and O. P. John. 1999. Personality dimensions in nonhuman animals: A

crossspecies review. Current Directions in Psychological Science 8:69-75.

Griffin, D. R. 1992 Animal Minds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kessin, R. H., and M. N. Van Lookeren Campagne. 1992. The development of social amoeba.
American Scientist 80:556-565.

LeDoux, J. E. 1998. The Emotional Brain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Loomis, W. E 1988. Four Billion Years: An Essay on the Evolution of Genes and Organisms.
Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates.

Neisser, U. 1963. The imitation of man by machines. Science 139:193-197.

Owings, D. H., and E. S. Morton. 1998. Animal Vocal Communication: A New Approach. New
York: Cambridge University Press.

Plutchik, R. 1980. Emotions: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis. New York: Harper & Row.

Plutchik, R 1989. Measuring emotions and their derivatives. In Emotion: Theory, Research, and
Experience: Vol. 4. The Measurement of Emotions (pp. 1-35), ed. R. Plutchik and H. Kellerman.
San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press.

Plutchik, R. 1994. The Psychology and Biology of Emotion. New York: HarperCollins.
Plutchik, R. 1997. The circumplex as a general model of the structure of emotions and
personality. In Circumplex Models of Personality and Emotions (pp. 17-46), ed. R. Plutdchik and
H. R. Conte. Washington: American Psychological Association Press.

Plutchik, R. 2000. Emotions in the Practice of Psychotherapy: Clinical Implications of Affect

Theories. Washington: American Psychological Association Press.

Ricci, N. 1990. The behavior of ciliated protozoa. Animal Behavior 40:1048-1069.

Scott, J. P. 1980. The function of emotions in behavioral systems: A systems theory analysis.
In Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience: Vol. 1. Theories of Emotion (pp. 35-56), ed. R.
Plutchik and H. Kellerman. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press.

Stossel, T. R. 1990. How cells crawl. American Scientist 78:408-423.

Wayne, R. 1993. Excitability in plant cells. American Scientist 81:140-151.

Figure 5. Although emotional substrates

cannot always be discerned in
the behavior of non-human animals,
many stimuli are experienced by
people and animals alike and
result in prototypical behavior
followed by, generally, the
reestablishment of an equilibrium
state that might not have been
achieved without the impulse
precipitated by the inner state.
In human experience it is common
to use the term "emotion" to
describe the feeling state, but in
fact emotion is considerably more
complex.
stimulus cognition feeling overt effect
even state behavior
threat "danger" fear escape safety
obstacle "enemy" anger attack destroy
obstacle
gain of "possess" joy retain or gain
valued object repeat resources
loss of "abandonment" sadness cry reattach to
valued object lost object
member of "friend" acceptance groom mutual support
one's group
unpalatable "poison" disgust vomit eject poison
object
new territory "examine" expectation map knowledge
of territory
unexpected "what is it?" surprise stop gain time
event to orient
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
Plutchik, Robert. "The Nature of Emotions." American Scientist 89.4 (2001): 344. Academic OneFile. Web.
19 Oct. 2014.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA76442698&v=2.1&u=inbhc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=5ec
17072da6f44249a693bc39b136892

Gale Document Number: GALE|A76442698

The selfish book
Author(s):Robert Costanza
Source:BioScience. 48.4 (Apr. 1998): p318.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 1998 University of California Press
http://ucpressjournals.com/journal.asp?j=bio

Full Text:
Why do humans behave in the uniquely cooperative way we do? This question has puzzled
thinkers for centuries. To address it, zoologist Matt Ridley has produced an engaging and
entertaining synthesis of a broad range of theoretical and empirical information from both the
natural and social sciences. The ground covered includes such diverse territories as social
insects, Adam Smith's ideas on the division of labor, the prisoner's dilemma in its many
incarnations, the evolutionary advantages of emotions, reciprocal blood sharing among vampire
bats, David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage in trade, and the ever-interesting social
behavior of nonhuman primates.

Given the goals of this broad-ranging synthesis, I was hoping for something more than the
"Russian doll" model of reductionist science - the belief that the explanation for complex
phenomenon always resides at the lowest level. For example, because society is made up of
individuals, reductionists argue that explanations of social behavior that originate at the
individual level are the most "fundamental." Although conceptually simple and therefore
appealing, the reductionist approach continues to come under heavy criticism from many
quarters (Williams 1997). One of the fundamental debates in science continues to center on just
how much of the behavior of complex systems can be explained from the behavior of the parts
without recourse to higher levels of organization (Wilson and Botkin 1990).

In many ways, Ridley does go beyond the Russian doll model, but, interestingly, he fails to
acknowledge this fact, preferring instead to leave the (not quite explicit) impression that his
examples and synthesis fully support the reductionist approach. But this interpretation is
certainly not self-evident. For example, one chapter focuses on John Maynard Smith's model of
"hawks and doves," a game similar to the more famous "prisoner's dilemma," in which
cooperative behavior can evolve even in situations in which the optimal strategy in single
encounters is to defect. Cooperation can win out if repeated encounters with the same
individuals occur and if it is possible to remember what the other individual did during previous
encounters.

Although Ridley obviously thinks that such game theoretical models of the evolution of
cooperative behavior through reciprocity support the reductionist approach, Maynard Smith
himself contends that "Game theoretical models move up rather than down the reductionist
scale" (Williams 1997). Can the behavior of groups (particularly their cooperation with each
other) be explained completely from the behavior of individuals (or more fundamentally their
genes)? Or is something more required? Ridley seems to think that if something more is
required, then the theory does not qualify as an explanation, foreclosing even the possibility of
higher level selection. However, I, for one, do not find his arguments convincing.

Consider an analogy in written language. Individual letters make up all (western) written
languages. One could thus argue - taking the reductionist line - that all meaning in language
must be reducible to letters, the fundamental units from which all language is built. The
absurdity of this conclusion should be obvious. Although letters are, indeed, the building blocks
of written language, it is the pattern of letters combining into words, words into sentences, and
sentences into complete thoughts that give language its meaning. These patterns are the
product of constraints and "selection" imposed at the level of words, sentences, and so on.
Likewise, cells, individuals, species, communities, and ecosystems can all be considered as larger
patterns built from component parts. The information content in these patterns cannot be
reduced completely to the blocks that are used to form them. It makes no more sense to reduce
all life to the behavior of individuals or their genes than it does to reduce all written language to
the letters from which it is built. One needs to understand the complex patterning of life as a
multiscale phenomenon, with selection occurring simultaneously at multiple scales.

Reductionists are right to stress that genes and individuals cannot be ignored, but they are
wrong to contend that all other factors can be ignored. In human societies, there must be a
consistency between individual goals and social goals; otherwise, a "social trap" occurs with the
goals of the individual taking precedence over the goals of the society, which results in the social
goals not being met (Costanza 1987). But this fact does not mean that individual goals can
completely explain social goals. Selection at the social level still exists, but it goes on in
conjunction with selection at lower levels and must be concordant with those lower levels. Just
because the results of selection are stored and passed on in the genes does not mean that
"selfish genes" control the process any more than the fact that culture is stored in libraries
means that "selfish books" control culture, trying to push copies of themselves into the future.

Ridley also focuses on only two paths to cooperative behavior: reciprocity and kin selection (and
kin selection is given only passing reference). Both paths can be explained within the reductionist
"selfish gene" paradigm (Dawkins 1976). But, as Dugatkin (1997) points out, there are two
other, probably more common and important, paths to cooperation: byproduct mutualism and
group selection. Although group selection certainly remains controversial, Ridley's out-of-hand
dismissal of this path to cooperation is not warranted. For example, there is credible theoretical
and empirical evidence for group (nonkin) selection in foraging ants (Rissing et al. 1989, Seger
1989, Wilson 1990, Wilson and Sober 1994).

An even easier road to cooperation is through byproduct mutualism (Connor 1995), which occurs
when the immediate benefits of cooperation outweigh the immediate costs. Some scientists
argue that this path should not even be considered to be cooperation, because there is no
temptation to cheat. But for this very reason, it may well be the most common path to
cooperation (Dugatkin 1997). Perhaps cooperation is so common because in many situations it
simply pays - directly - to cooperate, even without the complex reciprocal, kin, and group
dynamics that have been developed to explain those more difficult situations in which
cooperation is not so obviously or directly beneficial. But byproduct mutualism is not even
mentioned in Ridley's book.
Ridley's final chapter, entitled "Trust: in Which the Author Suddenly and Rashly Draws Political
Lessons," explains much about the reasons for the interpretations and omissions in previous
chapters. Ridley reveals himself to be a political conservative of the Margaret Thatcher variety,
even quoting Ms. Thatcher's notorious views on the subject at hand: "'There's no such thing as
society. There are individual men and women, and there are families'" (p. 261). To this idea, he
adds his own political lesson: "If we are to recover social harmony and virtue, if we are to build
back into society the virtues that made it work for us, it is vital that we reduce the power of the
state" (p. 264). Ridley believes that humanscooperate instinctively and that the organized state
only confuses and corrupts those instincts: "The roots of social order are in our heads, where we
possess the instinctive capacities for creating not a perfectly harmonious and virtuous society,
but a better one than we have at present" (p. 264). But if this assertion is true, why did states,
governments, religions, and other cultural institutions and traditions need to evolve in the first
place?

The synthesis Ridley offers (and even more the things left out) do not support his rashly drawn
political lessons. People behave cooperatively for a number of complex reasons, some of which
have become embedded in our genes and "instincts," and others of which remain at the level of
learned cultural responses. These cooperative behaviors all lead to individuals in the society
being better off, but understanding this process requires a multiscale perspective. Humans have
the instinctive capacity to cooperate if such behavior is consistent with individual short-term
interests, but religion, government, cultural traditions, and other mechanisms are needed to
adjust the short-term individual incentive structures to be consistent with longer-term social
benefits (Costanza 1987). Selection occurs at several levels of organization (even though the
results may be stored and transmitted through genes and culture). Although cooperation may
reflect enlightened self-interest, the source of the light is society itself and its own survival.

ROBERT COSTANZA Center for Environmental Science, Zoology Department, and Institute for
Ecological Economics University of Maryland Solomons, MD 20688-0038

References cited

Connor RC. 1995. The benefits of mutualism: A conceptual framework. Biological Reviews 70:
427-457.

Costanza R. 1987. Social traps and environmental policy: Why do problems persist when there
are technical solutions available? BioScience 37: 407-412.

Dawkins R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dugatkin LA. 1997. The evolution of cooperation: Four paths to the evolution and maintenance of
cooperative behavior. BioScience 47: 355-362.

Rissing S, Pollock G, Higgins M, Hagen R, Smith D. 1989. Foraging specialization without

relatedness or dominance among co-founding ant queens. Nature 338: 420-422.

Seger J. 1989. All for one, one for all, that is our device. Nature 338: 374-375.

Williams N. 1997. Biologists cut reductionist approach down to size. Science 277: 476-477.

Wilson DS. 1990. Weak altruism, strong group selection. Oikos 59:135-140

Wilson DS, Sober E. 1994. Re-introducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17: 585-654.
Wilson MV, Botkin DB. 1990. Models of simple microcosms: Emergent properties and the effect
of complexity on stability. American Naturalist 135: 414-434.

Abstract:
Cooperative behavior in humans is instinctive and the state only corrupts these instincts. Social
order is rooted in man's head and thus, he is capable of creating a society a lot better than that
existing today.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Costanza, Robert. "The selfish book." BioScience 48.4 (1998): 318+. Academic OneFile. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
Document URL

The solace of patterns: the strange attractors that define life's

stages give shape even to grief
Author(s):Robert M. Sapolsky
Source:The Sciences. 34.6 (November-December 1994): p14.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 1994 New York Academy of Sciences
http://www.nyas.org/

Full Text:
A SHORT TIME AGO MY FATHER died, having spent far too many of his last years in pain and
degeneration. Although I had expected his death and tried to prepare myself for it, when the
time came it naturally turned out that you really can't prepare. A week afterward I found myself
back at work, bludgeoned by emotions that swirled around a numb core of unreality--a feeling
of disconnection from the events that had just taken place on the other side of the continent, of
disbelief that it was really him frozen in that nightmare of stillness. The members of my
laboratory were solicitous. One, a medical student, asked me how I was doing, and I replied,
"Well, today it seems as if I must have imagined it all." "That makes sense," she said. "Don't
forget about DABDA."

DABDA. In 1969 the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published a landmark book, On Death
and Dying. Drawing on her research with terminally ill people and their families, she described
the process whereby people mourn the death of others and, when impending, of themselves.
Most of us, she observed, go through a fairly well defined sequence of stages. First we deny the
death is happening. Then we become angry at the unfairness of it all. We pass through a stage
of irrational bargaining, with the doctors, with God: Just let this not be fatal and I will change my
ways. Please, just wait until Christmas. There follows a stage of depression and, if one is
fortunate, the final chapter, serene acceptance. The sequence is not ironclad; individuals may
skip certain stages, experience them out of order or regress to earlier ones. DABDA, moreover,
is generally thought to give a better description of one's own preparation for dying than of one's
mourning the demise of someone else. Nevertheless, there is a broadly recognized consistency in
the overall pattern of mourning: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I was stuck
at stage one, right on schedule.

Brevity is the soul of DABDA. A few years ago I saw that point brilliantly dramatized on
television--on, of all programs, The Simpsons. It was the episode in which Homer, the father,
accidentally eats a poisonous fish and is told he has twenty-four hours to live. There ensues a
thirty-second sequence in which the cartoon character races through the death and dying stages,
something like this: "No way! I'm not dying." He ponders a second, then grabs the doctor by the
neck. "Why you little...." He trembles in fear, then pleads, "Doc, get me outta this! I'll make it
worth your while." Finally he composes himself and says, "Well, we all gotta go sometime." I
thought it was hilarious. Homer substituted fear for depression and got it on the other side of
anger. Even so, here was a cartoon suitable to be watched happily by children, and the writers
had sneaked in a parody of Kubler-Ross.

But for sheer conciseness, of course, Homer Simpson's vignette has nothing on DABDA. That's
why medical students, my laboratory colleague included, memorize the acronym along with
hundreds of other mnemonic devices in preparation for their national board examinations. What
strikes me now is the power of those letters to encapsulate human experience. My father, by
dint of having been human, was unique; thus was my relationship to him, and thus must be my
grieving. And yet I come up with something reducible to a medical school acronym. Poems,
paintings, symphonies by the most creative artists who ever lived have been born out of
mourning; yet, on some level, they all sprang from the pattern invoked by two pedestrian
syllables of pseudo-English. We cry, we rage, we demand that the oceans' waves stop, that the
planets halt their movements in the sky, all because the earth will no longer be graced by the
one who sang lullabies as no one else could; yet that, too, is reducible to DABDA. Why should
grief be so stereotypical?

SCIENTISTS WHO STUDY HUMAN THOUGHT and behavior have discerned many stereotyped,
structured stages through which all of us move at various times. Some of the sequences are
obvious, their logic a quick study. It is no surprise that infants learn to crawl before they take
their first tentative steps, and only later learn to run. Other sequences are more subtle.
Freudians claim that in normal development the child undergoes the invariant transition from a
so-called oral stage to an anal stage to a genital stage, and they attribute various aspects of
psychological dysfunction in the adult to an earlier failure to move successfully from one stage to
the next.

Similarly, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget mapped stages of cognitive development. For
example, he noted, there is a stage at which children begin to grasp the concept of object
permanence: Before that developmental transition, a toy does not exist once it is removed from
the child's sight. Afterward, the toy exists--and the child will look for it--even when it is no
longer visible. Only at a reliably later stage do children begin to grasp concepts such as the
conservation of volume--that two pitchers of different shapes can hold the same quantity of
liquid. The same developmental patterns occur across numerous cultures, and so the sequence
seems to describe the universal way that human beings learn to comprehend a cognitively
complex world.

The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg mapped the stereotyped stages people undergo in
developing morally. At one early stage of life, moral decisions are based on rules and on the
motivation to avoid punishment: actions considered for their effects on oneself. Only at a later
stage are decisions made on the basis of a respect for the community: actions considered for
their effects on others. Later still, and far more rarely, some people develop a morality driven by
a set of their own internalized standards, derived from a sense of what is right and what is wrong
for all possible communities. The pattern is progressive: people who now act out of conscience
invariably, at some earlier stage of life, believed that you don't do bad things because you might
get caught.
The American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson discerned a sequence of psychosocial development,
framing it as crises that a person resolves or fails to resolve at each stage. For infants, the issue
is whether one attains a basic attitude of trust toward the world; for adolescents, it is identity
versus identity confusion; for young adults, intimacy versus isolation; for adults, generativity
versus stagnation; and for the aged, peaceful acceptance and integrity versus despair. Erikson's
pioneering insight that one's later years represent a series of transitions that must be
successfully negotiated is reflected in a quip by the geriatrician Walter M. Bortz II of Stanford
University Medical School. Asked whether he was interested in curing aging, Bortz responded,
"No, I'm not interested in arrested development."

Those are some of the patterns we all are reported or theorized to have in common, across many
settings and cultures. I think such conceptualizations are often legitimate, not just artificial
structures that scientists impose on inchoate reality. Why should we share such patterning? It is
certainly not for lack of alternatives. As living beings, we represent complex, organized systems-
-an eddy in the random entropy of the universe. When all the possibilities are taken into account,
it is supremely unlikely for elements to assemble themselves into molecules, for molecules to
form cells, for vast assemblages of cells to form us. How much more unlikely, it seems, that such
complex organisms conform to such relatively simple patterns of behavior, of development, of
thought.

ONE WAY OF COMING TO GRIPS WITH the properties of complex systems is through a field of
mathematics devoted to the study of so-called cellular automata. The best way of explaining its
style of analysis is by example. Imagine a long row of boxes--some black, some white--arranged
to form some initial pattern, a starting stage. The row of boxes is to give rise to a second row,
just below the first. The way that takes place in a cellular automation is that each box in the first
row is subjected to a set of reproduction rules. For example, one rule might stipulate that a black
box in the first row gives rise to a black box immediately below it in the next row, only if exactly
one of its two nearest neighbors is black. Other rules might apply to a black box flanked by two
white boxes or two black boxes. Once the set of rules is applied to each box in the first row, a
second row of black and white boxes is generated; then the rules are applied again to each box
in the second row to generate a third row and so on.

Metaphorically, each row represents one generation, one tick of a clock. A properly programmed
computer could track any possible combination of colored boxes, following any conceivable set of
reproduction rules, down through the generations. In the vast majority of cases, somewhere
down the line it would end up with a row of boxes all the same color. After that, the single color
would repeat itself forever. In other words, the line would go extinct.

Return now to my earlier question: How can it be, in this entropic world, that we human beings
share so many stable patterns--one nose; two eyes; a reliable lag time before we learn object
permanence; happier adulthoods if we become confident about our identities as adolescents; a
tendency to find it hard to believe in tragedy when it strikes? What keeps us from following an
almost infinite number of alternative developmental paths? The studies of cellular automata
provide a hint.

Not all complex patterns, it turns out, eventually collapse into extinction. A few combinations of
starting states and reproduction rules beat the odds and settle down into mature stable patterns
that continue down through the generations forever. In general, it is impossible to predict
whether a given starting state will survive, let alone which pattern it will generate after, say, n
generations. The only way to tell is to crank it through the computer and see. It has been shown,
however, that a surprisingly small number of such mature patterns are possible.

A similar tendency in living systems has long been known to evolutionary biologists. They call it
convergence. Among the staggering number of species on this planet, there are only a few
handfuls of solutions to the problem of how to locomote, how to conserve fluids in a hot
environment, how to store and mobilize energy. And among the staggering variety ofhumans, it
may be a convergent feature of our complexity that there are a small number of ways in which
we grow through life or mourn its inevitabilities.

IN AN ENTROPIC WORLD, WE CAN TAKE a common comfort from our common patterns, and
there is often consolation in attributing such patterns to forces larger than ourselves. As an
atheist, I have long taken an almost religious solace from a story by the Argentine minimalist
Jorge Luis Borges. In his famous short story, The Library of Babel, Borges describes the world as
a library filled with an unimaginably vast number of books, each with the same number of pages
and the same number of letters on each page. The library contains a single copy of every
possible book, every possible permutation of letters. People spend their lives sorting through this
ocean of gibberish for the incalculably rare books whose random arrays of letters form something
meaningful, searching above all else for the single book (which must exist) that explains
everything. And of course, given the completeness of the library, in addition to that perfect book,
there must also be one that convincingly disproves the conclusions put forth in it, and yet
another book that refutes the malicious solipsisms of the second book, plus hundreds of
thousands of books that differ from any of those three by a single letter or a comma.

The narrator writes in his old age, in an isolation brought about by the suicides of people who
have been driven to despair by the futility of wandering through the library. In this parable of the
search for meaning amid entropy, Borges concludes: Those who judge [the library to be finite]
postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come
to an end--which is absurd. Those who imagine it to be without limit forget that the possible
number of books does have such a limit. I venture to suggest this solution to the ancient
problem: The library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any
direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same
disorder (which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order). My solitude is gladdened by this
elegant hope.

IT APPEARS THAT AMID THE ORDER WITH which we mature and decline, there is an order to our
mourning. And my own recent solitude is gladdened by that elegant hope, in at least two ways.
One is inward-looking. This stereotypy, this ordering, brings the promise of solace in the
predicted final stage: if one is fortunate, DABDA ends in A.

Another hope looks outward, to a world whose tragedies are inexorably delivered from its
remotest corners to our nightly news. Look at the image of a survivor of some carnage and,
knowing nothing of her language, culture, beliefs or circumstances, you can still recognize in the
fixed action patterns of her facial muscles the unmistakable lineaments of grief. That instant
recognition, the universal predictability of certain aspects of human beings, whether in a facial
expression or in the stages of mourning, is an emblem of our kinship and an imperative of
empathy.

Abstract:
The author's personal experience with grief, on the death of his father, provides an opportunity
to appreciate the universal patterns of grief. Though it seems limiting to reduce
all human behavior to patterns and stereotypes, the similarity of behavior provides connections
between people from varied cultures. Evolutionary biologists call the tendency of
complex human beings to follow a few set patterns of behavior convergence. This convergence
becomes an effective tool is facing life's complexities.

Marijuana's effect on emotion

Source:UWIRE Text. (Oct. 16, 2014): p1.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2014 Uloop Inc.
http://uwire.com/?s=UWIRE+Text&x=26&y=14&=Go

Full Text:
Byline: Stephanie Mason

Since the passing of Amendment 64 in 2012, researchers have been active in working to
understand marijuana and its effects on the human brain.

Lucy Troup from Colorado State University's Psychology Department is conducting research on
the impact marijuana usage has on an individual's emotional state.

"The bottom line is it appears that marijuana use does affect the brain's ability to process
emotional information," Troup said.

Troup uses a brain activity measuring tool called the electroencephalogram to look at brain
function. The EEG measures something called the P300, which is associated in the brain with
emotional responses.

"The methods I use allow me to look more closely with how behavior is linked to brain
mechanism with EEG," Troup said. "When you make a positive stimulus or a negative stimulus, it
changes with the size of that waveform."

In Troup's lab, images showing emotional expressions are shown to participants being monitored
by the EEG. She looks at how self-reported marijuana users identify with
the emotions displayed.

An EEG scan gives levels of P300 activity in the brain. A lower P300 is also called 'depressed',
which indicates lower levels of emotion recognition.

The tests are done on three groups: people who have never used marijuana, people who have
occasionally used and people who are chronic users.

"We have seen really interesting results," Troup said. "We have a definite deficit for the usage
amounts. Those who are chronic users have a very depressed P300, those who have used it once
or twice have a P300 that falls in the mid range."

Troup uses EEG to better understand how emotions are processed in the human brain.

"We look for biomarkers: indicators in brain activity that suggests difference between people who
present with emotional disorders and those that don't ... just looking at what the brain does in
regards to emotion and emotion processing," Troup said.
The Troup lab is working on analyzing which emotions result in a depressed P300 level in the
chronic user's brain.

"We seem to be seeing brain mechanism effects that suggest that marijuana is changing how the
brain processes emotional information," Troup said. "What is less clear, and what we are starting
to investigate further, is how that affects behavior."

According to Troup, there have been a great deal of stories circulating mass media about
behavioral changes of marijuana users, which prompted her interest in the study.

Troup also gained initial interest in marijuana research after Amendment 64 was passed.

"There is no such thing as a safe drug," Troup said. "Caffeine is not safe, any drug or anything
you put into your body ... has some sort of risk attached to it. The idea that something was
completely safe sort of mystified me."

Marijuana usage is also going to be looked at as a possible depression treatment. Troup is

interested in seeing if depression can be treated with marijuana. Her research will soon include
EEG scans on a group that uses medical marijuana to treat their depression.

"Marijuana does have some really interesting applications medically," Troup said. "The reasons
people were asking for (marijuana) were not necessarily the ones best treated by
endocannabinoids."

According to Troup, people who use marijuana have varied reactions to the drug's effects. The
research is looking at how individual users can be affected on different levels.

"Some people may be able to cope quite well with these deficits and not have issues with
interpreting emotional expressions, but for some people, this may be a problem," Troup said.

Troup's lab is not the only marijuana-related research going on at CSU. Kevin Walters is a
second year graduate student working with the physical and psychological health that goes along
with working in the new marijuana industry.

"As this legalization is occurring we notice this industry of marijuana workers that is just growing
rapidly before our eyes," Walters said. "Essentially what our project is aiming to do is to access
potential issues and occupational health and well being in the workplace."

Stephanie Bastidas is a graduate student who helps with the EEG scanning and research. People
fill out questionnaires before the scan to list family history and many other factors that may
contribute to the study.

"It is not as bad as it looks," Bastidas said. "The experiment people are just kind of looking at
images and processing them how we tell them."

The lab is currently looking for volunteers to participate in the research.

"Please come and participate," Bastidas said. "We want to try and get a wide range."

Collegian Science and Technology Beat Reporter Stephanie Mason can be reached at
news@collegian.com or on Twitter @stephersmason.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

"Marijuana's effect on emotion." UWIRE Text 16 Oct. 2014: 1. Academic OneFile. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA386207334&v=2.1&u=inbhc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=d1
6e51b21d1a11f9281a5204a04fc437

Gale Document Number: GALE|A386207334

How motivation really works: towards an emoto-motivation

paradigm
Author(s):Murray Hunter
Source:Economics, Management, and Financial Markets. 7.4 (Dec. 2012): p138.
Document Type:Report
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2012 Addleton Academic Publishers
http://www.addletonacademicpublishers.com/economics-management-and-financial-
markets/journals/emfm/about-the-journal.html

Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to layout an emoto-motivation paradigm to better
understand human decision making and behavior. The paper briefly reviews currently accepted
theories of human motivation then considers the role ofemotions in forming our sense of
identity. The influence of emotions on decision behavior is discussed before presenting an emoto
view of our self identity. How emotions shape our beliefs and influences our actions is explained
within this hypothesis, showing how tension builds up in an individual and energy is produced.
Before concluding the paper recaps the emoto-motivation process showing how this hypothesis
affects enterprise effectiveness, and individual perception, decision making and behavior.

JEL Classification: C44, D81, G11

Keywords: affect, decision making, emotions, energy, identity, motivation, narrative,

perception, self awareness, tension

Full Text:
1. Introduction

Picture a nerd in Palo Alto immersed in the tech cult and going along for the ride but finds an
ingenuous idea that brings him success and fame. A divorced mother in Pattaya Thailand who
needs to find a daily income that will feed and school her children through good honest work. To
do this she emulates what she sees around her and opens up a food stall or washing service
down one of the back streets. A Malaysian youth living in Berseri Perlis who hasn't got the best
deal and doesn't know where to go. He has expectations upon him, can't get a scholarship to
study, feels the system is stacked against him, so what does he do?

The things we think, the things we do, the intentions we have, the things we buy, are all
governed by our own stories. What types of narrative are inside the person that drive behavior
and the choices he makes among alternatives? Will he fight the odds or hit ganja or ketum (a
local drug)? Will he care about society? Or just feel hopelessness?

How do we think what we think? How do we feel what we feel? How do we develop our values?
Where do our beliefs come from? How do our assumptions develop? Where do our motivations
come from?

This paper will consider these questions from an emoto-motivational perspective.

2. Past Perspectives on Motivation

Motivation is the process of developing intent, energy, determination, and action to carry out
certain behavior. Motives push people to perceive, think and act in specific ways that attempt to
satisfy needs. (1) Motives often stay unconscious in a person, as the person doesn't know
exactly what they want, yet these motives remain a powerful influence behind thoughts, feelings
and behaviors. (2) People differ in their types and strength of motives, taking them on different
lifetime journeys with different outcomes. For example, Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body
Shop may have been personally committed to the environment, education and social change,
while Jack Welch and Bill Gates were more motivated by competition and winning, leading to
completely different types of organizations and operational philosophies, while all being
considered more than successful. Motivation is also situational where for example one can see
the higher rates of entrepreneurship among migrant populations in developed countries. (3)
Studying motives can assist in answering the question of 'why people do what they do?"

The issue of motivation has been of interest to management scientists for many decades.
Motivational theory forms the basis of effective management practice, leadership, team and
group performance, management ethics, decision making, and organization change and
transformation. (4)

Interest in the concept of motivation was initially a philosophical issue during Greek times. At
that time the focus was on hedonism as the primary motivation, a concept refined centuries later
by Locke, Bentham, Mill, and Helvetius.

At the beginning of the 20th century motivation became of interest to the psychoanalysts and
experimental psychologists like Freud, James and McDougall. Motivation began to be seen as
instinctive rather than rational, (5) where basic and socialemotions played a role. Then in the
1920s the importance of intrinsic motivation was discovered by accident.

Elton Mayo, an Australian researcher in the United States, was investigating the reasons for high
employee turnover at the Philadelphia Textile Mill in 1923 and 1924. After interviewing and
consulting with employees, Mayo's group set up a number of rest periods during work which
resulted in reduced turnover and more positive work attitudes. At the same time a scientific
management study was being undertaken at the Western Electric Plant in Hawthorne, Illinois.
Between 1924 and 1927 these studies examined the effect of lighting illumination, which would
be expanded upon and continue into the 1930's. The experiments were intended to examine the
effect light intensity on productivity and expected to see a direct correlation between light
intensity and productivity. However to their surprise, the researchers found that no matter the
light intensity, productivity would increase. Something else was influencing increased
productivity. This led to a completely accidental discovery. The research group concluded that it
was the novelty of the situation that was the factor accounting for the increases of productivity.
(6) The studies continued with Elton Mayo joining the group, which experimented with changes
in job design and pay incentives as new variables. The results indicated that pay schemes and
incentives were not as importance as group influence on productivity in the workplace through
the norms they develop. Group norms developed to protect the group in the organization from
external influences such as management. For example, the group would restrict production out
of fear they would work themselves out of a job or that management would raise quotas. The
group developed its own sanctions against errant members through ridicule, ostracism and name
calling.

The "Hawthorne studies" to that time was probably the single most important research
breakthrough in motivational theory. The results showed the importance of the informal group on
productivity and satisfaction in the workplace and issues like job security can be considered more
important than financial rewards in motivation. Mayo himself argued that self esteem was vital to
performance and management must take account of human nature as social motives. Failure to
do this will lead to lower productivity, through covert activities like restricting production or in
extreme cases sabotage. (7) Consequently, non-directive styles of supervision would be best to
promote harmony and avoid conflict, allowing strong interpersonal bonds between the group
members to develop as a means of satisfying social needs and inducing high productivity. (8)
Industry didn't jump on the bandwagon over these new ideas, however the knowledge gained
from the Hawthorne studies was set to influence a number of thinkers in the development of
management thought including, Macgregor, Maslow, Herzberg, Schein, Arygris and Bennis, in the
formation of what is called the human relations school of thought.

