Evolution of Emotions

Question 1

What is a stimulus reward reversal study?

Answer 1

A stimulus reward reversal study is where the participant learns that one of two objects will lead to a reward, after a while the reward object will swap to show the other – people who have OFC damage will not be able to complete this study because they cannot reassign the reward

Question 2

Patients with OFC damage lose a particular effect, what is it?

Answer 2

Patients with OFC damage lose the ability to have a gut feeling about something – because the OFC has lost its ability to “store associations between patterns of the environment and states that those patterns produce”

Question 3

What other consequences are there of having damage in the OFC?

Answer 3

A brain that can’t make decisions about things can’t make up it’s mind, even the most insignificant decisions become make or break

Question 4

What are emotions?

Answer 4

“Emotions are mechanisms to set goals and establish priorities” – they can interrupt what we are doing and force other things on our awareness – it’s the meaning of the situation that gives the emotion purpose

Question 5

What are the four big principals of the evolutionary approach

Answer 5

• Principle of natural design for gene replication – evolution operates in genes
• Superabundance – produce more offspring than necessary
• Variation – each offspring is somehow different
• Selection pressures – environmental factors that increase or decrease likelihood of that combination of genes making it to the next generation

Question 6

What are the three types of selection pressures

Answer 6

• Natural – avoid predation, disease, sensitive to toxins, fears of heights, spiders etc
• Sexual – intersexual and intrasexual competition can make the animal more attractive to others and can only make it to the next generation if they can convince another to reproduce
• Group – only those who get on with others are more likely to survive

Question 7

What is the EEA?

Answer 7

The EEA is a set of problems faces by a species over an evolutionary time – you can investigate this by: studying close primates, archaeological records and looking at current hunter gatherer societies

Question 8

What is “the curse of Lucy”?

Answer 8

The curse of Lucy is a shorter gestation period in humans because to account for the larger head size, any more growth in the uterus would not be possible to allow for bipedalism

Question 9

What are the consequences of a shorter gestation period?

Answer 9

• Vulnerability of babies – implications for the development of compassion and cooperation
• Development of emotions in infancy – instead of using energy to outgrow vulnerability, babies instead learn how to communicate as they need to be well looked after to survive

Question 10

What are the evolutionary factors of emotions?

Answer 10

• Flattening of social hierarchies
• Monogamist bonds
• Need for collective action
• Emergence of caring

Question 11

What are the central ideas of the evolutionary perspective?

Answer 11

• Emotions are designed to solve problems
• Universality
• Cross species comparisons

Question 12

What are the functions of emotions?

Answer 12

• Prioritisation – is it a threat or an opportunity?

* Organisation – emotions coordinate responses

Question 13

What are the main components of the constructivist approach to emotions?

Answer 13

• Biology has no role in emotions
• Emotions are open systems constructed by culture
• Culture and emotions make each other up
• Emotions are different facets and culture puts them together in radically variable idiosyncratic ways

Question 14

How do we research the constructivism approach?

Answer 14

• Compare cultures
• Ethnography – live in the culture
• Relativise – the meaning of an emotion is relative, depends on a culture