In the discipline of psychology, Henry Murray was an author of one of the first textbooks on
personality. Murray was one of the first to develop a model of motives and their relationship with
behavior. His model was developed for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to evaluate the motives and access potential behaviors of
world leaders. Murray believed that people rarely do things for a single reason, their unique
range of needs had many levels where some dominated more than others. For example, a high
need for dominance, coupled with a low need for intimacy would develop leadership behavior
where the person would have little regard for the feelings of others. In contrast, a person with a
high need for dominance, but accompanied for a medium need for intimacy, would be more
considerate about the feelings of others. A description of Murray's Five categories of needs is
below: (9)

Ambition Needs

* Achievement: to master, manipulate or organize others, objects or ideas; to accomplish

difficult tasks rapidly and independently; to overcome obstacles and excel; to suppress rivals by
exercising talent,

* Exhibition: to be seen and heard; to be centre of attention; to make impression on others; to

excite, fascinate, entertain, intrigue, amuse, entice, or amaze others,

* Order: to put things in orderly arrangement, to desire cleanliness, organization, balance,

neatness and precision.

Needs to Defend Status

* Dominance: to seek to influence or direct the behavior of others by persuasion, command,
suggestion or seduction; to control one's environment, particularly the social environment; to
restrain of prohibit others.

Needs Related to Social Power

* Abasement: to accept injury, criticism and blame; to submit passively to external force; to
resign oneself to fate; to admit inferiority, error or wrong doing; to confess and atone and seek
pain and misfortune,

* Aggression: to overcome opposition forcefully; to avenge an injury; to attack, injure or kill

another; to forcefully punish or oppose another,

* Autonomy: to shake off restraint; break out of confines; to get free; to resist coercion and
restriction; to avoid being dominated; to be free to act according to one's wishes and to remain
unattached,

* Blame-avoidance: to avoid humiliation at all costs; to avoid situations that may lead to
embarrassment or belittlement; to refrain from action because of fear of failure or worry over
scorn, derision or indifference from other.

Social Affection Needs

* Affiliation/Intimacy: to enjoy cooperation or reciprocal interaction with others; to draw near

others; to please and win affection of those like you; to remain loyal to friends,

* Nurturance: to take care of others in need; to give sympathy and gratify the needs of helpless
others, such as a child or someone who is weak, disabled, inexperienced, infirm, humiliated,
lonely, dejected or confused; to assist persons in danger; to help, support, console, protect,
comfort, nurse, feed and heal others,

* Succor: to receive aid from others; to have one's needs gratified by another; to be nursed,
supported, protected, advised, indulged, loved and consoled; to always have a supporter or
devoted protector. Murray also developed a test of peoples' needs and motives through their
perceptions of the world, called the Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT), (10) which was one of the
first types of personality tests ever developed.

Murray was a very respected psychologist. Although his work isn't featured much in psychology
literature today, he was a great influence on many others in this area. Murray's TAT test is one
of the most cited psychological tests ever (11) and a forerunner to many other psychological
tests, including the numerous 'entrepreneurial attribute', 'suitability' and 'personality' tests,
published in entrepreneurship texts today. Murray's work has very rarely, if ever been applied to
management, most texts preferring the work of Hertzberg, Maslow and others.

Management approaches to motivation in the workplace during the 1940's in practice were
simple and clear cut, seeing worker motivation as a result of monetary incentives, job security
and good working conditions. Such a simple approach to solving complex issues was falling
short. The only other alternative was the democratic principles of management, which were not
acceptable at the time. Little had been done to apply psychology to business behavior, at the
time.

Abraham Maslow, a clinical psychologist realized there were higher needs that people perceived
which influenced motivation. Maslow outlined a complete theoretical model of needs and
motivation in 1943, (12) drawing upon his clinical experience as a psychologist. He believed
needs could be arranged in a hierarchical manner, where once a set of lower needs had been
satisfied, they no longer served to motivate the individual and a set of higher level needs
become important to motivate the individual:

1. Physiological needs: are the most basic level in the hierarchy, which correspond to hunger,
thirst, sleep, shelter and sex, etc. Once these basic needs are satisfied, they no longer motivate
the individual. Only the next level of needs will motivate.

2. Safety needs: are the second level of needs that an individual seeks such as emotional
security and safety. Like physiological needs, once they are satisfied, they no longer serve to
motivate the individual.

3. Affiliation and love: are the third level of needs which concern an individual's acceptance and
belongingness to a group and society.

4. Self esteem needs: this is one of the higher levels of individual needs where power,
achievement and status become important. This level includes both self-esteem and esteem from
others.

5. Need for self-actualization: Once all other needs are satisfied the individual seeks self
fulfillment and seeks realization of his potential. This is related to a person's self concept and
perception of self into reality.
Maslow did not apply the hierarchy of needs to work motivation for almost twenty years, (13)
however others popularized Maslow's theories into management literature. Maslow's hierarchy of
needs is taught in almost every business school in the world, and for a long time uncritically
accepted. However, Maslow's theory was developed in American society in the 1940's and fails to
explain issues why people deprived of lower needs turn to spirituality and devotion to religion.
(14) Research utilizing Maslow's theories has come up with inconclusive results. (15) Most
importantly, Maslow's theory failed to take account of the influence of culture on social needs in
the workplace.

David McClelland was a Harvard University psychologist who is best known for his achievement
model and work on power in organizations. McClelland with his co-researchers began looking in
1947 at all aspects of achievement. He developed a profile of the characteristics of a high
achiever: (16)

1. A high achiever will take moderate risks,

2. High achievers have a desire for immediate feedback on how they are progressing toward a
goal. High achievers prefer to do things that give relatively quick results, such as sales jobs or
management positions with measurable performance criteria, rather than something long-term
with slow results. Professions like research and development or a teaching profession would be
frustrating to them.

3. High achievers find accomplishment satisfying in itself, they don't necessary want the
accompanying rewards. Their attitude towards money is not as an ends, but look at money as a
form of feedback or measurement of how they are performing. Given the choice of a non-
challenging job with a high reward or a challenging job with a low reward, on the whole, the high
achiever would select the latter.

4. High achievers are preoccupied with the task, once they have set their goals, they will pursue
them until the goals are achieved. They cannot stand to leave a job half done and not satisfied
until they have made full effort. This often reflects in their outward personalities, which can have
a negative effect on others. Often high achievers have the characteristic of being a loner. They
tend to be very realistic and don't allow others to get in their way. Typically these people are
good salespeople, but not good managers. Similarly they are good entrepreneurs, but not good
at managing an ongoing enterprise.

Approximately 10% of the population could be considered high achievers and this can be seen
from childhood. (17)

McClelland also researched a person's needs for affiliation. He found that the need for affiliation
or intimacy with a group plays an important role in motivation. There are various reasons behind
the need for intimacy. Groups are perceived to provide a sense of security for individuals where
there is some uncertainty, or fear of something external to the individual and group. Groups also
provide individuals with a cognitive clarity (sense of how to interpret events around them) and a
way to make a self evaluation and social comparison about the way they should dress, talk, think
and act. Generally, women's needs for intimacy are higher than men.

McClelland also researched a third motivator, status, power and prestige. Many people are status
seekers in their careers, who desire material status symbols like good clothes, big houses,
expensive cars, etc. This infers in their self-perception of higher in a social hierarchy than others.
Social status can also be achieved through membership of a family, personal qualities, academic
achievements, material processions and authority and power through career position. Status-
determining factors may differ from culture to culture and will depend on cultural roles and
values. McClelland stated that the drive for status for some people is very high and it seems to
start developing at an early age. The need for status and power is a need to have an effect on
others and a need of control over their lives and work. Associated with these needs is the
likelihood that such people will also be susceptible to stress and anxiety and vulnerable to
aliments and diseases, like high blood pressure, (18) caused by a sense of lack of control over
their lives and work. (19) The power need in men and women is perceived differently and will
behave differently by this need motivation.

McClelland stated that each person has all three needs to different extents within them, which
influence their behavior. However one need will dominate as a rationale and motivator for their
behavior at any given time.

The psychoanalytic influence of Freud and Klein had led to beliefs that achievement motives are
only developed in childhood, and once developed, nothing much can be done to change them.
McClelland went on to conduct courses on developing a need for high achievement in individuals,
as he believed this could be learned and conditioned. He conducted these classes all around the
world (including Asia) among both groups of company executives, which produced very positive
results, measured by improvements in income levels after the course. The achievement-
motivation course also worked on producing new entrepreneurs in India and indicated that this
sort of training could have benefit in assisting disadvantaged groups as well as corporate groups
in developing their achievement-motivation. (20) The achievement-motivation course had four
goals: (21)

1. To teach participants how to think, talk and act like a person who is a high achiever,

2. To stimulate participants to set higher, but more carefully planned goals over the next two
years,

3. To give participants more knowledge about themselves, and

4. To create group bonding from learning about each other's hopes and fears, successes and
failures, and from going through emotional experiences together, in a retreat setting.

McClelland extended his research to societies and hypothesized that in a country whose populace
showed a high achievement factor, the country will experience high economic growth and
prosperity, whereas a society consisting of low achievers will economically decline and eventually
collapse. (22)

David McClelland's work was similar to Maslow's and had many parallels with other behaviorist
psychologists at the time. McClelland also showed that need achievement and motivation could
be learned and that self esteem and mutual group reinforcement and support was very important
to this. Contemporary behavioral research into entrepreneurship heavily cites McClelland's work
on the issues of why people become entrepreneurs.

Frederick Herzberg was another clinical psychologist with a passionate humility, influenced by his
wartime experiences. Herzberg basically believed that tasks performed by people at work has an
influence over psychological growth and people were satisfied and mentally to the extent that
work provided opportunities for achievement, recognition, challenge, personal advancement and
learning. (23) Herzberg extended the work of Maslow and undertook a study of accountants and
engineers in Pittsburgh, from which he developed his Two Factor Theory. Herzberg identified
certain factors relating to the work task that he called hygiene factors, which reduce a person's
dissatisfaction with their work situation and motivators which result in job satisfaction. Herzberg
postulated that hygiene factors must be satisfied before motivators have a positive effect on the
employee's commitment to the company and productivity. A description of the hygiene factors
and motivators is below: (24)

Hygiene Factors: Salary; Status; Security; Working conditions; Fringe benefits; Company
policies, i.e., leave etc.; Interpersonal relations in the workplace

Motivators: Meaningful work; Challenging work; Recognition for accomplishment; Feeling of

achievement; Increased responsibility; Opportunities for growth and advancement; The job
itself.

Herzberg's two factor theory, like Maslow's, became a standard textbook and business school
theory and was widely accepted by practitioners in the 1960's. Herzberg's work was the focus of
numerous studies in subsequent years, which gave a number of criticisms of the two factor
theory. (25) However it is widely recognized today that Herzberg's work was still an inter-
mediate explanation of job satisfaction and it influenced much further research into the area of
job satisfaction and job enrichment.

American psychologist Douglas Macgregor developed a theory on two different views of people
and their implications for management. Theory X was an assumption by managers that people
were basically lazy, extrinsically motivated, undisciplined, want job security but no responsibility
in their jobs. In contrast Theory Y was an assumption by managers that people do not inherently
dislike work, are extrinsically motivated, are capable of self-control and seek responsibility. (26)
Most managers took the Theory X view and thus it could be explained why they were reluctant to
delegate responsibility, etc. Adopting a Theory Y approach is a more innovative way of
managing, where responsibility, much looser control and much more goal-orientated approaches
can be undertaken. Macgregor had the same humanist philosophies as Maslow and Herzberg,
believing that human motivation was complex and the organization could benefit from the
differences of individuals, thus Theory Y management was the preferred option to go.

Macgregor's work still has great influence on management today and is still standard in most
textbooks and business schools. Macgregor's ideas probably brought about the development of
the human resources manager as an extension of Theory Y management in the organization,
where training systems were developed to promote this style of management. Macgregor was
working on Theory Z, which aimed to bring together the needs and aspirations of the individual
and organization, when he died in 1964. William Ouchi took over the idea and examined the
lessons US companies could learn from their Japanese counterparts, such as consensus decision
making, lifetime employment, slow promotion and planned succession, concern for employees
including social life, and commitment to the firm. (27) Macgregor's work was also to influence
the writings of Kanter, Bennis and Peters.

The 1980s onwards with the aid of more sophisticated research methods saw extensions and
refinements of existing motivational theories. These theories were applied to learning theories,
(28) job design, goal-setting theories, (29) job analysis and selection, (30) training, (31) reward
setting, personality, (32) and cross-cultural studies.

Published journal articles on motivation waned during the 1990s, (33) while university textbooks
primarily referred to the motivational theories of the 1960s with only scant references to any
new work. While other areas of management theory have advanced, the area of motivational
theory has seemed to lag behind.

However in some recent work, the influence of feelings, moods and emotions has become
focused upon as a means to explain motivation within the workplace, (34) with a number of
conceptual models presented of late. (35) There have also been models presented based on the
concept of self categorization and social identity processes. (36) The purpose of this paper is not
to run a critique on existing affect models but rather to present a conceptual model based upon
self identity constructed through emotional disposition.

3. The Role of Emotions

Cognition as a discipline has emerged over the last sixty years with the brain as a computer
metaphor, leaving the study ofemotion to behavioral psychology. But recent research has
determined that our cognitive processing has an emotional element, which is paramount for
effective functioning. (37)

It is important to recognize our emotions and the role they play in influencing decision making
and behavior. Emotional states can influence a person's thinking and make behavior irrational.
(38) The increase of the influence of cognition in understanding psychology has brought
emotional processes into focus. (39) Our basic emotions are primal urges that we share with
many other members of the animal kingdom, except that the majority of animals do not have
any cognitive capacity to turn them into higher order feelings, thoughts and concepts.
(40) Emotions are part of our basic schemata and semantics at the imaginative and conceptual
levels, (41) and their intensity assists us with memory retrieval. Higher orderemotions tend to
be socially constructed and occur within social interaction and relationships. Emotions can
evolve, transform, change and take new directions in different situational
contexts. Emotions can be positive or negative, expressed or not expressed and vary in
intensity. Emotions play a role in our perception, thinking, decision making and communication
with others.

Emotions, although not directly part of our cognitive systems, are very closely intertwined and
have great influence over perception and decision making. Emotions add subjectivity to our
experiences and trigger accompanying physiological responses which in many cases have
motivational influences and behavioral consequences. Emotions are biological, social, cultural
and personal.

If we subscribe to the notion that the process of motivation and sub-sequent behavior is not an
entirely rational process, then exploring these activities through emotions may create some
valuable texture and understanding to the subject that we miss through examining the process
through previous motivational theories. Using metaphors such as nurturing and bringing up a
child conjure up analogies that portray events as emotional, that traditional management
process theories do not take into consideration and thus lack full meaning. The nurturing
metaphor would bring understanding to the persistence someone would put into a business when
results are poor (i.e., where a parent would not give up), exercise long term commitment with
self sacrifice (i.e., the nature of life with dependent children), being an over-controlling founder
of an enterprise (i.e., parents attachment to children), reduce the perception of risks (i.e., love
may be blind), and treat the business like it is an offspring through commitment (i.e., a passion
for work), etc. (42) This enables us to 'feel' rather than think in an emotional context with an
intensity that exists within these processes that we cannot understand through using other
motivational theories.

To understand who a person is, it is necessary to understand emotion. Emotions help us to

learn and are an integral part of how we make sense of our lives. We find ourselves feeling
strongly about something without really knowing how these feelings come. Emotions are part of
our fundamental irrationality and unpredictability and thus an important influence in our self
identity. Our basic emotions come from inner extra-rational dynamics deep within our psych
that are expressed as feelings, dreams, fantasies, and other imagined aspects of our lives.
(43) Emotions are part of our fundamental irrational and unpredictable side to our
self. Emotions show our basic urges, desires, repulsions and dislikes about what we see, feel
and perceive in the environment. Emotions play a major role in our cognitive appraisal, deciding
our likes and dislikes, what is agreeable and disagreeable to us and the decisions we make.
Values, beliefs and assumptions are embedded within one's dominant narrative (44) that is a
guiding influence upon action and behavior. (45) This action or behavior is derived from a
person's intentions and motivations that are both self generated and reflective upon one's
culture, domicile out-look, (46) prior knowledge and experience, and inheritance. Our knowledge
evolves and is stored in our higher memory as a narrative, reflecting our social contexts. (47)
Experience is expressed through narrative. Narrative composes of an order of meaning which we
see as our reality and our identity. (48)
Emotions can also trigger memories and memories can also trigger emotions. Memories are
orientated around "I" and constantly redefine the nature of our existence relative to the past and
future, and our sense of power over any situation. Thus memories have an important influence in
forming our identity and guiding our behavior according to our perceived nature.

This subverts our sense of rationality, sometimes giving us multiple and contradictory feelings at
the same time. One example would be getting angry at someone and then felling guilty about it.
Yet behind these conflicting emotions maybe deeper emotions exist, as the feeling of been left
out or not being part of the group - even a low feeling of self esteem. In a Jungian
way, emotions are a window into our deep inner selves that are exposed through our daily
experiences in the world.

Emotions provide personal meanings for everyday occurrences. (49) Emotions animate our
thoughts into actions and behavior which connects us to an event and social interaction.
Thus emotions connect our inner selves with the outside environment and also with our
interrelationships with others. We reflect using our emotions and touch our spiritual and moral
inner world through what we feel through our emotions. (50) Emotions can amplify or
circumvent the power of our ego and desires, thus encouraging or restraining any actions we
take through specific feelings (often manifested with multiple feelings) that are generated within
us. These urges are usually able to be controlled through the discipline of our reasoning, but in
extreme situations become uncontrollable, (51) showing the inner conflict between our rational
and irrational selves.

Emotions usually exist in multiplicity and as such often conflict with each other. In an ongoing
enterprise where decisions have to be made, a person may be "pulled in two conflicting
directions" by the emotions he or she has. Take for example in a family company where a long
time employee must be disciplined or terminated for some grave misconduct. There may be
mixed feelings that create tension and reluctance to take action when at the same time there are
feelings that action must be taken in the interests of the enterprise. (52)

Each event, object or person we perceive will bring about some form of response. This will occur
in the form of emotionwhich is a form of psychic energy and generally provides driving or
restraining forces behind a person's intent. Emotionsmay be short lived or persist for long
periods of time. They may be dependent on internal processes or a reaction to the outside
environment. Emotions can vary in intensity and be shaped by our cultural and social situations.
While undertaking any tasks, emotions will tend to fluctuate widely and affect our level of
creativity, energy, passion and persistence.

Emotions relate to our general temperament and functioning in life. They provide feeling states
which influence what we want, what we do and don't do, and who we meet and interrelate
with. Emotions influence our general beliefs and attitudes, providing feelings upon which courses
of action we intend to take, places we want to go and people we want to associate with. (53)
They create states of caution, persistence, patience, excitement, restraint, boredom,
encouragement, confusion, hesitancy, challenge, mastery and enthusiasm within us. Therefore it
stands that with changing emotions we also change our physiological state and behavior.

Our higher emotions are a message to others and are interpreted according to our culture and
social situations. Emotionsare part of communication and color our perceptions of organizations
and relationships with others. People observe ouremotions and read meaning based on the
types of emotions we display or fail to display within any situational context. (54) Examples of
everyday use of emotion in our society include the supermarket cashier's smile and an
undertaker's expression of sadness when in the presence of the widow. (55) People expect to
experience certain types of emotions in certain social and cultural situations to create an
atmosphere of safety and stability. Perceiving a different set of emotions would create
tenseness, frustration, anxiety, discomfort and even fear in a social situation.

Positive emotions in a social context lead to higher involvement in tasks, tolerate higher levels
of stress, (56) and lead to more efficient decision making. (57) A negative emotional
environment may result in avoidance behavior and the hesitancy to take risks. (58)
Positive emotions can also have negatives consequences as well as negative emotions having
positive consequences as Table 1 indicates.

Table 1 The Positive/Negative Consequences of Positive/Negative

Emotions.

Positive Emotions * Emotions indicate to others what

-Positive Effects we feel and think about something.
This can be a motivator to others to
share the specified emotions in some
form of social situation.

* Leads to more efficient decision

making.

* Leads to higher task involvement.

* Able to tolerate higher levels of

stress. (59)

* With positive attitudes better

able to persuade potential
customers, financiers, suppliers and
other stakeholders.

* Leads to increased creativity.

Positive Emotions * By showing positive emotions

-Negative Effects during certain negotiations may give
signals to other parties of what one
is thinking at that particular point
of time.

* May lead to hasty decisions

without full deliberation.

* Stop the search for information

needed to make fully informed
decisions (incomplete information
search).
 * Increase the willingness to take
risks.

* Create feelings of overconfidence

as expect positive outcomes.

* Strong emotions increase the

propensity to use heuristics rather
than systematic thinking.

* Reduces cognitive activity that

can lead to judgment areas.

Negative Emotions * Like positive emotions and

-Positive Effects positive effects, the showing of
negative emotions can be a queue to
others that something is not
encouraged or wanted.

* Negative emotions may be a warning

that something is not right and
requires further investigation.

* May become more careful in

decision making.

* Tend to evaluate all alternatives

of action before acting.

Negative Emotions * The showing of negative emotions

-Negative Effects can show the weaknesses of a person
and be socially undesirable. The
showing of negative emotions may
also show that someone is unable to
exercise self control and
emotionally immature.

* Leads to avoidance behavior.

* Leads to risk aversion.

* Discourage action due to over

analysis of the situation.

* Negative emotions can prevent a

person undertaking necessary change
that may be in the best business
interests, i.e., fear of the
 consequences of shutting down an
enterprise may prevent a person from
closing down, even though there may
be drastic financial consequences.
Organizations have been designed to eliminate emotion that would interfere in rational decision
making. (60) So much effort has been made in business schools and throughout the rest of our
education systems to promote rationality as the basis on action. Although rationality is given this
supreme position, the reality is that many issues are decided upon by emotional rather than
rational thinking. Emotion is sublimed through the education process, although taking a central
part in our cognitive and learning processes. In the preneurial context many decisions are made
under ambiguity and uncertainty. There is a high probability that the entrepreneur will have very
intense emotions when making decisions. (61) Decisions are made in the absence of precedent
and information, thus relying upon one's reasoning, intuition, feeling and reckoning.

Opportunity is a prediction of a potential future outcome, but any accurate prediction of the
future is impossible. Emotionsinfluence the process of decision making, as it is impossible to
make any rational type of decision regarding the future. (62) It can only be an objective, goal,
aspiration or hope. People will make decisions based on intuition and wisdom, which rely on
stored knowledge in the long term memory and its retrieval, rather than the present situation in
the environment. Before making any decision, a person will tend to weigh up the issues on the
matter and take some form of 'calculated risk' in the decision they reach. This is the work of
using tacit knowledge or heuristics and emotion. Emotion prioritizes what heuristics to use by
recalling the pleasantness, unpleasantness and intensity of the associated emotions. Stimulated
by events, ouremotions attract our attention to heuristics that are associated with the more
intense emotions. (63) Our cognitive processes will retrieve mental models associated with
intense happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, grief, worry, complexity, etc. (64)

The range of emotions we have are wide and it is not generally agreed how
many emotions actually exist and what they actually are. (65) The basic emotions may have
been biologically derived from our earlier primal existence which aided our survival within a
dangerous environment. (66) Some of our most basic emotions include anger, fear, sorrow, joy,
envy and greed. These appear to be wired into the human organism (67) and specific codes of
behaviors correspond to specific primary emotions. (68)

The basic emotions (particularly the unpleasant ones) also generate physiological responses
such as needed in the fight/flight mode when we came in proximity of a threatening animal. The
brain would release adrenaline and noradrenaline into the bloodstream to enable faster thinking
and actions. The brain would drastically increase its activity. The body would freeze with all
senses focused on the perceived threat. The heart would beat faster, ready for a quick getaway.
Blood is diverted from the skin to the limbs to enable quick and powerful movement. Blood
pressure rises and respiration increases. The muscles are tensed and sweating increases to cool
the body. Appetite is suppressed and the bowels relaxed so that a person will be lighter for a
getaway. These emotions are involuntary and often experienced without recourse to our
consciousness or intervening thought processes. (69)

As the situation gets reinterpreted and reinterpreted, secondary emotions begin to be generated
at a more conscious level.Emotions occur when a person is aroused after detection of some form
of stimuli. This immediately changes the base level of arousal where perhaps a genetically
encoded response is triggered, such as a response to the danger of a snake or spider, etc. This
response immediately prepares our senses and body according to the significance of the threat.
There will be a physiological response and behavioral intention after identification and a clear
understanding of the situation is gained.

From the evolutionary viewpoint, the properties of stimuli that create pleasant emotions aim
towards sustaining life and the properties of stimuli that take aversion to things that are
incompatible with life. (70) Though essentially our basic emotionswere biological responses to
danger, threat or loss, as well as an aid to seek out ways to nurture human needs, in the
modern world, threats and dangers don't exist as they did in the primal world. These
physiological states are only intended to last a few moments while one deals with a perceived
threat. With the stress of today's society and the prolonged emotional state many people
experience, some of the above described physiological actions like high blood pressure become
pathologies in individuals trying to cope with long terms stress.

There is a range of emotions that are much more complex than the basic emotions. The higher
ordered emotions are more socially related and usually show to others our feelings and the
meaning we make of the situation. They are our response to meaning. (71) Socially constructed
meaning is a large part of what emotional experiences are about. We answer a situation from
mental models built upon our experiences stored in our long term memory. Upon subsequent
appraisal, our cognitive processes determine the intensity we respond to the situation with
our emotions. (72) Learned 'core related themes' are believed to influence this automatic
appraisal process. (73) Therefore higher order emotions are social constructs. To be angry,
disgusted, humiliated and proud are moral positions. (74) These social emotional positions are
coded into memory schemata and they become automatic responses. (75) These socially
related emotions will also have some relationship to the basic core emotions. (76) The
hierarchy of our emotions is shown in Figure 1.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Socially related emotions have evolved through the influence of family, social and cultural
influences. We learn the basic forms of these higher level emotions and tend to use them when
culturally and socially appropriate. (77) All the higher levelemotions can be represented as
complex interactions of the basic emotions.

Emotions may not have direct opposites like happiness and unhappiness. Both
these emotions can be experienced at the same time, as they are independent dimensions. (78)
For example, lack of happiness does not necessarily mean unhappiness and vice versa. Some of
the more common socially derived emotions are listed in Table 2.

Table 2 Some common socially derived emotions

Emotion Comments

Aggression Aggression is a defense against threats to one's

self-identity, or in the physical sense one's own
survival. It can also be used as a tactic of
dominance over others. Aggression is derived from
anger. (79)

Bewilderment Failure to understand and seen as a type of

ambiguity experience. (80) A sign of weakness.
Compassion Compassion is being moved by another person's
suffering and wanting to help. Compassion is
closely related to empathy.

Depression A longer lasting emotion than sadness. It occurs as

a more global state of mind and usually follows
major life events like a loss of reputation,
humiliation, business or personal failure, etc.
(81) A person in a business 'going nowhere' may
also develop depression. Depression can be seen as
a motivator to disengage from something (business
or relationship) that is going nowhere. (82)
Derived from loss of self-esteem. Depression is
also considered in the extreme form as a psychotic
pathology.

Frustration Worry, bewilderment, strain and other negative

emotions. Derived from the basic emotion of anger.
(83)

Guilt A self righteous feeling of having a moral lapse

where remedy is attempted by performing acts of
contrition. (84) It can be considered a loss to our
identity and is closely related to shame.

Pride Pride stems from something favorable or positive

that perceptually elevates the persona or feelings
of superiority of a person in front of others. It
is associated with achievement and happiness. Pride
is also the opposite of shame.

Regression As in crying, acting below one's age, etc. A social

means of gaining attention or affection from others
by causing emotional disturbance in others. (85) A
baby crying for food is an emotional tactic for
gaining more food or affection from the parents.

Sadness An emotion based on the deeper emotion of loss.

Sadness usually comes after an event, maybe as a
way to prevent further losses. (86)

Shame The feeling after doing something defective or

feeling inadequate in front of a public. It is a
grave failure of living up to the expectations of
the ego. Shame is closely related to guilt.

Spite An urge to revenge a person out of disappointment

and a feeling of betrayal in reciprocation or
 obligation by another person. This may be mixed
with anger, mistrust, rejection and hatred. Spite
is an intent to revenge and obtain reparations from
the other through some form of malicious or harmful
action. (87)

Strain A form of tiredness, exhaustion and depression

arising from high job demands. (88) Continuous
strain can lead to physical symptoms such a
increased blood pressure and cardiovascular
diseases. (89)

Submission A tactic to maintain membership of a group by

allowing one to be dominated by others.

Worry A negatively affect emotion where there is an

uncomfortable chain of thoughts and images. (90)
Leads to insecurity, intolerance of uncertainty.
Our core emotions help maintain a unitary feeling within us along a particular mood theme.
However the more socially related emotions provide us with mixed and complex feelings, which
are often conflicting and flowing backwards and forwards in their individual intensities, leaving us
in indecisive decision making capacity or in the more extreme situation, confused disposition. We
experience a whole range of different emotions at the same time which partly overlap and partly
conflict with each other. This would be something like the wait at an amusement park for some
sort of exhilarating ride where expectation, excitement would be accompanied by some fear and
hesitancy. Whether one decides to get on the ride or not will depend upon the balance
of emotions at that very time, i.e., the excitement and exhilaration would be stronger than the
fear and hesitancy. Decisions about opportunity and strategy may be just like the amusement
ride but with less immediate intensity for many entrepreneurs.

Our whole emotional state is affected by a balance of affected and socially related emotions,
core emotions and primal and deep sub-conscious emotions. What drives the
higher emotions comes from both the environment and what is deep within our sub-conscious.
Therefore in understanding our own emotional state it is important not just to look at the
expressed higher emotions, but at the deeper emotions that may be driving them. Thus our
experience of reality is a meta-experience made up of the set of all our emotions, the
environment, and our self.

To some degree our decisions are influenced by the moods we are in. Therefore according to
research, happy entrepreneurs with positive emotions tend to be more successful than sad
entrepreneurs because happy people focus on learning new knowledge, new skills, and maximize
their social contact with others. This increased involvement with their environment leads to more
success. (91)

Most psychotic states are emotional states and driven by the person's social conflict. (92)
When emotions become very intense and prolonged, they create a dysfunctional state, leading
to deep fears and anxieties. This develops in the extreme into pathologies like paranoia,
compulsion, schizophrenia, depression, dramatic behavior tendencies and narcissism. Within any
of these situations a person will always look for danger and threats and maintain an aroused
nature of anxiety, fear or depression. This will greatly affect a person's cognitive processes and
rationality when holding underlying believes of fear, pessimism and danger, etc.
Our emotions affect the relationships we have. Some people fly into rages at the slightest
irritation, while their partners stay with them for years out of infatuation, security or the fear of
leaving. Couples can spend a great amount of time and energy fighting but stay together. Some
parents will feel the excitements of having children, while others will feel neglect from their
partner and seek intimacy and affection from third parties. Some people will spend a whole
career of helping others, but neglect their own family and children. Parents mourning a loss of a
child may neglect their other children and sub-consciously blame the other partner for the loss.
Our behavior is rarely rational because of ouremotions.

Emotions can enhance or impede our learning. Emotion is a very important part of our
individual learning experiences and enables newly learnt knowledge to become psychically
connected with our selves through the intensity of our emotions. (93) Emotionally charged
images and other information are more vividly remembered and thought about than material
that does not invoke any emotions. This is partly why shock enables a person to quickly make
changes to their personal lives. (94) The emotions we experience with learning gives meaning to
new information within our self and social setting.

4. Emotions and the Construction of the "Self"

The average person, most of the time is not consciously aware of their 'self'. Their awareness is
like a fish in a fish bowl, where the fish can't see the water they are surrounded with. We are
aware of "I" and "me" and associate our identity with 'who we are' and 'what we do'. I am a
parent, I am a husband, I am a teacher, I am a Christian or Muslim, I am an American,
Japanese, or Australian, etc. These identities also create barriers between us and
compartmentalize society, i.e., I am female, they are male, I am black, they are white, I am
heterosexual, they are homosexual, etc. These barriers or separations are sources of emotion,
our sense of self-esteem, power, social positioning, and locus of control. Self concept is a
combination of our cognitive, emotional and social orientation.

Our self concept is not a single, unitary identity. It is layered and complex, developed through
our interaction with society and personal experience throughout our lives. Some aspects of our
identity dominate, while other aspects are suppressed. These influence the level of our
consciousness, filtering our awareness. Everything a person experiences creates their own reality
and sense of "I" or "me". In other words, "I" and "me' is a construction of our self.

A person is in a perpetual struggle for self awareness. This begins as Melanie Klein describes
straight after birth where an infant's first relationship is with the mother's breast. At this time the
only object within the infant's environment is the breast, where it is identified as 'good' when he
or she can feed upon it and feels secure and nourished. When there is trouble feeding or the
breast is not available, it becomes the 'bad' breast. Thus perpetual conflict first begins where the
infant unconsciously splits the breast into two; the 'good' breast and the 'bad' breast. These
experiences create a range of feelings, object relations, and thought processes, where the infant
feels ecstasy, happiness and joy in the 'good' and anxiety, sorrow, and a persecutory fear of
annihilation, giving rise to the emotions of anger and even a destructive 'death wish' for
anything that threatens their survival with the 'bad'. (95) These first experiences outside the
mother's womb that give us a sense of identity, related to objects outside of our self. We
experience streams of sensation through our feel, sight, hearing, sense, and taste. These all
provide relativity, helping us to define the internal and external. Emotions are generated with
these sensations which begin to create the first aspects of our identity. In this early infancy all
our actions are based upon our emotions, thus setting emotion as a driver of our behavior in
the absence of reason.

We are not born with any sense of social identity and emotional bias. Emotions stimulated from
sensations very quickly suppress our true inborn essential nature, which in most cases is lost
forever as people are nurtured and brought up in the environment around them. From our
infancy, who we are, how we are, and who we will become greatly depends upon this process of
cultivation. Many of our personality traits will develop at this stage, where for example, an infant
often neglected in feeding may develop a sense of insecurity, which may lead to aggressive
tendencies in later life. In contrast, a person well nourished and weaned may become a
contented person in later life. However the causes of personality development and behavior still
until today remain more conjecture, as we still can't explain these processes in their entirety.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

5. Perceptions and Physical Sensations

It's very important to have a basic understanding of the perception process because of the
influence over our awareness. Perception is such a complex brain activity that a large part of the
brain is totally dedicated to these processes. All external stimuli are detected by the five senses
and environment energy is transformed through enzymatic processes into neural electricity
called transduction. Neural electricity carries information within its original format, cell to cell to
the sensory stores by the process of transmission. The sensory store is not a single area within
the brain, as different areas of the brain process different types of sensory information. These
sensing stores can only keep unanalyzed sensing information for very brief periods of time for
identification and pattern recognition. Information that cannot be identified by the pattern
recognition process is lost.

At the limbic level, initial physical sensations may invoke crude feelings of arousal, pleasantness,
unpleasantness, heat, cold, fear, or anger, etc, which may evoke an averse or attractive
response. (97) This forms part of a reflexive system that may appear after birth that acts to
protect an individual through oral rejection, fear of heights, etc, when a person is exposed to
certain stimuli that are interpreted as potentially dangerous. (98)

At the cognitive level, many stimuli can enter the sensory store at one time but only one pattern
at a time can enter the pattern recognition stage. This is controlled through perpetual limitation
which prevents people from becoming overloaded with too much information at any one time.
(99) The attention function determines the sequence and amount of information that will be
identified at any one time, which restricts the amount of information that can reach the memory,
like a bottleneck. (100) This bottleneck occurs at the entrance to the to the pattern recognition
stage, where only one piece of information can be processed at any one time, thus preventing
information overload. (101)

Within the pattern recognition stage, incoming information is matched against known patterns
through a number of methods, of which all we do not understand at this point of time. Perception
also takes place consciously and unconsciously, competing for limited capacity. Some tasks are
so routine they are processed automatically. However when one comes up against unusual
objects, then a great conscious effort is required to process and make recognition. For example,
when we learn to drive a car we must initially concentrate on every decision and action we take.
Once we are familiar with the skills of driving a car, we do this without taking any conscious
actions. This is the advantage of patterning.
What information finally enters into our limited capacity short term working memory depends
upon current memory capacity at the time, enduring dispositions, momentary interventions, and
conscious and unconscious evaluations. (102) Our basic patterning mechanism is biased and
distorts information in particular ways depending on our knowledge structures we already have.
Thus our previous knowledge of the environment influences our perceptions. Therefore our
perception is influenced by prior knowledge and the heuristics and cognitive biases they create.
This is how the brain cuts down on information overload and assists a person make sense out of
the confusion and uncertainty of the environment where thinking is focused upon finding thinks
that we are already familiar with, i.e., assisting a person to drive an automobile. Thus our
thinking is really based upon hindsight rather than foresight in gaining insights and ideas about
the world. (103)

The patterning mechanism may partly explain why people have different perspectives from the
same stimuli and may also partly explain why some people see opportunity while others don't,
(104) although this process is still far from understood.

Our emotions influence our patterning through diverting our attention, which distorts our
perceptions. It is the ability to manipulate of change these patterns, which are like colored lenses
that we look through, (105) that gives us the ability to look at the world in different ways. (106)
Patterning influenced by bias, delusion, distortion, heuristics, and socio-cultural influences on our
schemas, guide our approaches to reasoning, decision making, and problem solving.

6. The Primal Self

The outer level of our self identity is the "primal self". The "primal self" is concerned about the
basic physiological needs required for existence including food, water, shelter, sleep, sex, safety,
and security. The "primal self's" awareness is physical and immediate, concerned about the now.
Associated with the "primal self" are the basic primal emotionsconcerned with survival, physical
fulfillment and contentment. These range from the emotions of ecstasy, joy, contentment, and
lust, to anxiety, fear, and anger. These emotions are usually short lived as they automatically
activate through the amygdala, separate from our cognitive architecture, previously important to
protect a person in a hunter gatherer environment. Behavior is almost controlled by
primal emotions which focus attention on objects of physical fulfillment and drive almost
instinctive behaviors. (107) Research has shown that when people are deprived of their
physiological needs, they will go to the extremes to fulfill them, even if that means breaking
social morals, culturally accepted behavior, civic codes, and religious morals. (108) Although the
primal self is very powerful, as a person's instinctive survival is hardwired into the primal
emotional level, a person learns that other levels of the self are better able to fulfill their needs
in more sophisticated ways.

7. The Material Self

The next layer of our self identity is the "material self". The "material self" is concerned about
pleasure, comfort, and the avoidance of pain. Goods and other material things metaphorically
extend the boundaries of a person through the things that they own. These may include real
estate, land, cars, and also extend to intangible things like degrees, honors, social status, and
other things that bring notoriety and respect. Even a marriage partner is important to the
"material self". The mythology of the trophy wife comes from the times when ancient warriors
captured the most beautiful women during times of battle to bring them back to their village as
wives. This is still a part of many cultures today, often encouraged by the media attention the
wives and girlfriends (WAGs) of celebrities receive. This layer of the self is influenced by both the
primal and social emotions as motivators including greed, envy, jealousy, and attachment. Thus
at one end of the continuum a person desires objects for the satisfaction of greed, while at the
other end of the continuum objects are desired for the social status. Self worth is perceived
through the things that a person owns, where valued objects provide comfort, pleasure, prevent
pain, are attractive, socially desirable, and a rarity in society.

The "material self" is the source of narcissism, where an individual requires a continual source of
nourishment in the same way an infant requires a supply of food. (109) The "material self" can
be envious and even depressive when needs are not fulfilled. However when the individual is in
possession of prized and valued items, he or she can verge on a narcissistic disposition. In some
cases the material self can also exhibit attention seeking and dramatist behavior in order to
attract attention to themselves, (110) where attention itself can be considered a valuable
commodity. On the positive side, the material self will tend to be highly motivated and very hard
working to fulfill their perceived need for material possessions.

The "material self" is easily suppressed by the higher levels of the self which can achieve the
desired objectives for fulfillment through more sophisticated strategies. The "material self" can
be a trend setter, as setting trends is a sophisticated form of status. However the majority of
those dominated by the material self paradigm are impulsive followers, influenced by peers, and
usually adopt likes and dislikes of trend setters. Trend following therefore occurs over the whole
range of material goods, fashion and brands, and also include preferences for the types of work
desired.

The "material self's" awareness is a social one where what others like and dislike, do and follow
is of extreme importance. This is a lower form of imitative behavior that has not developed into
full empathy. This may be a very good quality for picking up new consumer product and service
opportunities within the environment, but the majority of people pick up the collective norms of
society and can't see outside this social cocoon. Collective awareness suppresses a person's
ability to see things that are different until someone else brings attention to it. This can hinder
innovation in firms led by a person dominated by the "material self".

8. The Social Self

The identity of the "social self" plays a very complex but vital role in one's self concept. Self
concept is very much relative to others. The essence of humankind is a social existence, where
people have a strong need to identify and belong to groups. (111) Being accepted by others
seems to be a more important driver of the self than physical and material needs.
Autobiographical accounts of hermits, prisoners, and those deprived of human contact show the
pain of isolation that individuals feel over time. (112) This need for affiliation can be seen in the
way societies have organized themselves throughout the centuries by the creation of families,
extended families, clans, guilds, unions, specific interest groups, and ethnic groups, etc. This
atmosphere of identification and belonging existed in small towns and parts of larger cities right
up to recent times. Many sports codes and competition is based upon group belongingness, i.e.,
cricket, football, and basketball, etc. Belongingness can also be seen in today's social media
where particular special interest groups bond together and thousands of people participate on
mass in online games interacting with each other through fantasized personas or avatars.

Aloofness and aloneness is generally considered abnormal behavior by most of society, and one
of the most punitive sanctions a group can put on a person is exclusion from the group. Many
disputes and wars have occurred because of differing group ideas, objectives, and philosophies.
Outside groups have often been used as objects of hate, and idealization projection and
introspection to justify a sense of right, superiority or hope. German society made categorical
judgments and projected all their blame and hate on the Jews in Nazi Germany during the
1930s. People projected so much hope and idealization on Princess Diana and so publicly
mourned her loss. Minority groups like homosexuals are often persecuted because they remind
us of the shadow within ourselves which we cannot bear to see. (113) There is probably a
relationship between disassociation, dislodgement, or disconnection and anxiety and fear, which
can lead through projection into hate. Street gangs offer the opportunity to those who feel
oppressed or otherwise feel alienated by society or feel inferior to others to gain strength
through the sense of belongingness a group provides. Fear itself is a powerful social bonding
mechanism which can unite groups together in the face of a common enemy, whether real or
imaginary. Many of our social struggles are seen in black and white, where both sides see right
and the high moral ground or "God" behind them.

Social awareness is extremely important to the concept of cultural capital where empathy is
important toward, to appreciate, or to have competence in working within cultural rules and
norms within society. (114) Empathy is a powerful component of our imagination in enabling us
to understand others, their situations, predicaments, and outlooks. Empathy links the individual
to the larger community. Empathy can assist a person's awareness move into the spiritual
awareness domain.

Empathy is also a way of learning. Empathy is the ability to enter into the world of another and
understand it. (115) However, too much empathy may lead to deep emotions triggered by
observing the suffering of others and in the extreme lead to depression and lethargic states.
Lack of empathy into the needs and feelings of others is a trait of ego-centricity and narcissism
which destroys the potential for insightful thinking, where in extreme cases the destructive
forces of social prejudice, conflict, anger, and depression may occur. The absence of empathy
will leave a person within the primal and material domains.

9. The Ego Self

The identity of the "ego self" is the most common domain people exist within. (116) The 'ego
self' is primarily concerned about self survival. This continuum includes the domains of how
people see themselves, and how they want others to see them. How a person sees him or herself
is often suppressed and they live within the "idealized self". If the real self emerges and is too
different from the "idealized self", great conflict will occur within the person. The "idealized self"
gives a person confidence to deal with and cope with all the dramas that go on within their
world. How a person wants others to see them is like a shell that protects a person's self esteem.
It is within the ego self that we develop the labels that give us our identity.

The ego self is the part of our self the which develops sophisticated coping mechanisms to deal
with realities that don't fit into a person's self view and view of the world. For example, if a
person enters into a community 10 km run and expects to complete the distance in 45 minutes
but actually takes just on one hour, the ego will try to explain not meeting personal expectations
away through self excuses like "it was too hot", "I didn't have time to prepare for the run", or "it
really doesn't matter anyway". The "ego self" copes with fears, anxieties, and disappointments
through defense mechanisms like acting out, altruism, anticipation, denial, devaluation,
displacement, distortion, fantasy, fixation, humor, idealization, identification, introjections,
intellectualization, passive aggression, projection, rationalization, regression, repression,
splitting, sublimation, and suppression. The individual learns the boundaries and how to control
complex emotions so they can interact within the social environment without endangering their
affiliations or harming others. They live an emotional life which links them to others with shared
values important to their own self identity.

Within the "ego self" there is a need to glorify ourselves and distance ourselves from the feelings
of not being good enough. This is the idealized self that exists within the "ego self", nurturing
and evolving through the journey of our lives. For example, if we rebel, we see our combative
ways as heroic and standing up for what is right. If we are compulsive, we see ourselves as hard
working and diligent and if we are clingy, we see ourselves as very loyal and faithful. This is what
we call our survival personality which assists us to cope with our anxiety, insecurities, and fears.
However if we continually fall short of our expectations, this may lead to deep depression.

Likewise if our coping mechanisms one day fail with a relationship break up for example, we are
likely to suffer a traumatic shock and go into denial, rage or even develop suicidal tendencies.
These types of shocks can cause fundamental crisis of our self identity.

The whole purpose of the ego self is to give us an identity. We develop social identities with a
fitting socialized world view where "I" and "me" is in the centre. Everything that occurs and
everyone we interact with is relative to the "I" and "me" stance. We become lost within this
socialization and don't even realize it, accepting this as "who we are". In this way the "ego self"
controls how we perceive, feel, think, and act. We are strongly driven by our social emotions,
not being able to think or reason without their influence. Awareness is our thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors. This becomes our self - a person who is a member of a family in a particular role,
with a particular occupation, with an affinity to a particular group, with its own set of thoughts
and feelings based on a cocktail of emotions created from fear, trust, happiness, curiosity,
anger, inspiration, etc. The ego self is not interested in higher awareness and often utilizes
intelligence as a block against a person becoming spiritual. (117)

Emotion has a strong determination upon our actions where we become sociologically
ideologicalized with feelings of righteousness, superiority, pride, with stereotyped judgments
about people, objects, and events. What we do becomes who we are giving us the identity of "I
am". We are a creation of our own mind and the mind is partly a creation of the events and
history that we have experienced. Through this identity we see the world from a biased position,
attentive to how people, objects, and events will affect the "me". Our identity and role in life
demand that we act out these identities, thus locking us into a certain view and place within the
world, where we are largely unable to see outside of it. We take society's measures of success,
i.e., education, career, net worth, real estate holdings, rather than what we might individually
like. Society has indoctrinated us to the point where we tend to think alike within an acceptable
continuum of thought. Our morals, ethics, and views are formed, shaped, and supported by our
socialization within these continuums. How we act is also socialized - we can never be who we
really are within the ego self.

Power motivating emotions seem to come from the ego portion of our psych. (118) The ego
provides a person with a sense of purpose and this is where the 'urge to make a difference', 'to
be respected', 'to be admired', 'to be wealthy', 'to be successful', 'to control others', and 'to be
the best' originates. The ego holds emotions of self esteem, the sense of achievement, envy,
greed, hate, anxiety, fear, and guilt, which are hybrid forms of emotions from some of the more
basicemotions.

Socialization forces are so powerful that it is difficult for anybody to free themselves from
society's defined positions, thinking, and identities. However the "ego self" can operate along a
continuum of self awareness. At the lower end some people are more concerned about
materialism, while others within the middle ranges are concerned about their social esteem
within the community. At the higher end there are those who are concerned about high
achievement and working for causes that don't directly benefit themselves. Of course various
actions may be based upon different motivations from seeking genuine self satisfaction or need
to achieve, to undertaking compulsive behavior to suppress some form of feeling within
themselves like neglect, non acceptance, or feeling of inadequacy.

The ego self is most powerful during times of success. When one is successful and attributes this
success to themselves, their innate awareness and humility can be totally suppressed. This is the
time when many business partnerships of long time friends can break up over monetary issues
and disagreements about shared efforts. This often brings out selfish ruthlessness that is new
behavior on the part of these individuals.

10. The Spiritual Self

It was the evolution of our frontal lobes that gave humankind the ability to communicate giving
rise to symbols and language thereby enabling our search for meaning in our lives.
(119) Human beings are creatures of meaning. Without meaning people very quickly become ill
and die, which is a fate installed for many retirees if they have not planned out meaningful
activities for their retirement. (120)

Within the continuum of the "spiritual self" people attach different values to the concept of "I"
and "me". Only a very small percentage of people in society reach this stage as most people are
trying to achieve personal, career, and financial security, work on developing relationships with
their families and others, satisfying their primal needs for sex, or seeking esteem from the their
peers and the rest of the community. Under the other continuums individuals are not well
acquainted with themselves, however within the spiritual self, people begin to feel integrated,
more deeply question "who they are" and "their meaning and purpose".

The "spiritual self" represents the culmination of all other continuums of self where a person
looks for self actualization and some form of intrinsic self fulfillment. At this awareness level, self
esteem comes from a person doing what they believe is right. A person who is spiritually aware
is willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believe are higher causes than themselves.

This is part of the psychology some social entrepreneurs and also ironically of suicide bombers.
There is a distinct move from the trait of selfishness, common in the lower continuums to
selflessness and giving. The higher awareness of the "spiritual self" drives a different set of
behaviors than people orientated around the other continuums. Individuals are able to trans-
verse the basic emotions of excitement, fear, anger, and anxiety, etc., avoiding being trapped
within defense mechanism centered behavior patterns. For example a person will not play out
games to seek affection from their spouses and loved ones, motivated by the fear that they may
lose them.

A person will not love someone out of fear of being alone, or of the fear of having no one to love
them. Instead they overcome that fear and are able to carry out much more mature behaviors.

Within the lower continuums, peoples' streams of thoughts tend to be negatively based where
fear manifests itself in worry, anger, judgment, and general anxiety, leading to generally
pessimistic and negative narrative, i.e., "you can't get away with doing that", "that's so difficult
to do", and "they don't want you to do that", etc. Within the spiritual continuum there will be
little negative narrative on the part of a spiritually aware person. Spiritually aware people are
aware of their patterns of thought and can consciously change these patterns when they notice
that they become negative. He or she will be curious, reflective, exercise great patience and be a
good listener before personally jumping to quick conclusions about matters. Discussions will take
the form of dialogues rather than opinionated and advocating debates. A spiritually aware person
still experiences emotions but the difference is that they are aware of them, and the
consequences of blindly following the whims of these emotions. They will be able to reframe
their thoughts from something like "I don't know how to do this" to "this is a great opportunity to
learn something". Therefore a spiritually aware person is self disciplined.

The "spiritual self" enables one to examine information and knowledge without the bias
of emotion in deep wisdom. A spiritually aware person should possess some of the traits and
abilities listed below:

* A relatively unbiased view of the realties within the environment, aware of their own wishes,
desires, and emotions that may influence their perceptions;

* An acceptance of themselves, others, and the nature or fate, realizing that things are not
perfect and that people, including themselves will make mistakes, which they can accept. They
see setbacks, natural events, and disasters as part of life;

* Adversity becomes a positive frame where it is seen as a challenge rather than a setback;

* Their life is simple and honest. Spiritually aware people don't need to put on airs and acts;

* Spiritually aware people trust their own intuitions;

* They know their own strengths and weaknesses;

* They are very responsive to changes within people, events, and the environment;

* They revel in diversity and contrast, rather than uniformity and sameness;

* They like to learn and wonder about new things and the big questions of life;

* They are interested in the larger philosophical and ethical issues of the time;

* They feel comfortable about being alone and don't need company just for the sake of having
company;

* They tend to think independently from the prevailing culture, continuum of ideas and thinking
of contemporary society, and consequently are often non-conformists to cultural rules and
norms;

* They have their own predetermined interests and commitments that they deeply believe in;

* They are willing to serve the community, humanity, and causes greater than themselves;

* They are able to hold these convictions against the differing opinions of others;

* They appreciate challenges and see them from a resolute freshness;

* They have a deep sense of compassion, a desire to help others and contribute to
the human race;

* They have close ties to a relatively small number of people rather than loose ties with a large
number of people;
* They have a profound sense of fairness, not prejudiced, and don't stereotype or look at people
superficially;

* They value the journey rather than the achievement;

* They have the ability to reframe, look at things differently, see connections in a holistic manner
and are thus creative people;

* They have a great sense of gratitude to those that help them, and

* They have a sense of humility and are on the whole humble people. (121)

The big test for the "spiritual self" is the ethical dilemma one would face when their values are
challenged. For example, a person who upholds life and is against abortion may face a massive
moral dilemma if they become or make someone become pregnant outside of a married
relationship. It is only the decisions made at these times that truly show whether a person has
reached the level of "spiritual self", or not.

Hunter, Murray

Personal space regulation by the human amygdala

Author(s):Ralph Adolphs, Jan Glascher, Daniel P. Kennedy and J. Michael Tyszka
Source:Nature Neuroscience. 12.10 (Oct. 2009): p1226.
Document Type:Report
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2009 Nature Publishing Group
http://www.nature.com/neuro/index.html

Abstract:
The amygdala plays key roles in emotion and social cognition, but how this translates to face-to-
face interactions involving real people remains unknown. We found that an individual with
complete amygdala lesions lacked any sense of personal space. Furthermore, healthy individuals
showed amygdala activation upon close personal proximity. The amygdala may be required to
trigger the strong emotional reactions normally following personal space violations, thus
regulating interpersonal distance in humans.

Full Text:
People automatically and reliably regulate the distance maintained between themselves and
others during social interaction (1). Personal space, defined as the area individuals maintain
around themselves into which intrusion by others causes discomfort (2), is one mechanism by
which this automatic regulation of interpersonal distance is achieved. However, little is known
regarding the neural substrates of personal space. One candidate brain region is the amygdala,
as studies in non-human primates have found that this structure is involved in social approach
and avoidance (3-5). Here we show that one's sense of personal space is dependent on the
amygdala.

We studied S.M., a 42-year-old woman with complete bilateral amygdalar damage we have
described extensively (6,7). S.M. indicated the position at which she felt most comfortable as a
female experimenter approached her from 4.7 m across the room; chin-to-chin distance was
recorded using a digital laser measurer. We repeated this procedure four times (counterbalanced
with other trial types; see Supplementary Text). S.M.s preferred distance (0.34 [+ or -] 0.02 m;
mean and s.d.) was smaller than the smallest preferred distance on any trial of any comparison
subject (0.76 [+ or -] 0.34 m, range = 0.44-1.52 m, N = 20; Fig. 1) and statistically significantly
smaller than that of the comparison group (after excluding the three outliers with the largest
distance preferences, a mean comparison-subject distance of 0.64 [+ or -] 0.13 m, Z = -2.20, P
= 0.014, one-tailed; with a modified t-test, t16 = -2.14, P = 0.024.) This highly abnormal
pattern was found reliably across various experimental manipulations (gaze direct or averted;
subject being approached or approaching; starting close or far; a total of 32 trials per subject; Z
= -2.38, P = 0.009, one-tailed; [t.sub.16] = -2.31, P = 0.017, one-tailed, excluding three
outliers) and when S.M. s distance preferences were compared to female controls alone (Z= -
1.93, P = 0.027; [t.sub.11] = -1.86, P = 0.045). Furthermore, it could not be accounted for by
S.M. s degree of familiarity with the experimenter (see Supplementary Text for detailed results).

Throughout the experiment, S.M. demonstrated a notable lack of discomfort at close distances.
For example, on one trial, she walked all the way toward the experimenter to the point of
touching, and she repeatedly stated that any distance felt comfortable. We quantified this by
asking her to rate her degree of discomfort (1, perfectly comfortable; 10, extremely
uncomfortable) while one of us stood facing her at various distances. Even when nose-to-nose
with direct eye contact, S.M. rated the experience a 1. In a more natural and unexpected
context, a completely unfamiliar male confederate stood abnormally close to her while engaging
in conversation; S.M. again rated the experience a 1. By contrast, the confederate rated his
experience a 7. Although S.M. indicated afterward that she knew we were "up to something,"
awareness that this was an experiment cannot explain her lack of discomfort, since the
confederate had complete awareness yet still found the experience to be highly uncomfortable.

At a cognitive level, S.M. understood the concept of personal space. She spontaneously stated
that she did not want to make the experimenter uncomfortable by standing too close, and also
stated that she believed her personal space was smaller than most. Furthermore, we asked S.M.
to position the experimenter at the distance she judged other people might feel most
comfortable. Although she considerably underestimated this distance (0.47 [+ or -] 0.03 m), her
estimation was 38% greater than her own personal preference, thus demonstrating that she is
aware that other people have personal space requirements different from her own. The fact that
S.M. had a nonzero distance preference at all may simply reflect typical sensory processing
constraints (for example, too close makes it more difficult to focus on the person).

Our findings in S.M. made a clear prediction regarding the amygdala in healthy individuals: its
activity should be modulated by interpersonal distance. As a preliminary test of this prediction,
and to obtain corroborating evidence, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) study in eight healthy participants. We found that the amygdala responded to a greater
degree when the participants knew an experimenter was maintaining a close distance to them
(standing immediately next to the scanner) than when they knew an experimenter was
maintaining a far distance. This effect was statistically significant at the group level (Fig. 2; see
Supplementary Text for details). Although we did not collect ratings of subjective comfort from
S.M. or control subjects on the protocol used in this fMRI study, our interpretation of the
observed amygdala activation is that it reflects the same amygdala-dependent mechanism that
comes into play when our personal space is noticeably violated.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
In sum, we found that the amygdala was differentially activated by proximity to another person,
and that complete bilateral damage to this structure in S.M. resulted in the absence of a
detectable personal space boundary and an abnormally small interpersonal distance preference.
In various animal species, many social behaviors (including collective group organization and
consensus decision-making) can be modeled as a balance between attractive and repulsive
forces between individual members of a group (8,9). Our findings suggest that the amygdala
may mediate the repulsive force that helps to maintain a minimum distance between people.
Further, our findings are consistent with those in monkeys with bilateral amygdala lesions, who
stay within closer proximity to other monkeys or people (4,5), an effect we suggest arises from
the absence of strong emotional responses to personal space violation.

One open question concerns how this mechanism might develop in infants and young children. It
is possible that the amygdala is necessary for learning the association between close distances
and aversive outcomes rather than triggering innate emotional responses to close others. As the
developmental course of S.M.'s lesion is unknown, her data cannot distinguish between these
two possibilities. A second open question is how this mechanism can accommodate modulation
by situational context, personal familiarity and other factors (2,10). Furthermore, there are
variations in social distance between individuals, and gross dysregulation in disorders such as
autism and Williams syndrome. These effects could arise in part through modulation of the
amygdala from the prefrontal cortex, an effect of considerable recent interest in explaining
individual differences and psychiatric disease (11).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank C. Holcomb for behavioral data collection, R. Nair and V. Chib for help with the 1MRI
study, and M. Spezio for discussions. Supported by US National Institute of Mental Health and
the Simons Foundation (R.A.), the Della Martin Foundation (D.P.K.) and the Tamagawa
University global Centers of Excellence program of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports and Technology.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

D.P.K. and R.A. designed the experiment and wrote the paper; D.P.K. executed the studies;
D.P.K., J.G. and J.M.T. analyzed the data.

Received 26 March; accepted 8 July; published online 30 August 2009; doi:10.1038/nn.2381

(1.) Hall, E. The Hidden Dimension (Doubleday, Garden City, New York, USA, 1966).

(2.) Hayduk, L.A. Psychol. Bull. 85, 117-134 (1978).

(3.) Kluver, H. & Bucy, P.C. Am. J. Physiol. 119, 352-353 (1937).

(4.) Emery, N.J. et al. Behav. Neurosci. 115, 515-544 (2001).

(5.) Mason, W.A., Capitanio, J.P., Machado, C.J., Mendoza, S.P. & Amaral, D.G. Emotion 6, 73-
81 (2006).

(6.) Adolphs, R., Tranel, D. & Damasio, A.R. Nature 393, 470-474 (1998).

(7.) Buchanan, T.W., Tranel, D. & Adolphs, R. in The Human Amygdala (eds. Whalen, P.J. &
Phelps, E.A.) 289-320 (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2009).
(8.) Couzin, I.D., Krause, J., James, R., Ruxton, G.D. & Franks, N.R. J. Theoc Biol. 218, 1-11
(2002).

(9.) Couzin, I.D., Krause, J., Franks, N.R. & Levin, S.A. Nature 433, 513-516 (2005).

(10.) Hayduk, L.A. Psychol, Bull. 94, 293-335 (1983).

(11.) Pezawas, L. et al. Nat. Neurosci. 8, 828-834 (2005).

Daniel P Kennedy [1], Jan Glascher [1], J Michael Tyszka [2] & Ralph Adolphs [1,2]

[1] Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and [2] Division of Biology, California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, California, USA. Correspondence should be addressed to D.P.K. (ken
nedy@caltech.edu).

Kennedy, Daniel P.^Glascher, Jan^Tyszka, J. Michael^Adolphs, Ralph

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Adolphs, Ralph, et al. "Personal space regulation by the human amygdala." Nature Neuroscience 12.10
(2009): 1226+. Academic OneFile. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA209407602&v=2.1&u=inbhc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=f8
b2435599e6512cdf5eeb9356bf0f64

Gale Document Number: GALE|A209407602

Consistency and enhancement processes in understanding
emotions
Author(s):Emily K. Asencio and Jan E. Stets
Source:Social Forces. 86.3 (Mar. 2008): p1055.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2008 Oxford University Press
Abstract:
Many theories in the sociology of emotions assume that emotions emerge from the cognitive
consistency principle. Congruence among cognitions produces good feelings whereas
incongruence produces bad feelings. A work situation is simulated in which managers give
feedback to workers that is consistent or inconsistent with what the workers expect to get from
their performance. Workers' emotional reactions are then obtained. The power and status of the
managers is investigated. The findings reveal that how much time workers have to process their
performance feedback, and the power and status of the managers, influence workers to feel
good about feedback that is inconsistent with their expectations. These findings are consistent
with the enhancement process. We suggest that the enhancement process be included in
sociology theories on emotions.

Full Text:
The sociology of emotions is a recent field, emerging in its modern form in the 1970s (Heise
1979; Hochschild 1983; Kemper 1978). Since then, the study of emotions has become one of
the leading edges of theory and research in sociology, particularly social psychology (Turner and
Stets 2006). In social psychology, most theories on emotions assume thatemotions emerge
from the cognitive consistency principle (Turner 2006). People feel good when there is
congruence among cognitions, but they feel bad when there is incongruence among cognitions.
For example, theories within the symbolic interactionist tradition, such as identity theory and
affect control theory, maintain that when a person's identity is confirmed in a situation, she
experiences positive emotions; if her identity is not confirmed, she feels
negative emotions(Robinson et al. 2006; Stets 2006). In expectation states theory,
positive emotions emerge in situations when an individual behaves according to the
expectations associated with her status, while negative emotions emerge when performance
expectations associated with her status are violated (Ridgeway 2006). Social exchange theory
(Lawler and Thye 2006) and justice theory (Jasso 2006) also assume that emotions stem from a
cognitive consistency dynamic. Both theories share the idea that expected rewards lead to
positive emotions and unexpected rewards lead to negative emotions.

In general, these theories assume individuals' feelings result from a deliberative process in which
they compare what they expect in a situation with what they actually experience. However, not
all situations permit such a comparative process. Sometimes the comparison will not occur in a
situation because cognitive processing is limited. For example, individuals may not be given
sufficient time to think about the outcomes they have received in a situation. Instead, they may
be rushed to an evaluation as to whether their outcomes are fair(Swann et al. 1990; Van den
Bos et al. 2006). Indeed, research reveals that when people receive outcomes in a situation that
are positive but incongruent with their expectations and they quickly evaluate these outcomes,
they report positive emotions even though they should report negative emotions given the
incongruence (Stets 2005; Swarm et al. 1990; Van den Bos et al. 2006).

A theoretical process that may explain why positive emotions may result from incongruent
expectations, at odds with the cognitive consistency principle, is the enhancement dynamic. This
process emphasizes people's desire to obtain positive information rather than consistent
information (Sedikides 1993; Sedikides et al. 2003; Swarm 1990). Research finds that the
enhancement process occurs as an immediate emotional response to feedback in a situation.
This is in contrast to the more deliberative comparison process underlying the consistency
principle.

In this research, we examine more closely the conditions under which the mindful, consistency
dynamic and quicker, enhancement process operate to produce positive and negative emotions.
Identity theory is used to test these competing theoretical processes (Stryker and Burke 2000).
Identity theory makes one's identity the central dynamic in explainingemotions. In this theory,
cognitive consistency is equivalent to having one's identity verified in a situation. Identity
verification occurs when one's identity meanings that serve as the identity standard match one's
identity meanings in a given situation. Identity non-verification is equivalent to a mismatch
between identity standard meanings and identity meanings in a situation.

In addition to the processing time that permits a deliberative or forces a more automatic
response to feedback, other people in the situation may also modify the consistency process and
influence enhancement effects. In identity theory, other people facilitate or disrupt the
verification of one's identity. They can support or not support one's identity claims. Two
dimensions in which others may disrupt the cognitive consistency dynamic are examined. These
are the dimensions of power and status. While power is one's control over the allocation of
resources or the ability to give rewards and punishments, status reflects the respect and
affection one gets from others (Kemper 2006; Zelditch 2006). We propose that when an identity
is not verified in a situation, one may feel good rather than bad when 1.) the legitimacy of the
power of the source providing the feedback is reinforced and 2.) the source providing the
feedback is given status or evaluated positively. The power and status of the source of identity
feedback carry additional meanings in a situation beyond the identity feedback itself. These
factors may intrude into the deliberative consistency process, making it less likely to occur.

To test this, we conduct a study that simulates a work situation and invokes a "worker" identity.
A participant as the "worker" learns that another participant as the "manager" will give her
feedback in the form of points after she completes each of three different tasks. After each task,
the worker is awarded points. These points reflect either 1.) what the worker would expect to get
in the worker role identity (identity verification), 2.) more than what she would expect to get
(identity non-verification that is too positive relative to her worker role identity standard), or 3.)
less than what she would expect to get (identity non-verification that is too negative relative to
her worker role identity standard). Prior to receiving the points/ feedback, either the worker is
reminded that the manager is authorized to award the points (reinforcing the manager's
legitimacy of power), or the worker is not reminded of this. Further, following receipt of the
feedback, either the worker has the opportunity to evaluate the manager, or she does not have
the opportunity to evaluate the manager. Finally, self-reports on the worker's feelings are
gathered.

This experiment allows us to study a situation that is difficult to examine in the natural setting,
that is, individuals' emotional response to identity verification or non-verification. Such situations
occur at work, at school, at home and with friends. Here, we capture features at work to
examine people's emotional reaction to the feedback.

Theory

The Identity Verification Process

In identity theory, an identity is a set of meanings that characterizes individuals as group

members, role players and unique persons (Burke 2004; Stets and Burke 2003; Stryker and
Burke 2000). These meanings serve as standards for the many identities that individuals claim.
According to identity theory, individuals compare a set of identity standard meanings (which
define them in a particular identity) with what they perceive to be the meanings (for that
particular identity) in a given situation (Burke 1991).

From this comparison, persons assess the degree of correspondence or consistency between
identity standard meanings and identity meanings in the situation. Consistency between the two
sets of identity meanings is identity verification, and individuals will feel positive emotions when
this occurs. Inconsistency between identity meanings is identity non-verification and persons will
feel negative emotions when this occurs. Given the consistency principle,
negative emotions emerge irrespective of whether the identity meanings in the situation are too
negative relative to the meanings held in the identity standard, or they are too positive relative
to the meanings held in the identity standard (Burke 1991). For example, if a person views
herself as average in worker productivity (a meaning in her worker identity standard), but
identity meanings in a situation suggest that she is actually lazy (too negative in productivity
relative to her standard) or an overly hard worker (too positive in productivity relative to her
standard), she will feel bad about both types of feedback; neither corresponds to her identity
standard.

These identity theory predictions in sociology are similar to the predictions in self-verification
theory in psychology (Swann et al. 2003). In self verification theory, people desire to confirm
what they already believe about themselves because in confirming who they are, stable self-
views are forged. This stability provides a sense of security and predictability to their world.
Further, people seek verification even when they see themselves negatively, such as being
dishonest or a criminal (Robinson and Smith-Lovin 1992; Swannet al. 1989; Swann et al. 1990;
Swann et al. 1992). Thus, when people receive verifying feedback as to who they are, they will
experience positive emotions. When they receive non-verifying feedback, irrespective of whether
their original self-views are negative or positive, they will experience negative emotions.

The consistency process that underlies identity theory, self-verification theory and a host of other
theories is at odds with the enhancement process in which people seek positive information
rather than consistent information. Shrauger (1975) attempted to reconcile evidence of self-
enhancement and self-verification by arguing that both exist, but that affective responses (how
one feels about feedback) are a function of self-enhancement while cognitive responses (an
assessment or judgment of feedback) are a function of self-verification. Looked at in another
way, the self-enhancement process affirms feeling good about oneself and one's world, while
self-verification argues a consistent view about oneself and the predictability of one's
environment (Swann 1990). Interestingly, Swann and his colleagues (1987) found that when
participants in their study were given either favorable or unfavorable social feedback, those with
negative self views thought that the unfavorable feedback was more characteristic of them, but
this unfavorable feedback also made them depressed.

Swarm (1990) has argued that the enhancement process is at odds with the cognitive
consistency principle underlying the self-verification model because enhancement involves a
simple categorization process in which individuals sort information into good/positive and
bad/negative. Persons typically embrace positive feedback and avoid negative feedback.
Verification entails additional mental work. Individuals not only have to categorize the feedback,
but they also must retrieve from memory their self-view along the dimension of the feedback,
and then compare their self-view with the feedback they receive. Thus, the self-verification
process has additional steps (retrieval and comparison processes) not found in self-
enhancement. If the self-verification process entails additional work, self-enhancement is more
likely to emerge initially in a situation, particularly when cognitive processing is limited. Self-
verification should follow self-enhancement if there is time and motivation for further processing.
Thus, self-enhancement responses are subject to an automatic process while self-verification
responses are subject to a deliberative process.

More generally, understanding the conditions under which the self-enhancement and the self-
verification processes operate may help us better theorize about emotions in sociology, and
more specifically, lend some insight into emerging contradictory findings on emotions in identity
theory. For example, consistent with identity theory, Burke and Harrod (2005) found that,
compared to partners who experienced spousal identity verification, those who experienced
spousal identity non-verification reported negative emotions. This was true whether spousal
identity meanings in the situation were overly positive or overly negative compared to their
identity standard for such meanings. However, in a series of laboratory studies on the worker
identity, Stets (2003, 2005) found that identity non verification that was overly negative
(workers were under evaluated relative to their worker identity standard)led to
negative emotions, while identity non-verification that was overly positive (workers were over
evaluated relative to their worker identity standard) led to positive emotions. Stets argued that
her results might be due to individuals in the laboratory responding automatically to positive
feedback rather than processing the feedback more deeply.

We predict that in response to non-verifying feedback that is overly positive (relative to their
identity standard), individuals will report positive emotion when they are not given the time to
process the feedback. This is consistent with the self-enhancement process. For ease of
presentation, our hypotheses are summarized in Table 1. The first row of Table 1, H1a, reflects
this prediction. Alternatively, when individuals have the time and motivation to engage in
cognitive work and compare their identity standard with feedback that is too positive, they will
report negative emotion. This is consistent with the self-verification process. This is H1b in Row
2. Finally, consistent with both the self-enhancement and self-verification process, non-verifying
feedback that is overly negative should lead to negative emotion. This is H2 in Row 3.

The Dimensions of Power and Status

While feedback that does not verify identities elicits emotional responses, the power and status
of the person who gives the non-verifying feedback also influences emotional responses.
Especially important in this regard is whether the legitimate power of the person is reinforced
and whether and how the person is evaluated. As Zelditch (2006) points out, legitimate power
elicits voluntary compliance, and is inexpensive and stable compared to non-legitimate power.
(1) Legitimate power is authority. People are more likely to comply with authority when support
comes from within the group to which the authority applies rather than outside the group. When
support for authority comes from peers and superiors, the authority is authorized. When support
comes from subordinates, the authority is endorsed.

When the power of the person providing identity feedback is legitimate through authorization or
endorsement, others should view the feedback as appropriate, even when it is inconsistent with
their own identity standard. Recipients of such feedback may anticipate formal sanctions from
superiors or informal sanctions from peers if they do not view the feedback as appropriate
(Walker and Zelditch 1993). They may assume that there is consensus on the authority's
actions. Thus, they may find ways, psychologically, to justify non-verifying feedback. For
example, they may convince themselves that they deserve the feedback because they did not
work as hard as they could have. Consistent with this, researchers in the justice area maintain
that legitimate power decreases feelings of injustice and negative emotions when unfair
allocations from powerful persons emerge in situations (Hegtvedt and Johnson 2000). Unfair
allocations in the justice area are analogous to non-verifying feedback in identity theory (Stets
2003, 2005).

We study the effects of authorization as a form of legitimacy. Authorization emerges in a

formally constituted multi-level hierarchy in which a top-level person can authorize a middle level
person to have power over persons at the lower level (Zelditch and Walker 1984). In this study,
a hierarchy exists in which the "supervisor" is the person at the top who is overseeing a project
in which the "manager" and "worker" are involved. The supervisor designates one person, the
manager, to be the more powerful actor in the situation, and the other to be the less powerful
actor, simply a worker.

What happens when the legitimate power of the manager is reinforced? We anticipate that when
we remind a worker of the legitimacy of the power of the manager, the worker will respond
positively to non-verifying feedback that is overly positive or negative. These predictions
correspond with hypotheses 3 and 4 in Table 1.

Kemper (2006:90) defines status as a situation in which "actors [with lower status] willingly and
gladly defer to, accept, approve, support, respect, admire, and ultimately, love others [with
higher status] without compulsion or coercion." We examine how individuals evaluate a person
who is the source of their identity feedback. This evaluation measures the degree of status
accorded to the person in power, which should also influence emotional reactions. When another
provides inconsistent feedback to a recipient and when the recipient has the opportunity to
evaluate the person who provided the feedback, the evaluation process encourages the recipient
to think about the feedback she received compared to what she expected to receive. This
additional mental work, which goes beyond the simple categorization of feedback to involve a
comparison process, moves the recipient beyond the self-enhancing process toward the self-
verification process. Thus, given the opportunity to evaluate the manager, a worker will report
negative emotions when feedback is overly positive or overly negative. These expectations are
found in hypotheses 5 and 6 in Table 1.

Aside from examining the effects of having the opportunity to evaluate the manager, we also
examine the nature of a worker's evaluation of the manager. Because a person is likely to use
the comparative process when given the chance to engage in an evaluation, a worker should
negatively evaluate the manager when the latter provides non-verifying feedback that is too
positive or too negative. These are hypotheses 7 and 8.

How people feel about the person giving the identity feedback should influence their emotional
reaction to the feedback. Again, because the comparative process is likely to be activated when
persons engage in an evaluation, the more a worker negatively evaluates the manager, the more
she will report negative emotions to identity feedback that is either overly positive (Hypothesis
9)or overly negative (Hypothesis 10).

To summarize, in response to non-verifying feedback that is overly positive (relative to their

standard), a worker will report positive rather than negative emotions if he or she does not have
the opportunity to process the feedback. A worker also should report positive feelings about non-
verifying feedback when the legitimacy of the manager is reinforced, and when he positively
evaluates the manager. In this way, the cognitive consistency principle underlying the sociology
of emotions may be conditional. The enhancement process can intrude into the situation.

Method

Subjects and Design

Participants in this study were male and female students recruited from undergraduate classes at
a large northwestern university. (2) Students earned $10 each for their participation. The setting
simulated a work situation. Just before participants started a set of tasks, the supervisor
designated one person as the worker, and the other as the manager. Following the completion of
each task, a worker received feedback in the form of points from the manager for her work. Prior
to the assignment of points, the worker was reminded that the supervisor designated the
manager as the person qualified to assign points or the worker was not reminded of this.
Following the awarding of points, the worker had the opportunity to evaluate the manager or she
did not have the opportunity to evaluate the manager. Participants reported their emotional
reactions to their points after each task. We collected data on 292 participants.

Procedure

Two participants were ushered into a room by a confederate (laboratory assistant) identified as
the "supervisor." One of the participants was actually a confederate. The supervisor explained
that an advertising agency, HIGHLIGHTS, was hired by one of the major automobile
manufacturers to create an ad campaign for a new car. The current study was to assess
HIGHLIGHTS' ad campaign. The "worker" in the study would perform three clerical tasks that
employees of HIGHLIGHTS would use during their ad campaign. The manager would evaluate the
worker's output to see how well the tasks were done.

The supervisor then assigned one person to be the manager and one person to be the worker for
the study. (3) Following the assignment, the worker went into a workroom where she viewed a
five-minute video explaining the clerical tasks. (4) The video explained the reward standard by
demonstrating that the worker in the video received 100 points for "average" work. After the
participant viewed the video, the manager entered the workroom and the study began.

The manager reviewed with the worker the clerical tasks and schedule of points. The manager
reminded the worker that she would receive 100 points for average work, 200 points for above
average work, and 50 points for below average work. The manager then left the workroom, and
the worker carried out the first task. After the allotted time expired, the manager reentered the
workroom.
After each task, the worker received feedback in the form of a rating from the manager. This
rating was based on the manager weighing (in ounces) the worker's output on a scale in the
workroom. The output weight was compared with a fictitious evaluation sheet posted on the wall
that specified the weight of average, above average and below average work. Following this
calculation, the manager always announced to the worker that she did average work. After this
feedback, the manager gave her a short survey to fill out. The worker was asked how well the
manager said she performed on the task (Average Work, Above Average Work or Below Average
Work), and how many points she expected the manager to allocate to her (100 points, 200
points or 50 points).

Before awarding the points to the worker, for a random half of the participants, the manager
qualified the reward amount with the following statement, "The supervisor told me that since I'm
the manager, the final decision for your points is up to me." The statement reinforced the
legitimacy of the manager's power. The manager then assigned points based upon the condition:
100, 200 or 50 points.

After the manager assigned the points, a random half of the participants had the opportunity to
evaluate the manager on several dimensions such as competence and trustworthiness. Thus, a
worker gave the manager more or less "status." Before going to the next task, the worker also
provided her emotional reactions to the feedback/points she received such as feeling satisfied,
grateful and angry. After all three tasks were completed and the instruments administered, the
worker was debriefed. Each participant spent approximately one hour in this experiment.

Manipulation Checks

After a worker received feedback as to how she had performed on a task, the person was asked,
"After the manager told you how you performed on the task, how many points did you expect to
receive?" Because the manager always told the worker that she did average work prior to
assigning points, all workers should have reported an expectation of 100 points. The findings
reveal that 98 percent of the workers expected to receive 100 points for their work prior to
receiving their points from the managers. This indicates that participants adopted the worker
identity standard of 100 points for average work. To ensure that the worker assigned
responsibility for their reward to the manager before moving on to the next task, the worker was
asked, "Who determined how many points you got for these tasks?" All of the workers reported
that their managers were responsible for the reward they received for each task.
Measures

Identity non-verification of the worker role that is overly positive is equivalent to a participant
receiving 200 points. Identity non-verification that is overly negative is equivalent to a
participant receiving 50 points. Identity verification occurs when a participant expects and
receives 100 points. (5) Reinforced legitimacy is coded 1 if the manager announced, prior to
awarding points for each task, that she was designated by the supervisor to award points to the
worker; otherwise, it is coded 0.

The opportunity to evaluate the source is coded 1 when the worker evaluated the manager in
several areas; otherwise, it is coded 0. The areas of evaluation included how much the manager
was competent, fair, considerate, trustworthy and biased. Response categories were anchored
with 0 (Not at all) and 10 (Very Much). Table 2 presents the factor analyses of the items for each
task. All items load well on the single factor. (6) For each task, the items were standardized
(mean = 0; variance = 1) and then summed, with a high score representing a positive
evaluation of the manager.

For the negative and positive emotions, workers were to report their feelings after they received
feedback for each task. For the negative emotions, they were asked on a scale from 0 (Don't
feel the emotion at all) to 10 (Intensely felt theemotion) how much anger, fear, sadness and
disgust they felt. Previous literature argues that these four emotions are primary emotions.
Primary emotions are emotions from which all other emotions are derived (Ekman and Friesen
1975; Kemper 1987; Plutchik 1980). For the positive emotions, they were to indicate on a scale
from 0 (Don't feel the emotion at all) to 10 (Intensely felt the emotion) how satisfied and
grateful they felt. Satisfaction is a primary emotion (Kemper 1987), and gratitude, which stems
from satisfaction, is a secondary emotion (Kemper 1987; Turner 1999).

In general, identity theory does not discuss specific emotions. (7) Instead, it predicts negative
feelings for identity non-verification and positive feelings for identity verification. Table 3
contains the factor analyses of the positive and negativeemotions for all three tasks showing
that all items load well on the single factor. For each task, the items were standardized (mean =
0; variance = 1) and then summed, with a high score representing positive emotions.

Analysis

Because we are examining individuals' emotional reactions to identity feedback and to the source
of that feedback across all three tasks, the unmeasured factors that influence individuals'
emotional reactions in the first task ([T.sub.1]) undoubtedly influence individuals' emotional
reactions in the second task ([T.sub.2]) and the third task ([T.sub.3]). Therefore, seemingly
unrelated three-stage least squares regression (SUR)is used, which takes into account the
correlated errors among multiple observations for a participant. The equations for all the
dependent variables are estimated simultaneously, and the least squares estimators are
interpreted in the same way as ordinary least square estimators (Felmlee and Hargens 1988).

There is no theoretical reason to assume that over time the independent variables will influence
individuals' emotional reactions differently. Consequently, the effects of the independent
variables were constrained to be the same in [T.sub.1], [T.sub.2], and [T.sub.3]. When the
results indicated a significant difference in the effects of the independent variables, the
constraints were removed. While we present the amount of variance explained for each equation,
we are actually more concerned as to whether the findings support the theory than accounting
for all variability in the emotional reactions.

Results

Table 4 presents the seemingly unrelated regression results of individuals' emotional responses
to non-verifying feedback. The top portion of the table reveals that non-verifying feedback that is
overly positive results in more positive emotionscompared to identity verification. Thus, when a
worker receives more points from the manager than what he or she is owed for average work,
the worker, when asked immediately for his emotional reaction, reports feeling good. This finding
supports the self-enhancement prediction (Hypothesis l a). There was insufficient time for the
worker to retrieve his identity standard from memory and compare it with the feedback, in which
case, the worker would have reported feeling bad (Hypothesis 1b).

Findings also reveal that the positive response to identity feedback that is overly positive
diminishes from [T.sub.1] (Task 1) to [T.sub.3](Task 3)([X.sup.2] = 7.90, p < .05). When
repeatedly exposed to non-verifying feedback that is too positive (from Task 1 to Task 2 to Task
3), a worker might begin to think about the meaning of the feedback. Thus, individuals who have
more time to engage in the comparison process associated with the verification process appear
to respond less positively to feedback that is overly positive relative to their standard. This
suggests activation of the self-verification process. Finally, the bottom portion of Table 4 shows
that feedback that is overly negative produces significantly more negative feelings compared to
identity verification. Identity meanings in a particular situation that fall short of identity standard
meanings neither enhance nor verify the self.

In Table 5, we examine how a person evaluates the source of the identity feedback when given
the opportunity. Overall, a worker negatively evaluates a manager who provides identity non-
verifying feedback, that is, feedback that is too positive or too negative compared to a worker's
evaluation of the manager who provides identity verifying feedback. At the top of the table, this
negative evaluation of the manager increases over time from [T.sub.1] to [T.sub.3] ([X.sup.2] =
5.41, p < .05) because a worker has more time to compare his or her worker identity standard
with the feedback. In the bottom of the table, the negative evaluation of the manager also
becomes significantly more negative over time (for [T.sub.1] to [T.sub.2], [X.sup.2] = 9.71, p <
.05; for [T.sub.1] to [T.sub.3], [X.sup.2] = 8.18, p < .05). These results support hypotheses 7
and 8 and are consistent with the self-verification process. Thus, while the findings in Table 4
reveal that a worker reports feeling good when he or she receives feedback that is overly
positive from the manager, the results in Table 5 show that, he negatively evaluates the
manager who over-rewards him, and this negative evaluation increases over time.

Table 6 reports individuals' feelings when the legitimacy of the power of the source is reinforced.
When the identity feedback is overly positive or overly negative, a worker reports feeling good
when the legitimacy of the manager is reinforced compared to when the legitimacy of the
manager is not reinforced. This is self-enhancement. These findings confirm Hypotheses 3 and 4.

Next examined are persons' emotional reactions to identity feedback when they were given the
opportunity to evaluate the source of their feedback. We expected that when the worker had the
opportunity to evaluate the manager on a variety of dimensions, the worker would then be able
to stop and think about the feedback and report feeling bad about feedback that was overly
positive or negative. The results did not support this expectation, thus hypotheses 5 and 6 are
not supported. (8)

Table 7 presents the emotional responses to identity feedback that is too positive or too negative
by reinforced legitimacy of the manager and the opportunity to evaluate the manager. This
enables us to examine the effect of each factor, controlling for the influence of the other. The
findings are similar to those found in Table 6. When the worker receives feedback that is not
verifying, she reports feeling good, when the legitimacy of the manager is reinforced. The
opportunity to evaluate the manager has no significant influence.

The findings in Table 8 show the effect of the worker's evaluation of the manager on the worker's
emotional reactions to non-verifying feedback. As revealed in the table, the intercept is positive
when feedback is too positive, but negative when feedback is too negative. These results indicate
that the worker has an average positive evaluation of the manager when the manager provides
non-verifying positive feedback, but an average negative evaluation of the manager when the
manager provides non-verifying negative feedback.

The top of Table 8 shows that to the extent that a worker positively evaluates the manager, the
worker feels good about non-verifying feedback that is overly positive. This positive response
strengthens over time from [T.sub.1] to[T.sub.2]([X.sup.2] = 7.43, p < .05) and from
[T.sub.1]to [T.sub.3]([X.sup.2] = 10.61, p < .05). This is the self-enhancement process.
However, a test of the intercepts reveals that a worker's average positive emotion declines over
time from [T.sub.1] to [T.sub.2] ([X.sup.2] = 13.28, p < .05) and from [T.sub.1] to
[T.sub.3]([X.sup.2] = 27.55, p < .05). It appears that when a worker has more time to think
about the feedback, she responds less positively to feedback that is too positive relative to her
standard. When a worker positively evaluates the manager, she also feels good about the non-
verifying feedback, as is shown in the bottom of the table for the condition of non-verifying
feedback that is too negative. However, these emotions do not strengthen over time. These
findings support hypotheses 9 and 10. In general, how individuals feel about the source of the
feedback has an influence on their emotional reaction to non-verifying feedback.

Finally, in Table 9, we examine the combined effects of reinforced legitimacy of the manager and
the evaluation of the manager on workers' emotional reactions to identity non-verifying
feedback. Both factors significantly influence how a worker feels. When a worker is reminded of
the manager's legitimate power, he or she is more likely to report, at the top of the table, feeling
good about positive non-verifying feedback than if he is not reminded of the manager's
legitimate power. Additionally, when a worker positively evaluates the manager, he or she is
more likely to report feeling good for non-verifying positive feedback. (9) These latter feelings
strengthen over time from [T.sub.1] to [T.sub.2]([X.sup.2] = 7.54, p < .05) and from [T.sub.1]
to [T.sub.3]([X.sup.2] = 10.63, p < .05). These effects reveal the self-enhancement process.

The bottom of Table 9 reveals that reinforcing the manager's legitimate power leads to a worker
feeling good about non-verifying negative feedback. However, this effect occurs only initially
([T.sub.1]), but does not reoccur in [T.sub.2] or [T.sub.3]. The effect of the evaluation of the
manager persists over time. When a worker positively evaluates the manager, the worker feels
good about non-verifying negative feedback. (10) Again, this finding is the self-enhancement
process.

Overall, the findings support most of the hypotheses. Individuals feel good about non-verifying
feedback that is overly positive, and bad about non-verifying feedback that is overly negative.
These findings support the self-enhancement process. However, persons not only react to
identity feedback, they also react to the person giving the feedback. If a person's legitimate
power is reinforced, people are more accepting of non-verifying positive and negative feedback.
Additionally, when people positively evaluate the source of their identity feedback, they are also
more accepting of non-verifying positive and negative feedback. The results thus show how the
self-enhancement process importantly influences individuals' emotional reactions to non-
verifying feedback.

Discussion

Many sociological theories of emotions assume a cognitive consistency approach to emotions in

which feelings result from individuals comparing what they expect in a situation with what they
actually get. When individuals receive what they expect, they feel good; when they do not, they
feel bad. The present research examined this approach in more detail because some research
has found that persons feel good about unexpected positive outcomes (Stets 2003, 2005). This
contrary evidence is one example of a larger body of research that has investigated whether
individuals are guided by an immediate response in situations that enhance themselves or a
calculating cognitive response that verifies them (Sedikides 1993; Sedikides et al. 2003; Swann
1990; Swann et al. 1987; Swann et al. 2003). Our findings reveal that emotions do not always
result solely from the cognitive consistency principle.

The results in Table 4 evidence a lack of support for the consistency principle. Individuals
reported positive rather than negative feelings for non-verifying feedback that is overly positive.
This supports other findings on persons' emotional reactions to persistent non-verifying identity
feedback in the laboratory (Stets 2003, 2005). However, these laboratory findings are
inconsistent with identity results on newly married couples (Burke and Harrod 2005). The self-
enhancement process may be more likely to occur between uninvolved partners in the laboratory
than between married couples. In the latter, the individuals may be motivated to process
feedback more thoroughly to avoid deception compared to the less intimate relationship with a
relative stranger in the laboratory (Burke and Harrod 2005). Additionally, in this study, we might
have simulated less invested identities with participants not as strongly committed to the worker
identity. Less invested identities may be more subject to affective (self-enhancing) responses of
feeling good than cognitive (self-consistency) responses of identity verification (Stets 2005;
Swann et al. 2003). Thus, this experiment suggests two situational factors that make the
cognitive consistency principle conditional: the nature of the relationship and the degree of
investment in the identity enacted. It would have been difficult to discover these situational
factors in the complex, natural setting.

Interestingly, the findings identified in this study reveal that, over time, positive reactions to
non-verifying feedback that is too positive were reduced significantly. Thus, the enhancement
response can begin to diminish even between strangers. This diminishment is consistent with
Swann's (1990) argument that people must have the cognitive resources available (for example,
sufficient time)to access their self-view and compare it to situational outcomes for consistency
motives to emerge. The fact that participants' positive feelings declined over time (Table 4)
suggests that participants were beginning to access their identity standards in response to the
feedback and realizing the discrepancy between the feedback and their identity standards. When
people do not have time to access their self-view, Swann maintains that individuals may
immediately respond to feedback by simply categorizing it as good or bad, embracing the good
and avoiding the bad. When people are rushed to respond to feedback, they simply respond to
what feels good rather than what is true about them (Swann et al. 2003).

However, when the participants in this study had the opportunity to evaluate the source of their
feedback, the cognitive operations that otherwise might not have taken place actually did. In
asking the worker to evaluate the manager, the worker's evaluation was based in part, on
whether the manager was giving the worker feedback that was consistent with the worker's
identity standard. In making this comparison, the worker would judge the manager poorly when
the manager's feedback was inconsistent with the worker's identity standard. The findings in
Table 5 are consistent with this, although the less positive feelings for the manager in response
to non-verifying positive feedback are not significant until the third round (Task 3), when more
time for cognitive processing has occurred. Sufficient time may need to elapse and repeated
non-verifying feedback may need to be given to overcome the tendency to respond in a self-
enhancing manner. The worker had no trouble evaluating the manager more negatively when
the feedback was negative. This negative evaluation emerged early on and persisted across the
three tasks. Negative inconsistent feedback is neither self-enhancing nor verifying.

The emotions that individuals' feel in a situation are not only a function of the relationship
between their identity standard and identity feedback, but also their relationship to others in the
situation, along with their corresponding social structural positions. The more the worker
positively evaluated the manager, the more the worker reported feeling good for non-verifying
feedback that was overly positive or overly negative (Table 8). However, for identity feedback
that was overly positive, a worker felt increasingly good over time about the feedback, but over
that same period, her positive evaluation of the manager declined. Thus, individuals may have
competing affective states depending upon their focus of attention.

In evaluating the manager, we argue that a worker has to compare the identity feedback with
her identity standard and, when they exist, identify discrepancies. Therefore, the initial
emotional response to non-verifying identity feedback reflects self-enhancement tendencies
while the response after evaluating the manager reflects self-verification or cognitive consistency
tendencies. Thus, automatic affective responses may slow down whereas deliberative cognitive
processes may take over.

The power of others in the situation also influences people's emotional responses. Reinforcing the
legitimacy of a person's power appears to interfere with the self-verification process because
individuals responded positively to non-verifying feedback that was too positive or too negative
(Table 6). This persists when controlling for the opportunity to evaluate the person (Table 7),
and when controlling for whether the evaluation of the person is positive or negative (Table 9).
Therefore, persons' emotions are influenced by the nature of the feedback and the power that
lies behind it.

Overall, the findings from this research show how the cognitive consistency dynamic is
inadequate to account for complex situations. When people are in less intimate relationships, less
invested in an identity, and rushed to an evaluation, they will respond favorably to non-verifying
positive feedback. If the legitimate power that lies behind the source of the feedback is
reinforced and this person is positively evaluated, people will respond positively rather than
negatively to non-verifying feedback. This response is enhancement, and suggests that
sociologists need to consider the enhancement process in their theories of emotion. We need to
consider contextual factors in future theorizing such as how much time is available to process
outcomes as well as the power, status and perhaps other characteristics of those who provide
the outcomes. In this study, such factors challenge the operation of the cognitive consistency
principle of emotions.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (SES-9904215) to the first
author. We thank members of the Social Psychology Seminar at the University of California,
Riverside, for their comments on an earlier draft. We also thank Peter J. Burke and James L. Heft
for their helpful feedback. Direct correspondence to Jan E. Stets, Department of Sociology, 1224
Watkins Hall, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0419. E-mail jan.stets@ucr.edu.

References

Burke, Peter J. 1991. "Identity Processes and Social Stress." American Sociological Review
56(6):836-49.

--. 2004. "Identities and Social Structure: 2003 Cooley-Mead Award Address." Social Psychology
Quarterly 67(1): 5-15.

Burke, Peter J., and Michael M. Harrod. 2005. "Too Much of a Good Thing?" Social Psychology
Quarterly 68(4):359-74.

Felmlee, Diane H., and Lowell L. Hargens. 1988. "Estimation and Hypothesis Testing For
Seemingly Unrelated Regressions: A Sociological Application." Social Science Research
17(4):384-99.

Ekman, Paul, and Wallace V. Friesen. 1975. Unmasking the Face. Prentice-Hall.

Hegtvedt, Karen A., and Cathryn Johnson. 2000. ""Justice Beyond the Individual: A Future with
Legitimation." Social Psychology Quarterly 63(4):298-311.

Heise, David R. 1979. Understanding Events. Affect and the Construction of Social Action.
Cambridge University Press.

Hochschild, Arlie R. 1983. The Managed Heart. Commercialization of Human Feeling. University
of California Press.

Jasso, Guillermina. 1980. "A New Theory of Distributive Justice." American Sociological Review
45(1): 3-32.

--. 2006. "Emotion in Justice Processes." Pp. 321-46. Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions.
Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner, editors. Springer.

Kemper, Theodore D. 1978. A Social Interactional Theory of Emotions. John Wiley.

--. 1987. "How Many Emotions Are There? Wedding the Social and Autonomic Components."
American Journal of Sociology 93(2):263-89.

--. 2006. "Power and Status and the Power-Status Theory of Emotions." Pp. 87-113. Handbook
of the Sociology ofEmotions. Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner, editors. Springer.
Lawler, Edward J., and Shane R. Thye. 2006. "Social Exchange Theory of Emotions." Pp. 295-
320. Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions. Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner, editors.
Springer.

Plutchik, Robert. 1980. Emotion. A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis. Harper & Row.

Ridgeway, Cecilia L. 2006. "Expectation States Theory and Emotion." Pp. 347-67. Handbook of
the Sociology of Emotions. Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner, editors. Springer.

Robinson, Dawn T., and Lynn Smith-Lovin. 1992. "Selective Interaction as a Strategy for Identity
Maintenance: An Affect Control Model." Social Psychology Quarterly 55(1):12-28.

Robinson, Dawn T., Lynn Smith-Lovin and Allison K. Wisecup. 2006. "Affect Control Theory." Pp.
179-202. Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions. Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner, editors.
Springer.

Sedikides, Constantine. 1993. "Assessment, Enhancement, and Verification Determinants of the

Self-Evaluation Process." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65(2):317-38.

Sedikides, Constantine, Lowell Gaertner and Yoshiyasu Toguchi. 2003. "Pancultural Self-
Enhancement." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84(1):60-79.

Shrauger, J. Sidney. 1975. "Responses to Evaluation as a Function of Initial Self-Perceptions."

Psychological Bulletin 82(4):581-96.

Stets, Jan E. 2003. ':Justice, Emotion, and Identity Theory." Pp. 105-22. Advances in Identity
Theory and Research. Peter J. Burke, Timothy J. Owens, Richard T. Serpe and Peggy A. Thoits,
editors. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

--. 2005. "Examining Emotions in Identity Theory." Social Psychology Quarterly 68(1): 39-56.

--. 2006. "Identity Theory and Emotions." Pp. 203-23. Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions.
Jan E. Stets and Jonathan H. Turner, editors. Springer.

Stets, Jan E., and Peter J. Burke. 2003. "A Sociological Approach to Self and Identity." Pp. 128-
52. Handbook of Self and Identity. Mark Leary and June Tangney, editors. The Guilford Press.

--. 2005. "New Directions in Identity Control Theory." Advances in Group Processes 22:43-64.

Stryker, Sheldon, and Peter J. Burke. 2000. "The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity
Theory." Social Psychology Quarterly 63(4):284-97.

Swann, William B., Jr. 1990. "To Be Adored or to Be Known?: The Interplay of Self-Enhancement
and Self-Verification." Pp. 408-50. Handbook of Motivation and Cognition. E. Tory Higgins and
Richard M. Sorrentino, editors. The Guilford Press.

Swarm, William B., Jr., John J. Griffin, Steven C. Predmore and Bebe Gaines. 1987. "The
Cognitive-Affective Crossfire: When Self-Consistency Confronts Self-Enhancement." Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 52(5):881-89.

Swann, William B., J. Gregory Hixon, Alan Stein-Seroussi and Daniel T. Gilbert. 1990. "The
Fleeting Gleam of Praise: Cognitive Processes Underlying Behavioral Reactions to Self-Relevant
Feedback." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59(1):17-26.
Swann, William B., Jr., Brett W. Pelham, and Douglas S. Krull. 1989. "Agreeable Fancy or
Disagreeable Truth? Reconciling Self Enhancement and Self-Verification." Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 57(5): 782-91.

Swann, William B., Jr., Peter J. Rentfrow and Jennifer S. Guinn. 2003. "Self Verification: The
Search for Coherence." Pp. 367-83. Handbook of Self and Identity. Mark R. Leary and June Price
Tangney, editors. The Guilford Press.

Swann, William B., Jr., Richard M. Wenzlaff and Romin W. Tafarodi. 1992. "Depression and the
Search for Negative Evaluations: More Evidence of the Role of Self-Verification Strivings." Journal
of Abnormal Psychology 101(2):314-71.

Turner, Jonathan H. 1999. "Toward a General Sociological Theory of Emotions." Journal for the
Theory of Social Behavior 29(2):132-62.

--. 2006. "The State of Theorizing in Sociological Social Psychology: A Grand Theorist's View."
Pp. 353-74. Contemporary Social Psychological Theories. Peter J. Burke, editor. Stanford
University Press.

Turner, Jonathan H., and Jan E. Stets. 2005. The Sociology of Emotions. Cambridge University
Press.

Van den Bos, Kees, Susanne L. Peters, D. Ramona Bobocel and Jan Fekke Ybema. 2006. "On
Preferences and Doing the Right Thing: Satisfaction with Advantageous Inequity When Cognitive
Processing Is Limited." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42(2): 273-89.

Walker, Henry A, and Morris Zelditch Jr. 1993. "Power, Legitimacy, and the Stability of Authority:
A Theoretical Research Program." Pp. 364-81. Theoretical Research Programs. Studies in the
Growth of Theory. Joseph Berger and Morris Zelditch Jr., editors. Stanford University Press.

Zajonc, Robert B. 1980. "Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences." American
Psychologist 35(7):151-75.

Zelditch, Morris Jr. 2006. "Legitimacy Theory." Pp. 324-52. Contemporary Social Psychological
Theories. Peter J. Burke, editor. Stanford University Press.

Zelditch, Morris, Jr., and Henry A Walker. 1984. "Legitimacy and the Stability of Authority."
Advances in Group Processes 1:1-27.

Jan E. Stets, University of California, Riverside

Emily K. Asencio, University of California, Riverside

Notes

(1.) Legitimate power is power that is "natural, right, proper and in accord with the way things
ought to be." (Zelditch 2006:324)

(2.) We examined whether there were gender differences. The only difference we found was that
women were more likely than men to respond positively to identity verification. These results are
available upon request.

(3.) The assignment was preset with the participant always assigned to the worker role and the
confederate always assigned to the manager role. The procedure for this assignment is available
upon request.
(4.) In Task 1, workers alphabetized promotional letters on the new car by the selected family's
last name. In Task 2, they copied each family's name and address onto a HIGHLIGHTS mailing
envelope, and then they clipped a return envelope addressed to HIGHLIGHTS to the promotional
letter and mailing envelope. In Task 3, they took a new stack of promotional letters and did the
second task again, but they kept the promotional packets in alphabetical order as they
proceeded. Participants carried out each task for six minutes. Pre-testing revealed six minutes
was sufficient for participants to develop an attitude toward each task.

(5.) In distributive justice theory, it takes more of an over-reward to generate injustice of an

equal magnitude to that of an under-reward (Jasso 1980). According to Jasso, this is the log
(under-reward/just reward) = -log (over reward/just rewards). An over-reward is analogous to
overly positive non verifying feedback, and an under-reward is analogous to overly negative non-
verifying feedback. Therefore, in this study, the ratio of 200/100 = inverse of 50/100.

(6.) [T.sub.1], [T.sub.2] and [T.sub.3] = Task 1, Task 2 and Task 3 in the experiment.

(7.) Identity theorists are hypothesizing about specific emotions that may stem from identity
non-verification (Stets and Burke 2005). Future research needs to test these hypotheses

(8.) These results are available upon request.

(9.) There were no significant interaction effects in [T.sub.1], [T.sub.2] and [T.sub.3] These
results are available upon request.

(10.) Again, there were no significant interaction effects in [T.sub.1], [T.sub.2], and [T.sub.3]
These results also are available upon request.

Table 1: Hypotheses

Non- Timing Evaluation

Verifying of of
Hypothesis Feedback Response Source

H1a Overly Immediate -- (b)

Positive
Hlb Overly Delayed --
Positive
H2 Overly -- (a) --
Negative
H3 Overly -- --
Positive
H4 Overly -- --
Negative
H5 Overly -- Opportunity to
Positive Evaluate Source
H6 Overly -- Opportunity to
Negative Evaluate Source
H7 Overly -- Negative
Positive
H8 Overly -- Negative
Negative
H9 Overly -- Negative
Positive
H10 Overly -- Negative
Negative

Non- Source
Verifying of
Hypothesis Feedback Feedback Emotion

H1a Overly -- (c) Positive (d)

Positive
Hlb Overly -- Negative
Positive
H2 Overly -- Negative
Negative
H3 Overly Legitimacy is Positive
Positive Reinforced
H4 Overly Legitimacy is Positive
Negative Reinforced
H5 Overly -- Negative
Positive
H6 Overly -- Negative
Negative
H7 Overly -- --
Positive
H8 Overly -- --
Negative
H9 Overly -- Negative
Positive
H10 Overly -- Negative
Negative

(a) Unless otherwise indicated, timing can be immediate

or delayed.

(b) Unless otherwise indicated, no opportunity for

evaluation is provided.

(c) Unless otherwise indicated, the legitimacy of the

source's power is not reinforced.

(d) Bolded text indicates the predicted outcome for

conditions to the left of the row.

Table 2: Principal Components Analyses of

Evaluation of Source
Evaluation of Source
Items [T.sub.1] [T.sub.2] [T.sub.3]
Competent .90 .87 .82
Fair .95 .95 .91
Considerate .94 .93 .90
Trustworthy .95 .93 .90
Biased -.72 -.68 -.56
Eigenvalue 4.02 3.84 3.45
[ohm] .96 .94 .92

Table 3: Principal Components Analyses of Emotions

Items [T.sub.1] [T.sub.2] [T.sub.3]

Sad -.76 -.76 -.75

Fear -.61 -.67 -.48
Anger -.91 -.87 -.88
Disgust -.87 -.87 -.86
Satisfied .69 .56 .75
Grateful .52 .73 .62
Eigenvalue 3.31 3.39 3.27
[ohm] .89 .91 .92

Table 4: SUR of Emotional Responses to Identity Non-Verification

[T.sub.1]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N =192)
Identity Non-Verification .52 * .51 * 0.06
Intercept 0.11 0.04
[R.sup.2] .28 *
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N =195)
Identity Non-Verification -.57 * -.83 * 0.08
Intercept 0.11 0.06
[R.sup.2] .33 *

[T.sub.1]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N =192)
Identity Non-Verification .47 * .51 * 0.06
Intercept 0.11 0.05
[R.sup.2] .19 *
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N =195)
 Identity Non-Verification -.55 * -.83 * 0.08
Intercept 0.13 0.06
[R.sup.2] .29 *

[T.sub.1]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N =192)
Identity Non-Verification .41 * .42 * 0.06
Intercept 0.14 0.05
[R.sup.2] .15 *
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N =195)
Identity Non-Verification -.54 * -.83 * 0.08
Intercept 0.15 0.06
[R.sup.2] .29 *

Note: * P < .05

Table 5: SUR of Evaluation of Source for

Identity Non-Verification

[T.sub.1]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 95)
Identity Non-
Verification -.12 -.13 .11
Intercept .45 .08
[R.sup.2] .01
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 98)
Identity Non-
Verification -.64 * -1.17 .14
Intercept .43 .10
[R.sup.2] .41 *

[T.sub.2]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 95)
Identity Non-
Verification -.12 -.13 .11
Intercept .52 .08
[R.sup.2] .02
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 98)
Identity Non-
Verification -.74 * -1.41 .13
Intercept .54 .09
[R.sup.2] .56*

[T.sub.3]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 95)
Identity Non-
Verification -.16 * -.19 * .12
Intercept .55 .08
[R.sup.2] .03
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 98)
Identity Non-
Verification -.74 * -1.43 .13
Intercept .56 .09
[R.sup.2] .56 *

Note: * p < .05

Table 6: SUR of Emotional Response to Identity

Non-Verification by Legitimacy

[T.sub.1]

[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 96)
Reinforced Legitimacy .17 * .12 * .07
Intercept .56 .05
.03
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 99)
Reinforced Legitimacy .18 * .25 * .13
Intercept -.84 .10
[R.sub.2] .04

[T.sub.2]

[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 96)
Reinforced Legitimacy .15 * .12 * .07
Intercept .53 .05
.02
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 99)
Reinforced Legitimacy .18 * .25 * .13
Intercept -.81 .10
[R.sub.2] .01

[T.sub.3]

[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 96)
Reinforced Legitimacy .14 * .12 * .07
Intercept .48 .05
.02
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 99)
Reinforced Legitimacy .17* .25 * .13
Intercept -.80 .10
[R.sub.2] .01

Note: * p < .05

Table 7: SUR of Emotional Responses to Identity Non-Verification

by Legitimacy and Opportunity to Evaluate the Source

[T.sub.1]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 96)
Reinforced Legitimacy .19 * .13 * .07
Opportunity to Evaluate Source -.08 -.06 .07
Intercept .59 .06
[R.sub.2] .04

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 99)
Reinforced Legitimacy .18 * .25 * .13
Opportunity to Evaluate Source -.11 -.15 .13
Intercept -.76 .12
[R.sub.2] .06

[T.sub.2]
 [beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 96)
Reinforced Legitimacy .17 * .13 * .07
Opportunity to Evaluate Source -.03 -.06 .07
Intercept .56 .06
[R.sub.2] .04

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 99)
Reinforced Legitimacy .18 * .25 * .13
Opportunity to Evaluate Source -.11 -.15 .13
Intercept -.73 .12
[R.sub.2] .03

[T.sub.3]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 96)
Reinforced Legitimacy .15 * .13 * .07
Opportunity to Evaluate Source -.12 -.10 .08
Intercept .53 .07
[R.sub.2] .04

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 99)
Reinforced Legitimacy .17 * .25 * .13
Opportunity to Evaluate Source -.10 -.15 .13
Intercept -.72 .12
[R.sub.2] .02

Note: * P < .05

Table 8: SUR of Emotional Responses to Identity Non-Verification

by Evaluation of Source

[T.sub.1]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 47)
Evaluation of Source .40* .29 * .07
Intercept .50 .06
[R.sup.2] .26 *
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 50)
 Evaluation of Source .41* .34 * .07
Intercept -.54 .10
[R.sup.2] .28 *

[T.sub.2]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 47)
Evaluation of Source .55* .42 * .06
Intercept .38 .06
[R.sup.2] .43 *
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 50)
Evaluation of Source .39* .34 * .07
Intercept -.47 .10
[R.sup.2] .23 *

[T.sub.3]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 47)
Evaluation of Source .58* .46 * .06
Intercept .31 .06
[R.sup.2] .52 *
Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 50)
Evaluation of Source .37* .34 * .07
Intercept -.42 .10
[R.sup.2] .24 *

Note: * P < .05

Table 9: SUR of Emotional Responses to Identity Non-Verification

by Legitimacy and Evaluation of Source

[T.sub.1]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 47)
Reinforced Legitimacy .22 * .19 * .10
Evaluation of Source .40 * .29 * .07
Intercept .41 .08
[R.sup.2] .31 *

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 50)
Reinforced Legitimacy .29 * .40 * .15
Evaluation of Source .40 * .33 * .06
Intercept -.75 .12
[R.sup.2] .36 *

[T.sub.2]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 47)
Reinforced Legitimacy .19 * .19 * .10
Evaluation of Source .54 * .41 * .06
Intercept .29 .08
[R.sup.2] .45 *

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 50)
Reinforced Legitimacy .12 .16 .16
Evaluation of Source .38 * .33 * .06
Intercept -.56 .13
[R.sup.2] .25 *

[T.sub.3]
[beta] B (SE)

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Positive (N = 47)
Reinforced Legitimacy .17 * .19 * .10
Evaluation of Source .58 * .46 * .06
Intercept .21 .08
[R.sup.2] .55 *

Non-Verifying Feedback:
Overly Negative (N = 50)
Reinforced Legitimacy .11 .16 .16
Evaluation of Source .36 * .33 * .06
Intercept -.51 .13
[R.sup.2] .24 *

Note: * p < .05

Stets, Jan E.^Asencio, Emily K.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Asencio, Emily K., and Jan E. Stets. "Consistency and enhancement processes in understanding
emotions." Social Forces 86.3 (2008): 1055+.Academic OneFile. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA177828251&v=2.1&u=inbhc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=da
d84aa9a9be1611f43bb20fc052e170

Gale Document Number: GALE|A177828251

Optimum happiness
Author(s):Ilka Bradshaw
Source:Modern English Digest. 5.5 (Oct. 2007): p36.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2007 Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd.
http://www.keywayspublishing.com/style/component/option,com_virtuemart/page,shop.product
_details/flypage,shop.flypage/category_i

Full Text:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
New studies show that we are at our happiest when we are young. We are also happy when we
are older but interestingly, the period of greatest unhappiness usually occurs while we are in our
middle age. These findings surprised the researchers who reached their conclusions only after
studying the comparative happiness of more than 2 million people in over 80 different countries.
Apparently, people's sense of well-being follows a U shaped route throughout their lives. Their
sense of well-being peaks at the beginning of their lives and during their twilight years but dips
in middle age. In Britain, for example, men are at their unhappiest when they are 50 and at 40
for women.

What especially amazed the researchers was the fact that the findings cut through such
considerations as race, culture and social or economic background. The results suggested that
wellbeing and general happiness is not necessarily dependant on matters usually associated with
happiness, for example by having children, by benefiting from a high income or even by having a
stable family background. Indeed, whether a person was divorced, married, rich or poor seemed
to make no material difference to their overall lifetime sense of well-being. As one researcher
pointed out, "It happens to men and women, to single and married people, to rich and poor and
to those with or without children".

But if people's general happiness is not dependant on factors generally perceived to aid a sense
of well being, then what explains these emotional peaks and troughs? One theory is that as we
grow older we learn to adapt to our own individual strengths and weaknesses. As children and
young adults we embark upon our lives full of expectations, ambitions and goals. A lucky few
achieve their childhood ambitions but most learn, from bitter experience, to recognise and if
necessary discard any unrealistic expectations. Usually this process of reevaluation occurs during
our middle age, a time when we review and if appropriate revise our life view. In our old age, we
may unconsciously accept our own limitations, any setbacks or disappointments and learn to
simply enjoy life for what it is.

Another, somewhat simplistic, theory put forward by the researchers is that cheerful, contented
people tend to live longer. Does a positive and optimistic view of the world enhance happiness
and even prolong life? One other explanation is that as people grow older they witness the death
of their peers and as a consequence begin to appreciate life more and count their blessings.

Whatever cause of the "U" shaped curve during our lives, it is clear that something occurs,
unconsciously, deep inside us. For the average middle aged person in the modern world, the dip
in mental health and happiness comes on slowly, not suddenly in a single year. But
encouragingly people usually emerge from their low period in their early 50's. As the researchers
point out, "By the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit, then on average you are as
happy and mentally healthy as a 20 year old." Clearly, we can all have something to look forward
to!

Comparative (adj) which compares two or more things.

Twilight (n) the final stages of something. Trough (n) a low period. Discard (v) to get rid of
something.

Simplistic (adj) treating or dealing with something in a way that is too simple and easy.

Bradshaw, Ilka

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Bradshaw, Ilka. "Optimum h
Why your mind has a mind of its own
Author(s):Jonathan D. Cohen
Source:The Wilson Quarterly. 30.2 (Spring 2006): p90.
Document Type:Article

Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2006 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/page.cfm/About_Wilson_Quarterly

Full Text:
THE SOURCE: "The Vulcanization of the Human Brain: A Neural Perspective on Interactions
Between Cognition and Emotion" by Jonathan D. Cohen, in The Journal of Economic
Perspectives, Fall 2005.

How DO WE MAKE DECISIONS? Why do we allow our emotions to get in the way of rational
response? What we think of as emotional behavior may be the result of "evolutionarily old"
mechanisms winning out over areas of the brain that developed later in the course
of human evolution, argues psychologist Jonathan D. Cohen, director of the Center for the Study
of the Brain, Mind, and Behavior at Princeton University. While emotional behavior sometimes
seems irrational in a modern setting, it may have been perfectly reasonable in the early days of
our evolutionary history.

In this view, the human mind is best thought of not as a unified whole but rather as a "society of
minds," each capable of independent action. So although the brain's prefrontal cortex enables
the individual to act in accordance with abstract goals or principles, it doesn't always run the
show. The older, "limbic" system of the brain acts more quickly and thus may win the battle to
determine behavior.

This theory resolves long-standing conundrums in Various fields, such as the inconsistencies of
individual moral behavior illustrated by the switch and footbridge scenarios.

In the switch scenario, individuals are asked if they would flip a switch to divert a trolley car onto
a sidetrack if it would kill one person but save five others who are on the main track. Most
people say yes.

In the footbridge scenario, they are asked if they would push a man off a footbridge onto the
track below to save the same five people; in this instance, most people say no. We instinctively
recoil from the idea of pushing someone off a bridge, but if we can flip a switch from a distance,
we seem able to make the rational choice.

What explains the difference? In his work using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor
brain activity, Cohen sees an answer in the "society of minds" theory.

In people faced with dilemmas like the footbridge scenario, MRIs revealed activity in the
emotional processing regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex. The switch
scenario, however, triggered activity in the anterior and dorsolateral areas of the prefrontal
cortex, home of more-rational thought processes.
Cohen is careful to note that MRIs, which measure changes in blood oxygen in specific areas of
the brain, are not a decisive indicator of brain activity. And even a correlation between brain
activity and behavior does not prove that one caused the other.

Why would people have developed a negative emotional response to pushing someone off a
bridge? One possibility is that an aversion to killing arose because it fostered the creation of
cooperative social structures that conferred an evolutionary advantage.

Many seemingly irrational human decisions observed by behavioral economists can also be
explained by the dominance of evolutionarily old emotional responses. In the ultimatum game,
for example, a player is given a sum of money and instructed to make an offer to a partner
about how it should be split between them. If they can't agree on a split, both players get
nothing. Surprisingly, people in tests run in many different cultures generally reject offers of less
than 20 percent of the sum, often walking away empty handed.

This, too, seems to be a deeply embedded response--Cohen suggests that early humans living in
small groups needed to show their fellows that they couldn't be taken advantage of--and it's
associated with activity in more primitive areas of the brain. The
contemporary human preference for immediate consumption (think failure to save) also falls into
this category; the best place for our evolutionary ancestors to store food was in their bellies.

It's the rational mind that has created today's complex technological societies, Cohen observes,
but the often discordant "society of minds" in our heads isn't always up to the challenges those
modern societies pose.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Cohen, Jonathan D. "Why your mind has a mind of its own." The Wilson Quarterly 30.2 (2006):
90+. Academic OneFile. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA145389024&v=2.1&u=inbhc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=9c
f42c8b221ba1b424cc8cba40021ddd

Gale Document Number: GALE|A145389024

Type of activity as a function of experiencing a depressive or happy

event
Author(s):Alisa Brooks and Larry Christensen
Source:Journal of Sport Behavior. 29.1 (Mar. 2006): p27.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2006 University of South Alabama
http://www.southalabama.edu/psychology/journal.htm

Abstract:
The study investigated the type of activity that individuals believe they would engage in following
the experience of a depressive or a happy event. Thirty-four males and 64 female undergraduate
psychology students read a description of a depressive or happy vignette with instructions to
picture themselves experiencing and feeling the emotionsand events described. Participants
then rated the likelihood of engaging in nine different activities after experiencing the depressive
or happy event. Results revealed that females believe they would be more likely than males to
talk to someone after a depressive event whereas males believe that they would be more likely
to talk to others after a happy event. Males were more likely to engage in some type of activity
than were females following a depressive event, but the effect was significant only for sedentary
activities such as going to a movie. For more strenuous activities such as exercising, males
believed that they were more likely to engage in such activities following a happy event but
females increased their stated intention to exercise following a depressive event but not to the
level of males. Overall, the results reveal that the type of activity selected varies with the gender
of the individual and the type of event experienced.

Full Text:
Depression is a serious disorder affecting 2 to 5 percent of the population (Kessler et al., 1994)
and extracting a heavy toil on the health care system. Depressed individuals spend 1.5 times as
much on health care as their nondepressed counterparts and 3 times as much on medication
among those receiving pharmacotherapy (Simon, VonKorff, & Barlow, 1995). Because of the
serious personal and societal effect of depression it is important to not only find effective but also
cost effective treatments.

The most commonly used treatments for depression are psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy.
However, these therapies are expensive and time consuming (Byrne & Byrne, 1993).
Additionally, pharmacotherapy can have unpleasant side effects (Martinsen, 1990). One of the
treatments for depression that is cost effective is exercise. The past 25 years has witnessed an
increasing focus on the relationship between exercise and particularly on the therapeutic effect of
exercise. Although this literature has been plagued with methodological problems, a meta-
analysis has revealed that exercise results in an amelioration of depression with an overall effect
size of-.72 (Craft & Landers, 1998).

Although exercise has been demonstrated to be beneficial in combating depression, exercise is

seldom the primary focus of attention in the treatment of depression and few depressed patients
begin or maintain an exercise program (Pollock, 2001). This is consistent with the data indicating
that few people participate in a regular exercise program (Yeung, 1996). Although exercise is not
the activity typically engaged in when depressed, or even when not depressed, Zuckerman
(1989) found that men become more active than women in response to stress. This suggests
that there is a gender difference in response to stress with males being more likely than females
to become active. If males are more likely to become active following a stressful experience, it
would seem to follow that they would also become more active than females following a
depressive experience because stress is one of the factors contributing to the experience of
depression. If males are more likely to exercise following a depressive experience this could
partially explain the gender difference that exists in the incidence of depression.

The present study investigated the type of activity that people believe they would engage in
following both a depressive event and a happy event.

Method

Participants

The participants were 98 introductory psychology students (34 men with a mean age of 21.44;
SD = 3.36, and 64 women with a mean age of 20.56; SD = 2.74) who volunteered for the study
as part of their course requirement. An additional 148 undergraduate students (98 women and
50 men) provided descriptions of happy and sad events.
Materials

A happy and depressive vignette were constructed from descriptions of events which 148
undergraduate students said made them happy or depressed and down in the dumps.
Participants were asked to describe each event in as much detail as possible. From the
descriptions provided, 6 happy and 4 depressive vignettes were selected based on a judgment,
by the authors, that these represented the best descriptions of events that would generate
feelings of happiness or depression. These 10 vignettes were reworded to preclude any
possibility of identifying the source of the vignette.

Twenty introductory psychology students rated these 10 vignettes on a 10-point rating scale with
1 representing the least feelings of depression or happiness and 10 representing the greatest
feelings of depression or happiness. The results of these ratings (see table 1) reveal that, for
women, the event that created the most happiness was getting married and having a beautiful
baby and the event that made them the most depressed was having an unfaithful boyfriend. For
men, the event that created the most happiness was reuniting with an exgirlfriend and the event
that created the most depression was ending a relationship with a longtime girlfriend. These are
the four events that were used in the present study.

A nine item activity questionnaire was constructed to assess the participants' likelihood of
engaging in a variety of activities after experiencing a depressive or happy event. The activity
items consisted of both active (running and working out) and sedentary activities (watching
television or going to see a movie). Each item was rated on a 10 point rating scale anchored by
the descriptor "not at all likely" and "very likely".

Procedure

Participants, after reading and signing a "consent to participant" form, were given, in random
order, the two vignettes previously selected for their gender. They were asked to read each
vignette and then place themselves in that situation and picture themselves experiencing and
feeling the events and emotions described. After reading each vignette participants were asked
to complete the activity questionnaire and in doing so to reflect on what they thought they would
do if they had actually experienced the situation described in the vignette. Then they were to
rate the likelihood of performing each of the activities listed in the activity questionnaire.

Results

Participants rating, after the depressive vignette, of the likelihood of engaging in the nine
activities listed on the activity questionnaire were analyzed by principal components analysis with
varimax rotation to identify the common activity factors tapped by these items. The principal
components analysis extracted four factors with eigenvalues greater than 1. Table 2 depicts the
loadings and communalities for each of these factors and reveals good simple structure with all
items loading .50 or better on only one factor. Three items loaded on the first factor with two of
the items, talking to a friend and talking on the phone, having positive loadings, and one item,
remaining isolated, having a negative loading. Taken together, these items focus on
communication or lack of it and represent a communication factor. Two items, going to bed and
going to sleep, loaded on the second factor and represent a "sleep" factor. Two items,
running/walking and working out, loaded on the third factor which represents an "exercise"
factor. Two items, going to see a movie and watching television, loaded on the fourth factor
which represents a "sedentary" factor. Taken together, these four factors accounted for 77.9
percent of the variance.
Each participant's rating of the likelihood of engaging in the activities loading on each of the
factors were averaged and these average ratings were analyzed by a repeated measures analysis
of variance (ANOVA) with gender as the between effect and type of vignette (depressive or
happy) as the within effect. For the communication factor, this analysis revealed a significant
main effect for vignette, F(1,93) = 12.33, p = .001, and a significant interaction, F(1,93) = 9.17,
p = .003, between type of vignette and gender. The significant vignette main effect revealed that
participants are more likely to talk to someone after the depressive vignette (M = 6.84) versus
the happy vignette (M = 5.66). Figure 1 depicts the significant interaction and reveals that the
desire to communicate after the depressive or happy vignette depended on the gender of the
participant. A one-way ANOVA revealed that women were significantly, F(1,63), = 27.51, p <
.01, more likely to talk to someone following a depressive event (M = 7.06) versus a happy
event (M = 5.33). Type of event did not affect men's likelihood of talking to someone. One-way
ANOVA, F(1,95) = 9.17,p =.003, also reveals that men were more likely (M = 6.3) than females
(M = 5.33) to talk to someone following a happy event. However, no difference existed between
men and women following the depressive event, p > .05

For the sleep factor, repeated measures ANOVA revealed that a significant main effect existed for
vignette, F(1,96) = 15.35,p <.01, and gender, F(1,96) = 14.35,p < .01. The significant vignette
main effect revealed that participants were more likely to sleep after a depressive event (M =
6.33) than after a happy event (3.84). The significant gender main effect revealed that women
were more likely to sleep (M = 8.20) than were men (M = 5.30).

For the exercise factor, repeated measures ANOVA revealed that a significant main effect existed
for gender, F(1,96) = 8.79, p < .01, and for the interaction between gender and vignette,
F(1,96) = 10.51, p < .01. Inspection of the mean scores for the gender main effect revealed that
men (M = 6.86) were more likely to exercise than were women (M = 4.60). However, the
significant interaction, shown in figure 2, reveals that the likelihood of exercising depends on the
person's gender and the nature of the event experienced. To identify where significant
differences existed, a one-way ANOVA was computed between men and women's likelihood of
exercising after experiencing a happy event. This analysis revealed that men would be more
likely to exercise than would women, F(1,63) = 11.01, p < .05 after a happy event. However, a
gender difference did not exist for the depressive event. A one-way ANOVA computed between
the type of vignettes separately for men and women revealed that women, F(1,63) = 11.01, p <
.01, reported that they would be more likely to exercise following the depressive versus the
happy event whereas men reported a nonsignificant decline in the likelihood of exercising.

For the sedentary factor, a repeated measures ANOVA revealed that a significant difference
existed for the main effect of vignette, F(1,96) = 10.70, p < .01, gender, F(1,96) = 5.03,p <
.05, and for the interaction between vignette and gender, F(1,96) = 5.68, p <.05. Inspection of
the mean ratings for the vignette main effect revealed that participants would be more likely to
engage in sedentary activities such as watching television or going to a movie after a happy (M =
4.04) versus a depressive event (M = 3.28). The gender main effect revealed that men were
more likely to watch television or go to a movie (M = 6.06) than were women (M = 4.71).

The significant interaction, shown in figure 3, reveals that men are more likely than women to
watch television or go to the movies following a happy event but that there is little difference in
men and women tendency to engage in these activities following a depressive event. A one-way
ANOVA computed between type of vignette separately for men and women participants revealed
a significant, F(1,33) = 11.44, p < .01, difference for men but not for women. This reveals that
men were less likely to watch television or go to the movies following a depressive event but the
nature of the event experienced did not alter women's likelihood of engaging in these activities.

Discussion

The results of the present study have revealed that the activities a person believes they would
engage in is affected by the type of event experienced and the gender of the individual. Overall,
the present study results have revealed that participants believe that they are more likely to talk
to someone and to sleep following a depressive event. Such findings, particularly a tendency
toward hypersomnia, are consistent with the symptoms of depression (Rush et al, 1985). The
tendency to want to tall to someone is probably a function of the fact that the depressive event
is distressing and there is a desire to vent and to discuss the situation with another person. It is
interesting that it is the women that are more likely to want to tall to someone and that they are
also the ones that are more likely to sleep. This is consistent with the results of other studies
(e.g., Funabiki, Bologna, & Pepping, 1980) indicating that women are more likely to seek
personal support when depressed by discussing the problem with a close friend. Women are also
more likely to express aggressive feelings by gossiping and spreading false rumors (Coie et al.,
1999). The evidence definitely points toward females being more likely than males to use verbal
communicating to express feelings. For example, Hammen and Padesky (1977) revealed that
more women than men talked to a friend because of depression.

The results of the present study found that men are more likely to exercise as well as engage in
more sedentary activities such as going to a movie than women particularly following the
experience of a happy event. This is probably due to the fact that men are more activity oriented
than women. Research has consistently demonstrated that males are more aggressive than
females (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974) and this more aggressive nature may manifest itself as being
oriented more toward being active. When this is coupled with women's tendency to be more
expressive of feelings (Funabiki et al., 1980), it is perhaps not surprising that men are the ones
that are more likely to engage in some type of activity be it exercise or some more sedentary
activity such as watching television or going to a movie. This increased activity may also be
protective from depressive episodes as the evidence (Craft & Landers, 1998) suggests that being
physically active is an effective treatment for depression. It may be that men use physical
activity as a mechanism for distracting themselves following a depressive event whereas
women's greater tendency to tall reflects an attempt to process the depressive event.

It is interesting, therefore, that women and not men indicate that they would be more likely to
exercise following a depressive versus a happy event. This suggests that women would engage
in a coping mechanism that would help combat a depressive effect that may exist. The increase
in women's tendency to exercise may be due to the fact that they are unlikely to do so following
happy events so part of this effect may be a regression artifact. It is also important to note that
the increased tendency of women to exercise still does not reach men's tendency to exercise or
engage in the more sedentary activities. This is consistent with Zuckerman's (1989) results
which indicated that men become more active in response to stress. When the tendency to
exercise and to engage in more sedentary activities are combined, it is obvious that men are
more "activity" oriented.

The results of the present study indicate that there are definite sex differences in the type of
activities men and women believe they will engage in and the nature of these activities is
affected by nature of the event experienced. Overall, men think they are more likely to be active
regardless of the nature of the event considered although their level of activity does decline
following a depressive activity. Women expect to be less active but believe that they have a
greater tendency to communicate, particularly when some negative event is experienced.
Apparently, women have more of a need to discuss a problem event whereas men would be
more likely to engage in some form for activity such as exercising.

It is important to remember that the results and conclusions of the present study are based on
individual's beliefs concerning the activities in which they would engage and not the activities in
which they did engage. It has been shown that attitudes are not related to behavior (Wicker,
1969) unless a certain set of conditions exist such as a strong and important attitude or belief
(Kraus, 1995). It should also be remembered that the participants in the present study did not
actually experience the depressive or happy events. They only read about such events and were
asked to try to project themselves into this event. It would be important to know if the gender
and event differences found in this study would be replicated if participants had actually
experienced happy and sad events.

References

Byrne, A., & Byrne, D. G. (1993). The effect of exercise on depression, anxiety and other mood
states: Areview. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 37, 565-574.

Coie, J. D., Gillessen, A. H. N., Dodge, K.A., Hubbard, J. A., Schwartz, D., Lemerise, E. D., &
Bateman, H. (1999). It takes two to fight: Atest of relational factors and a method for assessing
aggressive dyads. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1179-1188.

Craft, L. L. & Landers, D. M. (1998). The effect of exercise on clinical depression and depression
resulting from mental illness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 20, 339-
357.

Funabiki, D., Bologna, N. C., & Pepping, M. (1980). Revisiting sex differences in the expression
of depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 89, 194-202.

Hammen, C., & Padesky, C.A. (1978). Sex differences in the expression of depressive responses
on the Beck depression Inventory. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86, 609-614.

Kessler, R. C., McGonagle, K. A., Zhao, S., Nelson, C. B., Hughes, M., Eshelman, S., Wittchen, H.
U., & Kendler, K. S. (1994). Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric
disorders in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey. Archives of
General Psychiatry, 51, 8-19.

Krans, S. J. (1995). Attitudes and the prediction of behavior: A meta-analysis of the empirical
literature. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 58-75.

Maccoby, E. E., & Jacklin, C. N. (1974). The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.

Martinsen, E.W. (1990). Benefits of exercise for the treatment of depression. Sports Medicine, 9,
380-389.

Pollock, K. M. (2001). Exercise in treating depression: broadening the psychotherapist's role.

Psychotherapy in Practice, 57, 1289-1300.

Rush, A. J., Giles, D. E., Schlessr, M. A., Fulton, C. L., Weissenburger, J., & Burns, C. (1985).
The inventory for depressive symptomatology (IDS): Preliminary findings. Psychiatry Research,
18, 65-87.
Simon, G. E., VonKorff, M., & Barlow, W. (1995). Health care costs of primary care patients with
recognized depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 52, 850-856.

Wicker, A. W. (1969). Attitudes versus action: The relationship of verbal and overt behavior
responses to attitude objects. Journal of Social Issues, 25, 41-78.

Yeung, R. R. (1996). The acute effects of exercise on mood state. Journal of Psychosomatic
Research, 40, 123-141.

Zuckerman, D. M. (1989). Stress, self-esteem, and mental health: How does gender make a
difference. Sex Roles, 20, 1989.

Larry Christensen and Alisa Brooks

University of South Alabama

Address Correspondence To: Larry B. Christensen, PhD., Department of Psychology, University of

South Alabama, Life Sciences Building, Room 324, Mobile, Alabama 36688. E-mail:
lchriste@usouthal.edu

Table 1.
Mean Rating of Happy and Depressive Vignettes for Males and Females

Type of
Vignette Vignette Gender Mean SD

Happy Getting married and having

a beautiful baby girl Female 9.4 2.0
Wanting to be in a sorority Female 8.9 1.4
Feeling competent after
making better grades Female 8.7 1.9
Deciding to go back to college Female 8.3 1.6
Becoming united with an
ex-boyfriend Female 8.1 2.1
Having a stepfather with cancer
in remission Female 6.7 1.2

Depressed Having an unfaithful boyfriend Female 9.0 1.1

Watching a stepfather's life
end due to cancer Female 8.7 1.3
Feeling incompetent after
making bad grades Female 7.5 2.4
Ending a relationship with a
longtime boyfriend Female 7.4 2.7

Happy Reuniting with an ex-girlfriend Male 9.5 0.7

Getting married and having a
beautiful baby girl Male 9.2 1.0
Feeling competent after making
better grades Male 9.1 0.9
Deciding to attend college again Male 7.7 0.9
 Having a stepfather with cancer
in remission Male 7.3 0.9

Depressed Ending a relationship with a

longtime girlfriend Male 7.6 2.2
Having an unfaithful girlfriend Male 7.1 2.1
Feeling incompetent after making
bad grades Male 7.1 2.1
Watching a stepfather's life
end due to cancer Male 6.5 3.1

Table 2
Factor Loadings and the Communality for the Four Factors Extracted from
the Activity

Items Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 5 Communality

Bed .00855 .93440 .02475 .05480 .87678

Friend .94267 .01941 .10589 .04933 .90265
Isolate -.52761 .46888 .15582 .22082 .57127
Movie .13353 .01060 .26059 .53595 .37309
Phone .96283 .03926 .05227 .04935 .93374
Run/Walk .10280 .07725 .90499 .06901 .84031
Sleep .08205 .90100 .05404 .14345 .84207
Television .00752 .04229 .04711 .88631 .78960
Workout .08213 .09082 .92286 .11751 .88047

Note: Items loading .5 or above are underlined.

Cognitive empathy and emotional empathy in human behavior and

evolution
Author(s):Adam Smith
Source:The Psychological Record. 56.1 (Winter 2006): p3.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2006 The Psychological Record
http://www.siuc.edu/~ThePsychologicalRecord/index.html

Abstract:
This article presents 7 simple models of the relationship between cognitive empathy (mental
perspective taking) and emotional empathy (the vicarious sharing of emotion). I consider
behavioral outcomes of the models, arguing that, during human evolution, natural selection may
have acted on variation in the relationship between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy
resulting in two separable, complementary systems. I predict the existence of 4 empathy
disorders using a concept of empathic imbalance. I propose hypotheses about the psychology of
autism, antisocial personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and Williams syndrome.
This approach generates new predictions and integrates some previous theoretical work by
various authors.

Full Text:
The term empathy refers to sensitivity to, and understanding of, the mental states of others.
Hollin (1994, p. 1240) has written that "the ability to see the world, including one's own
behaviour, from another person's point of view is to display empathy." According to Hogan
(1969, p. 308), empathy is "the act of constructing for oneself another person's mental state."
Hoffman (1987, p. 48) has defined empathy as "an affective response more appropriate to
someone else's situation than to one's own." Eisenberg and Strayer (1987a, p. 5) have regarded
empathy as "an emotional response that stems from another's emotional state or condition and
that is congruent with the other's emotional state or situation." As these definitions illustrate, the
term empathy has been used to refer to two related human abilities: mental perspective taking
(cognitive empathy, CE) and the vicarious sharing of emotion (emotional empathy, EE). The
terms CE, perspective taking, theory of mind, and mentalizing all have a strong degree of
synonymity (see e.g., Davis, 1996; Staub, 1987; Whiten, 1991).

Empathy seems to play a central role in human behavior (e.g., Hogan, 1969). Theorists have
often associated empathy with prosocial behavior (e.g., Eisenberg & Strayer, 1987b) but it may
also be involved in antisocial behavior (see e.g., Bischof-Kohler, 1991). People with autism have
been widely described as lacking empathy and being insensitive to theemotions of others (e.g.,
Baron-Cohen & Bolton, 1993; Frith, 1989; Happe, 1994). People with antisocial personality
disorder (APD) have also been widely described as lacking empathy and being insensitive to
the emotions of others (e.g., Blair et al., 1996; Bootzin, Acocella, & Alloy, 1993) although APD
differs markedly from autism. People with schizoid personality disorder have been described as
lacking empathy (e.g., Wolff, 1995) but people with Williams syndrome, despite having
intellectual deficits, do not appear to have an empathy deficit (see e.g., Semel & Rosner, 2003).

How could empathy have evolved? There are two main arguments:

1. The demands of the complex social environment in human evolution have selected for CE
because it enhances social functioning (Byrne & Whiten, 1988; Crook, 1980; Davis, 1996;
Humphrey, 1988; Jolly, 1991). It enables humans to understand and predict the behavior of
others in terms of attributed mental states. CE facilitates conversation and social expertise.
Accurate CE can guide the behavior of parents as they nurture their children (see e.g., Staub,
1987). More generally, CE helps us to manipulate or deceive people to our own advantage and
gives us a chance of realizing when someone is lying or holding a false belief. Milestones in a
child's development of CE seem to include joint attention (first appearing at the age of 9-14
months, see Baron-Cohen, 1995), pretence (18-24 months, see Mitchell, 1996), and the
attribution of false belief (approximately 4 years, see Whiten, 1997).

2. EE motivates humans to behave altruistically towards kin, mates, and allies (Darwin, 1922;
Davis, 1996; Vine, 1992). Provided we can distinguish between our own emotions and empathic
ones (Crook, 1980, 1988), EE could promote inclusive fitness. (Inclusive fitness has a direct
component gained from personal reproduction and an indirect component gained by helping
nondescendant kin to survive and reproduce, see e.g., Slater, 1994.) EE could have been
selected for due to kin selection (Hamilton, 1964), to sexual selection, and to the fitness benefits
of having friends who are reliable reciprocators (Trivers, 1971). EE probably underpins moral
development (e.g., Hoffman, 1987) and may be a key mechanism of violence inhibition. EE
appears to provide "the fundamental basis for social bonding between parents and children"
(Plutchik, 1987, p. 44) and it might also facilitate group cohesion. Infants as young as 1 day old
appear to have EE sensitivity (e.g., Sagi & Hoffman, 1976).

Davis (1996, p. 9) has viewed CE and EE as "two distinctly separate" capacities. Strayer (1987)
has rejected the view that there are two kinds of empathy and some theorists (e.g., Bischof-
Kohler, 1991; Eisenberg, 2000) have suggested that it is helpful to distinguish between empathy
and pure emotional contagion. True empathy arguably integrates CE and EE. Staub (1987) has
stated that CE is a precondition for EE (see also Blair et al., 1996). Hoffman (1987) has
discussed the developmental interaction of CE and EE. Davis (1996) has suggested ways in
which the two abilities may regulate each other.

The purpose of this article is to develop a parsimonious framework of integrative and predictive
value. I present some simple conceptual models of the relationship between CE and EE. I try to
assess the behavioral implications of these models from a Darwinian perspective. I then predict
the existence of four empathy disorders. Finally, I propose hypotheses about the psychology of
autism, APD, schizoid personality disorder, and Williams syndrome.

The Models

Model 1. CE and EE as inseparable aspects of a unitary system.

Model 2. CE and EE as two separate systems.

Model 3. EE system as a potential extension of CE system.

Model 4. CE system as a potential extension of EE system.

Model 5. EE system as a potential extension of CE system with feedback.

Model 6. CE system as a potential extension of EE system with feedback.

Model 7. CE and EE as two separable, complementary systems.

Direct sensory input to the CE system is possible in Models 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7. Direct sensory input
to the EE system is possible in Models 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7. Table 1 summarizes the models'
features. Davis (1996) has provided an organizational model that distinguishes the antecedents,
processes, and outcomes of empathy. The above models simply focus on some possible
relationships between mentalizing and parallel affective outcome. I will not focus on the reactive
affective outcomes (e.g., personal distress and empathic concern) that can be derived from
parallel affect (see Davis, 1996; Eisenberg, 2000). Behavioral outcomes of the models are
discussed below.

Assessment of the Models

Benefits of Discriminate EE Responsiveness

EE responsiveness that discriminates in favor of close kin, loyal reciprocators, and in-group
members is likely to have been selected for during hominid evolution. As Goodall (1986, p. 386)
has written, "If we know that another, especially a close relative or friend, is suffering, then we
ourselves become emotionally disturbed, sometimes to the point of anguish. Only by helping (or
trying to help) can we hope to alleviate our own distress."

Emotions can be viewed as mechanisms of survival and communication (e.g., Plutchik, 1987).
Positive emotions tend to be linked to safety, security, comfort, relaxation, and enhanced
immune activity. Negative emotions tend to be linked to danger, insecurity, discomfort, stress,
and reduced immune activity (see e.g., Booth & Pennebaker, 2000; Millenson, 1995; Strongman,
1996). Discriminate EE responsiveness would tend to motivate humans to increase the
occurrence of positiveemotions in kin, mates, and friends. It would tend to motivate us to
reduce the occurrence of negative emotions in kin, mates, and friends.

Individuals who readily extended EE to distant kin, disloyal friends, competitors, and out-group
members are likely to have incurred the fitness costs of EE without the benefits. Such
indiscriminate EE responsiveness would almost certainly have been selected against. All the
models are compatible with discriminate EE responsiveness. However, for Models 1, 4, and 6,
withholding EE also means withholding CE.

Benefits of CE Without EE

CE is used to negotiate one's way in the complex social world of humans. But if substantial EE
always occurred with CE the effect (and affect) could be overwhelming. It might distract us from
our behavioral goals or motivate altruism that reduces inclusive fitness. Sharing the
negative emotions of others may be inherently costly and sharing positive emotions that are
not appropriate to one's situation could sometimes be highly distracting. Social expertise in a
world of emotional beings requires the ability to understand the minds of others and predict their
overt behavior without necessarily sharing theiremotions. CE with minimal EE would also
facilitate competitive, Machiavellian, and agonistic behavior. Successful agonistic behavior may
often require CE (e.g., for predictive, deceptive, or counterdeceptive purposes) in the absence of
EE-based violence inhibition. War planning is likely to be enhanced by CE without EE.

I suggest that individuals who could use CE without EE would have survived and reproduced
more successfully than individuals who could only use CE with EE or not at all. If there are
fitness benefits of CE without EE, then Models 2, 3, 5, and 7 would confer a selective advantage
relative to Models 1, 4, and 6.

Benefits of EE Without CE
If EE can occur independently of CE processing, then empathic emotions would be able to
influence one's behavior in a very immediate and spontaneous way. It might also result in EE
being a much more effective mechanism of violence inhibition. EE that precedes CE may equip
parents to respond almost instantaneously to the emotional vocalizations of out-of-sight
offspring. In group situations, EE without CE could quickly distribute basic emotion and facilitate
behavioral synchronization and group cohesion.

Noninferential EE is likely to enhance general sensitivity to the emotions of significant others

and it could quicken helping behavior. Such direct EE with perceived emotion might lead to CE
(a possibility in Models 4, 6, and 7) but I suggest that the capacity for EE that can precede CE
would be functional. This is not to deny that CE may influence EE or that EE may sometimes be
purely a consequence of CE (a possibility in Models 3, 5, and 7).

I suggest that the capacity for EE without CE would promote inclusive fitness. If this is true, then
Models 2, 4, 6, and 7 would confer a selective advantage relative to Models 1, 3, and 5.

Benefits of Integration of CE and EE

The ability to use CE and EE in an integrated way seems important in many circumstances.
Working together, the two empathic capacities would complement each other and facilitate
(pro)social expertise. For example, EE could facilitate prosocial motivation and CE could provide
prosocial insight. CE might help manage EE responses. EE might guide and regulate the use of
CE. EE could make us feel like helping someone else and CE could clarify what sort of help is
appropriate. EE might restrict the Machiavellian or violent use of CE. Integration of EE and CE
seems particularly important when interacting with family members and close friends. Empathic
concern may emerge from the integration of CE and EE.

If the interaction and integration of CE and EE is often functional, then Models 1, 5, 6, and 7
would confer a selective advantage relative to Models 2, 3, and 4. Model 7 would allow sensory
activation of the EE system to lead to CE activity and vice versa. The integration in Models 5 and
6 would be less flexible.

Overall Assessment

If (a) there has been heritable variation in the mental relationship between CE and EE during
hominid evolution, (b) the mental variation led to variation in behavioral tendencies and inclusive
fitness, then (c) natural selection acted on the variation in the relationship between CE and EE.
Evolutionary logic can potentially predict the relationship between CE and EE in
contemporary humans.

I have suggested that there are fitness benefits of using CE without EE, of having EE sensitivity
that can precede CE, and of using CE and EE in an integrated way. Of the seven models, Model 7
is the only one that has all of these features (Table 1). Assuming sufficient time and variation, a
case can be made for expecting the contemporary human empathy system to resemble Model 7.
I suggest that individuals with Model 7 empathy would have been able to invade a population in
which Model 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 was the norm. Model 7 appears to be evolutionarily stable. These
proposals could be explored using mathematical models or computer simulations.

Model 7 enables CE and EE to act as one integrated system in many circumstances but be
separable in key circumstances of functional and evolutionary significance. Model 7 facilitates a
balance between altruistic and selfish behavior. It could promote care of relatives and friends
while keeping open the option of the competitive, Machiavellian, and violent use of CE. Model 7 is
one of the models that can clearly cope with the evidence of neonate empathic distress and it
seems likely that most humans can share the basic emotions of others without CE. (Bischof-
Kohler, 1991, has hypothesized that perceiving another's emotional expression can directly
release the very same emotion in the observer.) Model 7 may optimize empathic flexibility. The
rest of this article is based on the hypothesis that human empathy resembles Model 7.

Variation of the Separability of the Two Systems

Some reviews have suggested that, after artifacts have been exposed, there is little or no
evidence of a sex difference in empathic ability and sensitivity (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983;
Lennon & Eisenberg, 1987). Davis (1996) has concluded that most studies support this position
but that some evidence suggests that females may tend to be more empathic than males.
Eisenberg (2000) has concluded that the picture is unclear but Baron-Cohen (2002) has argued
that there is strong evidence that females do tend to be more empathic than males (see also
Baron-Cohen, Richler, Bisarya, Gurunathan, & Wheelwright, 2004).

If Model 7 is accurate, then the extent of the separability of the systems may have varied from
individual to individual in functionally significant ways. Empathy may play a central role in
childcare. As Plutchik (1987, p. 43) has pointed out, an "important aspect of empathy in an
evolutionary context is that it serves to bond individuals to one another, especially mothers to
infants." Relatively reduced separability of the two systems may facilitate successful childcare
and social bonding. Relatively increased separability of the systems may facilitate competitive,
aggressive, and violent behavior. Assuming that women have tended to be more involved in
childcare than men during human evolution (a reasonable assumption given that men do not
lactate and can seldom be sure of paternity) and assuming that men have tended to be more
involved in competitive behavior (see e.g., Brody & Hall, 2000; Crook, 1971), then the extent of
the separability may have become linked to sex. Relatively reduced separability of the two
systems may have been selected for in women and relatively increased separability of the two
systems may have been selected for in men. I thus hypothesize that both males and females
have Model 7 empathy, but that male empathy tends towards Model 2 and that female empathy
tends towards Model 1.

This hypothesis could be tested by instructing men and women (matched for general instruction-
following ability) to perform a CE task without EE. The target(s) would be emotionally aroused
and the subjects would be instructed to take the perspective of the target but to refrain from
sharing the target's emotion. I predict that more evidence of EE (e.g. physiological or
neuroimaging evidence) would be found in the female subjects than in male subjects of equal CE
performance. Similarly, when asked to perform an EE task without CE, I predict that more
evidence of CE would be found in women than in men of equal physiological EE sensitivity.

Predicted Empathy Disorders

Disorders of empathy should have far-reaching behavioral consequences. Model 7 raises the
possibility of four main empathy disorders in abnormal developmental circumstances. I predict
the existence of two empathy imbalance disorders:

1. Cognitive empathy deficit disorder (CEDD), consisting of low CE ability but high EE sensitivity.

2. Emotional empathy deficit disorder (EEDD), consisting of low EE sensitivity but high CE ability.

I also predict the existence of two general empathy disorders:

1. General empathy deficit disorder (GEDD), consisting of low CE ability and low EE sensitivity.
2. General empathy surfeit disorder (GESD), consisting of high CE ability and high EE sensitivity.

More accurately, I predict a spectrum of empathy disorders with the possibility of any degree of
CE ability being combined with any degree of EE sensitivity. I define empathic imbalance as EE
sensitivity that substantially exceeds CE ability or as CE ability that substantially exceeds EE
sensitivity. The existence of these disorders would be evidence that Model 7 is accurate. Without
attempting to specify etiological factors, what would be the psychological characteristics of the
four disorders?

Predicted Characteristics of the Disorders

CEDD. This disorder entails EE-dominated empathic imbalance. People with CEDD would have
major social problems and a reduced tendency to understand others' behavior in mental state
terms. They would have difficulty communicating and they would struggle to understand
deception. They might be gullible and honest. They might behave unconventionally and lack
awareness of how others perceive their behavior. People with CEDD might find the social world
confusing, unpredictable, or frightening. They would be highly sensitive to the expressed
basic emotions of others. (In emotional terms, they might have a confusingly permeable sense
of self.) Yet with a CE impairment they might struggle to make cognitive sense of
others' emotions and they might spontaneously develop ways of minimizing their exposure to
other people's emotions. They might thus appear to be highly insensitive to others' emotions.
They might enjoy spending time in the company of people who express positive emotions in
calm and predictable ways. They might dislike spending time in the company of people who
express a wide range of emotions, particularly negative emotions such as anger, in noisy and
unpredictable ways. They are likely to experience both prosocial motivation and asocial
motivation.

EEDD. This disorder entails CE-dominated empathic imbalance. People with EEDD would have a
strong tendency to understand others' behavior in mental state terms. They would not find the
social world confusing and would have good or excellent social skills. They might appear to be
charming people. They would have a good cognitive understanding of other people's mental
states but minimal capacity to share the emotions of others. (In emotional terms they would
have a very narrow sense of self). They might be highly skilled in the arts of manipulation,
pretence, and deception. Their CE ability would enable them to appear to be sensitive to
others' emotions but their behavior would not be limited by those emotions. People with EEDD
would be selfish and tend to harm or exploit others. They would be unlikely to form enduring
friendships or to be faithful to sexual partners.

GEDD. People with GEDD would in some respects resemble people with CEDD and in some
respects resemble people with EEDD. They would have difficulty understanding the social world
and they might be unconventional and deeply asocial. They might be gullible and not understand
deception. They would not share others' emotions and they might sometimes harm people.
However, they would have little ability to manipulate or deceive people. They would have a
narrow sense of self. Because they would not be vulnerable to other people's emotions, they
might actually appear to be much less disabled than people with CEDD. People with GEDD would
not need to learn how to defend themselves from the emotions of others.

GESD. People with GESD would have exceptionally good social skills. They might be compulsive
communicators and excellent conversationalists. They would be highly sensitive to
the emotions and thoughts of others. They would have a good cognitive understanding of
others' minds. They might be highly sociable and have an expansive sense of self. In some
psychological respects this disorder might be beneficial but hypersensitive EE might sometimes
be a burden. Also, empathic overdevelopment might be at the expense of other mental abilities.

Other Predictions

If males have increased separability of their empathy systems compared to females, then both
empathy imbalance disorders should develop more readily in males than in females. A key
prediction is that particularly problematic behavior is generated by empathic imbalance. The
behavior associated with CEDD and EEDD should be more problematic than the behavior
associated with GEDD and GESD. The greater the imbalance, the more severe the disorder. A
method of measuring empathic imbalance might be of nosological and clinical value. The high EE
sensitivity in CEDD and in GESD might lead to indiscriminate EE responsiveness.

Do these four empathy disorders exist? Below I propose four testable hypotheses.

Autism and CEDD

Autism

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that appears to be linked to brain pathology (see
e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1995) and genetic factors (see e.g., Hughes & Plomin, 2000). Children with
autism have major communication problems. Social development, language development, and
play development are all usually impaired (e.g., Cooper, 1994; Frith, 1989). The overt behavior
of people with autism is characterized by stereotypies. Their behavior often involves repetition
and a strong resistance to change. Autistic people often appear to be odd, aloof, and in a world
of their own. The autistic spectrum includes Asperger syndrome which involves relatively normal
language development.

Ethologists (e.g., Richer, 2001; Tinbergen & Tinbergen, 1983; see also Archer, 1992) have
analyzed the behavior of autistic children in terms of approach-avoidance conflict. Autistic
behavior seems to involve ambivalence but the motivational balance usually favors avoiding, not
approaching, other people.

Cognitive developmental psychologists have studied autism in very different ways (see e.g.,
Astington, 1994; Baron-Cohen, 1995; Happe, 1994; Hill & Frith, 2004; see also Whiten, 1991).
These researchers have focused on the difficulty people with autism have in understanding the
minds of others (the theory of mind hypothesis). People with autism have difficulty
understanding deception and they often cannot pass false belief and second-order belief
attribution tests (see e.g., Mitchell, 1996; second-order belief is the ability to understand
another's beliefs about the mental state of a third person).

Does Autism Involve CEDD?

I hypothesize that CEDD tends to be part of autism. The predicted characteristics of CEDD
provide an accurate description of autism in many respects. The suggestion that people with
autism have a significant CE impairment is unoriginal and consistent with the evidence. Baron-
Cohen (1995) has argued that the CE system involves four modules and that only two to three of
these modules are intact in autism. CEDD is predicted to be more common in males than in
females and this is the case with autism. There is, though, one substantial discrepancy between
the characteristics of CEDD and traditional understanding of autism: CEDD involves
hypersensitive EE and people with autism are generally thought to lack EE. Baron-Cohen (2002)
has argued that males tend to be less empathic (in both CE and EE terms) than females and that
autism is an extreme form of the male brain. However, people with autism do describe
themselves as sharing others' emotions (see Capps, Kasari, Yirmiya, & Sigman, 1993; Sigman &
Capps, 1997) and parents describe their autistic children as affectionate (Tams, 2001). People
with autism might emotionally empathize with others but they might tend not to express this
empathy in overt or ordinary ways (due to empathic imbalance). Also, it is important not to
confuse attentional avoidance of EE with EE insensitivity.

According to Crook (1980, p. 244), "The evolution of subtle empathic abilities is of value only if it
correlates with an equally competent ability in discrimination between the states of mind of
another and those of one's own." Without normal CE, people with autism may not distinguish
between their own emotions and someone else's emotions in the same way that nonautistic
people do. Some people with autism may share others' emotions without fully realizing it. Lewis
(2000) has distinguished between emotional states and emotional experiences. The state
component of autistic people's empathicemotions may tend to dwarf the experience component.
Staub (1987, p. 106) has pointed out that we must be able to "step back" from empathic
connections "so that we won't lose ourselves in others, so that we can return to our own
identity." People with autism may struggle to step back (see Williams, 1996, p. 126). Instead,
they may rely on avoidant behavior to try to prevent overwhelming empathic connections from
forming in the first place.

Integrating Motivational Analyses and the Theory of Mind Hypothesis

Archer (1992) has stated that the motivational conflict hypothesis of autism and the theory of
mind hypothesis seem very difficult to integrate. If autism involves CEDD, then these different
perspectives may be easier to integrate. If children with autism have a general lack of empathy,
then it would not be surprising if they found the social world confusing or irrelevant. It would not
be surprising if they had no motivation to approach people. But it would be more difficult to
understand approach-avoidance conflict. I suggest that the motivational conflict in autism
derives from hypersensitive EE in the absence of normal CE. A child with autism may be
motivated to approach people who are expressing positive emotions in calm, predictable ways. A
child with autism may be motivated to avoid social situations where a wide range of negative and
positive emotions are expressed in ways that are difficult to predict and understand without CE.
A person with autism might be motivated to help other people but lack the CE needed to offer
appropriate and flexible help (see Blair et al., 1996). Autistic people might experience prosocial
motivation without the CE insight needed to manage and act on it successfully. This empathic
imbalance might be a potent source of frustration, distress, and motivational conflict. High EE
sensitivity might often make attending to the emotions of others intolerably painful. Autistic
withdrawal and apparent indifference to others' emotions may thus be caused by an EE surfeit,
not deficit. According to one writer with autism (Williams, 1996, p. 217), "If your mind learns
from ... experiences of emotional hypersensitivity that being affected feels dangerous and causes
the pain and discomfort of sensory overload, all your motivation may be directed towards
avoiding anything that will cause personal affect."

The avoidance may often be based on attentional strategies. Tinbergen and Tinbergen (1983)
emphasized the significance of stereotypies as evidence of avoidance-dominated motivational
conflict. Children with autism may spontaneously develop cognitive and behavioral strategies to
manage their vulnerability to others' emotions in the absence of CE understanding. This may be
a significant source of stereotyped patterns and may further reduce the chances of normal social
development.
Advice from an experienced clinician seems consistent with the hypothesis that autism involves
EE: "It is not true to say that they are totally indifferent, as the child with autism may become
very distressed by the emotional behaviour of other people.... The child is most at ease if one
approaches in a very calm way with the absolute minimum of emotional content" (Attwood,
1993, p. 8). Eisenberg (2000) has reviewed evidence consistent with the hypothesis that
personal distress is usually the consequence of empathic overarousal. It is possible that people
with autism become distressed by the emotional behavior of others as a consequence of
empathic overarousal. They may share another's emotion but be confused about its source,
unclear as to why it arose, or unsure of how to manage it. Because people do express a wide
range of emotions, and because emotional states can change rapidly, people with autism may
tend to withdraw their attention as a defense mechanism.

Autistic behavior can cause considerable emotional distress to parents and siblings. Perhaps
children with autism sometimes vicariously share the negative emotions that their behavior
gives rise to in others. This could create vicious circles that exacerbate autistic avoidance and
familial suffering. (Williams, 1996, has suggested that when an autistic person becomes
preoccupied with his emotional state, another person in the room may sometimes have been the
source of the emotion.) Interventions designed to break such hypothetic vicious circles might be
therapeutic.

Laboratory Evidence Suggestive of Hypersensitive EE in Autism

Capps et al. (1993) asked adolescents with autism to watch vignettes of social behavior. These
people with autism "appeared happy during portions of the vignettes in which the protagonist
was happy and looked sad or distressed during portions of the vignettes that were most
upsetting to the protagonist" (Sigman & Capps, 1997, p. 124). Moreover, the autistic adolescents
"showed far more facial affect while watching than did adolescents in the normal comparison
group" (p. 124). They also appeared to be confused, despite their appropriate empathic
responses. This seems consistent with the empathy imbalance hypothesis.

APD and EEDD

APD

APD involves hedonism, an absence of guilt, frequent lying, promiscuity, and emotional
callousness (e.g., Cooper, 1994; Millon, Grossman, Millon, Meagher, & Ramnath, 2004). The
disorder is diagnosed in adults (but begins in childhood) and it is resistant to punishment. Many
people with APD harm others and behave criminally. People with the disorder may have excellent
communication skills or appear to be charming. They readily provide plausible rationalizations for
their behavior.

Does APD Involve EEDD?

I hypothesize that EEDD tends to be part of APD. The predicted characteristics of EEDD seem to
provide an accurate description of APD. APD is much more common in males than in females.
The key features of APD suggest high CE ability and permanently low EE sensitivity. People with
APD are often considered to be highly skilled in manipulating and deceiving other people (e.g.,
Harpending & Sobus, 1987). This suggests a good understanding of other people's
thoughts, emotions, and motivations. Providing plausible justifications for antisocial behavior is
a defining part of APD. People with APD may be cognitively aware of others' emotions but they
appear not to share vicariously those emotions. Thus there may be little motivational obstacle to
harming people.
Blair et al. (1996) compared the ability of APD patients with the ability of controls (people
without APD matched for IQ and other variables) in an advanced test of CE. The APD patients
provided correct judgments slightly more frequently than the controls and they used more
mental state justifications than the controls. (The mean IQ of the control group was slightly
higher than the mean IQ of the APD group.) Future studies might test how quickly people with
APD can successfully perform CE tasks compared with controls.

Studies are likely to underestimate the mean CE ability of people with APD for at least three
reasons. Firstly, APD sufferers with the highest CE ability may refrain from criminal behavior or
avoid detection and thus not come into contact with researchers (see Murphy & Stich, 2000).
Secondly, people with APD may be resistant to experimenter effects: The desire of subjects to
please researchers may often stem from EE sensitivity. (It might be worth investigating the
influence of desired rewards on the CE performance of people with APD.) Thirdly, it is possible
that people with APD sometimes choose to conceal the full extent of their CE ability.

There is evidence that people with APD lack EE sensitivity to the distress cues of others (e.g.,
Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith, 1997). Blair (Blair et al., 1996, 1997) has argued that APD is the
result of a damaged violence inhibition mechanism (see also Murphy & Stich, 2000). The concept
of the violence inhibition mechanism seems to have been inspired by classical ethological
thinking about group selection and instinct (see Blair et al., 1997; see Archer, 1992, for a
distinction between classical ethology and modern ethology). I suggest that the clinical features
of APD indicate a general lack of EE rather than a specific insensitivity to distress cues. EE
sensitivity to just the positive emotions of others would still provide a partial basis for prosocial
behavior. If APD involves EEDD, then people with APD should share neither the sadness nor the
happiness of others. There is evidence that autistic people react both to the distress cues of
others (see Blair et al., 1996) and to the happiness of others (Capps et al., 1993).

APD as an Alternative Developmental Strategy

It seems likely that APD can be an alternative developmental strategy triggered in genetically
susceptible individuals by certain cues (e.g., abuse or parental absence) in the rearing
environment. The patterns of behavior associated with APD have sometimes been viewed as
functional (e.g., Harpending & Sobus, 1987; Murphy & Stich, 2000; Stevens & Price, 1996).
According to this perspective, people with APD are free-riders or cheaters who follow specific
strategies. Nonreciprocal behavior patterns may be functional in certain circumstances and all
that may be needed to facilitate such behavior is a shift from balanced empathic development to
EEDD. Successful free-riders probably need good CE understanding (see Harpending & Sobus,
1987) in the absence of EE sensitivity.

Interaction of EE and CE in Early Development

EE sensitivity may trigger the development of CE in normal infants. Intersubjectivity and social
referencing are early grades of CE (Whiten, 1994) and these processes often
involve emotion sharing between infant and mother (see Hobson, 1994). People with APD, at
the very least, do not have a CE deficit (see Blair et al., 1996). Therefore, if EE is necessary for
CE development, then people with APD must have had EE sensitivity as infants (perhaps losing it
in response to abuse or neglect during a sensitive phase of development). If people with APD did
not have EE as infants, then EE is not necessary for CE development.

Schizoid Personality Disorder and GEDD

Schizoid Personality Disorder

Schizoid personality disorder involves a strong preference for being alone (see e.g., Cooper,
1994; Stevens & Price, 1996; Wolff, 1995). People with schizoid personality disorder have been
described as unable to experience social warmth or to have deep feelings for others. They seem
to be indifferent to the praise and criticism of others. People with schizoid personality disorder
have difficulty understanding social interaction and they unintentionally disregard social
conventions. They tend not to communicate their thoughts and emotions. They may struggle to
understand morality and they may sometimes harm others.

Does Schizoid Personality Disorder Involve GEDD?

I hypothesize that GEDD tends to be part of schizoid personality disorder. The predicted
characteristics of GEDD provide a moderately accurate description of this personality disorder.
People with schizoid personality disorder do have an empathic impairment (see Wolff, 1995).
Moreover, the characteristics of this disorder are suggestive of both an EE impairment and a CE
impairment. Children with schizoid personality disorder are less disabled than autistic children
(although this may be partly due to IQ differences) and there is evidence that they may have
less awareness of others' emotions than autistic children (see Wolff, 1995; Millon et al., 2004).
Schizoid personality disorder and Asperger syndrome can be difficult to distinguish. Wolff (1995)
has argued that some children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome have high-functioning autism
but that others actually have schizoid personalities. Tantam (1991) has suggested that there is a
subgroup of Asperger syndrome which includes individuals with a degree of empathy and a
subgroup of Asperger syndrome which includes callous individuals. The former individuals may
have a form of CEDD and the latter individuals may have GEDD. It also seems possible that
severe cases of GEDD are diagnosed as pervasive developmental disorder.

Williams Syndrome and GESD

Williams Syndrome

Williams syndrome is a rare genetically based neurodevelopmental disorder. It involves cardiac

abnormalities, certain cognitive deficits, linguistic skill, and hypersociability (see Bellugi & St.
George, 2001; Semel & Rosner, 2003).

Does Williams Syndrome Involve GESD?

I hypothesize that GESD tends to be part of Williams syndrome. The predicted characteristics of
GESD seem to be an accurate description of many psychological aspects of Williams syndrome.
According to Bellugi and St. George (2001, p. xiii), "it is difficult to grasp their sophistication with
language, their connection to their own emotions, and their ability to express
those emotions without actually talking to someone with Williams syndrome." There is evidence
that people with the syndrome are compassionate and have high EE sensitivity (see e.g., Jones
et al., 2001). They can seem "almost psychic with their uncanny knowledge and responsivity to
the feelings and circumstances of others" (Semel & Rosner, 2003, p. 202). People with Williams
syndrome are concerned about injustice and oppose antisocial behavior. The syndrome also
provides evidence of the problematic side of high EE sensitivity. People with Williams syndrome
can become preoccupied by the suffering of others and they often worry about the welfare of
friends, relatives, and even strangers (Semel & Rosner, 2003). Thus, the EE responsiveness of
people with the syndrome does seem to be somewhat indiscriminate.

The linguistic skills, social skills, and wit of people with Williams syndrome suggest high CE
ability. Furthermore, people with the syndrome are often able to manipulate social situations
(Semel & Rosner, 2003). Storytelling and interview task studies have found that people with the
syndrome make rich use of empathic markers, audience hookers, and evaluative comments (see
Jones et al., 2001). An initial storytelling study of adolescents with Williams syndrome found that
they frequently made inferences about the characters' mental states; a later study of children
with the syndrome found them to use more social engagement devices than the normal controls
(see Jones et al., 2001). Children with Williams syndrome tend to engage frequently in social
referencing. They can usually pass false belief tasks and many can pass second-order belief
tasks (see Semel & Rosner, 2003). Overall, the evidence suggests that Williams syndrome does
involve high CE ability but the evidence is not conclusive. One possibility is that the syndrome
does involve an overdeveloped CE system but that the intellectual deficits in the syndrome
impinge on aspects of CE activity. (Indeed, it is possible that excessive empathic fascination with
the social world hampers intellectual development.) Another possibility is that traditional theory
of mind research tends to underestimate the CE ability of people with Williams syndrome.

Williams Syndrome and Autism

Williams syndrome and autism appear to be overlapping disorders: Some children are diagnosed
with both disorders (see e.g., Baron-Cohen & Bolton, 1993; Semel & Rosner, 2003). The
empathic sensitivity and hypersociability of Williams syndrome have been contrasted with the
apparent lack of empathy and hyposociability of autism (Jones et al., 2001; Semel & Rosner,
2003). Indeed, in these respects Williams syndrome and autism appear to be opposite disorders.
If autism really does involve a general lack of empathy then it is puzzling that autism and
Williams syndrome merge in some children. However, if both disorders involve EE
hypersensitivity, then it makes more sense that they overlap.

Conclusion

The relationship between understanding others' minds and the vicarious sharing of emotion is a
basic issue in humanevolution. I have presented arguments about how one might expect natural
selection to act on empathic individuals. I have hypothesized that empathy involves two
separable, complementary systems. This simple model led me to predict the developmental
possibility of four main empathy disorders. I have described two of the disorders as empathy
imabalance disorders and the other two as general empathy disorders.

I have hypothesized that the CE and EE systems of males have increased separability relative to
females and I have outlined an experiment that could test this hypothesis. I have suggested that
the male brain is particularly vulnerable to the development of empathic imbalance. Key
predictions are that people with autism have hypersensitive EE and that autism and APD are
opposite empathy imbalance disorders. I have also hypothesized that people with schizoid
personality disorder (and some people with Asperger syndrome) have a general empathy deficit
and that people with Williams syndrome have a general empathy surfeit.

This article is an exercise in exploratory theorizing and it provides an alternative to Baron-

Cohen's (2002) extreme male brain theory of autism. I have cited some empirical studies that
are consistent with my hypotheses but there is currently a lack of evidential support for some of
my arguments. Essentially, I have used ideas about the relationship between CE and EE to make
predictions. Empirical research is needed to test these predictions. I hope researchers interested
in empathy and its disorders will find this article stimulating.

References

ARCHER, J. (1992). Ethology and human development. Hemel Hempstead, England: Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
ASTINGTON, J. (1994). The child's discovery of the mind. London: Fontana.

ATTWOOD, T. (1993). Why does Chris do that? Some suggestions regarding the cause and
management of the unusual behaviour of children and adults with autism and Asperger
Syndrome. London: National Autistic Society.

BARON-COHEN, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press.

BARON-COHEN, S. (2002). The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 6, 248-254.

BARON-COHEN, S., & BOLTON, P. (1993). Autism: The facts. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press.

BARON-COHEN, S., RICHLER, J., BISARYA, D., GURUNATHAN, N., & WHEELWRIGHT, S. (2004).
The systemizing quotient: An investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning
autism, and normal sex differences. In U. Frith & E. L. Hill (Eds.), Autism: Mind and brain (pp.
161-186). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

BELLUGI, U., & ST. GEORGE, M. (Eds.). (2001). Journey from cognition to brain to gene:
Perspectives from Williams syndrome. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

BISCHOF-KOHLER, D. (1991). The development of empathy in infants. In M. Lamb & H. Keller

(Eds.), Infant development: Perspectives from German-speaking countries (pp. 245-273).
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

BLAIR, R. J. R., JONES, L., CLARK, F., & SMITH, M. (1997). The psychopathic individual: A lack
of responsiveness to distress cues? Psychophysiology, 34, 192-198.

BLAIR, J., SELLARS, C., STRICKLAND, I., CLARK, F., WILLIAMS, A., SMITH, M., et al. (1996).
Theory of mind in the psychopath. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 7, 15-25.

BOOTH, R. J., & PENNEBAKER, J. W. (2000). Emotions and immunity. In M. Lewis & J. M.
Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook ofemotions (2nd ed.) (pp. 558-570). New York: Guilford Press.

BOOTZIN, R., ACOCELLA, J., & ALLOY, L. (1993). Abnormal psychology: Current perspectives.
New York: McGraw Hill.

BRODY, L. R., & HALL, J. A. (2000). Gender, emotion, and expression. In M. Lewis & J. M.
Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed.) (pp. 338-349). New York: Guilford
Press.

BYRNE, R., & WHITEN, A. (Eds.). (1988). Machiavellian intelligence: Social expertise and the
evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes and humans. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

CAPPS, L., KASARI, C., YIRMIYA, N., & SIGMAN, M. (1993). Parental perception of emotional
expressiveness in children with autism. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 61, 475-
484.

COOPER, J. E. (Ed.) (1994). Pocket guide to the ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioural
disorders. Edinburgh, Scotland: Churchill Livingstone.
CROOK, J. H. (1971). Sources of co-operation in animals and man. In J. Eisenberg & W. Dillon
(Eds.), Man and beast: Comparative social behavior (pp. 235-260). Washington, DC:
Smithsonian.

CROOK, J. H. (1980). The evolution of human consciousness. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press.

CROOK, J. H. (1988). The experiential context of intellect. In R. Byrne & A. Whiten (Eds.),
Machiavellian intelligence: Social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes
and humans (pp. 347-362). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

DARWIN, C. (1922). The descent of man (2nd ed.). London: John Murray.

DAVIS, M. (1996). Empathy: A social psychological approach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

EISENBERG, N. (2000). Empathy and sympathy. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.),

Handbook of emotions (2nd ed.) (pp. 677-691). New York: Guilford Press.

EISENBERG, N., & LENNON, R. (1983). Sex differences in empathy and related capacities.
Psychological Bulletin, 94, 100-131.

EISENBERG, N., & STRAYER, J. (1987a). Critical issues in the study of empathy. In N. Eisenberg
& J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development (pp. 3-13). Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.

EISENBERG, N., & STRAYER, J. (Eds.). (1987b). Empathy and its development. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

FRITH, U. (1989). Autism: Explaining the enigma. Oxford, England: Blackwell.

GOODALL, J. (1986). The chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

HAMILTON, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour I & II. Journal of
Theoretical Biology, 7, 1-52.

HAPPE, F. (1994). Autism: An introduction to psychological theory. London: UCL Press.

HARPENDING, H. C., & SOBUS, J. (1987). Sociopathy as an adaptation. Ethology and

Sociobiology, 8, 63S-72S.

HILL, E. L., & FRITH, U. (2004). Understanding autism: Insights from mind and brain. In U. Frith
& E. L. Hill (Eds.), Autism: Mind and brain (pp. 1-20). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

HOBSON, R. P. (1994). Perceiving attitudes, conceiving minds. In C. Lewis & P. Mitchell (Eds.),
Children's early understanding of mind (pp. 71-93). Hove, England: Lawrence Erlbaum.

HOFFMAN, M. L. (1987). The contribution of empathy to justice and moral judgment. In N.

Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development (pp. 47-80). Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.

HOGAN, R. (1969). Development of an empathy scale. Journal of Consulting and Clinical

Psychology, 33, 307-316.

HOLLIN, C. (1994). Forensic (criminological) psychology. In A. Colman (Ed.), Companion

encyclopedia of psychology (pp. 1231-1253). London: Routledge.
HUGHES, C., & PLOMIN, R. (2000). Individual differences in early understanding of mind: Genes,
non-shared environment and modularity. In P. Carruthers & A. Chamberlain (Eds.), Evolution
and the human mind: Modularity, language and meta-cognition (pp. 47-61). Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

HUMPHREY, N. (1988). The social function of intellect. In R. Byrne & A. Whiten (Eds.),
Machiavellian intelligence: Social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes
and humans (pp. 13-26). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

JOLLY, A. (1991). Conscious chimpanzees? A review of recent literature. In C. Ristau (Ed.),

Cognitive ethology: The minds of other animals (pp. 231-252). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

JONES, W., BELLUGI, U., LAI, Z., CHILES, M., REILLY, J., LINCOLN, A., et al. (2001).
Hypersociability: The social and affective phenotype of Williams syndrome. In U. Bellugi & M. St.
George (Eds.), Journey from cognition to brain to gene: Perspectives from Williams syndrome
(pp. 43-71). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

LENNON, R., & EISENBERG, N. (1987). Gender and age differences in empathy and sympathy. In
N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development (pp. 195-217). Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

LEWIS, M. (2000). The emergence of human emotions. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones

(Eds.), Handbook of emotions(2nd ed.) (pp. 265-280). New York: Guilford Press.

MILLENSON, J. (1995). Mind matters: Psychological medicine in holistic practice. Seattle, WA:
Eastland Press.

MILLON, T., GROSSMAN, S., MILLON, C., MEAGHER, S., & RAMNATH, R. (2004). Personality
disorders in modern life (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

MITCHELL, P. (1996). Acquiring a conception of mind: A review of psychological research and

theory. Hove, England: Psychology Press.

MURPHY, D., & STICH, S. (2000). Darwin in the madhouse: Evolutionary psychology and the
classification of mental disorders. In P. Carruthers & A. Chamberlain (Eds.), Evolution and
the human mind: Modularity, language and meta-cognition (pp. 62-92). Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.

PLUTCHIK, R. (1987). Evolutionary bases of empathy. In N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.),

Empathy and its development (pp. 38-46). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

RICHER, J. (2001). An ethological approach to autism: From evolutionary perspectives to

treatment. In J. Richer & S. Coates (Eds.), Autism: The search for coherence (pp. 22-35).
London: Jessica Kingsley.

SAGI, A., & HOFFMAN, M. (1976). Empathic distress in the newborn. Developmental Psychology,
12, 175-176.

SEMEL, E., & ROSNER, S. R. (2003). Understanding Williams syndrome: Behavioral patterns and
interventions. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

SIGMAN, M., & CAPPS, L. (1997). Children with autism: A developmental perspective.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
SLATER, P. J. B. (1994). Kinship and altruism. In P. J. B. Slater & T. R. Halliday (Eds.), Behaviour
and evolution (pp. 193-222). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

STAUB, E. (1987). Commentary on Part I. In N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its
development (pp. 103-115). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

STEVENS, A., & PRICE, J. (1996). Evolutionary psychiatry: A new beginning. London: Routledge.

STRAYER, J. (1987). Affective and cognitive perspectives on empathy. In N. Eisenberg & J.

Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development (pp. 218-244). Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.

STRONGMAN, K. (1996). The psychology of emotion: Theories of emotion in perspective.

Chichester, England: John Wiley.

TAMS, R. (2001). Parents' perceptions of autism: A qualitative study. In J. Richer & S. Coates
(Eds.), Autism: The search for coherence (pp. 294-302). London: Jessica Kingsley.

TANTAM, D. (1991). Asperger syndrome in adulthood. In U. Frith (Ed.), Autism and Asperger
syndrome (pp. 147-183). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

TINBERGEN, N., & TINBERGEN, E. A. (1983). "Autistic" children: New hope for a cure. London:
George Allen and Unwin.

TRIVERS, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-
57.

VINE, I. (1992). Altruism and human nature: Resolving the evolutionary paradox. In P. M.
Oliner, S. P. Oliner, L. Baron, L. A. Blum, D. L. Krebs, & M. Z. Smolenska (Eds.), Embracing the
other: Philosophical, psychological, and historical perspectives on altruism (pp. 73-103). New
York: New York University Press.

WHITEN, A. (Ed.). (1991). Natural theories of mind: Evolution, development and simulation of
everyday mindreading. Oxford, England: Blackwell.

WHITEN, A. (1994). Grades of mindreading. In C. Lewis & P. Mitchell (Eds.), Children's early
understanding of mind (pp. 47-70). Hove, England: Lawrence Erlbaum.

WHITEN, A. (1997). The Machiavellian mindreader. In A. Whiten & R. W. Byrne (Eds.),

Machiavellian intelligence II: Extensions and evaluations (pp. 144-173). Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.

WILLIAMS, D. (1996). Autism: An inside-out approach. London: Jessica Kingsley.

WOLFF, S. (1995). Loners: The life path of unusual children. London: Routledge.

ADAM SMITH

Dundee, Scotland

I thank Alasdair Murray for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. John Scott
asked a helpful question at an early stage. Correspondence concerning this article should be
addressed to Adam Smith, 7 Faraday Street, Dryburgh Industrial Estate, Dundee DD2 3QQ,
Scotland, UK. (E-mail: adamjamessmith@fsmail.net).

Table 1 Features of Seven Models of the Relationship Between CE and EE

 Model
Feature 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

CE without EE - + + - + - +
EE without CE - + - + - + +
CE influences EE + - + - + + +
EE influences CE + - - + + + +
CE/EE Integration + - - - + + +

Note. + = possible; - = impossible.

Full Text:
Emotional responses have a profound effect on public policy, prompting government officials to
make decisions in response to a crisis with little regard to long-term consequences. That's the
conclusion of a study by scholars at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh
School of Law.

The times we need deliberation most are also the times that emotion is apt to take over:
"Moderate levels of fear, anger, or almost any form of negative emotion warn the deliberative
system that something is wrong and that its capabilities are required. Perversely,
as emotion intensifies, it tends to assume control over behavior even as it triggers the
deliberation system, so one may realize what the best course of action is but find one's self doing
the opposite," said Carnegie Mellon professor George Loewenstein.

With regard to public policy, when people are angry or afraid, they tend to favor symbolic,
viscerally satisfying solutions to problems over more substantive, complex, but ultimately more
effective policies.

How emotional conflicts affect our bodies

Author(s):Ulrike Banis
Source:Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients. .262 (May 2005): p84.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2005 The Townsend Letter Group
www.townsendletter.com

Full Text:
Editor:

Whenever we develop physical or emotional/mental symptoms, we begin to look for where our
lives took a wrong turn and how we came to be sick. We ask ourselves what the connections are
between our life history and our illness. The more we think about it, the more people or
circumstances we can find to blame: our parents (who could have been more caring), the bad
times that we've had to endure, envious neighbors, a "significant other" who didn't love us
enough, unfulfilled professional aspirations--the list can be extended indefinitely once we start to
pin the blame on external factors.

If we consider ourselves to be more advanced, more rational and self-reliant, we don't blame
others, but rather ourselves. Most psychosomatic explanations tend to look for the "language of
the inner organs" behind the symptoms, but this generally doesn't work because subconscious
processes are not improved by rational analysis: it only lets us to talk about our problems more
eloquently--but not eliminate them. It only makes us feel worse, makes us blame and punish
ourselves for our mistaken belief systems, convictions and feelings. I see every day that
"knowledge" alone doesn't improve a situation; health doesn't come from knowing what is
wrong. The important experiences in the human soul take place in regions of the mind
inaccessible to speech, psychoanalysis and other tools--the parts of the soul that only
imagination, dreams and intuition can reach.

My most successful tool for establishing contact with human energy is Psychosomatic
Energetics[TM]--a method I have been using for a number of years in my clinic. It helps me
detect autonomic blocks in my patients, along with the emotional issues hidden behind
autonomic malfunctions, and it tells me a great deal about my patients' true energetic situation.

Over the years, I have realized that every human being has certain (recent or long-standing)
emotional issues that are activated by specific biographical circumstances. As soon as such a
conflict is activated, it will cause certain physical and/or emotional symptoms. Why this is so
becomes clear if you know that emotional issues are limited in number and are closely connected
to the body's autonomic centers.

We have found 28 different emotional issues, and every one of them can cause symptoms in the
corresponding autonomic segment (to which the conflict is attached). But this also means that
our wounded soul will draw attention to itself by generating an autonomic disturbance--a good
practitioner only has to be able to read these signs to know the connections.

But for many patients it can be pretty painful to look for answers on their own, and conventional
medical diagnostics cannot establish the true cause either. These patients are usually told
something like "Well, there is nothing wrong with you ..." even though they are clearly suffering
and they know that it's not just their imagination running wild.

The picture below identifies the 28 found conflicts and shows where they attach to the subtle
energy field. We find this system very useful in daily practice, and I have not had a single case
that contradicts it.

[Zu untenstehendem Bild (Text):

7 -- cosmic orders [right arrow] cosmic order

6 -- imaginations [right arrow] imagination

3 -- digesting [right arrow] digestion

2 -- fight and flight [right arrow] fight or flight/steering [right arrow] regulation

1 -- rooting [right arrow] groundedness]

How can we deal with this knowledge? I do it by first finding out where the autonomic block is
situated with the aid of the REBA[R] test device and its test kits. My technique is the
kinesiological arm-length test. Once I know where the block is, I just need to check for the
attached conflicts in that particular segment--since I know that any other possible conflicts are
not currently active. If the upper abdomen is blocked, then it has to be one of the four
associated conflicts responsible for the block, for example Isolated (Emvita 8) or Frustration
(Emvita 11).

When I talk to my patients, I tell them the name of the conflict--and sometimes it's like saying
"Rumpelstiltskin": the demon loses its power once its name is spoken! Many patients experience
instant relief and feel like someone finally understands them. I then explain which physical
symptoms might be caused by the block, to help them understand how this conflict is responsible
for their complaints. Of course, I use my knowledge of which organs belong to what segment--
i.e. for the upper abdomen it would be stomach, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, some segments of
the colon and of the vertebral spine.

I always call the emotional conflict an "energy thief" that steals subtle energy from the person
and makes them feel bad. Practically speaking, this conflict belongs to the person, and is
connected via an "umbilical cord" in the subtle energy system, as shown in the picture below.

I perform the treatment using the homeopathic preparations Chavita[TM] and Emvita[TM], which
help restore the bound energy to the patient; once more energy is available, many autonomic
symptoms recede spontaneously and pain goes down.

With this explanation, I tell my patients that their complaints have a real background--it's just
that it is in the subtle energy field, which cannot be checked by conventional means. I also tell
them that this conflict has stolen their energy, and that the therapy can return it to them. It thus
becomes clear that the conflict is a part of the patient's soul that needs to be re-integrated.

I will never discuss when this conflict might have come into existence, who might be responsible
for it and who should be blamed. Sometimes my patients ask me where the conflict comes from,
and I will always answer that I don't know--and that I don't need to know in order to administer
successful therapy.

The only important things one needs to know for therapy are: the name of the conflict, where it
is situated, and how to treat it. All the rest resides in the patient's soul, and vivid dreams
experienced during the course of therapy will lead the patient in the right direction, revealing the
precise amount of knowledge needed for the healing process.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I personally have to leave my professional curiosity in the background, something I like to

designate as humility. I always tell my patients that I am merely their guide, the midwife
attending their soul's "birth," and that it is up to them to make their own way, that I can and will
not carry them there. They are each responsible for themselves, and this responsibility cannot be
shared. This might come as an unpleasant shock to some therapists, since therapists can
become accustomed to feeding their egos with what they do for their patients. A method such as
Psychosomatic Energetics[TM] (PSE)--which I like to call an "energy check," thus brings the
bottom to the top. We have to realize that we cannot apply force--a patient's soul will always
reveal only as much as a patient can cope with--and my years of experience tell me that a soul
will never take up an issue "before its time."
The practitioner's function in this process of emotional ripening is to translate the messages
hidden within the conflicts, to be a guide and provide loving support along the way. I want to
give an example from my practice:

Ms. S. comes to me because she doesn't feel well emotionally. This has been going on for 35
years. She is happily married, has a creative profession, and her kids are all grown up. Yet she
suffers from major depression and always pins the blame on herself when things go wrong. Her
physical symptom is a therapy-resistant irritated bladder.

She had tried all kinds of treatments over the years, such as psychotherapy, family
constellations, and transactional analysis. She knows that she has been suffering from her
dominant mother, but this didn't help her depression after all. Her energy check showed a low
level of emotional energy--as I would expect in a case of depression. Emotional energy relates to
our moods and to how we feel about ourselves; if this level is low, recurrent depressions are the
result.

Her vital energy (which tells me about her physical condition) and her mental energy (which tells
me about her ability to concentrate) are both excellent. Her causal energy is 80%, indicating that
Ms. S. is a very intuitive person, very open-minded. She agrees when I tell her that she should
have a good connection to her guardian angel.

Her blocks are a condition of hidden anxiety and a conflict named Lack of strength, feeling
helpless located in the root Chakra. This issue is also her life issue, her largest and most
important conflict, which runs like a red line through her entire life history.

As a child, she was dominated by her mother; later on in life, she felt helpless when problems
cropped up, and would lack the strength to overcome them. The root Chakra is involved with
issues of primal trust, how we are grounded in life, our connection to the earth and trust in
ourselves as well as self-confidence.

First Chakra conflicts often originate in early childhood, as in this case. In less than an hour, I
had hit the mark--something previous therapies had failed to do. I prescribed Chavita 1[TM] and
Emvita 3[TM], 12 drops twice daily for four months.

At the second appointment, Ms. S. is smiling brightly. She reports feeling as happy as she has
always wanted to be. She could scarcely believe that her symptoms had been eliminated simply
by taking "a few drops," but she was grateful and called it a miracle. The energy check yielded
excellent readings, and there were no more blocks to be found.

My practical work has been elevated to new dimensions by combining conventional medical
knowledge with energy medicine. I can now treat my patients in a truly holistic manner, as I
always wanted to. My work is thus not only very successful, but also enjoyable and rewarding
(for both practicioner and patient).

Information on the method:

Rubimed AG

Grossmatt 3

CH6052 Hergiswil, Switzerland

Tel: 41-41-630 0888

Fax: 41-41-630 0887

info@rubimed.com

www.rubimed.com

Recommended reading:

Banis, Reimar: Psychosomatic Energetics, Explore edition

Banis, Ulrike: Handbook of Psychosomatic Energetics, CoMed edition

Dr. med. Ulrike Banis, MD ND

Rathausstr. 11, 6900 Bregenz, Austria

Tel: 43-5574-58460

ulrikebanis@hotmail.com

Banis, Ulrike

The human mind, institutions, and economic behavior

Author(s):Harold Wolozin
Source:Journal of Economic Issues. 38.2 (June 2004): p563.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2004 Association for Evolutionary Economics
http://www.orgs.bucknell.edu/afee/jei/

Full Text:
In this paper I explore the implications for institutional analysis of recent research on the role of
the brain and the mind inhuman behavior in both neuroscience and neo-psychoanalytic theory.
In particular, I cover findings of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and psychoanalyst Elio Frattaroli
as well as those of Jonathan Lear on the role of the mind in humanbehavior. From these writers
I distill the following key points:

* Mind is not another word for brain; it encompasses it.

* The mind is the seat of both the cognitive and the emotional.

* Emotion and the unconscious as key drivers of behavior have been neglected by economists.

* Behavioral patterns including those caused by institutions are programmed in the brain.

* Unpredictable behavior is common because the mind has a tendency to disrupt its own rational
functioning.

The Mind and Institutions

In this section I turn to Damasio's research on the functions of the brain for the light it throws on
the role of institutions in economic agency.

Damasio on the Brain and Institutions

Focusing on the role of drives and emotions, Damasio maintained "the brain brings along innate
knowledge and automated know-how.... [T]here is nothing free or random about drives
and emotions. They are highly specific and evolutionary preserved repertories of behavior whose
execution the brain faithfully calls into duty" (2003, 205). He described "the powerful
connection" between "social phenomena" and the brain. He pointed out that this connection was
dramatically posited by Sigmund Freud, almost a hundred years ago, in his depiction of the
pervasive role of the superego "which would accommodate instincts to social dictates." What
Damasio was talking about is behavior becoming programmatic. In several recent works he has
explored this behavior in "neural terms" (1999, 2000, 2003). In his research, he has found that
signals to the brain are "imaged" and processed as follows:

In brief, the brain brings along innate knowledge and automated

know-how, predetermining many ideas of the body. The consequence of
this knowledge and know-how is that many of the body signals
destined to become ideas ... happen to be engendered by the brain.
The brain commands the body to assume a certain state and behave in
a certain way, and the ideas are based on these body states and
body behaviors. The prime example of this arrangement concerns
drives and emotions. As we have seen there is nothing free or
random about drives and emotions. They are highly specific and
evolutionary preserved repertories of behaviors whose execution
the brain faithfully calls into duty in
certain circumstances. (2003, 205)
Damasio's focus on social phenomena raises two issues: first, the connection of institutions to
the brains and, second, the implications of identifying the mind with the brain, that is, an identity
of mind and brain, as opposed to the view of Frattaroli, who views the mind as including the
brain and standing above it. I shall expand on this difference below.

What is germane here is that according to Damasio, institutional behavior can be encoded in the
brain, hence, in humanbehavior (Wolozin and Wolozin 2003). This is also a position which
appears in bath contemporary and early institutionalist formulations. I shall comment briefly on
this.

Encoded Behavior in Institutional Thought

Thus, Huascar Pessali and Ramon Fernandez in a recent Journal of Economic Issues article
maintained, "Human wishes and behavior have been molded or changed through time by
institutions, and vice-versa" (1999, 265). Describing institutions, Thorstein Veblen a hundred
years ago declared, "They are the products of his heredity traits and his past experience"
(Veblen 1898, 390). Geoffrey Hodgson termed a "pillar" of Veblen's institutionalism the
"psychological mechanisms by which an individual is molded by his or her circumstances" (2003,
550). Walton Hamilton in 1919 charged that economists had "overlooked the part that instinct
and impulse play in impelling ... economic activity" (Hodgson 2003, 550, 551). David Hamilton in
his 1991 text depicted "[h]uman nature and, thus human behavior, in institutionalism [as] 'a
complex of neuro-sensory activity guided in its outward manifestation by the total cultural
situation'" (Waller, 2001). We see, in summary, that Damasio's description of programmed
behavior in the brain strikes a deterministic chord in institutionalist literature. In each instance of
the institutionalists I cite, behavior is encoded in one way or another. Let me now turn to the
findings of Frattaroli.
Frattaroli's Science of Subjectivity

Elio Frattaroli called for "a new science of subjectivity ... based on the [psychoanalytic] processes
for ... making the unconscious conscious [making us] less controlled by our drives [with] more
possibility of autonomous conscious choice ... enlarging the range of the free will." He cited
Freud's call to become free of "the unconscious neurobiological forces of the drives" (2001, 323).
What is singularly impressive to me is Frattaroli's case for the possibility of the individual rising
above the control of both the drives emanating from the mind (the conscious and the
unconscious) and those of institutions empowered through the superego.

The I above the Mind--I shall develop his thinking on this possibility below, but first let me look
at his differences with Damasio on their descriptions of the mind and in Frattaroli's work the
existence of "an I that stands above the mind and the superego ... [and] is a self observing
agency that in a sense does 'stand above' or outside the personality as an autonomous,
dispassionate awareness." He wrote of "the same split we all experience between the clear
consciousness of the I that stands above and the reflexive biological impulses of the--It--
repetition compulsion" (Frattaroli 2001, 337-338). The latter is a concept from Sigmund Freud
described as "the universal tendency to act out the same unconscious scenario time after time,
automatically, despite obvious indications that it leads to unhappiness" (337).

Mind Not Another Word for Brain--Frattaroli in describing drives as emanating from the mind
differs fundamentally with Damasio's equating of the mind to the brain. Although Damasio
describes the brain as encompassing both the conscious and the unconscious, it is essentially the
former which is the prime mover in his behavioral scenario and that which he is really talking
about because it is the only (and smallest) part of the brain which neuroscience has been able to
penetrate with their research methodology. Damasio's formulation is, according to Frattaroli, an
oversimplification. "Mind is not just another word for brain any more than wave is just another
word for particle." As Frattaroli put it:

Consider a parallel question from the field of physics. Does light

travel in the form of waves or in the form of particles? Here we
all know that the paradoxical answer is both, yet in the
experimental observation of light, physicists must choose between
one way of looking at it or the other. If they use one kind of
experimental arrangement, they observe electromagnetic waves. If
they use a different methodology and apparatus, they find no
evidence of waves but discover instead that light consists of tiny
photon particles. In other words the nature of light depends the
observational framework through which we choose to look at it. So,
too, with human nature. If we look at ourselves through the
lens of introspection--that is, through the conscious awareness of
emotional experience in all its immediacy--then we discover that
human nature is dualistically divided, in a perpetual state of
conflict between the Flesh and the Spirit, unconscious and
conscious, love and hate. But if we look at people through the
external lens of the senses, we can only see that human nature is
physical, a pattern of brain activity, audible, or palpable
behaviors. (2001, 99-100)
Rising Above the Brain
Frattaroli was asking above that we look beyond the neuroscience portrayal of the brain as
depicted "through the external lens of the senses" to human nature as "dualistically divided, in a
perpetual state of conflict between the Flesh and the Spirit, unconscious and conscious, love and
hate." He has gone beyond Damasio on the nature of the mind and suggested
that human agency can and does rise above the conflicts and passions of programmed and
institutional responses. Frattaroli spoke of making the unconscious conscious as "the idea that as
we become more conscious we are less controlled by our drives" (2001, 323).

Coping with Programmed Response

An example of the profound but reversible damage of early life experience embedded in the
unconscious is Frattaroli's account of the impact of an early life condition on a patient, Mary, who
was having serious, debilitating difficulties in her interpersonal relationships. Frattaroli
commented as follows: "Mary's adult tendency to be distrustful of people who tried to hold her
(stay with her in a long term relationship) would be the natural evolution to her early paranoid
reaction to her parents as perpetrators of her pain" (2001, 224). This "tendency" driven by her
programmed response resulted in painful, negative responses to the many institutions involving
interpersonal relationships she encountered in her life, the institution of marriage, for example.
Only through intensive introspection (psychotherapy) was Mary finally able to free herself from
the destructive power of her unconscious fears. Multiply Mary by many thousands, and what are
the implications for institutional analysis? (Describing this process asks for a separate paper.)

Although this insight suggests that institutional behavior can be unpredictable and is much more
complicated then implied by Damasio, there is an important point of agreement between
Frattaroli and Damasio. They both agree on the overriding role of emotions and the unconscious
in human behavior. Damasio wrote of "the existence and the power of unconscious processes
in human behavior." Significantly, he also called attention to the inaccessibility to neural
research of "the vast amount of processes and contents that remain nonconscious" (1999,
228,297).

Human Emotions, the Unconscious and Behavior

The nature of the role of emotions and the unconscious is where Damasio and Frattaroli differ in
that, as I described earlier, to Damasio it is the brain that musters the emotions. This is, of
course the antithesis of Frattaroli's interpretation, which views it as much more complex. In this
section I turn to the role of emotions and the unconscious in human behavior and their
responsibility for unpredictable institutional behavior.

The Neglect of Emotion

But before that I wish to point out that there has been increasing attention called to the neglect
of emotion as a subject in all of economics, not only among institutionalists. In an extensive
survey in the JEI "of psychological findings relevant to economics" Matthew Rabin documented
"how humans differ from the way in which they are traditionally described by economists"
(1998, 1). Jon Elster pointed out, however, that Rabin's survey article "contains virtually no
reference to theemotions" (1998, 47). The absence of emotion as a variable in the economic
scenario had been addressed by Elster in an earlier article on rationality and the emotions as
follows: "No economist to my knowledge has considered emotions in their main role as providers
of pleasure, happiness, satisfaction or utility. To put it crudely, economists have totally neglected
the most important aspect of their subject matter" (1996, 1387). (I do not interpret the products
of the so-called behavioral economists such as Richard H. Thaler, Robert J. Shiller, and others as
throwing light on the nature and roots ofhuman emotion [Wolozin and Wolozin 2003]).

The Unconscious in Human Behavior

What goes on in the unconscious has profound affects on behavior. Yet inaccessible to
neuroscience, the unconscious has been the focus of intense analysis in psychoanalytic theory
based on findings of its qualitative research methodology. The unconscious is depicted as the
home of "instincts as unconsciously motivating force," also the root source of "involuntary action,
innate impulse, and elementary and untamed forces, compelling, irrational, unreasoning"
(Loewald 1980, 109).

It is of course beyond the scope of this paper to go deeply into the extensive research on the
unconscious. 1 did describe the importance for institutional analysis in a recent paper of a key
manifestation of the unconscious in human behavior, the super-ego. In my analysis I drew a
parallel between it and the role of institutions in affecting economic behavior (2003). I described
it as a vehicle of institutions. I had turned to Freud's original depiction of the super-ego as still
very much applicable as follows:

The super-ego is the representative for us of every moral

restriction, the advocate of a striving towards perfection [my
emphasis]--it is, in short, as much as we have been able to grasp
psychologically of what is described as the higher side of
life.... [I]t becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the
time-resisting judgments of value which have propagated
themselves ... from generation to generation. You may guess what
important assistance taking the super-ego into account will give
us in our understanding of the social behavior of mankind--in the
problem of delinquency, for instance--and perhaps even what
practical hints on education.... Mankind never lives entirely in
the present. The past, the tradition of the race and of the
people, lives on in the ideologies of the super-ego, and yields
only slowly to the influences of the present and to new changes;
and so long as it operates through the super-ego it plays a
powerful part in human life, independently of economic conditions.
(Freud 1923, 66-67)
Jonathan Lear on the Mind as Restless and Sometimes Irrational

Psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear rejects the idea of the functioning of the mind as somehow being
divided between the conscious and the unconscious. He does not dismiss the role of the
unconscious. Rather, he has argued that there is one "restless" mind housing both the conscious
and the unconscious, unable to operate independently of each other (1998). He asserted, "That
it is intrinsic to the very idea of mind that mind must be sometimes irrational." "In a nutshell,"
he wrote, "mind has a tendency to disrupt its own rational functioning [for] within a
single human mind there are heterogeneous forms of activity, not all of which are rational."
Thus, we see again by this construct that response to institutions may not be axiomatically the
expected. Lear underlined the uncertainty he introduced as follows: "The consequence is that the
complex mental activity of the mind, encompassing both the conscious and the unconscious, is
compounded of rational and irrational behavior as well as phantasy" (Lear, 84-87). This alone
introduces in no uncertain terms a serious element of uncertainty as to the nature of the
response to institutions. But there's more.

The Restless Mind and Phantasy

Citing Freud on the restlessness of the mind, Lear asserted that Freud's portrayal of the mind as
inherently restless was "one of Freud's distinctive achievements." This, according to Lear,
"guarantees the immanence and disruptiveness of irrationality in our lives." He described it as
follows: "Restlessness is not itself a teleological goal of mind; it is the inevitable outcome of
mind's operating under the influence of conflicting teleological principles. At its best this
restlessness expresses itself in creative associations, poetry, delightful wanderings of mind; at its
worst, in mental discontent, irritability of mind and dominating thoughts, traumatic associations.
But this restlessness isn't a goal of mind; it's an expressing of it" (1998, 119-120).

Restlessness, according to Lear, also accounts for irrationality. How does he explain this?
Although answering this question fully warrants a separate paper, the following may give you
some idea of the psychic forces at work in producing restlessness:

From Socrates and the ensuing philosophical tradition we have

learned that a mind capable of propositional attitudes such as
belief, desire, hope and fear, must be sensitive to the content of
those attitudes in such a way as to maintain rational relations
among them. This requires sensitivity to the inner structure of the
contents of those attitudes, so that transformation of subject and
predicate can be made which preserve the overall rationality of the
system of propositional attitudes. But if the mind is to be
restless, in the sense I want to capture, there must be systematic
ways of disrupting that system, systematic ways of moving on. Others,
like sexuality, are drives. But others like displacement and
condensation seem simply to be principles of mental activity. In
their wake meaning is created, and the associations may be put to
various uses, but strictly speaking, they have no purpose: They are
just forms of restlessness.... It is this restlessness, which
guarantees the immanence and disruptiveness of irrationality in our
lives. (1998, 122)
Lear adds to the disruptive role of restlessness of the mind phantasy. It is important for our
exploration of the mysteries of the mind to explore the role of phantasy; for as interpreted by
Lear a great part of out waking day, let alone dreaming, is driven by unrecognized and unspoken
phantasy. Phantasy according to Lear is a nondirected form of creative mental activity (1998,
116-117). Phantasy according to Lear is, as we have pointed out, a nonteleological but
motivated form of mental activity. Although we experience it consciously, we rationalize its
effects as stemming from anything other than the phantasy which it is--a driving force in our
mental life. To make the story more complicated, the activity which results is a product of the
processing of basic drives, the id residing in the unconscious, as challenging prime movers. Thus,
in our exploration of the factors affecting the nature of the economic agency's response to
institutions we must include all of Lear's findings.

Conclusion

In this short paper I have tried to summarize the relationship between institutions and what goes
on in the human mind as portrayed by the provocative findings in both neuroscience and
psychoanalysis--those of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and psychoanalytic researchers Elio
Frattaroli and Jonathan Lear. Large areas of agreement and disagreement such as defining the
mind are revealed by the above exposition. I suggest (1) there is no simple relationship between
the mind,human behavior, and economic institutions; (2) while it is clear that institutional
behavior can be encoded in the brain (3) there is no guarantee that institutions will regularly
engender uniform and predictable behavior; (4) in other words, the mind can misbehave
(restlessness, irrationality, phantasy); (5) following Frattaroli, the possibility of free will exists,
and, in response to all these factors (6) the human mind can and often does rise above
institutional influences.

References

Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, Inc., 1999.

--. Descartes' Error. New York, N.Y.: Quill, 2000.

--. Looking for Spinoza. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, Inc., 2003.

Elster, Jon. "Emotions and Economic Theory." Journal of Economic Literature 36, no. 1 (Match
1998).

--. "Rationality and the Emotions." The Economic Journal (1996).

Frattaroli, Elio. Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain. New York: Penguin Books, 2001.

Freud, Sigmund. New Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1923.

Hodgson, Geoffrey M. "John R. Commons and the Foundations of Institutional Economics."

Journal of Economic Issues 37, no. 3 (September 2003).

Lear, Jonathan. Open Minded. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Loewald, Hans W. Papers on Psychoanalysis. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980.

Pessali, Huascar, and Ramon G. Fernandez. "Institutional Economics at the Micro Level?" Journal
of Economic Issues 33, no. 2 (June 1999).

Rabin, Matthew. "Psychology and Economics." Journal of Economic Literature 36, no. 1 (1998).

Veblen, Thorstein. "Why Is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science? The Quarterly Journal of
Economics (July 1898).

Waller, William. "It's Culture all the Way Down: The Cultural Economics of David Hamilton."
Paper presented at annual meeting of Association for Institutional Thought, Albuquerque, New
Mexico, 2001.

Wolozin, Harold. "The Individual in Economic Analysis: Toward a Psychology of Economic

Behavior." Journal of Socio-Economics 31, no. 1 (2002).

--. "Veblen Had It Right and Didn't Know It." Paper delivered at annual meeting, Association for
Evolutionary Economics, Washington, D.C., January 2003.

Wolozin, Harold, and Benjamin Wolozin. "The Unconscious in Economic Decision-Making:

Convergent Voices." Paper presented at conference of Behavioral Research Council, Great
Barrington, Massachusetts, July 2003.

The author is Professor of Economics at

Five key questions about pleasure
Source:New Scientist. 180.2416 (Oct. 11, 2003): p41.
Document Type:Article
Copyright:COPYRIGHT 2003 Reed Business Information Ltd.. For more science news
and comments, see http://www.newscientist.com.
http://www.newscientist.com/

Full Text:
1 Can other animals feel pleasure?

When your pet dog yelps excitedly as you throw a favourite toy, or your cat purrs contentedly as
you scratch its bead, you can't help but wonder if they're "enjoying" themselves. But are you
just being anthropomorphic to suggest your pet has feelings?

Once a taboo subject, many researchers are now starting to consider the possibility that animals
have an inner world ofemotions. They experience fear, pain, joy and anger as well as more
complex emotions such as embarrassment, love and grief, according to Marc Bekoff from the
University of Colorado, Boulder, author of The Smile of a Dolphin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000).
As for pleasure, Bekoff is in no doubt that animals g experience it. Animals at play, for example.
appear to be having fun.

Bekoff points to work by Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist from Bowling Green State University in
Ohio, who discovered some years back that infant rats, when they play or when they're tickled,
make regular high-pitched noises just as if they were laughing. Their behaviour suggests that
they're experiencing pleasure, says Panksepp. When accused of anthropomorphism himself, he
points out that animals at play produce opioids, the brain chemicals that are increasingly being
seen as the main mediators of pleasure in humans. And the brain systems and genes that
control the rats' behaviour are equivalent to those in people. Although we can never prove they
feel pleasure, he says, "there is overwhelming evidence for the conclusion that they do."

Physiologist Michel Cabanac of Laval University in Montreal, Canada, is similarly convinced that
there is feeling associated with animal emotions. "We have good reasons to accept that reptiles
experience pleasure," he says.

If you place a lizard in an enclosure with a warm lamp in one corner and food in the opposite,
cold corner, when it really needs to eat, it will venture quickly into the cold. It deals with the
conflict of motivations by trading off different needs. So where does pleasure come into it? By
slightly changing the conditions, Cabanac believes he has shown that the lizard's choices are
guided by relative pleasure and displeasure. "Pleasure shows what is useful to an animal," he
says.

This time he placed normal food in the warm corner and the lizard equivalent of gourmet food in
the cold corner. The lizards ventured out to eat the gourmet food as long as this part of the
enclosure was above a certain temperature, but when it got too cold they stayed in the warm
and just ate the nearby food. The better the food in the cold corner, the lower temperature the
lizards will tolerate. They trade off food quality and warmth. It cannot be a reflexive behaviour,
such as simply ceasing to move because of the cold, Cabanac claims. The lizard makes a decision
based on palatability. "This means they must experience palatability, or pleasure," he says.
In another experiment he showed that lizards can learn to avoid food with a particular taste that
once made them sick. Mammals do this easily, and people stop liking food that made them sick.
In other words the process is driven by experiencing pleasant and unpleasant sensations. "So if
it takes place in lizards, it seems likely that they also know sensory pleasure," says Cabanac.
When he carried out the same experiment on frogs and toads they did not learn to avoid foods
that made them sick, suggesting that pleasure evolved around the time reptiles branched off
from amphibians. "Frogs and toads, I believe, are just robots," says Cabanac, "whereas reptiles
have a mind"

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio from the University of Iowa also thinks animals have pleasure,
though he's not sure they're aware of it. He believes emotions and feelings are two distinct
things--emotions are physiological processes that help guide behaviour, whereas feelings come
from experiencing and reflecting on those physiological processes. Animals, he says, definitely
have emotions--even a fly can be happy or angry. But do they feel them?

In Damasio's model, feelings require a complex brain capable of representing the animal's body.
We know that humans have sophisticated sensory maps of the body in cortical regions of the
brain, in which emotions trigger different patterns of neural activity. These patterns are what
produce feelings, thinks Damasio. Other primates certainly have sensory maps, though it's not
known exactly what kind of body maps other animals have, nor what level of sophistication
would be needed for teelings to emerge.

2 Is there a limit to pleasure?

Yes, says George Koob, neuroscientist and addiction expert from the Scripps Research Institute
in La Jolla, California. The pleasure system, he reckons, is like a bank. Take out too much money
too quickly and you'll simply run out, or worse, you could go bankrupt--the route to addiction. So
why can't we have it all, all the time?

You have to consider what pleasure is for, says Koob--a reward system that guides our
behaviour, giving us a simple way to decide what to do next. Pleasure acts as a kind of common
currency, allowing us to compare the relative values of behaviours such as feeding, drinking,
mating or relaxing, according to what our body needs at the time.

But for pleasure to work in this way, it must have built-in limits, thinks Koob. If an animal gets
too carried away with the pleasure of eating something, it is likely to fall prey to the next
predator that comes along. Pleasure has to be transient enough to let us focus on the next task.
"I think there's a reason for the brain being created to limit pleasure," says Koob. "If it wasn't,
then the species would be compromised in some way."

Koob believes the brain puts a limit on pleasure in two ways. The first is the simple depletion of
dopamine, opioids and other mood chemicals such as serotonin. You can see this happening in a
cocaine binge, he says. Once dopamine levels drop, for example, so too does the motivation to
continue taking the drug.

The second way is through the brain's stress system. According to his model, pleasurable
experiences stimulate the stress system, with stress chemicals being released and feeding back
to limit the amount of pleasure we feel. The combination of dopamine depletion and stress build-
up is a powerful limit to pleasure, he says.

This tight regulation creates what he calls a "hedonic set point"--your baseline level of pleasure.
Get a pay rise and you may feel good for a while. But you don't stay pleased for long. If you win
the lottery, move to an idyllic home and give up work, in the long term you won't necessarily be
much happier. Pleasure seems to be superimposed on a baseline you always return to.

But if you misuse your pleasure system, you may start to have trouble rising above this baseline.
That's part of the process of addiction, says Koob. At first a drug may be intensely pleasurable,
but the pleasure resources are quickly frittered away. Now the same amount of drug produces a
smaller pleasure response. And because the brain's reward system is depleted, you get no
pleasure from anything but drugs. Addicts spend most of their time not trying to experience bliss
but just trying to feel normal, says Koob. Eventually even drugs won't do it. It's as if they've
bankrupted the system. The changes in the brain can be incredibly long-lasting, perhaps
explaining why addicts can relapse after many years of abstinence.

Koob sees people using up their pleasure resources in all kinds of addiction-like behaviours.
Whether you're a workaholic or binge eater, or experience an unhealthy compulsion to have sex,
go shopping or gamble, the limited resources of your pleasure system are being expended too
rapidly.

Take compulsive running, says Koob. At first people run for pleasure, but once they have crossed
a certain threshold, being unable to go running makes them miserable, irritable, depressed and
withdrawn until they can run again. They are no longer running for pleasure, but to avoid the
pain of not running.

You could attain pleasure all the time, but it's not going to be intense pleasure all the time, says
Koob. There'll never be designer drugs to give "free" highs or hour-long orgasms without
somehow having to pay the costs later. Evolution has made the eternal high impossible--too
much pleasure would simply distract us from the nitty-gritty of surviving.

The other bad news is that there's no limit to displeasure. "Displeasure indicates what is harmful
or dangerous," says Michel Cabanac of Laval University in Montreal, Canada. And unlike
pleasurable stimuli, the unpleasant stimulus may be ever-present. If the source of danger or
pain is not removed, the displeasure remains. Only joy is transient.

3 Can pleasure be unconscious?

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. So goes the children's song. But can you be
happy and not know it? Can you have pleasure without being aware of it? Surely, by definition,
you experience pleasure and so must be conscious of it?

Not necessarily, says neuroscientist Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan. He reckons
pleasure can sometimes be an "implicit emotion"--a state that can alter how we behave or think,
but that we can have no awareness of, even upon introspection.

He points to experiments that show how pleasure-inducing drugs can alter people's behaviour
without their experiencing any conscious pleasure. In one example, the late Marian Fischman of
Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute gave cocaine addicts the choice
of pressing two levers. One delivered a high dose of cocaine, the other a lower dose. The addicts
were free to give themselves a series of shots and, after experimenting, they repeatedly chose
the higher dose. The researchers gradually lowered both doses, to the point where the addicts'
heart rates and adrenaline levels no longer respond to the drug. By now the subjects insist there
is no drug. But given the choice, they still choose the undetectable cocaine more frequently than
an empty shot. They say they are picking at random, and are unaware that they favour one over
the other. Without their knowing it, the tiny dose is guiding their behaviour.
Berridge and his colleague Piotr Winkielman, a psychologist now at the University of California,
San Diego, found that if they showed people subliminal images of happy or angry faces they
could induce pleasure without their subjects being aware of it. They flashed images of happy or
angry faces onto the screen for just 16 milliseconds before showing a neutral face for much
longer, so the subjects were only conscious of having seen the neutral image, immediate
questioning showed they experienced no obvious mood changes and didn't feel any different. But
if they were thirsty, they would drink more after subliminally viewing a happy face than an angry
one, and rated the drink as more pleasant tasting, more attractive and worth more money, even
though all the drinks were identical. This, says Berridge, is implicit emotion--liking without
feeling.

4 Why is music pleasurable?

It's easy to see how pleasure might have evolved to help us choose between vital behaviours.
But why do we find pleasure in more abstract things such as art, music or winning money?
Emotionally charged music clearly taps into the same brain regions as other pleasurable stimuli.
Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre from the Department of Neuropsychology at McGill University in
Montreal, Canada, used PET scans to show that emotional "chills" induced by music activate the
same brain regions as euphoria-inducing stimuli, such as food, sex and recreational drugs. But
how?

We can learn by association that a particular stimulus predicts we're about to receive another
that we naturally find pleasurable. For example we can use money to buy food, and we enjoy
food, so by association we learn to find pleasure in money. But how could that work with a piece
of music?

Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp from Bowling Green State University in Ohio believes something
different is happening. He suggests that music taps directly into the innate pleasure systems.
"Music makes baby birds respond, it makes cows give more milk," he says. Rats, mice and
chickens all get the musical chills too. Music must be affecting our emotions at a very basic
level.

He believes it triggers brain mechanisms that originally evolved to make mammals and other
animals respond to their crying offspring. "Separation" calls can induce a slight drop in
temperature in the parents, perhaps the origin of the musical chill. And when parent and child
are reunited, chemical changes occur in the brain that look very like other pleasure responses,
releasing opioids and other neurochemicals.

5 Why do we feel high after something stressful?

Why do people go bungee-jumping, throw themselves over steep cliffs on snowboards, or jump
out of aeroplanes? How can something dangerous or stressful give a buzz of pleasure
afterwards? Thrill-seeking, according to researchers, is simply a by-product of how our brains
work.

Our pleasure system is there to reward us and guide our behaviour, making sure we are doing
things that will help us survive. But some types of beneficial behaviour naturally involve risk-
taking, points out neuroscientist George Koob of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla,
California. Foraging, hunting, competing for a mate--these can be incredibly risky. Being safe
and finding what we need are often in conflict. If pleasure guides our behaviour, so taking risks
sometimes ought to be pleasurable too. "Something can be both stressful and pleasurable," he
says. "Stress can be rewarding in itself." Stress hormones--cortisol in humans, corticosterone in
rats--produce a transient "high", says Koob. Corticosterone is a modest stimulant and activates
the dopamine system.

But to be useful in guiding behaviour, pleasure shouldn't last too long. An animal that becomes
too distracted by the pleasure of eating is very likely to get eaten itself, which could partly
explain why if you eat too much, what tasted pleasant begins to become unpleasant and may
even make you feel sick, Koob thinks the counter-response to bring us back down after a buzz of
pleasure is also mediated by stress. Stress activates a brain system as well as a hormonal one,
inducing release of corticotropin releasing factor and noradrenaline and depletion of neuropeptide
Y, all of which help to restrain our feelings of pleasure.

In effect, the stress and pleasure systems are antagonistic, making our feelings swing back and
forth like a pendulum. This means every emotional high has to be followed by a low--but also
that every low has to be followed by a high.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

The logic of action: indeterminacy, emotion, and historical

narrative
Author(s):William M. Reddy
Source:History and Theory. 40.4 (Dec. 2001): p10.
Document Type:Article
Abstract:
Modern social theory, by and large, has aimed at reducing the complexity of action situations to
a set of manageable abstractions. But these abstractions, whether functionalist or linguistic, fail
to grasp the indeterminacy of action situations.

Action proceeds by discovery and combination. The logic of action is serendipitous and
combinative. From these characteristics, a number of consequences flow: The whole field of our
intentions is engaged in each action situation, and cannot really be understood apart from the
situation itself. In action situations we remain aware of the problems of categorization, including
the dangers of infinite regress and the difficulties of specifying borders and ranges of categories.
In action situations, attention is in permanent danger of being overwhelmed. We must deal with
many features of action situations outside of attention; in doing so, we must entertain
simultaneously numerous possibilities of action. Emotional expression is a way of talking about
the kinds of possibilities we entertain. Expression and action have a rebound effect on attention.
"Effort" is required to find appropriate expressions and actions, and rebound effects play a role in
such effort, making it either easier or more difficult.

Recent theoretical trends have failed to capture these irreducible characteristics of action
situations, and have slipped into a number of errors. Language is not rich in meanings or
multivocal, except as put to use in action situations. The role of "convention" in action situations
is problematic, and therefore one ought not to talk of "culture." Contrary to the assertions of
certain theorists, actors do not follow strategies, except when they decide to do so. Actors do not
"communicate," in the sense of exchanging information, except in specially arranged situations.
More frequently, they intervene in the effortful management of attention of their interlocutors.
Dialogue, that is, very commonly becomes a form of cooperative emotional effort.
From these considerations, it follows that the proper method for gaining social knowledge is to
examine the history of action and of emotional effort, and to report findings in the form of
narrative.